DVD Review: Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies, by Jesus Franco

Text © Richard Gary/FFanzeen, 2011
Images from the Internet



Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies
Written and directed by A.M. Frank (aka Jesus Franco)
Re-released by Cheezy Flicks, 1981/2011
82 minutes, USD $14.95
Cheezflicks.com
MVDvisual.com

This was written by guest reviewer, Richard Gary.

Sometimes one can tell how bad a film is just by how many names it goes by, especially if it came out in Europe during the 1980s. Now, the director is Jesus Franco under the pseudonym A.M. Frank (I’m guessing as in “I Am Franc[o]), so the expectation should be low in the first place. While it’s original incarnation was as L'abîme des morts vivants, it’s English releases alone include The Treasure of the Living Dead, The Oasis of the Living Dead, Oasis of the Zombies, The Walking Nazi Dead, Nazi Zombies,, and this release of BNZ.

Here is the basic premise of the plot: Nazis were trucking gold through Northern Africa (Morocco?) during Dubbya Dubbya Dos, when they were attacked by the Allies at an oasis in the desert, and now they have returned from the dead to protect said gold in the form of flesh-eatin’ zombs. The college-age son of one of the sole Allied survivor decides to find the treasure after his dad is killed by a greedy turncoat. Along with a couple of buds, they run into the traitor, some hot women who come along for the ride, and, of course, some of those pesky, slow-moving meat chompers.

While the whole shebang is a bit of fun (after all, it is a Franco film), it’s also a lot of fluff (after all, it is a Franco film). There are more questions than answers by the end, and on so many different levels. For example:

If it is Nazi zombies protecting the gold, how come we never see any Nazis? Yes, there is a swastika on an overturned jeep, but all the zombies have (relatively) long hair and no uniforms. I’m guessing these are supposed to be the victims who have turned into zombies themselves, but there is not a single Nazi in sight, nor any of the post-dead over the age of, say, mid-20s.

I’m just guessing here that the original, foreign-language dialog was written by Franco, but the English translation I am assuming was not? There is almost a Firesign Theater-type disconnect from the action actually happening on screen and what the characters are saying. As an example, the night after a zombie attack where part of the son’s troupe is killed, this lighthearted dubbed interchange takes place:
Male: Shit!
Female: You say “shit” like you’re from Brooklyn.
Male: Yeah, a real native.
What the hell?

Another is a scientist, commenting on the zombie attack, who makes that old grade school joke, “They came out of the sand which is there.”

And as for that attack, I wonder, would these kids really be making out, joking around, etc., that soon after a violent run-in with the post-dead? For me, I would be out of there soooo fast. A part of Eddie Murphy’s routine from Delirious when he’s discussing the film The Amityville Horror comes to mind.

The zombies seemly attack at night during the main part of the story (they fade into the air when the sun hits them), but how come they came out during the day to attack two women tourists during the prolog? And if the victims come back to be zombies themselves, how come all the zombies are male? And why only when women are attacked, do the zombies rip off their clothes before eating… well, I can guess the answer to that: it’s the 1980s!

Despite the cheesy writing, amateurish special effects (including puppets), grainy and sometimes unfocused film (actually, this may be a transfer to DVD taken directly from a VHS), inconsistent tone of the characters, an over the top hammy death scene (play the trailer below), and some of the serious questions I’ve listed below, only one piece of dialog really bothered me (even more than the Brooklyn comment): After the only survivors of the attack come out alive, a rescuing Bedouin asks one of them, “Did you find what you were looking for?” The response is, “I mainly found myself.” Well, bully for you! What about the rest of your friends and others of your party who are toast? So glad he found himself at the expense of so many others. Yes, I talked back to the screen, possibly even insulting the character’s mother.

Oh, and I realize this is looking back to the 1980s through a post-9/11 rearview mirror, but watching long leggy beautiful actresses walk around Muslims praying made me just a little, well, self-conscious of Western imperialism.

This film is typical of many Euro-trash horror genre of the ‘80s, with a weak story and made on a low budget (some exceptions are those by Fulci and Argento), but also characteristic is the factor of enjoyment in their ineptitude, perhaps even more so because of it, and this is no exception. I’ve been watching some indie films that have been released in the last few years, such as Bill Zebub’s Worst Horror Movie Ever Made, Creep Creepersin’s Frankenstein, and Matthew Kohnen Ahhh! Zombies!!, and nearly all of them are usually equally entertaining (if not more so), have a stronger factor of creativity (well, Zebub’s work is usually borderline as much as I like some of it), and especially a robust sense of not taking themselves too seriously that most Euro releases from the period severely lack.

That being said, BNZ is the kind of film that is a lot more fun to watch with a crowd than in a lonely garret, so grab your food and beverage of choice (mine would be, of course, some White Castle and Manhattan Special Espresso Coffee Soda), and hunker down to groan in delight. And feel free to yell at the screen.



Bonus video :

DVD Review: Cheezy Trailers Extravaganza Box Set

Text © Robert Barry Francos/FFanzeen, 2010
Images from the Internet; note that the videos are not directly from the disk

Cheezy Trailers Extravaganza Box Set
Cheezy Flicks Entertainment, 2010
405 minutes, USD $14.95
Cheezyflicks.com
MVDvisual.com

To explain, I am that guy who tries to get to the cinema at the time listed, not when the film starts. While I hate the commercials they’ve started showing, I will happily sit through 20 minutes of trailers without complaint, and will usually shush people around me (dependant on their size ratio to me, and who I am with), despite their usual response of, “Dude, it’s just the trailers, dude!” response*. Just the trailers!?!?!?

As long as I can remember, the coming attractions have been a joy, and sometime I may write a blog about just them. Originally, I was even thinking of writing about them for my Master’s thesis, but was talked out of it by my advisor), but for now, this is a review, so let me get back to the pleasurable task at hand..

First a bit of business: These seven discs were originally released individually in 2005, and is now packaged as a single box set (a better deal esthetically and financially) in 2010. But that does not really matter (or, as Jesse Jackson famously said on SNL, “The point is moot!), since most of the films covered are from the 1940s through ‘70s.

The subject titles are broken into five sections, being Action, Fantasy, Science Fiction (2 discs), Horror (2 discs), and Exploitation. I’ll take each of these sections individually, but it is really important to note that as large and as thorough as any collection is, it cannot be all inclusive. There’s always that one more you wish were there.

The Action disc is also called “Adventure” on the opening track (lets call it the “subtitle” going forward). Along with the serials like Jesse James Rides Again, much of this section deals with jungles in various locales, be it South America or – mostly – Africa. Along with the many Tarzan pictures (post-Weissmuller, including Gordon Scott’s Tarzan’s Fight For Life and Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (which has a very young Sean Connery in an obvious henchman role), and Jock Mahoney’s Tarzan Goes to India, there’s some mainstreamers like Zulu! (Michael Caine), King Solomon’s Mines (Deborah Kerr), Mogambo (Clark Gable and Grace Kelly) and Hatari! (John Wayne). But the interest for me is the B- through D-films, with titles like Jungle Gold (with Linda Stirling as “the White Goddess”), Tropic Love (starring the future second-worst president, Ronnie Reagan), Safari Drums (Johnny Sheffield plays Bomba, a Tarzan rip-off), Hell on Devil’s Island, Native Girl and the Slaver, Virgin Sacrifice, She-Gods of Shark Reef , and the infamous gross-out Man From Deep River.

An aspect that is interesting about this genre is the inherent racism and misogyny in these films, whatever the level of grade of release. For example, there is a lot of naked flesh, including breasts, in many of them, but because it was labeled “documentary” footage of native dances, it was permitted even in films for the general public (for example, I clearly remember seeing Zulu! in the theater when I was a child). And, of course, with few exceptions, white = civilized and in control, while black = savagery and fear (or, the enemy). Sure, there are some evil white hunters, but the rescuers were always other whites (especially Tarzan).

Among the non-jungle scenarios, there include Steve Reeves’s Sandokan the Great, Two Sane Nuts, and a few British Hammer (is that redundant?) releases such as Sword of Sherwood Forest (with Peter Cushing) and The Brigand of Kandahar (starring Oliver Reed). Overall through this section, the word “greatest” is well overused as a descriptor. There are 30 films covered on this disc.


The second disc, Fantasy, is more correctly subtitled “Monsters, and Sword and Sandal.” The first half of this disc is indeed, monster-laden, much of it from the ‘50s and ‘60s, with a general focus on larger-than-life creatures, such as The Giant Gila Monster, The Giant Behemoth (one of my faves as a kid), Godzilla! King of the Monsters, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Them!, Rodan, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Konga, and Gorgo. As for the more non-standard versions of the classics, there’s the Spanish The Werewolf and the Vampire Woman, and the Hammer Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell and The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayans . Other radiation-inspired spookers include Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and The Cyclops (basically an extension of War of the Colossal Beast, not represented here). Then there’s Monster That Challenged the World, Rodan, the Astonishing She Monster, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and other dinosaurs on the loose, like The Valley of the Gwangi, Mysterious Island, and Valley of the Dragons.

For the Sword and Sandal section, there’s lots of Steve Reeve (including The Giant of Marathon, The Last Days of Pompeii, and Goliath and the Sins of Babylon), of course, and many others such as Sign of the Gladiator (Anita Ekberg), Gold for the Caesars (Christopher Pik… err, Jesu… I mean Jeffrey Hunter), Captain Sinbad (John Robinso… oh, Guy Williams), Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World, Mighty Ursus, and one of my childhood faves, Atlantis, the Lost Continent (with the Chief, Ed Platt). The S&S flicks had some great titles. And lest I not forget, there is The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (I grew up loving the Stooges, but the later full-lengthers were sad). Stop-motion king Ray Harryhausen makes quite the showing on this disk. There are 46 titles on disc two.

The next two disks (numbers three and four, for those keeping track), are devoted to Science Fiction. There are some obvious choices here, like Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, One Million Years B.C. (though I would have thought this should be on disc 2), The Day the Earth Stood Still, Rollerball, It! Terror From Beyond Space (from which Alien was – err – homage’d), Forbidden Planet, The Time Machine, Barbarella, Robot Monster (what, no Cape Canaveral Monsters?), a couple of the later Planet of the Apes sagas, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Again, it is the more obscure ones that piqued my interest, including Laser Blast, The Navy vs. The Night Monsters (Mamie van Doren!), Planet of the Vampires, The Giant Spider Invasion, Thunderbirds Are Go (though I stand loyal to Fireball XL5), The Last Days of Man on Earth, The Flesh Eaters, The Brain Eaters, and one I’ve never even heard of called Superargo and the Faceless Giants (obviously European). There are 63 films over the two disks.


There is just so much to love about the next two disks (five and six), titled simply “Horror.” Now what exactly constitutes horror in the cinema to you? Suspense or gore? Monster or masked killer? Alien creature or reptilian from the sea? All these are represented here. Some of the majors are Tales From the Crypt, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, The Tingler, Dr. Phibes, and to some extent The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me But Your Teeth Are in My Neck.

As always it’s the B- through Z-movies which are the most interesting (and luckily far outnumber the mainstreamers), like the vampire western Curse of the Undead, Equinox, Berserk (during Joan Crawford’s final career meltdown), Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (Hammer, with Chris Lee), Sugar Hill and Blacula (both double genre benders, including the blaxploitation theme), Axe, Raw Meat, The Legend of Hell House, My Bloody Valentine, Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, The Velvet Vampire, and Cronenberg’s classic Rabid (RIP Ms Chambers). There are a number of Hammer films here, mostly with Lee and/or Cushing.

This is a nicely rounded collection. Thankfully, there is more monster than gore (I’ll take a ghost, demon or creature over someone in a mask). Sadly, the movie that I found to be the scariest I’ve ever seen is not on here: Robert Wise’s The Haunting, a definite proving case of less is more. However, I do like a good gorefest, nonetheless, but something more imaginative, like Herschell Gordon Lewis’s work (e.g., 2000 Maniacs, The Wizard of Gore), which is also not here. There are 71 on these two disks.


The final collection is set aside for Exploitation. These are films that take a subject and try to scare the bejesus out of the viewer by preying on their fears (sounds like modern day Republicans, doesn’t it?), such as sex, drugs or motorcycles, or takes something salacious and hold it up for prurient viewing (ditto). Most of the films here, understandably, are from before the fall of the ratings boards (i.e., before 1968 when the ratings system started).

Usually they had titles to grab attention, like Pin-Down Girl (female wrestling and prostitution together!; it contains this great piece of dialog: “He’s the sort of guy who would change a girl’s evening stroll from a recreation to an occupation.”), She Shoulda Said No, Glen or Glenda (I Changed My Sex), I Passed for White, The Cocaine Fiends, Striporama (with Bettie Page), His Wife’s Habit, and Satan in High Heels (with Grayson Hall!). Some of the later dated trailers from the end of the ‘60s into the ‘70s include the biker themed Bury Me an Angel, The Glory Stompers and Satan’s Sadists.

There are other seedier sides of violence, like Switchblade Sisters and Black Mama/White Mama, and just a mix-mash from stuff that would seem ordinary on cable today, such as Myra Breckinridge, The Student Nurses and Russ Meyer’s classic Supervixens. Probably the most recent one is Reform School Girls, which starred Wendy O. Williams [RIP]). These are the kinds of films that will either cause your blood to boil, or fall down laughing, depending on your creed. This one has 37 trailers.


Lest not to forget, there are two other sections on each DVD in the specials area, one for trailers of other Cheezy Flicks films and one for intermission bits (“let’s go down to the loooooby…”). Note that there are about a dozen of these, and they seemed to be randomly picked six or so on each the disks, so some repeat (both the trailers and intermission shorts), including Day of the Triffids, Horrors of the Black Museum, The Headless Ghost, Robot Monster , and the TV movie of the week, Gargoyles.

My one complaint about this collection is that there are some trailers that repeat from disk to disk, which makes some sense when they were sold as separate units, but occasionally this happens even within a set. So of the 250 (not 500, as the box claims) or so trailers on the collection, it is narrowed down closer to 225, which is still a fine find and a great deal, and so I’m happy.

This is the kind of collection that you sit down and enjoy it for what it is, or run it in the background during a party, or just jump around to see the ones you like. Either way, there is plenty to go around and satisfy the trailer jones.

* Any true duder will (at least) double dude, at the beginning and end of the sentence.

Unrelated bonus trailer: