Customer Reviews

Oasis of the Zombies

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Two sexy, nubile half naked young girls on a trip to the desert wander off into a grave of supposed long dead Nazi's
(obviously awakened by the wiggling of bum's in tight sports shorts!) for whom they quickly become lunch.

Then in a rather lengthy flashback the story of lost gold and Nazi's is explained and a greedy young pup through his
connection with his father, is now on the trail of the lost gold.

Eventually he and his amigos arrive in northern Africa, to find the German Captain from the convoy of Nazi's, on the brink
of death, after he and his entourage were attacked by the gooey zombies after trying to recover the lost gold.

Despite warnings from the superstitious locals about the "walking dead", and the death of the German officer, the greedy
young uns are still intent on going to the oasis to find the gold.

Finally they arrive at the oasis and find some of their recent acquaintances slaughtered by the zombies. The night is upon
the young scallywags and soon too is the living dead. But, they pluckily fight them off with Molotov cocktails (which they
learnt to make at college!!) and torches (flames not batteries!). At which the zombies graciously shuffle off their immortal
coil.

There are not many zombies in here, maybe a dozen or so, so it aint exactly "Dawn of The Dead 1978". But what we do have
is a pretty dry and flaky bunch, with the occasional gory, gooey, worm ridden phisog.

Oasis isn't exactly fast paced, it takes a hell of a long time for the young gold hunters do actually get to the desert, and even
longer to get to the oasis.

These Nazi zombies must have rotten wooden limbs as a creaking always precedes their appearance, like 2 tree branches
rubbing together in the wind. And talking of wind! Though there is a lot of desert wind sound effects on the soundtrack, I
can't remember seeing a single grain of sand being blown about!

There is really only one gory death in there, where a woman is stripped (of course! It is Jesus Franco movie after all!) and
has herself promptly disembowelled. The rest of the zombie munchings are quick and nowhere near as gory as this one
scene.

The print of the film looked quite good for such an obscure piece. The lighting looked a bit screwed, though maybe this was
the fault of the dodgy "Saturn Productions", extended play video version I saw. All of the night-time scenes were either
filmed during the day in dark surroundings, big trees and all that, or were shot when it was time for the sun to be going
down. So there are a lot of shots of dark images of people in the foreground with lots of light in the sky in the background, I
guess this is "day for night" shooting. Whether it is genuine day for night shooting, or just Franco shooting against the sun
I'm not so sure.

Not Franco's best but seemingly not the worst zombie movie of which "Zombie Lake " holds the title, but which, as of yet I
have not seen. It's also not the only Nazi Zombie movie, there are supposed to be quite a few, one which comes to mind is
"Shock Waves 1975" with Peter Cushing, John Carradine and an early performance from Brooke Adams. Shock Waves for
sure though is better than Oasis, and actually does have a couple of good scary bits in it, which well Oasis, I think, lacks.

Franco uses the pseudonyms of A.M Frank for director here and Daniel Le Soeur for producer. Word has it that another
version out there (isn't there always with Franco movies?!) a Spanish version, has Jesus Franco's wife Lina Romay, in a
small part, and is seeminlgy a better version than the one I saw, with better music, and a couple of extra scenes, which may
sound like total masochism, but it seemingly makes for a better film. This other version is called Tombs Of The Living
Dead and is out on DVD somewhere.

Another one that I thought might be decent turned out to be a dud. This is an hour plus of people running around trying to find some secret treasure and 15 minutes of similar looking people with mud on their faces moving very, very slowly. You may turn into a zombie from watching this crap.

this piece of undead unhealthy guilty pleasure was almost entirely shot on location at the Maspalomas Dunes in the Canary Islands- rent it, if only for that incredible opening with the girls- you must hear them dubbed in spanish- messing round the oasis in shorts and high heels!!

This film has got a really bad reputation, but mostly cause the people that criticize it is used to see hollywood megabudget movies like Gladiator and Pearl Harbor. But we, who are familiar with the work of Jess Franco and Eurocine, won't be that surprised. Ok, the theme is not sex in this film, it's a typical lowbudget zombie slasher of the early 80's. And in fact it's really good. Mostly cause it's shot on location and using real people in the crowd scenes in the city (some of them looking into the cameralens). That almost gives the film some weird, crude and spontaneous documentary feeling in contrast with the obvious sets and photomodel actors in films like the Scream trilogy. The special effects are not that good, but much better than Zombie Lakes. The strange organ music in the film also adds to the weird atmosphere. It's hard to know how many stars I should give this film. The script is very stupid and the film look like it was made in a few days, but at the same time it's very entertaining and much more fun than the Friday the 13th series or the Scream trilogy. Well worth a look if you are a Jess Franco fan. Other people will probably just hate it.

If you watch this in a certain way, with your tongue in cheek, ready for a pastiche of almost unrelated scenes knit together into a plot, willing to look aside and admire the beauty of the sand shots and the classy interiors when things get boring, able to throb along with the drum/organ soundtrack, ready for some shocks, willing to accept (and enjoy) the limitations of a low budget film, well ... this film just might change your life! All of Jess Franco's films, even his "bad" ones, make me happy. I was laughing all the way through this - till the end. What else do you want? It's art meets the cannibal zombies.

This is one the worst zombie films ever made. One would think given that it's one of those rare films to cross Nazi soliders with zombies that it would be great, but it makes Zombie Lake look like an oscar contender and Shock Waves a masterpiece. Some of the zombie effect are so bad you can see the eye-slits in the rubber masks. Once again, buy this one only if your a completest and need every zombie film in your personal collection. Check out Peter Jackson's Dead Alive or Fulci's classic Zombie before you decide to throw your money away on this poor attempt at a horror film.

This zombie movie is according to most people one of the worst ever made and I don't agree. I really can't get enough of this one, and I certainly don't mean this in any sarcastic way. As a mater a fact, I have nothing with zombie movies really, except with the teriffic punk-spoof "Return of the living dead" - and this one, "Oasis of the living dead" (as my own VHS edition is still called.)

So what's wrong with it then, hey?
Let me post the opposite question as an answer: so what's to be liked about this then, hey?

I like it's amateuristic-looking aproach: it gives you that delicious documentary-feel. This is mainly thanx to the constant neuroticly zooming-in of the camera; first it's irritating, I admit, but after a while it becomes part of that swinging cinema-variété style, and you start to appreciate it, that is of course, if you're on the same radio-frequence here as I am.

Then you have this wonderful eerie organ tune, which is as simple and effective as the theme music of such flicks as "Halloween", "Suspiria" and "Phantasm".

Then there are the sublime moments of quietness throughout the movie, in which only sounds of nature is heard, like wind or birds. Together with the locations, from worn-down houses in nameless sun-blazed town, to the dessert and the sinister oasis itself, it works.

And talk about music: how about that sound that can best be described as "blood flowing through veins", like some chirurgical instrument is pressed against someone's arteries. It's all clever stuff the makers came up with when they knew their budget (which was, I guess, no budget at all) could not provide them with a full blown orchestra - and thank God for that.

It's an overall eerie tone and dense, hot-blazing atmosphere here. The effect of all this is hightened by the zombies themselves who do not howler, scream, run, jump or act in any frantic way - they just emerge from the sand, they simply "are there" all of a sudden, and then they overcome, and allmost seduce in stead of maim.

The result is still death and mayhem, but almost in a hypnotic sense.
(And you can quote me on this one.)

I got this movie in a big compilation of fifty horror films. I expected quite a few to be bad; bad in the MST3K sense... but this? This movie's just bad. I'll spare you from the general plot overview, as that tends to make the movie sound awesome. What I will tell you is that this movie takes forever to get going. Despite seeing zombie hands within the first five minutes, you don't see them again for a long time. So long, in fact, that I don't think I've ever stayed awake long enough to see!

I honestly can't recomend this movie to anyone. It's like watching the original "Day of the Dead" But not the first ten minutes, when there's zombies... or the last twenty, when there's zombie inside the mall. This movie is like watching all the boring "mall" scenes from "Day of the Dead" sans zombies....

This movie is soooo bad I can't explain it to you! It's about some people looking for lost gold in the damn desert but find something else! Hmm, what do they find? FLESHEATING ZOMBIES!!!!!
Good story? Very cheap, bad dubbing, what film has good dubbing eh? Though this film had Some good looking zombies. There was only 1 gory scene in this movie, when they rip that girl apart and eat her guts. This movie looks very weird and cheap. I paid $65 for mine, I have a very rare version of the film. I gave this a 3 because I don't really hate it that much but I don't like it. If your a fan of cheap zombie movies, enjoy!

Yep, those evil nazis are at it again! This time, they have the gall to rise from the grave as flesh-munching zombies! Unlike SHOCK WAVES, these lumbering cadavers crawl forth from the desert sands instead of the ocean floor. It seems they are guarding a ton of nazi gold from WW2. Enter four college students who decide to ditch school in order to hunt down and claim the treasure. The opening scene shows two babes who visit the oasis for a swim, only to end up as lunch. The zombies themselves ain't bad, though they should definitely have been in it more! There are long periods of dullness that cry out for a gruesome attack or two! The ending is a hurried affair that seems thrown-together. While there are certainly far superior zombie epics out there, OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES isn't the worst...