Le lac des morts vivants (1981)

Director:

Jean Rollin

Writers:

Julián Esteban (story)
Jesus Franco (writer)

Release Date:

13 May 1981 (France)

Genre:

Horror | War

Tagline:

God help us if they rise again!

Plot:

In a small village, somewhere in France, German soldiers, killed and thrown into the lake by the Resistance during WW II, come back.

Plot Keywords:

France | Village | Lake | Soldier | Zombie

Cast

Howard Vernon	...	The Mayor
Pierre-Marie Escourrou	...	German Soldier (as Pierre Escourrou)
Anouchka	...	Helena
Antonio Mayans	...	Morane (as Robert Foster)
Nadine Pascal	...	Helena's Mother
Youri Radionow	...	Chanac (as Youri Rad)
Burt Altman
Gilda Arancio	...	Blonde Girl Swimmer
Marcia Sharif	...	Katya
Yvonne Dany
Jean Rene Bleu
Jean Rollin	...	Stiltz
Edmond Besnard	...	Promizoulin
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
René Douglas
Julián Esteban
Alain Petit
Jean Roville
Claude Sendron

Also Known As:

Zombie Lake (International: English title) (USA)
El lago de los muertos vivientes (Spain)
The Lake of the Living Dead
Zombies Lake (Europe: English title)

Runtime:

90 min | Germany:71 min | Spain:88 min | Argentina:89 min | UK:83 min

Country:

France | Spain

Language:

French

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:18 | USA:Not Rated | Germany:16 (heavily cut) | Germany:Not Rated | France:-12 | West Germany:16 | Argentina:18 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:R (Ontario) | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Filming Locations:

France

Company:

Eurociné

Trivia:

The medallion which the French girl gives to her German soldier lover is actually a finger rosary; hence the ten small balls around the outside.

Goofs:

Continuity: When the woman is swimming in the lake during the opening credits, the water lilies on the water surface disappear or appear between shots outside the water and underwater.

Quotes:

Morane: Let's get away from this heap of hicks.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Route 666 (2001)

Zombies + boobs = fun?

(r#81)

This movie is schlock of the highest order, but you'd expect that the copious amounts of nudity would save it, right? Wrong! If you want nudity, rent a porno - a film like "Debbie Does Dallas" is likely to be better acted, scripted, and directed than Le Lac des morts vivants, a.k.a. Zombie Lake. This is a tedious hackwork. I knew it was going to be crap when I saw it, but I figured, it's got lots of 80's babes going skinny dipping, so how bad can it be? The answer was: extremely bad. This is a new low in zombie movies, and quite possibly the worst of its kind. Yes, I said it: 'Zombie Lake' is worse than 'House of the Dead'. At least the latter had a tiny, tiny bit of entertainment value. This is dreary, overlong, and just plain dull! It's the movie equivalent of Ben Affleck. It's like a Bergman movie without the fun.

The plot concerns a zombie dad who looks like a cross between Edward Scissorhands and The Mask. He rises from his watery grave to search for his daughter, who was supposedly born during the second world war but must have suffered some kind of disease that caused her to stop aging for about 30 years. Sound like fun yet? Good, because that's as much plot as you're gonna get. This movie might be worth watching for the nekkid women, but I just barely got through it once and you should be either drunk, stoned, very horny and alone, or all of the above before attempting to tackle this atrocity.

The eighties, man, the eighties. Those were the days. Only then could you build an entire movie around the subject of boobies. Wow.