Zombie Lake, known in the original French as Le Lac des Morts Vivants ("The Lake of the Living Dead"), is a 1981

1981 in film

-Events:*January 19 - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires beleaguered concurrent United Artists. UA was humiliated by the astronomical losses on the $40,000,000 movie Heaven's Gate, a major factor in the decision of owner Transamerica to sell it....

 zombie horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 directed by Jean Rollin

Jean Rollin

Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his films in the fantastique genre such as the vampire film Le Viol du Vampire and the first French gore film Les Raisins de la Mort .-Early life:Jean Rollin was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine , France to...

 (under the name J.A. Laser). The film is considered Rollin's worst film ever. Apparently, Rollin felt so embarrassed by the film he had not admitted for years he directed it under his alternative name J.A. Laser.

Synopsis

In a small lakeside hamlet in the verdant of French countryside, young women are disappearing without a trace. The superstitious locals blame "The Lake of Ghosts", because of the lake's haunting past, but the town's mayor (Howard Vernon) seems reluctant, or powerless to take any action. When another woman is found dead near the lake, with her throat ripped out, a Paris reporter comes to town and soon discovers that the lake harbours a terrible secret dating back to World War II. It is then a group of local Resistance fighters take action against a troop of Nazi soldiers invading their town, as they have come back from the dead. And now, whenever the waters at "The Lake of Ghosts" are disturbed, the dead will rise. One in particular has unfinished business with a family in the town, related to an unresolved affair of the heart.

Cast

• Howard Vernon
  Howard Vernon
  Howard Vernon was a Swiss actor.Vernon was born Mario Lippert to a Swiss father and an American mother and was fluent in German, English, and French...
  
   as The Mayor
• Pierre-Marie Escourrou as German Soldier (credited as Pierre Escourrou)
• Anouchka as Helena
• Antonio Mayans as Morane (credited as Robert Foster)
• Nadine Pascal as Helena's Mother
• Youri Radionow as Chanac (credited as Youri Rad)
• Burt Altman
• Gilda Arancio as Blonde Girl Swimmer
• Marcia Sharif as Katya
• Yvonne Dany
• Jean Rene Bleu
• Jean Rollin
  Jean Rollin
  Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his films in the fantastique genre such as the vampire film Le Viol du Vampire and the first French gore film Les Raisins de la Mort .-Early life:Jean Rollin was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine , France to...
  
   as Stiltz
• Edmond Besnard as Promizoulin
• René Douglas
• Julián Esteban

Production

Le Lac de Morts Vivants, better known by its international title Zombie Lake, was part of the Eurociné era of the seventies and eighties, it was infamous and considered as Jean Rollin's worst film. Jess Franco is reported to have abandoned the project just before filming began. He is nonetheless credited for the script, which is supposedly based on a story by Julián Esteban. Accordingly, Jean Rollin was brought in at the last minute to replace Franco, and had only two weeks to bring the film together The film is set and based in 1957, although the style looks to be of the late seventies.

Censorship

Several of the scenes involving nudity were re-shot with the actresses wearing clothes. These alternative scenes are included as extras on the American "Euroshock" DVD release. The scenes are:

• The girl who goes skinny dipping at the beginning now swims in her underwear.
• The volleyball girls go into the lake wearing t-shirts and panties.
• The girl who runs into the pub now wears a revealing shirt instead of appearing topless.

Critical response

The film has received negative reviews. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 has not given the film a score, but negative reviews have been given. The film has received a very low rating of 2.6/10 at the Internet Movie Database

Internet Movie Database

Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...

 (based on 1,378 votes)..

The film has been reviewed on many online sites. Popcorn Pictures has said "the lure of constant nudity is definitely not enough to make anyone watch Zombie Lake. Quite simple one of the worst zombie films of all time, one of the worst horror films of all time, and one of the worst films of all time". Obscure horror has said "the story is very weak and the make-up & effects are terrible". Stalk 'n' slash has said "no true horror fan should deprive themselves of the hilarity of this film, you need to see it first hand to truly appreciate just how ridiculous it is".

Home media

Zombie Lake has been released on VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

 and DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 format. The film was released on VHS by Image Entertainment

Image Entertainment

Image Entertainment, Inc. is an independent licensee, producer and distributor of home entertainment programming and film & television productions in North America, with approximately 3,000 exclusive DVD titles and approximately 250 exclusive CD titles in domestic release, and approximately 450...

 in the US, with the tagline "Most terrifying zombie massacre ever to come to the screen". It was released in UK on VHS by Modern Films Video under the title Zombies Lake. The film was released again in the US on VHS by Image Entertainment on 27 March, 2001.

The film was released on DVD in the UK by Arrow Films

Arrow Films

Arrow Films is a UK distributor of classic, horror, and cult films on Blu-ray and DVD.-Arrow Films:Arrow Films is one of the UK's leading independent distributors of world cinema, arthouse, horror and classic films...

on 9 February, 2004. Released in the US by Image Entertainment on 27 March, 2001 in the same packaging at the VHS release.

External links