More (and Fewer) Brains

Film: Return of the Living Dead II
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Genre mash-ups aren’t easy to do, something that is evidenced by the fact that a lot of them are ultimately not very good. Certainly there are a number of exceptions to this idea, something that is evidenced by the fact that there are a lot of great ones. Return of the Living Dead is an example of a great horror/comedy, and one that genuinely affected the idea of zombie movies. The “zombies eat brains” trope comes from this movie, not from Romero. Unfortunately, the sequel is the opposite, starting with the uninteresting name of Return of the Living Dead II.

If you don’t remember (or never saw) the first movie, the basic conceit is that the original Night of the Living Dead was a real outbreak, but instead of destroying the zombies, thy were captured and contained. And, naturally, they were misplaced and shipped to a facility in Kentucky. Wanting to impress his new protégé, a worker in the facility releases a zombie and mayhem ensues. We’re going to essentially forget all of that here. Return of the Living Dead II is more or less an unconnected movie with the same basic name.

Seriously? More Nazi Zombies?

Film: Shock Waves
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

There is a surprisingly robust horror subgenre of Nazi zombie films. The Dead Snow films are probably the best know, but Overlord (which I reviewed earlier this month) is the most recent example that I know of. Shock Waves from 1977 is one of the earliest exemplars of the subgenre. Oh, you can point at King of the Zombies and the sequel Revenge of the Zombies from the war years, but both of these involve voodoo zombies. The Creature with the Atom Brain from the ‘50s is closer, involving a Nazi scientist creating zombies, but doing so for revenge rather than the war. In that respect, Shock Waves might well be a first.

We start with a woman named Rose (Brooke Adams) being rescued in an open boat. What follows is her story, told initially and at the end in voiceover. We flashback to her experience, which starts on a small pleasure boat with a few other guests and a small crew. The boat loses its navigation with the arrival of a bizarre orange haze. The ship also encounters a huge freighter that appears as if out of nowhere, running without lights. Because of this, the boat runs up on a reef, stranding the group.