Night of the Zombies

Imagine a movie with a completely nonsensical plot, something about zombie soldiers left over from World War II. Now slap a bit of blue make-up on someone's face and call them a member of the undead. Not convinced? You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till you experience the face melting of one of these creatures, you won't know whether to laugh or cry. Special effects? I could have done better with some crayons and a piece of paper. And how's about the out of synch sound, the outrageously fake Germans and the not entirely convincing stabbing scenes?

As you can guess, this project was probably made with the change at the back of the director's sofa. Still, it wasn't all bad.. I did catch up on some sleep the first hour it was on. Sadly, duty bound to review it I had to rewind. You should be proud of me, I lasted for all of 50 minutes before fast-forwarding the rest. From what I gather, there is a big ACTION CLIMAX near the end involving those stunningly realistic cadavers attacking a bunch of hapless humans. This is shot and acted so ineptly that it quickly becomes a comedy masterpiece. There's plenty of unintentional laughs before that, but this scene really takes the cake. My final thought when the mess was over was "What were they thinking?!" Nothing else needs to be said really.. 0/10

My late wife, Debbie Jackson, was an assistant editor on NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES. Several years later, I found it in - of all places - a supermarket. I brought it home, but for some reason, Debbie refused to watch. That always puzzled me, but I guess the memory was just too painful. Years after that, the tape disappeared from our house. I can only assume she threw it away. My only memory of the movie is a chase scene shot in Europe, with pickup shots in Greenwhich Village, in an area that sorta looks like Europe.

Debbie told me stories about meeting Jamie Gillis and how the producers were always running out of money and bringing new investors to the editing room. There was a similar movie called SHOCK WAVES, also about revived Nazi Zombies, and according to Debbie, there was some talk that their priceless idea had been ripped off. Oh well.

Joel M. Reed has The Touch Of Trash! This zombie-obscurity (zombies are talking, eating normally in restaurants, smoking cigarettes...) is one of the best trashfilms I have ever seen.

Jamie Gillis is just the right guy for uncommunicative detective and the script is superb (in trash standards.)

If you say that you are a trashfan, don't miss it! No, I order you to watch it! It shines like a dirty diamond..

Fun to watch- I love it!

Reed himself has a significant role in this flick.

Zombies in a trashfilm= Poetry!

Night of the Zombies (1981)

* (out of 4)

Nick Monroe (Jamie Gillis) leads up a team of investigators who are looking for some missing soldiers. They end up finding a group of WWII zombies that were apparently brought back by a deadly gas and soon the team are fighting for their lives.

This here was director Joel M. Reed's follow-up to BLOODSUCKING FREAKS and it seems as if the director wanted to get as far away from that film's subject matter as he could. The film shares some similarities with THE FROZEN DEAD but if you're expecting any type of blood, gore, violence or shock matter then you're going to be mighty disappointed. In fact, this falls well below other zombie-war films from this period like SHOCK WAVES and ZOMBIE LAKE but it was still slightly better than Jess Franco's OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES.

There are all sorts of problems with this film but it's obvious that they weren't working with too much money. I say this because the zombies don't even turn up until the forty minute mark and when they do show up their make-up is less than stellar. The make-up might have been okay in the early 70s but after the work of Tom Savini and what was being seen in the Italian horror market, what's here is just lame. There's also not any gore to be found and in fact the one major attack sequence happens in a long shot so that you can't see anything! The performances are pretty much what you'd expect and nearly every scene appears to be shot on the same set. The lighting is extremely dark as I'm guessing this was done to hide how cheap everything was. The only thing that keeps NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES from being a complete bomb is the fact that, somehow, director Reed manages to build up a rather strange atmosphere. Yes, that same low-budget and nasty atmosphere that he brought to BLOODSUCKING FREAKS can also be found here.

NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES has pretty much been forgotten through time, although it never really got a good release anywhere. It's been listed under at least six different titles but without the shock value of Reed's previous film there's really no point in searching it out.

This horror movie production of very, VERY questionable quality opens rather peculiarly, with German marching music during the opening credits and a bunch of seemingly drunk actors with heavy German accents talking incomprehensible nonsense to each other. You either have to put the movie on stop straight away or accept these poor productions values immediately, because the incoherent plotting, weak dialogs and trashy incompetence go on for the rest of the movie. A handful of researchers are investigating a remote and forestry German region because, allegedly, there was held a secretive chemical warfare battle near the end of WWII and since then the place is a breeding ground for rotting Nazi zombies. Well, with more than 30 years after the end of the War, I'd say it's about time the military decided to investigate the rumors! If you manage to get the boring and inept first hour and ten minutes, during which there's absolutely not a single zombie in sight, you'll be "rewarded" with perhaps two or three zombie attack sequences, but still they'll all be scare-free and with terribly lame make-up effects.

The term "so bad it is good" doesn't even apply here anymore, as "Night of the Zombies" is a truly bottom-of-the-barrel horrible, trashy, tasteless and imbecilic Z-grade exploitation effort that cannot even remotely entertain the most hardened fans of bad cinema. Everything about the film is hideous to percept, from the characters' ugly mustaches to the nauseating Tiroler soundtrack. And just when you think it couldn't possible get any worse, writer/director Joel M. Reed comes up with a couple of the utmost retarded plot twists. Obviously there's also some random and totally gratuitous female nudity and a couple of embarrassing attempts at humor. I have honestly no idea what Joel M. Reed thought he was accomplishing here, but it's a miserable piece of junk that can't hold a candle to that other sordid little cult effort of his; entitled "Bloodsucking Freaks". I'm a big fan of that particular movie because it's so extreme and offensive, but "Night of the Zombies" is one of the most boring and pointless waste of film I ever voluntarily endured.