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ZOMBIE LAKE (1981, d. Jean Rollin)

Many filmmakers spend their entire careers trying to perfect a single idea. Jean Rollin, for example, never met a creepy castle that he didn’t wanna fill with lesbian vampires. These erotic gothic films, beginning with 1968’s Rape of the Vampire and concluding with 1979’s Fascination, represent the high water mark of an auteur who, as writer Scott Ashin put it, specialized in “movies that seem to have gotten lost on the way to the arthouse, and wandered into the grindhouse instead.” Yes, Rollin’s films featured all the hallmarks of textbook Eurosleaze: ample nudity, questionable dubbing, a soundtrack that ranges from lounge exotica to harsh synthesizers, etc. But with Rollin behind the camera, especially during this era, there was no doubt that you were in the hands of a true artist. His shot compositions, his use of color, and the languid, dreamlike pace of his movies still remain breathtaking to this day. In fact, many of Rollin’s films were based directly on his dreams: he considered 1973’s Requiem For a Vampire to be his best film, because he finished the script in two days, pulled from deep within his subconscious. For Rollin, the first thought was often the best thought, and for whatever reason, his thoughts always seemed to drift back to bloodsuckers.

Oh, but we’re not talking about vampires today. On the contrary, we’re dealing with a different kind of undead. You see, as the seventies turned into the eighties, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead kicked off a demand in the international film market for zombie movies. On the one hand, this craze lead to such flesh-eating foreign classics as Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City. However, it also lead to today’s film, 1981’s Zombie Lake, written by the previously discussed Spanish skin flick madman Jess Franco, and directed by Rollin. You would think that such a simpatico pairing of writer and director would go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Unfortunately, it’s more like two great tastes that should never be mixed, like chicken and orange juice. We’ll get into the behind the scenes chicanery that befell this film later, but for now, let’s strip down to our skivvies, and brave the undead Nazi-infested waters of Zombie Lake.

We open with a naked young woman. Obviously. She is lounging by a idyllic lake in the French countryside. Could it be the titular Zombie Lake? Only time will tell. Speaking of titular, the camera lingers all over this lady’s exposed flesh for a crazy amount of time. It’s a real get a good look Costanza sort of situation. You could count individual pubic hairs if you were so inclined. After what feels like three hours, the lady goes swimming in the lake. We get some underwater shots that feel positively gynecological. But wait, what is that creature emerging from the murky depths? Oh wait, never mind, here are some more shots of this woman’s crotch. Ok, now the creature is back. Are they even in the same lake? Is the young naked woman actually in a swimming pool? It’s difficult to say. Oh yeah, it’s a zombie. It’s wearing some sort of military uniform. Ok, yup, he’s drowning this nameless naked young woman. Au revoir, naked young woman!

So the town responds to this naked young woman going missing with a resounding shrug. Every time someone brings it up, they’re all like, ehh, we’ll deal with it tomorrow. The mayor, who looks like a frog who lost weight and speaks in a dubbed voice that sounds like someone doing a bad Peter Lorre impression, wants to get the cops involved, but doesn’t seem to think this is an urgent matter either. Things escalate when one of the zombies strolls into town and attacks another lady. This time, we get to see that the zombie has a special power that allows it to press his lips gently against a person’s neck, causing them to bleed to death. The town picks her up and lays her down on the mayor’s doorstep, then stands there completely stone faced, while the mayor once again is just like, oh well, nothing we can do, guess we’ll have to wait for a plucky reporter to show up in town.

Enter the plucky reporter! She goes to the local bar and literally announces to everyone there that she’s in town to do a story on that creepy ol’ lake of theirs. Some dude with an impressive mustache is like, hey, I’ll take you to see the mayor, he can tell you all about that lake, he reads books and stuff. So she goes to see the mayor, who for some reason is furious that she’s interrupted his busy schedule of sitting around looking pensive, until she’s like, hey, let’s talk about the legends and folklore surrounding that lake that your whole town doesn’t like to talk about, at which point he’s like oh cool hell yeah, come sit down, here’s the deal with the lake, it all started back in World War II…

Cut to the most adorable battle recreation you ever did see. It has all the charm and realism of a highly precocious grade school play. So a Nazi soldier saves a lady from a very small explosive, and gets a minor head wound in the process. After the medic fixes up his noggin, the lady repays him for his valor with some good ol’ fashioned fuck service. Would it surprise you to hear that this scene goes on for a long time? So all of a sudden the Nazis are being pushed out of the village. Our soldier goes to see his boo long enough for her to be like, hey, this is our daughter, I named her Helena, anyway, deuces, and then she dies. The Nazis are like, nuts to this, let’s retreat, but then whoops, they all get gunned down by some French resistance fighters, including the mayor, who apparently has been the same age since the 1940s. He’s like, yo, we have to throw these dead assholes in the lake, or else the next Nazis that roll through will see their dead homies and start some shit with us. So they throw the bodies in the lake, taking comfort in the knowledge that they’ll never rise from the dead and kiss people on the neck to death.

At this point, the movie realizes, hey, it’s been almost ten minutes since we last saw some nude boobs! So wouldn’t you know it, a female basketball team rolls up in a VW bus! How about that! There are like almost ten of them, and they all decide to go skinny dipping in this lake! Great idea, ladies! Would it surprise you to learn that this is the longest scene in the movie? Anyway, they all wait patiently to get drowned by the nazi zombies, which is hilarious, and one of them runs into the local bar, totally topless, and screaming her head off. Luckily these crusty old Frenchmen keep their hands to themselves.

Honestly, this is the part of the movie where my memory gets a little rusty. I know that the zombies start getting out of the lake and roaming around town. I know that our undead soldier lover man finds his daughter, Helena, who looks to be about ten years old, even though the war was almost 40 years ago at this point? Or maybe the movie takes place right after the war, but then why does everyone wear clothing and drive cars straight out of 1981? Uggggh, whatever, anyway, Helena somehow knows that this rotting corpse man is her dad, and she loves him. Oh yeah, and two detectives show up and are almost immediately eaten to death. Apparently there’s a scene involving a lady in an outdoor bathtub? I’ve seen pictures. And apparently our undead soldier lover man gets into an extremely slow-moving knife fight with another nazi zombie? Guys, I for real don’t remember any of this happening. This could be for two reasons: one, I watched a cut of the film that didn’t include these scenes, or two, it was after midnight, and the movie was boring, and I kept nodding off. I’ll let you be the judge.

Finally, plucky reporter lady is like, hey, have you ever considered just lighting these fuckin’ things on fire? And the mayor is like, holy shit, fire! You’re a brain genius, plucky reporter lady! So he goes to Helena, and is like, look, we’ve gotta kill your undead papa with fire. And she’s like nooooooo, but then agrees to it, telling the mayor, I’ll need a bucket of blood, then you can do whatever you want. Helena is the creepiest character in this movie.

It’s a beautiful afternoon in the French countryside, so the nazi zombies decide to go for one of their leisurely walkabouts. Plucky reporter lady is eaten for absolutely no reason. Helena lures her daddy and the rest of his crew to the old chapel with the bucket of blood. Here is where you notice that the main zombies merely have their faces painted green, while the background zombies seem to have more extensive makeup effects, scars and lesions and stuff. Why would you put the more realistic looking zombies in the background?! Ugggggh, whatever, anyway, Helena is like, I’m sorry daddy, deuces, and runs out of the chapel, just in time for one of the villagers to use a flame thrower (!!!) to turn these SS goons into crispy critters. Helena looks on, tears in her eyes, because her deadbeat daddy is dead for the second time. It’s like the end of that one episode of Fresh Prince, except dumb and shitty, and there are no meaningful statues.

So, it probably won’t shock you to learn that nearly everyone who worked on Zombie Lake was totally embarrassed to have done so and disowned the film completely. Jess Franco was originally hired by Eurocine producers Marius and Daniel Lesoeur to write and direct the film. However, when Franco learned how small of a budget and how tight of a schedule the Lesoeurs were giving him, he was like, fuuuuuuuuuck that, and bounced. So they hired Rollin, who signed on as a favor to the Lesoeurs, without really reading the screenplay. Later on, Rollin would admit that, had he actually read it, he never would’ve done the film. As it turned out, Franco was right to have budgetary concerns: apparently money was so tight that at one point, the actors were forced to move and say their lines in slow motion, because the camera was running at the wrong speed, and there wasn’t enough cash or time to have it fixed.

The sad irony is, Zombie Lake got a much wider distribution than any of Rollin’s passion projects. I can’t imagine having to live with the fact that your most widely seen film is the film that you’re most ashamed of. The one that you wished you had never made. The one that you demanded to have your name removed from, which is why “J.A. Lazer” is listed as director in the opening credits. But you know what? The fact that Rollin got this film made at all, under the circumstances that he was up against, is admirable. It may have had no budget, and a half-baked script, and a distinct lack of lesbian vampires, but that didn’t stop Jean Rollin from finishing the job that he was hired to do. So, in the end, A for effort, Monsieur Rollin. And B for breasts. Unfortunately, the movie is still C for crap.

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