Monster of the Day #102

Updated on September 29, 2010 By Ken Begg 19 Comments

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  • Ericb

    He’s got a Corman Giant Leech hickey on his cheek.

  • BeckoningChasm

    I remember that film as being rather decent. It was largely “this stuff happens because it needs to happen” but the happening stuff was interesting.

  • Ericb

    What movie is this from?

  • BeckoningChasm

    “Shock Waves” by Ken Weiderhorn. Peter Cushing and John Carradine are in it.

  • Elizabeth

    I work for an academic organization for studies in German culture, history, and language, and my boss recently suggested that we start up some B-movie film series to counteract the super-serious stuff everybody else does.

    Me: “Yeah, we could do a panel of aquatic Nazi zombie movies!”

    Him: “Of what??”

    Me: “There are two of them! That’s enough for a panel, right?”

    Him: *laughing uncontrollably* “But… but… why are they aquatic?”

    Me: “Well, you know, Nazis just got left all over the place…”

    I think I might have something here.

  • Actually, there are three aquatic Nazi zombie movies; four, if you include Dead Snow, in which they are under snow, which is after all frozen water.

    How’s that for hair-splitting?

  • Ericb

    Flushing the Fascists: Freudian Oedipal Submergance, Toilet Training and the European Fetish for Fascism; a Lacanian approach to Aquatic Nazi Euro-zombie film.

  • Rock Baker

    “Once they were ALMOST human!”

    One thing though, are these guys really zombies? I don’t recall any lines saying they’d been killed and resurrected. They were just soldiers scientifically altered into supermen. They’re the Nazi answer to Captain America.

  • BeckoningChasm

    Romero’s “Diary of the Dead” had a scene with a bunch of zombies at the bottom of a swimming pool, and I bet some of them were zombies. So there.

    I could check again, I suppose, except I don’t particularly want to see that film again. (I didn’t hate it, it was just pedantic and rather dull.)

  • BeckoningChasm

    Romero’s “Diary of the Dead” had a scene with a bunch of zombies at the bottom of a swimming pool, and I bet some of them were Nazis. So there.

    I could check again, I suppose, except I don’t particularly want to see that film again. (I didn’t hate it, it was just pedantic and rather dull.)

  • BeckoningChasm

    I am just a whiz at typing. This is what comes from being a zombie. Kids, don’t be zombies.

  • Gamera

    Yeah, when I heard about it I thought if you’re doing aquatic zombies wouldn’t Imperial Japanese ones make a little more sense? If there were National Socialist zombies I’d think they’d have been deployed on the Eastern Front againt the Soviet werewolvies.

    The version I have has a fantastic commentary where several of the guys who made the film talk about passing an IHOP on the way back to the studio after picking up Cushing at the airport and the star becoming ‘obsessed’ (as they put it) with driving him back so he could get a plate of buckwheat pancakes…

  • The Rev.

    I haven’t seen this in years, but I remember liking it pretty well. I should find it and watch it again sometime.

  • John Campbell

    BC I have to say I always loved this one.

    I also agree they are hard to classify as zombies.

    Mind as they are aquatic wouldn’t they be Hitler’s answer to Aquaman?

  • BeckoningChasm

    The Doctor Who episode “The Curse of Fenric” did underwater zombies pretty well. A lot of the show was just jammed with too many elements, but the atmospherics and the music were excellent.

  • Rock Baker

    So were the first underwater zombies the ones in Zombies of Mora Tau? (Or maybe we could say the title Martians in Zombies of the Stratopshere?)

    I know some zombie movies made during the war involved Nazis, but none had uniformed, undead soldiers, so far as I know.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Shockwaves, don’t they also make mention of other Death Corps units built for blistering hot and bitterly cold environments?

  • Rock: I’m pretty sure they were, although they weren’t underwater Nazi zombies. And, of course, one of George Romero’s last 17 zombie movies featured the living dead approaching Metaphor Towers underwater.

    I think it was Revolt of the Zombies that featured maybe John Carradine (?) as a mad scientist planning on making zombie soldiers. Pro-nazi or anti-nazi, I can’t remember. In any case, such a thing was more in line with the zombie-as-metaphor-for-capitalist-exploitation idea.

    I don’t remember the other units being mentioned in Shock Waves (although I haven’t seen it for a long time), but damn, there you go, that explains both Oasis of the Zombies and Dead Snow.

  • Elizabeth

    Ken — I knew about Dead Snow (which I really wanna see) but there’s a THIRD aquatic Nazi zombie movie? Oh, this is definitely going to be a film series.

    I’m certain there are other Nazi zombies out there as well, but hey, we can leave those for another panel.

    Ericb — I love the title, but, having edited the list of panels for this year’s program, let’s swap out the Freudian toilet-training stuff for something more up-to-date like “Re/Imagining the Uebermensch: Genderfuck and the Lacanian Meta-Narrative of Euro-Nazi-Zombie Cinema.”

  • Liz — Hold off, we’re having a debate as to whether the supposed third, Oasis of the Zombies, even qualifies. It’s often referred to as an underwater nazi zombie movie, but some of the guys are saying we never actually see the nazi zombies underwater. My memories of the film are (thankfully) dim, so I can’t recall. And while I do own a copy of Zombie Lake,* even I have my limits.

    *I’ve never shown Liz that movie because who wants to hear her incessant carping about all the nudity the whole time.