Dir. Jean Rollin, 1981
Another $5 zombie find! This has the distinction of being the only French zombie movie we've come across so far. Fittingly, what it lacks in quality, it endeavors to make up for in nudity.
Basically, during WWII some French villagers killed some Nazis (I hate those guys), one of whom who was having a tender affair with a villagerette, and threw them in the lake. Years later, these soldiers stumble out of the lake and start biting people. As far as I can tell, this is triggered by nubile young French women skinny-dipping in the lake. Skinny-dip, attack, leave lake, eat, return to lake, and then the cycle repeats.
The movie does not have a clear protagonist, but the main emotional arc follows the "good" Nazi zombie who is reunited with his half-Villager/half-Nazi daughter. He even goes so far as to fight OTHER ZOMBIES to protect her, until he is compelled to rejoin his unit to attack more skinny-dippers. Even though the girl loves her Nazi zombie daddy fearlessly and unconditionally, she lures him with a bucket of fresh blood to the flamethrowers anyway. Fin.
Contribution to the zombie canon: Honestly? Vaginas. Specifically, lots of gratuitous shots of the submerged vaginas of a French volleyball team. Well, and the zombie parentage issue. When we first put this movie on in the background of a party, we thought that there was a Frankenstein's Monster or possibly even a Lolita-ish relationship between the zombie and the young girl, but upon rewatching it turned out to be strictly blood related (har).
Favorite moment: Either the underwater shot of the Nazi zombies that is the most obvious and pity-inducingly low budget "swimming pool" one I've ever seen, or, you know, vaginas.
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I'd like to leave a few of my own observations. The movie is notable for awkwardly long periods of dead silence, gorgeous natural scenery, and completely inadequate "gore" consisting of a little red makeup smeared on someone's neck.
It's also worth noting (maybe) that the attacks only killed the villagers. There were no new zombie resurrections.
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