La tumba de los muertos vivientes (1983)

Director:

Jesus Franco

Writers:

Ramón Llidó (story)
Jesus Franco (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

1 March 1983 (Spain)

Genre:

Horror | Mystery

Plot:

An expedition searching for treasure supposedly buried by the German army in the African desert during WW II comes up against an army of Nazi zombies guarding the fortune.

Plot Keywords:

Desert | Treasure | Gold | Nazi | Son

Cast

Manuel Gélin	...	Robert Blabert
Eduardo Fajardo	...	Colonel Kurt Meitzell
Lina Romay	...	Kurt's Wife
Antonio Mayans	...	Sheik Mohamed Al-Kafir
Javier Maiza	...	Captain Blabert
Albino Graziani	...	Prof. Deniken
Miguel Ángel Aristu	...	Ahmed (as Miguel Aristu)
Doris Regina	...	Aisha
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jesus Franco	...	Zombie

Also Known As:

El desierto de los zombies
Grave of the Living Dead (International: English title) (literal title)

Runtime:

Argentina:88 min | USA:82 min | Spain:85 min

Country:

France | Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Spain:13 | USA:Unrated | Germany:16 (cut) | Germany:18 | Argentina:18

Filming Locations:

Canary Islands, Spain

Company:

Marte Films Internacional

Movie Connections:

Edited from L'abîme des morts vivants (1981)

Not even bad in a funny way...

This movie takes a pretty basic zombie premise that should take about 30 min, drags it out to an hour and a half, fills it with really bad dialogue and even worse actors, then tries to redeem itself at the end with non-stop zombies for about 10 minutes. This is the 1st Jesus Franco film I've seen, and if this is any indication of the quality of his body of work, it could easily be my last. The story is somewhat interesting, basically about a treasure lost in a desert oasis that is guarded by Nazi zombies. Not a very interesting or original plot, but it's the best part of this movie. Too bad it's so poorly paced, it might have held my interest if it was an hour shorter. The actors are even worse than you can usually expect from this kind of movie, the editing seems like it was done in 10 minutes by a five year old, and the writing is absolutely abysmal. The score seems like it's pieced together from at least 3 other movies; at times it fits the action well, but at others it sounds like a bad soap opera. Really, most of us that would watch a movie like this don't really care about those things: All we want out of a movie like this is gory zombie mayhem. Up until the ending there is none what-so-ever, and even once we to that point the action is very disappointing. Almost no gore to speak of, and most of the zombies just look like kids with sand on their faces. There was one shot near the end, however, that I really like. We see the darkened silhouettes of 3 zombies wandering over a mound of sand against a blood-red sky....the one good shot in the whole movie. Put simply, Id avoid this one. Not even laughably bad, just slow, boring and dumb.

3/10