Horror of the '70s: SHOCK WAVES (1974)

For a film that is hailed as one of the best Nazi-zombie films ever made Shock Waves(1974) isn't all that interesting of a film. The Nazi-zombie hasn't been done very well until recently in the superb Dead Snow(2009) so I was expecting something a little more with this film. It's a slow and uninteresting mess that even iconic horror actor Peter Cushing can't save.

The film involves a group of vacationers whose yacht gets stranded off the coast of a seemingly uninhabited island until they meet up with recluse and former SS Commander (Cushing). Their arrival at the island also unearths a sunken Nazi ship which harbors a plethora of Nazi zombies blood thirsty for revenge (and not so much brains or body parts). These zombies aim to kill anyone on the island.

One thing going for the film is the atmosphere which has the Nazi zombies coming from underneath the water rather than from underneath a grave which lends the film some originality. The makeup is serviceable but since a lot of the scenes are filmed during the day you can see the mediocrity of it all. I would give the film props if it had a decent story but its all pretty cookie-cutter stuff. Brook Adams as Rose, the only survivor of the group, does a good job but you wish she had been given more to do other than just run and hide which pretty much sums up the whole of the plot of the film.

I've only seen a handful of Nazi zombie films (because frankly I thought they'd all be as bad as Zombie Lake - 1980) and this doesn't convince me that this was ever a sub-genre of zombie films that should have ever been taken seriously.