The Nazi undead arise in the North African desert to attack a several groups seeking Hitler's gold. This Spanish version, LA TUMBA DE LOS MUERTOS VIVIENTES, featuring Eduardo Fajardo and Lina Romay, is superior to OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (the French cut dubbed into English), which is now out on at least two different US DVDs including the 50 movie box set, CHILLING CLASSICS. This budget disc has terrible video quality, is fullframe and is not recommended.
A favorite alternate title of this project, BLOODSUCKING NAZI ZOMBIES [!], which in the late 1980s was a Mom and Pop video store stalwart. It's better than Jean Rollin's Spanish-French Nazi zombie film, ZOMBIE LAKE (1980), which Franco was at one time set to direct from his own story. Several years ago I had the oppurtunity to interview the talented M. Rollin. He winced when I mentioned ZL and and laughed uncomfortably. Other Nazi zombie films are SHOCK WAVES and Lucio Fulci's GHOSTS OF SODOM.
Your best bet in terms of video quality is the IMAGE OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES disc which also features a French audio option (sans Eng. subtitles) and is at least letterboxed. LA TUMBA... has yet to appear on R1 DVD but is available on the Spanish DIVISA label.
A favorite alternate title of this project, BLOODSUCKING NAZI ZOMBIES [!], which in the late 1980s was a Mom and Pop video store stalwart. It's better than Jean Rollin's Spanish-French Nazi zombie film, ZOMBIE LAKE (1980), which Franco was at one time set to direct from his own story. Several years ago I had the oppurtunity to interview the talented M. Rollin. He winced when I mentioned ZL and and laughed uncomfortably. Other Nazi zombie films are SHOCK WAVES and Lucio Fulci's GHOSTS OF SODOM.
Your best bet in terms of video quality is the IMAGE OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES disc which also features a French audio option (sans Eng. subtitles) and is at least letterboxed. LA TUMBA... has yet to appear on R1 DVD but is available on the Spanish DIVISA label.
COMMENTARY BY ROBERT MONELL
COPYRIGHT BY ROBERT MONELL: 2006
The Spanish DVD looks quite good. While the tape was reviewed as having a variable aspect ratio, Divisa DVD is matted at 1.85:1 and probably looks as good as the original cinematography (Juan Solar is credited as cinematographer since he shot the Spanish footage but Max Monteillet does not get credit for shooting the rest of the film).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I just have seen LA TUMBA... via a video of an older Sp TV broadcast. The image quality is poor.
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