I was a teenager when I first came across Night of the Zombies, the last of six films made by exploitation director Joel M. Reed, in Francis Brewster, Harvey Fenton & Marc Morris' near-biblical Video Nasty tome, Shock! Horror!: Astounding Artwork from the Video Nasty Era (FAB Press - 2005)
At the time, remarking how cool and outrageous it looked just from the supplied Apple Video VHS cover. Really though, get a load of that illustration, take a good long look and tell me you're not the least bit interested? Holy smokes! There's a great big Schutzstaffel insignia stamped above the title, and below that, two gun-toting, totenkopf-looking gut-munchers dripping in Nazi regalia, and even lower still there's a hideously decayed, leering pale-faced ghoul in the lower right, accompanied by the ominous words "YOU COULD BE NEXT..." I could be next....next to what? Next to watch this cool as fuck Nazi zombie bloodbath? Nah, I wouldn't check out this hunk of tripe for almost another 20 years, but I never forgot that wild VHS art! The power of marketing eh? All of those bombastic attributes resonated with my undeveloped prefrontal cortex, I was hooked and ready to be reeled in, but as we jaded film fanatics know - for better or worse - looks can be deceiving, and that truth be told, Night of the Zombies isn't a (good) zombie film, or even a good film altogether. Instead, it's a dysfunctional cinematic curio, yet for all the incoherence and blatant shortcomings it still possesses a distinctive charm and wry sense of humour.

Starring: Jamie Gillis, Ryan Hilliard, Ron Armstrong, and Samantha Grey.

The plot is a baffling mishmash of James Bond-style spy/detective-action caper, a war movie, and a sci-fi zombie film, though there's only about 7 zombies and these are a far cry from your Romero flesh-eaters, this lot are a bunch of walkin', talkin' undead soldiers, kept alive by Gamma 693, an experimental chemical intended to keep wounded servicemen alive until they can reach a hospital. In the middle of this chaos is Nick Monroe (Gillis), a CIA Special Agent; Dr. Clarence Proud (Hilliard), a biochemical expert, and his niece Susan Proud (Grey). Nick is sent on a "minimum exposure assignment" - which I suppose for Jamie Gillis this movie is a minimum exposure gig! He's tasked by his handler to set off for Munich and chase down a lead on "Special Unit C", a chemical warfare outfit from WWII who were carrying the experimental "Gamma 693" gas.



The trio set off for the Bavarian Alps where Nick uncovers a much larger and fiendish game at play, involving world domination by a sort of secretive "undead new world order"; composed of decomposing Allied and Axis fighters, a sort of undead master race that intends to feed on the rest of humanity, prolonging their own lives by enslaving humans and effectively using them as cattle. However, Night of the Zombies is such a diabolical mess these nuances, or dare I say - intricacies, are so poorly conveyed that the whole narrative feels like it's degenerating faster than a walking cadaver. At times it's difficult to understand who's on which side and what schemer is behind any such machination.

Eventually, our intrepid hero, Nick, slathers on a layer of war paint, dons some military duds, and heads out to infiltrate a zombified Allied battalion in the snowy wilderness where battle is still being fought, apparently every night, with the soldiers acting as if they're seemingly trapped in a weird WWII re-enactment that you might find at a country fair. Amazingly, he succeeds, not only navigating his way across a pitch-black terrain, but somehow dodging bullets and shellfire. It's crazy to think those guys/ghouls would have been out there for over 30 years and don't appear to notice a new member joining their rank and file!
Events soon take a dramatic turn when it's revealed that Dr. Proud is a furtive flesh-eater - that's right kiddies, his reason all along for embarking on the mission has been for another fix of Gamma 693 in order to prolong his life. Unable to gas-up, he starts trying to put the bite on his niece, as it's also revealed that consuming human flesh prolongs the zombies' lifespan. Fortunately, Nick arrives just-in-time to have a bit of a rough 'n' tumble with the good doctor, before Susan grabs a nozzle hoses him down with some foam (??? - right!), reducing her uncle to plastic skeleton in a beige jumper. These are the kinds of plot holes, inconsistencies, and creative (or budgetary) choices that are truly magical and become real endearing features to the ever-enduring cinephile.

There's also a bizarre and inexplicable sequence where Nick picks up a teenage-looking hooker and takes her back to his hotel room. He begins talking to her in soft, dulcet, somewhat smug tones - those familiar with Gillis' work will know exactly what I'm talking about, asking her to strip off, all the while he picks up a chair - bemused I thought "where's this possibly going?" before he sends the chair crashing against a mirror, injuring some bloke getting an eyeful on the other side. He comes stumbling through a doorway, bleeding from the face, presumably he's a rival spy, or similarly scheming malfactor, it's never adequately explained. A confounding moment which sends Night of the Zombies spiralling into the category of filmic treasures collectively known as: What The Fuck? Movies.



It's a pity Night of the Zombies is only available in the form of VHS rips, I think the poor presentation adds to the overall "incoherent, sloppy mess" quality it deftly secretes. That's not to say this is beautifully shot, well framed, or expertly executed and merely suffers just because of poor presentation; don't get me wrong, it sucks, BUT I think it would benefit from a proper scan and restoration which might alleviate a few of the gripes & woes presented to the viewer. There's an enormous amount of potential here, but it's routinely and frustratingly squandered, and in a handful of moments, I couldn't help but be just a little bit reminded of Shriek of the Mutilated (1974) and Night of the Demon (1980), two Bigfoot movies that possess the same penniless production values, and in which an expedition set off to explore a remote mountainous region and while camped out there the shit hits the fan in a big bad way. Ironically, both of those movies are shining examples of cine basura, and equally, they too achieve a certain charm and are thoroughly enjoyable in their own right.

Yeah, Jamie Gillis in a non-sex role and guess what fuckers, he shines! The usual poise, bravado, and overall self-assuredness comes off with tongue planted firmly in-cheek, it's a playful rather than grating trait, in a sort of Sherlock Holmes-y way, and it brings a certain affable charisma to his character of Nick Monroe. Gillis, busy as ever in 1981 also appeared in a small role in Bruce Malmuth/Sylvester Stallone's Nighthawks, along with 11 credits for adult films, including: The Amero Brothers' Blonde Ambition, Cecil Howard's Neon Nights, and Shaun Costello's Pandora's Mirror. The links to the adult film industry don't end there either because this, along with two other Joel M. Reed movies: Career Bed (1969) and Blood Sucking Freaks (1976), are lensed by porno cinematographer Ron Dorfman, who also appears in this as Nick's C.I.A. chief. Reed and Co. actually shot quite a number of scenes on location in Munich, Germany with the rest being shot in New York, in the home and on the property of frequent Gillis collaborator and porno mainstay, Shaun Costello.



Nazi zombies? Cool! Where? That VHS cover art primes a prospective viewer for an intense Nazi zombie nightmare, but it's surprisingly lacking in the Nazi zombie department, I think I counted a grand total of two, both in one brief scene, where you can see the shambling members of the Third Reich (see one of the images above - if your eyes can penetrate stygian gloom and make sense of the blurry, dog shit-quality of the VHS rip), and the battalion Nick infiltrates in the last 15 minutes are quite obviously US soldiers, given the fact they're sitting around bullshitting about their Parisian downtime with American accents.

Anyway, for a "zombie" film, Night of the Zombies is utterly devoid of blood and gore and it's stranger still when taking into consideration that director, Joel M. Reed, wasn't afraid of throwing the red stuff around during the production of Blood Sucking Freaks, his debauched riff on H.G. Lewis' splatterific The Wizard of Gore (1970). What does it have going for it then? It has perhaps the most obviously fake, laughably bad, plastic skeletons I've ever seen in a movie. And, although it came out several years before, I can't help but be reminded of the chemical agent "2-4-5 Trioxin" from the infinitely better, The Return of the Living Dead (1985), a kind of cool but ultimately pointless similarity I thought I would take up more of your time with by mentioning.



It's one of those unique American zombie movies, made well after Romero's revolutionary Night of the Living Dead (1968), which doesn't conform to what would become the traditional, or codified rules of zombie cinema, cemented by Romero's Dead trilogy (1968-1985). Unfortunately, it might be one of the worst examples of the genre, yet when grouped with titles like, Ken Wiederhorn's Shock Waves (1977), Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake (1980), and Jess Franco's Oasis of the Zombies (1982), together they virtually form a subgenre of their very own. Nazi zombie movies with Skid Row production values and fever dream atmospheres that are often amplified by mystifying narrative choices.
I've read that Night of the Zombies was originally released in 1979 under the title, Gamma 693, which would have been hot on the heels of Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), but I can't find a source to truly substantiate this claim, along with it being later released again in 1981 as Night of the Wehrmacht Zombies. As a slight aside, understanding the numerous alternative titles for this are headache-inducing, since along with all the previously mentioned titles, this VHS rip is titled Night of the Zombies II, possibly billing this as a sequel to capitalise on its first release or a quick cash-in on the back of Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead / Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980), which is also known as Night of the Zombies.
In the UK, it was released on VHS for the first time in 1982 with slightly different artwork, before being re-issued the same year with that incredible Apple Video art. It was briefly re-issued again in 1986 under the title of The Chilling - not to be confused with the 1989 film of the same name by Jack A. Sunseri & Deland Nuse.

In any event, yes - the film's a dud, the direction is clumsy; the cinematography is unusually dark, as if they're attempting to mask the piss-poor production. Yet, that's not to say it isn't watchable or even enjoyable, on the contrary I've seen far worse performances in more recent, larger budgeted flix, and there's just so much fun to be had with this - whether that's at the film's expense or not is entirely up to you, but I would be an outright liar if I said I wouldn't pick up a copy of this if it appeared in a preorder announcement from the likes of Vinegar Syndrome or Severin Films in the future.