Zombie Lake

(1981) **

The French title of this movie is Le Lac des Morts Vivants, and my own personal title for it is Naked! If I had ever come across this on cable when I was a teenager, I would've taped it, then watched and rewatched it until the magnetic tape itself wore down to some wispy, cobweb-like material. I went back and timed the opening, and the girl starts undressing for the skinny-dipping scene at 58 seconds into the movie -- not even a full minute! After some nude sunbathing (during which the camera slooowly moves along her body in an extended closeup), she brazenly takes down the crudely-drawn "no swimming" sign and dives in.

"Oo weel take issue wiz me? Zis is France, and I am zo naked!"

There follows a long, long scene of swimming, some of it with our new best friend swimming along amongst the many lily pads, and some of it shot with...an underwater camera! If you bother to notice that the underwater footage has clearly been shot miles away in an indoor pool, with only a couple of prop plants tossed in, I smack you on the head! "Why are you counting lily pads?" I say.

Imagining oneself at age fourteen, as this movie inspires one to do, you can easily imagine saying "Man, the only thing that could make this better would be some zombies." And viola! A Nazi zombie pops out of the water and grabs the naked chick, and we get to watch that struggle from underwater, too.

During WWII, you see, the Nazi soldiers were victims of an ambush by the local French Resistance, led by the man who is now the mayor of the nearby village. It's admirable that from the very first disappearance the mayor suspects some supernatural evil lurking beneath the lake -- that is if you bother to notice that the magical naked lake has boring things like villages and mayors anywhere near it. In a flashback, we do see one of the still-living Nazis have steamy barn sex with one of the local girls, and see him meet his newborn daughter the same day of the ambush.

But whatever with all that, because here comes a girl's basketball team! Or badminton, or something. This is the movie that's bold enough to ask "If one skinny-dipping girl is good, then why not nine?" Cue the giggling and the splashing, cue the underwater camera, and, after a couple of minutes, cue the zombies.

Zombie Lake is baddity bad bad bad. It's a bad movie. Bad. The zombie effects are achieved simply with lots of green makeup, which -- oops -- tends to run off when it gets wet. The dvd had no English subtitles, so I had to watch the bad and frankly hilarious dubbing. My favorite line was when the mayor squeaks "We must band togezzer to fight ze mad murderous zombies." Worst of all, ultimately most of the plot is handed over to the little girl with the zombie daddy, who winds up turning on his own to protect her. For this she repays him by luring all the zombies into a barn that the townsfolk set on fire.

For all its badness, this is quite a fun, stupid romp. And while the heaps of nudity don't grip me the way it would when I was fourteen, it's pretty amusingly gratuitous how much there is. Sadly, the naked ends before the movie does; after the zombie rampage interrupts a tryst and an outdoor bath, the plot is turned over to the melodramatic little girl, who eventually beseeches her burning zombie daddy "I won't forget you, don't forget me." Awwww. (Cough.) Uh, any more naked?

I leave you with two minor but notable points: The girl is ten years old, despite every indication that the movie is taking place the year it was made and she should be at least thirty-five. And the sound design of the movie loops the same outdoor woodsy noises on a very short loop; I heard this one particular bird call so many times I wanted to go on a zombie rampage myself and maul a young girl taking a bath in her back yard. Of course I always want to do that.