(1977)**
“Beneath the living... Beyond the dead... From the depths of Hell's Ocean!”
During World War II German scientists created an army of super soldiers called the Death Corps. Neither living nor dead this elite army killed with their hands and none were ever captured. No one knows what became of them. Apparently the Nazis deemed them too dangerous and dumped them somewhere where they were never to be encountered again. Fast forward to present day (*cough 1977 cough*) where we find two couples boating in the middle of nowhere. The captain (John Carradine) manages to shipwreck the boat but fortunately there’s a remote island conveniently nearby. Arriving on the island they stumble upon a sprawling mansion where Nazi commander Peter Cushing lives. After regaling the soggy sailors with tales of the SS elite, it soon becomes apparent that they still roam the territory and they are thirsty for new victims.
Evacuate? In our moment of triumph?
John Carradine and Peter Cushing add respectability to what could have been simply an awful film. Cushing is particularly good here (he will be seen as Grand Moff Tarkin later this same year) and he’s so good at his craft he has me convinced that he was an evil bastard in real life. The pacing is terrible, which you might expect from a low rent affair yet the zombies look cool and a scene where they slowly rise out of the ocean one by one is particularly effective. Director Ken Wiederhorn clearly ripped this off from Fulci’s Zombie but it’s still cool to see zombies walking on the floor of the ocean.
