The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

Last night’s enterprise was the murky, confusing and thoroughly ridiculous Night of the Zombies. It goes by a few other names, including Gamma 693, Night of the Wehrmacht Zombies and Night of the Zombies II. I’ve mentioned before that there seems to be an inverse relationship between the number of names a movie goes under and its quality. That applies here.

Oh, it’s also a Nazi zombie movie, a genre which seems to be cursed (of the many, many Nazi zombie movies in existence, only one is any good) and it stars a porn star in a non-porn acting role. So, yeah. Pretty much a terrible movie.

It’s a meandering, talky spy tale that follows a CIA investigator and a scientist as they seek to recover a bunch of Gamma 693 that was lost at the end of World War II. It’s a gas that makes zombies of a sort. See, they can’t be killed but they look like normal people. At least as long as they get their dose of the gas and/or a fresh hunk of human meat to eat. But if they don’t, they get all zombified and ugly fast. Anyway, a bunch of German and American zombie soldiers have been hiding out in the mountains since the end of the war, preparing to take over the world zombie style. And now our hero has to stop them!

The story is poorly conceived and terribly executed. The scares are nonexistent and porn star/lead actor Jamie Gillis is the worst actor of all time — dude is so wooden and uninflected it seems like he’s suffering the effects of a moderate concussion. Most of the rest of the actors are wildly over the top, so the contrast is quite amusing. In fact, the whole film was kind of entertainingly bad. If you find it at a rummage sale for a dollar, pick it up and watch it with a bunch of drunk friends. That’s the only way you are likely to find it, since as far as I can tell it never got a DVD release and it isn’t the kind of film likely to get one.

The short, however, was awesome. I thought it was called Parasol Island Dead, but apparently it is just called Parasol Dead. It’s a great, full-blown zombie movie crammed into seven minutes. All action, no dialog. You can watch it embedded below!