SHOCK WAVES (1977) Schlock raves? Not quite. Zombies! Not just any zombies, but Nazi zombies! UNDERWATER Nazi zombies! Even though I can't think of any right now, something tells me there's a whole bunch of Nazi zombie movies out there. There should be a name for the Nazi-revival subgenre. My pick: Nazploitation! I probably would not be the first person to say that if the Nazis did not exist, it would be necessary that Hollywood invent them (come to think of it, the Holocaust-denial crowd probably beat me to that one). A group of people on what appears to be a discount cruise (very, very discount) run into the same underwater Nazi zombie problems most of us do eventually, when the boat is hit by a giant rusty ghost ship and they have to seek land in the form of a nearby island. On the island is one former SS Commander (Peter Cushing), who doesn't often have guests, and is seemingly both horrified and quite proud to find that these jackbooted undead have withstood the flesh-destroying rigors of three decades of marine residence surprisingly well. Admittedly, this is not one of Cushing's better performances, his German accent leaving much to be desired, and his draaaaawn-out entrance (first the voice....then....the silhouette...THEN...) comes to little payoff. The rest of the cast is mostly nondescript, though Brooke Adams has her debut here, Luke Halpin is likeably sensible and level-headed, and one guy overacts outrageously in an amply-telegraphed moment of claustrophobia in a refrigerator. And how common of a name is Clarence Thomas? Common enough that I doubt that the guy who picks up Adams in this movie's introductory scene is the same guy who would go on to Supreme Court. Shock Waves doesn't much succeed on a movie-sized scale (a PG zombie movie? Why?), but there are any number of likeable moments, like the discovery of one body, seen through the floor of a glass-bottomed boat. If I had a glass-bottomed boat, I'd always be worrying that I'd see something down there I didn't want to see. For that matter, most of the movie manages to sustain a pretty good atmosphere. Must've been a pretty physical shoot; half of these scenes have the cast running as fast as they can through knee-deep water, which as anyone who's done it will tell you, isn't easy. The zombies actually get the best moments in the water, though, as they slowly rise up out of the water, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in groups...this must've been the inspiration for the Simpsons episode when Principal Skinner chased Bart across the river. Totally cool poster art, though; I once saw a picture of a guy who had this tattooed across his back. Man, you have got to REALLY like underwater Nazi zombies to have them tattooed on your back. Also known as Death Corps; directed and co-written by the guy who gave us Return Of The Living Dead II. Without doubt, this movie is not THAT bad. It's not even half-bad. It's just not much more than half-good either. BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE