Color, 1971, 76 mins. Directed by Pierre Chevalier
Starring Howard Vernon, Brigitte Carva, Fernando Sancho, Isabel del Rio / Music by Camille Sauvage / Cinematography by Juan Fortuny and Raymond Heil / Produced by Marius Lesoeur
Format: DVD - Image (MSRP $24.98) Letterboxed (1.76:1) (16x9 enhanced) / Dolby Digital 1.0
It looks and feels for all the world like a Jess Franco film, but this outrageous cheapjack European mixture of Gothic ambience and Ed Wood insanity was actually the handiwork of director Pierre Chevalier. Chock full of the usual Eurociné staples like nudity, insane plotting, even crazier dubbing, and a very limited cast of characters, this potentially hazardous brew haunted video stores for years as The Invisible Dead from Wizard Video before turning up on DVD with its Orloff origins intact.
There really isn't much else that can be said about this film without spoiling the ending, which ranks up there with Night of the Lepus for insane monster concepts. At 76 minutes, the film moves along from one heavy breathing incident to another with lots of moody sets and lighting to set the scene. As usual Vernon is fun to watch, trying his best to get through the material with a straight face, while the screenplay throws in every convention you can think of: terrified villagers, dank dungeons, damsels in peril, long walks through dark hallways... but it's all rendered in such a deliberately skewed fashion that even die hard Eurofanatics will be glued to their televisions in disbelief.
Apart from its most famous incarnation as The Invisible Dead (complete with a misleading but terrific oversized cover depicting zombies bursting from the earth in front of a castle), this film has also been known as Orloff Against the Invisible Man, Love Life of an Invisible Man, and Dr. Orloff's Invisible Monster. The Image DVD retains the Against title on the print and menu but bills the film on the cover under the more accurate Orloff and the Invisible Man, since the two entities are technically not against each other. The source material is in wonderful shape, apart from the weird splices and erratic film stock conditions which have plagued this film since its inception. Colors are dynamic and striking, while grain is kept to a surprising minimum even in the darkest scenes. The disc contains the dialogue tracks in English, French, and German mono, all of which are at least partially dubbed. As with many Eurociné titles, there is no truly definitive edition; however, this is probably as close as we'll ever come. The disc also contains a French trailer (with most of the sleazy highlights), as well as alternate sequences shot with clothed actresses. The "rape" sequence is especially surreal in this variant form and makes for a welcome ableit highly bizarre addition.
Color, 1980, 83 mins. Directed by J.A. Lazer (Jean Rollin and Julian de Laserna)
Starring Howard Vernon, Nadine Pascale, Pierre Escourrou, Annouchka, Antonio Mayans / Written by A.L. Mariaux (Jess Franco and Julian Esteban) / Music by Daniel White / Cinematography by Max Monteillet
Format: DVD - Image (MSRP $24.98) Letterboxed (1.76:1) (16x9 enhanced) / Dolby Digital 1.0
Often cited as the ultimate "so bad it's good" Euroschlock title, Zombie Lake is many things -- most of them awful -- but devotees of Grade Z European exploitation certainly won't find it dull. Packed with acres of bare skin, softcore groping, a maudlin storyline, and splashes of unconvincing but plentiful gore, this is about as low as they come on the Continental totem pole of zombie flicks, but doesn't that alone make it worth a look?
Widely known as one of the fastest, cheapest, and most B-movie friendly European studios, Eurociné became a home for a wide variety of directors over the years. As with many of their titles, the authorship of Zombie Lake has been infernally difficult to pin down over the years. Originally Jess Franco was slated to direct (and thus Howard Vernon was signed to head up the cast), but he was unable to shoot the film (and instead wound up doing Oasis of the Zombies for the studio instead). The bulk of the film was handled by French erotic vampire specialist Jean Rollin, whose heart evidently wasn't in the project. However, the master's touch is still evident in some poetic gliding camera shots along the lake, some tender bits involving the Helena, and a funny extended Rollin cameo culminating in a bloody punchline. Franco fans will be especially amused by the blatant rehashing of Daniel White's haunting score for The Female Vampire, which once again becomes the catalyst for a rampage of erotic horror. Unfortunately Zombie Lake (or Lake of the Living Dead as it was sometimes shown in Europe) hardly ranks with either Franco or Rollin's best, but completists will find this oddly endearing little turkey worth a peek.
Zombie Lake haunted video stores for years in one of those great oversized VHS boxes from Wizard Video. The transfer was fuzzy and not very attractive, but it was decent for its time. This new transfer looks absolutely stunning in comparison; in fact, one has to wonder whether this film really deserves to look so pristine and clear in the first place. The framing measures out closer to 1.78:1 than the 1.66:1 aspect ratio listed on the box, but it looks just fine and appears more balanced than the cropped VHS version. Colors are extremely lifelike and strong (except for the cruddy green make up, of course), and the negative appears to have been stored with loving care in the Eurociné vaults for the past twenty years or so. The disc contains the same old cruddy English dub track as well as the far superior and almost lyrical French version. While there isn't an English subtitle option, returning viewers (and those who speak French) should try this option instead, as it imbues the film with at least a vague sense of poetry sabotaged by the clumsy English version. Along with the saucy European theatrical trailer, this includes the expected alternate clothed versions of the major nude scenes which have turned up on some alternate tape versions over the years. Most of these are quite funny, as the formerly skinnydipping girls now decide to get their long white dresses all soggy in the lake instead.
Our story begins in tried and true fashion with a stalwart, naive hero, Doctor Garondet, welcomed into the decaying castle of Doctor Orloff (Franco regular Howard Vernon). Appartently the doc's experiments have taken their toll on the local peasants and even Orloff's own nubile daughter, Cecile (Brigitte Carva), who is convinced that an invisible maniac has sprung from her father's work. As it turns out, Orloff has been experimenting with the creation of a "superior" race of homo sapien, though the punchline is not at all what most viewers will expect. In the meantime a peasant girl is ravished by an invisible man (conveyed by having the girl roll around naked in the hay while flailing her arms around), and the only way to expose the transparent fiend involves our protagonists walking around the castle hurling talcum powder in the air.
While any semblance of a plot may be accidental, the film revolves around a lakeside town under seige by Nazi zombies left over from World War II. The first victim is a beautiful young skinnydipper who gets groped to death by the helmeted underwater fiends, who sport military uniforms and bright green faces. The town mayor (Howard Vernon) is distraught by the crime, which repeats itself when a gang of uninhibited young schoolgirls decides to hop in the lake for a quick dip, too. Sweet little Helena (Annouchka, daughter of Eurociné head Daniel Lesoeur) deduces that the main blond zombie is actually the remnant of her dead soldier father, and the two form an unlikely bond as the entire town becomes zombie fodder around them.
