Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies

Aka Oasis of the Zombies

Aka Oasis of the Living Dead Etc

Schlock Horror

Cheezy Films

R1 DVD

Now this film is REAL schlock. It has all the necessary qualifications like an unbelievable plot, bad acting, dreadful music and low production quality. Even allowing for its production in 1981 as Oasis of the Living Dead the film is simply dreadful. You can start with the title – VAMPIRES are the bloodsuckers, not zombies. There are a couple of semi-nude scenes that neither titillate nor add to the plot. There seems to be a lot of tourist / travelogue clips spliced into the film – camels, so you know it’s set in the desert somewhere and palm trees so you know they are at an oasis. Writer / Director Jesus Franco (better known later as Jess Franco) must have been having a bad day when he shot this turkey. Yet it has a sort of deadly fascination about it that keeps you watching, hoping against hope that it may get better. It doesn’t. It’s a bit like banging your head on a brick wall – it hurts, but it feels so good when you stop.

During World War II, a small German army squad was detailed to carry a load of German gold through the African desert. We don’t know why, unless it was so the convoy could be ambushed more conveniently by the Allies. There was only one survivor, an American. Over the years a number of people have become interested in the gold, especially Kurt, a German treasure hunter. Kurt kills the old soldier and it’s left to his son now to find the gold. What none of them know is that the dead soldiers have been transformed into zombies. This leads to an orgy of hands reaching up from the sand and clutching unwary people, zombies chewing people up in the approved manner, and general mayhem. There is not much gore and splatter, though – they are not messy zombies.

This is about as low as zombie films can go, but Cheezy Flicks hasn’t cleaned up the sound or the picture either. This gives the film a crackly sound track and oversaturated colours that look so perfect for this style of schlock. It just shows that even the French can make a truly bad film if they put their minds to it.

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