I seem to have made the fatal mistake of waiting a few days before writing up Oasis of the Zombies. I have a good excuse for this, true: watching the film caused my boredom circuits to overload and short out my brain. Luckily, my brain wasn’t really needed for the rest of the picture anyway. However, if the description below sounds vague, well, you try watching that crapfest.
Two girls are in the desert, and find an oasis and walk around. Shockingly for a Euro zombie movie, much less a Euro zombie movie directed by Jess Franco (the fact that the film’s ‘direction’ consists mainly of zooming in and out of stuff about a thousand times was kind of a giveaway), the girls don’t get naked. There are bits of old war stuff scattered around, some with swastikas on them, and then zombies come out and kill the girls. Who, in case I hadn’t mentioned it, had not prior to their deaths gotten naked.
Weird.
Uhm, then there was this Guy. He meets up with another guy, about a treasure map or something, and kills the second guy and takes the map. Or whatever it is. Anyway, Dead Guy has a son in college, and the son is Our Hero, or the closest thing to it. Hero Guy—notable mostly for his curly locks—has his own Scooby Gang, consisting of Girl, Muslim Guy and Guy Who Looks Like Scott Hamilton.*
[*Not the skater, Scott Hamilton; I mean Scott “Five Plates” Hamilton, of Stomp Tokyo—admittedly, this means that the phrase ‘Guy Who Looks Like Scott Hamilton’ might not be an entirely useful frame of reference to most people.]Hero Guy, uh, somehow ends up with his father’s journal, or…something…and the next like half hour is a flashback about Dead Guy commanding some troops fighting some Nazis in the desert, and everybody was killed following much loud boredom, except for Dad Guy (I mean, in the flashback he’s not really Dead Guy yet), who wonders off wounded and is found by a stereotypical Arab dude who takes him home—I guess—and Dad Guy gets better and falls in love with Arab Dude’s daughter and they do the nasty—offscreen though—and then Dad Guy…went away, I think. Maybe because of the war? I don’t remember. But…that was the story of Hero Guy’s mom, which I guess he didn’t know. And Hero Guy eventually meets his grandfather, although I don’t remember what that had to do with anything.
Oh, and Guy Who Killed Dead Guy goes for the treasure, and zombies kill all his henchman, but only bite him, and he gets away, but the Scooby Gang finds him before he dies and I can’t remember how that tied into anything else. Also, the Scooby Gang meets Another Group, including Saucy Blond Girl, who flirts with Guy Who Looks Like Scott Hamilton.
So the Scooby Gang goes into the desert to look for the treasure—which is in the oasis and protected by the zombies, or some damn thing, in case I forget to mention it—and the Other Gang is there, but some of them are dead, having been attacked I guess by the zombies, only we didn’t see that, so I’m not really sure, but I think so. Survivors Blond Girl and Photography Guy mention leaving, but the Scooby Gang doesn’t want to, so the survivors of the zombie attack shrug and decide to stick around too. (!!!)
Blond Girl and Guy Who Looks Like Scott Hamilton have sex, because it was against the law to make a movie like this in Europe and not show at least some breasts, and they are all in love and stuff, so we knew they’d be killed. And the zombies come out that night—did I mention the zombies only come out at night, because the sun ill effects them, but for some reason the zombies only come out about ten minutes before dawn each time they attack, like how vampire hunters in movies always wait until half an hour before nightfall to go to the vampires house?—and kill everybody except Hero Guy and Girl, who know the zombies are afraid of fire (we were told that, I think) and made a three inch tall circle of fire by pouring gas into the sand and lighting it, which would also work on Octoman, and Hero Guy wields a half-hearted torch, at the touch of which the zombies go up like rice paper, being about the lamest zombies I’ve ever seen.
In any case, the only people left alive are Hero Guy and Girl, and maybe they get the treasure, or they leave without it, or something. The end.
Anyway, I meant to warn Steve over at the zombie-centric Gangrene Widescreen about the film, but he heard about me seeing it, and wrote to offer his condolences, since he had reviewed the film for his previous site, which disappeared into the Internet ether and took all the content with it. (Which I’m not blaming on his having reviewed Oasis of the Zombie, but I wouldn’t be surprised were there a connection.) Anyway, maybe he’ll re-review it. I wouldn’t wish it on him, but I’d suck on his and his partner Pam’s pain like sweet, sweet candy were they to choose to.
Anyway, when Steve and I meet in person one of these days, having both having seen Oasis of the Zombies and all, we’ll recognize that haunted look in each other’s eyes and give each other a little nod that only people who’ve sat through this movie would understand.
