Saturday, October 1, 2011 Z is for Zombie: G is for Garden of the Dead

G is for Garden of the Dead
USA, 1974

The Zombies: EC Vengeance Seekers. Hardy, but vulnerable to conventional firearms.

The Source: Huffing formaldehyde. Yes, huffing formaldehyde.

The Result:  A reallllllly long fifty-eight minutes*.

They're making zombies.

A group of inmates at a prison work farm spend their days doing unspecified yard work and getting high off of formaldehyde. The cons are gunned down during an escape attempt, only to rise from the dead after even more formaldehyde is leaked onto their communal grave. The zombies are intelligent (well, sentient anyway) and go on a killing spree until their one weakness is discovered - blue balls. The pretty young wife of one of their fellow prisoners is used to lure them into a hail of bullets. Fini.

Garden of the Dead is a zero-budget affair, and the absence of every dime is right there on the screen. The climax is especially lackluster given that the film spends time establishing the zombies' weakness towards bright lights; having the girl distract the undead until they were destroyed by the rising sun would have been a more poetic and satisfying ending (even if Nosferatu did it fifty years earlier).

Ted really needs to work on his grip.

The zombies use garden tools to dispatch their victims. Evil Fozzie would make some kind of "hoe" joke here, but he passed out during the film. Let's let him sleep, shall we?

1.5 Ghouls

*IMDB claims an 83 minute runtime for the film. Retromedia's horribly misframed print runs just over 58 minutes, and that's more than enough.