It’s a bad thing not recognize children paternity. Less bad, but always strange is not recognize the paternity of a movie, because movies are quite like children.

For years, the man who have signed the direction of this movie, with the name J.A. Laser, has always denied any connection with this work.

After watching this movie well-know as "Zombie Lake", we also understand and we fraternize with Jean Rollin, the one that for years has tried to deny the paternity.

Must be said that the fault of this disaster is not only of Rollin, but also Jess Franco is guilty. The great Spanish director wrote a screenplay based on a story by Julian Esteban. Probably (we can only imagine), realizing the result, he leaves the project.

The Eurociné staff, asking then to Jean Rollin, who accept without having read the script with serious attention. And so with the signing of J.A. Laser, we have the great Jean Rollin in a work worse than his porn, although here he has the honor to work with the legendary Howard Vernon.

We love "B Movies" as you know but in this one nothing is in the right place. It’s a chaos. Everything is put at random, in a incoherent way.

There are also many naked bodies and some soft-core scene, with the first powered by girls(components of a basketball team)  who are swimming in "Le Lacs Des Morts Vivants", and are hunted in a very funny way by the zombies emerging from the lake.

Yes from a lake, as the title suggests, and everything happens one day, without a reason, when a girl mysteriously disappears after taking a bath (naked). On this fact investigates a journalist who knows the legend of the "Lake of the Dead", while the mayor of the town (Vernon), as a good politician minimizes the incident.

The situation day by day becomes more tragic (comic), because zombies are really Nazi soldiers killed during World War II. The reason of their  awakening is

is never revealed, but we know, thanks to a simple line, that the lake is cursed and was already used in the Inquisition years to hide the bodies.

Victims of these monsters are the bathers,  and the citizens. But victims are us too, that apart from seeing the Nazi-zombies wandering wide-eyed and stiff hike seeking revenge, and the people who often look in the camera, we have to see even a love story.

It’s nad not recognize the children as said at the beginning, and you can say everything bad about  Nazi-zombies except not try love for their children, and here we see sweet reunion. Too much sweet and too much boring.

Just like the whole film, which could end in forty minutes in which everything happens and is told. But no, bad directing, bad acting and zombie make-up made with a poor carnival green color put on the faces of the actors. We regrets not having watched a porn Rollin, it’s better to being discovered with a porn movie, than with this movie.


Technical Data Sheet

Title: Zombie Lake

Alternative titles: Zombie Lake (Argentina, Title in English, Italy, USA), El lago de los muertos vivientes El lago de los zombies (Spain), I limni ton zontanon nekron (Greece), Lebenden Sumpf der Toten (Germany), The Lake of the Living Dead (Indefinite), Zombies Lake (European title in English), Zombik tava (Hungary)

Year: 1981

Country: France

Director: J. A. Laser (Jean Rollin)

Cast: Howard Vernon, Pierre-Marie Escourrou, Anouchka, Antonio Mayans, Nadine Pascal, Youri Radionow, Bertrand Altmann, Gilda Arancio.

Duration: 93 '

Production Company: Eurociné, J. E. Film (Julian Esteban Films)