Oasis of the Zombies (1981)
[+]
(Foreign Titles)
Nomination Year: 2015
SYNOPSIS: This is a disappointing entry in the otherwise-dazzling
armada of Nazi Zombie films. It's slow, lumbering, ponderous ... I can
sit here making like a thesaurus all night, but that won't tell you what
you really need to know about Oasis of the Zombies,
and that is ... avoid Oasis of the Zombies.
The plot sounds promising. A convoy of Nazis carrying six million dollars in gold is destroyed near a remote oasis in the middle of the desert. Only a few of the victorious allies survive to pass along the location.
Many years later, an unscrupulous businessman hears about this gold, and starts planning an expedition to retrieve it -- not knowing that, upon arrival at the site, the camera will zoom in on a random spider in a random web ... and at night, the zombies come! They will eat your brains! Also your guts, your face -- these zombies are unreasonable, they'll eat your eyes. They're messy, messy eaters.
The film consists of two waves of people going to the oasis, being attacked by zombies, and being eaten. The pacing is slow (as are the zombies), and the rationale behind the zombie attacks (and their nocturnal nature) is completely absent. But by golly that random spider gets a lot of camera time! Best. Agent. Ever. The two survivors manage to run/hide well enough in the oasis to make it until dawn -- when the zombies slowly shuffle back to their graves.
But by then, I was begging for the film to end, and I was so relieved that the movie was over, I didn't have any emotional energy left to spare on being disappointed that not everybody was killed by nocturnal Nazi zombies. I'm confident, however, that if they had been aquatic Nazi zombies in any way ... the film would have been much much better.
The plot sounds promising. A convoy of Nazis carrying six million dollars in gold is destroyed near a remote oasis in the middle of the desert. Only a few of the victorious allies survive to pass along the location.
Many years later, an unscrupulous businessman hears about this gold, and starts planning an expedition to retrieve it -- not knowing that, upon arrival at the site, the camera will zoom in on a random spider in a random web ... and at night, the zombies come! They will eat your brains! Also your guts, your face -- these zombies are unreasonable, they'll eat your eyes. They're messy, messy eaters.
The film consists of two waves of people going to the oasis, being attacked by zombies, and being eaten. The pacing is slow (as are the zombies), and the rationale behind the zombie attacks (and their nocturnal nature) is completely absent. But by golly that random spider gets a lot of camera time! Best. Agent. Ever. The two survivors manage to run/hide well enough in the oasis to make it until dawn -- when the zombies slowly shuffle back to their graves.
But by then, I was begging for the film to end, and I was so relieved that the movie was over, I didn't have any emotional energy left to spare on being disappointed that not everybody was killed by nocturnal Nazi zombies. I'm confident, however, that if they had been aquatic Nazi zombies in any way ... the film would have been much much better.
Kevin Hogan
Jesus Franco
