Shock Waves is an early entry into the niche subgenre of Nazi zombie movies. Like most films in this subgenre, it isn't very good. It's hampered by a low budget and an aimless script, but there are sporadically interesting things going on that keep it from being a complete failure.
The film follows a group of tourists who were either too cheap or not rich enough to go on a fancy cruise boat. Instead, they're aboard old man Robert Carradine's dinky boat. They spend the first half hour or so of the movie aboard the boat, arguing and otherwise wiling away the time until they get to the island of Nazi zombies. Eventually they near the island, and decide to go ashore after Captain Carradine goes missing. They find him dead in the shallows and search the island for help.
Unfortunately for the forgettable bunch of tourists, the island is occupied by Peter Cushing, who plays a scarred Nazi scientist who fled to South America at the end of WWII with a batch of supersoldiers. The ship sank and only Cushing seemingly survived, but the arrival of the tourists has somehow triggered the indestructible Nazi soldiers to come back to life and stalk the island. The movie is vague about how the zombies came back, but it doesn't really matter. What follows is a long stretch of the tourists wandering around the wooded areas on the island, occasionally stalked by zombies. Even when the film strolls into a climax, it still feels weirdly padded.
Sure, Shock Waves is cheap and uneventful, but is it entirely dull? Not exactly, because the movie has the good graces to make the Nazi zombies look really, really goofy. They wear goggles all the time because it turns out their weakness is sunlight for some reason. So basically, you have a bunch of guys wading through swamp water with giant welding goggles on. They look like frog-men, and it's really funny. It's not enough to make the movie worthwhile overall, but at least there are some silly looking villains.
May 15, 2019
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