Todd clocks in first with Teleport City’s trio of contributions to this month’s Roundtable, and in doing so, finally fulfills his final requirement for being a full-fledged B-Master:
My viewing of Zombie Lake was one of those events that lead you to question everything in your life that has lead up to it. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it was a “where did I go wrong” moment, because many of the choices that brought me to it couldn’t in themselves be considered mistakes. Nonetheless, when you get to the point where you see watching Zombie Lake as some kind of solemn obligation, it’s a circumstance that bares some investigation. And I would be lying if I didn’t admit that, amidst all the questioning of how and why, I also found myself asking if there was not some way that all of this could have been avoided.
To some extent, when it comes to Zombie Lake, I am a victim of my own conscientiousness. Had the current B-Masters roundtable topic, which asks the participants to reveal embarrassing gaps in their film-watching resumes, come up a couple of years ago, I would have had no shortage of movies to choose from. However, once I went from merely watching movies to writing about them on the internet, I felt duty bound to do a bit of caulking in that area — with the “caulk” that I am referring to being those films that I had yet to see that I felt I probably should, which I guess would then make the “caulking gun” that I would use for such purpose either my DVD player or computer drive, or whatever. It’s probably not a very good metaphor for me to have reached for, seeing as I’m not very handy with around-the-house sort of things.
#1 by lyzard on August 24, 2009 - 5:41 pm
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And on my solemn oath, I did NOT know about this when I made that Zombie Lake crack! Ah, beautiful… 😀
#2 by Baron Scarpia on August 25, 2009 - 2:40 am
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Thanks to the stirling work of the B-Masters, I own a copy of Zombie Lake. I never cease to marvel at how truly inept and awful it is.
#3 by jason farrell on August 25, 2009 - 7:09 am
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“…I was left with recurring zombie-themed nightmares that lasted well into my early twenties. These typically involved me desperately struggling, much like the protagonist in the film, to defend a not very well fortified old house against an unrelenting onslaught from wave after wave of flesh-eating ghouls, in the process watching as my friends and loved ones who were inside with me all got bitten and turned against me one by one.”
Green with envy. Simply green with envy.
#4 by Todd on August 25, 2009 - 10:18 am
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Liz: I guess Zombie Lake was just in the air. Time to fumigate!
Baron: It always seems fresh in its awfulness, doesn’t it?
Jason: I know. Who needs Xbox, right?
#5 by lyzard on August 25, 2009 - 5:02 pm
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I do think we have to rank (“rank”, ha, ha!) Zombie Lake amongst the Great Bad Movies, for exactly the reason Todd alludes to: you can come to it fully prepared, and it will still blindside you with its staggering ineptitude.
There’s also the fact that any new review or discussion will provoke a horrible urge to watch the damn thing again (or perhaps that’s just me).
#6 by El Santo on August 25, 2009 - 7:26 pm
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I own rather a lot of zombie movies these days, including a few good ones like Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead, and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. Not one of them gets watched nearly as often as Zombie Lake.
#7 by Braineater on August 25, 2009 - 7:49 pm
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You could cut off Todd Sheets’s head and sew it onto Uwe Boll’s shoulders, and the resulting monstrosity still couldn’t fuck up a zombie movie any worse than Zombie Lake.
(Actually, I think we should sew Todd Sheets’s head onto Uwe Boll’s shoulders for a whole host of other reasons. But my point still stands. Zombie Lake is the boundary beyond which Man is not supposed to pass.)
And thinking of mea culpas, when I wrote my own review back in 1999 I didn’t realize that the footage I thought was being played backwards was actually just shot at the wrong speed. I don’t think I’ve ever corrected that, and now I’m too embarrassed to back and look.
#8 by Braineater on August 25, 2009 - 7:58 pm
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Oh, and another thing:
Todd, as far as I’m concerned, your in-depth study of Sompote Sands earned you your brain pedestal long ago.
#9 by Joshua on August 25, 2009 - 8:20 pm
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The make-up on the bald zombie in the last set of screencaps actually looks pretty good. I’m impressed that you managed to isolate that one frame out of all the rest.
#10 by The Rev. D.D. on August 25, 2009 - 9:48 pm
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Good thing I’m not a B-Master, since I’ve still not seen this.
Of course, it’s about the only Euro-zom movie I haven’t seen, so I guess before too long I’m going to have to bite the bullet…
#11 by Todd on August 26, 2009 - 8:15 am
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Thanks, Braineater. Your mentioning Sompote Sands really put things in perspective. I’ll re-view Zombie Lake multiple times before I’ll ever watch Magic Lizard again.
Rev: I agree, but I think that’s more due to the weird shape of that guy’s head than it is to any kind of skill on the make-up person’s part.
#12 by Todd on August 26, 2009 - 10:07 am
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Sorry, that last part of my comment was meant for Joshua. My mistake.