Don't Wake the Dead

Horror-gore shot-in-English flick from Andreas Schnaas (VIOLENT SH*T series) that has its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, everything else isn't so easy to find. A gaggle of hot chicks head to an old German castle to help set up for a performance by a German metal band (amusingly, they are named Gang Loco). What they don't know is that every 66 years an Army of Blind Dead Knights Templar arise from their graves (alongside some Nazi zombies) and it is going down - as Phil Collins said - tonight, tonight, toniiiiight. The only person there to protect them is Vincent (Ralph Fellows), a Carthusian monk in a leather jacket who has the Sword of Mecca and Flying Guillotine (!) that can defeat these zombie bastards.

German helmer Schnaas continues to have better production values as his career progresses and there is plenty of the expected gore and nudity. Oh, and the terrible acting brings up some good laughs. But the film is still pretty rough. The worst thing is the end where - in the biggest directorial WTF? moment by a German since Uwe Boll inserted video game footage into HOUSE OF THE DEAD - Schnaas spends the time cutting between the climatic chase and the zombie band rocking out. It is totally unrelated as characters appear in both bits and it is awful. Like ever 4 minutes the action stops as he cuts back to the band playing and then back to the movie. Think NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR without the leg warmers. Bizarre. Even funnier is that after enduring that "song" being stretched out for nearly 15 minutes, the credits start to roll and - you guessed it - that song starts playing again! Damn you, Schnaassssssss!

German ultra-gore movement co-founder, Andreas Schnaas is back. This time he bring us a zombie movie, with Nazi zombies and templars. Production value is bigger than his previous efforts but this one is, like Demonium or Antropophagous 2000 a big let down.

This movie is nothing compared to Schnaass masterpiece "Violent Sh*t 3", its even worse than Nikos the impaler. There is a rock band playing the same song for like 40 minutes in the movie and all the zombies dancing...its that bad. I give it a 5/10 because it features some good gore and because i still have confidence in Andreas Schnaass but please, don't ruin the Karl the butcher series...if the upcoming Karl vs Axe is a turkey like this you must retire for ever

Do you enjoy watching really bad movies?

If you don't, run as fast as you can.

If you do, don't miss this one. It's simply ridiculous, from start to finish. Mind-bogglingly bad dialogs, a completely wacky story, pointless nudity, charmingly fake-looking gore and Templar and Nazi zombies. What more could you possibly want?

I was thoroughly entertained throughout the whole movie. The characters can't make up their minds about anything, switching positions back and forth basically from scene to scene and sometimes even in the middle of a dialog... just as the wine bottles here seem unable to decide whether they're full or empty, etc etc.

Actually, there's not much more to say about this one. As I said: If you enjoy watching a really bad movie every now and then, just watch this.

Andreas Schnaas had made some reputation with the Violent Sh*t trilogy (1989-1999). It was just made for the gore but everybody liked it a lot. But almost 20 years later he made this flick and I must say, having some kind of name as a director he didn't proceed in filmmaking.

The story itself is a mixture of old school horrors like Amando de Ossorio's La Noche Del Terror Ciego (1972) were we had some dead Templars. On the other hand it also contains some zombie nazi's , yep, remember Jaen Rollin's Zombie Lake (1972) and to end some cursed girls who moved like Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). They are all hunted by some cheap Van Helsing look-a-like. The acting was really bad and the effects used extremely cheap. There's even a decapitation scene were the body is coming up, but if you watch closely you can see that the camera just kept the head out of the lens, but you still can see the head on the body. On the other hand there's a lot of red stuff and a lot of gratuitous nudity but the whole flick just didn't work, I regret it to have been wakening the dead.

Gore 3/5 Nudity 2/5 Effects 1/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

A group of girls go to a castle to help an old friend set up for a rock concert, but when they arrive they find out that they are there on the 66th anniversary of a Nazi séance that brought dead Templar knights back to life. The Templars return from the dead but so do the Nazis. Then a descendant of one of the men who fought the Nazis shows up and fights the undead using skills he gained in the Orient. Sound confusing? Well it is.

Andreas Schnaas's new movie is easily his best looking but like most of his previous ones, Don't Wake the Dead is way too complex for its own good, has way too much nonsense (the final battle is intercut against a 10-minute rock concert) and is edited poorly. There are several great actors in this movie, and many who are very hard to understand (like Demonium). The castle they are in looks amazing and the Templars look great, appearing like a nod to the Blind Dead films.

It is not a good movie, but if you want a lot of cheesy gore, nudity, and the Shaw brothers Flying Guillotine for some reason - this is the movie for you. It defies all convention, which - after all - makes it a Schnaas movie.