Ken Wiederhorn made an impressive directorial debut with his 1977 Nazi zombie play Shock Waves, which he also co-wrote with future TV director John Kent Harrison and Ken Pare. The supremely haunting score for the film was composed by Richard Einhorn (his first of his), who would go on to score The Prowler, Don’t Go in the House, and Eyes of a Stranger (working again with director Wiederhorn). The film features ghoulish zombie effects courtesy of FX artist Alan Ormsby, who also worked on Bob Clark’s Deathdream (aka Dead of Night) and the 1974 necrophilia flick Deranged (which he also directed). Shot in 35 days in South Florida and cheaply financed for around $200,000, Shock Waves does a lot with very little. The film’s legion of deadly zombies, which appear to consist of many ghoulish members, were played by no more than eight different actors in zombie attire, and Wiederhorn was able to rent the abandoned hotel for the entire shoot for $250.
Shock Waves centers on a small group of people, including an earthy captain (John Carradine), the beautiful Rose (Brooke Adams), Keith (Flipper’s Luke Halpin), Chuck (Fred Buch), the stubborn mule Norman (Jack Davidson ) and his wife Beverly (DJ Sidney) and lazy, alcoholic crewman Dobbs (Don Stout), aboard a cruise ship shipwrecked on a spooky island after being struck overnight by a huge, apparently empty freighter. As the group searches the desolate island for signs of human life, they stumble upon a sprawling, seemingly abandoned hotel that turns out to have a single occupant: a brooding former SS commander (Peter Cushing), tortured by guilt and self-loathing. , which warns everyone that an army of superhuman aquatic zombies created during World War II for murderous purposes, and dubbed the Corps of Death, will soon rise from their watery graves and wreak havoc on anything living on the island.
His words are nothing less than the truth, and soon our castaways find themselves fleeing in terror from a legion of pale Nazi zombies bent on destruction. The group begins to thin out as the undead pick them off one by one, always attacking and leaving the corpses of their victims in watery terrain (strangling Chuck with a belt in a pool, killing and putting Beverly in a large aquarium). size, etc.) Crewman Dobbs has a funny kill that has him walking through a waist-deep river on the island and spying on the ghastly Nazi zombies from a distance, scaring him so much he slips on the water and lands face first on a spiky sea creature on the river floor. Finally, only Rose and Keith remain, the others (including the SS Major) having been efficiently eliminated by the mindless killing machines. Rose learns by accident that they can be killed by removing their black goggles and exposing their eyes to sunlight, but is this knowledge enough to save them from an entire army of Nazi zombies?
The cast, both known and unknown actors, is uniformly excellent. The film’s two veteran stars, Peter Cushing and John Carradine, each received $5,000 for four days of work, and their presence complements the film wonderfully. Cushing is grandly understated as the schizoid SS Commander, and Carradine is terrific as Captain Salty; however, surprisingly, we never learn the proper names of their characters! The lovely Brooke Adams makes an impressive film debut here as Rose, and it was really cool to see how blonde Luke Halpin, who played Sandy Hicks on the ’60s TV show Flipper, had changed since his teens. Director Wiederhorn, who would go on to helm the stylish 1981 slasher Eyes of a Stranger, does a solid job of creating a haunting and oppressive atmosphere. Shock Waves was, by the way, the first underwater Nazi zombie movie ever made, and since then only two movies have been made in this peculiar subgenre: Jess Franco’s Oasis of the Living Dead and Jean Rollins’ Zombie Lake, both made in 1981, and neither. of which can touch the far superior Shockwaves.
Shock Waves, the kind of horror movie they don’t do much anymore. It’s scary and exciting without using a drop of blood, and like the best horror movies, it leaves a lot to the imagination. The film had been out of print and a highly sought after collector’s item until Blue Underground released it widescreen on DVD in 2003, much to the delight of many horror fans who were dying to see this creepy little gem again. I rate Shock Waves a deserved 8 out of 10 and highly recommend it to horror fans who don’t rely solely on blood and gore for fun.