Shock Waves (1977)

My love for zombie Nazis in movies is well known, at least it is by those that know me. Outpost and Dead Snow are recent, wonderful films using them as villains, but the idea started back in the seventies in Shock Waves.

You should realise you are in trouble when the captain of your boat is John Carradine, but that doesn’t deter the heroes/victims of Shockwaves from their adventure. The young cast (including Brooke Adams who would later star in The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Dead Zone) find themselves stranded on an island, its only (living) inhabitant is Peter Cushing (a former SS Officer). Being on an island with no one but a thin, bedraggled Peter Cushing should be another warning that things aren’t right, but no one is suspicious until dead bodies appear, and then Nazi zombies (who “are neither dead or alive, but somewhere in between”) rise out of the water. Cushing is a former SS officer and the zombies are his former troops, engineered to not need oxygen so they could stay on U Boats for an indefinite period.

Like all movies of the seventies, it seems slow by today’s standards, and the low budget means there aren’t many Nazis or much action, but it has the atmosphere and ideas that so many other films lack. It’s a classic. Director Ken Wiederhorn would later write and direct more zombies in Return Of The Living Dead 2.