Search - Oasis of the Zombies on DVD

Oasis of the Zombies

giovannipistachio | USA | 05/25/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Two sexy, nubile half naked young girls on a trip to the desert wander off into a grave of supposed long dead Nazi's
(obviously awakened by the wiggling of bum's in tight sports shorts!) for whom they quickly become lunch. Then in a rather lengthy flashback the story of lost gold and Nazi's is explained and a greedy young pup through his
connection with his father, is now on the trail of the lost gold. Eventually he and his amigos arrive in northern Africa, to find the German Captain from the convoy of Nazi's, on the brink
of death, after he and his entourage were attacked by the gooey zombies after trying to recover the lost gold. Despite warnings from the superstitious locals about the "walking dead", and the death of the German officer, the greedy
young uns are still intent on going to the oasis to find the gold. Finally they arrive at the oasis and find some of their recent acquaintances slaughtered by the zombies. The night is upon
the young scallywags and soon too is the living dead. But, they pluckily fight them off with Molotov cocktails (which they
learnt to make at college!!) and torches (flames not batteries!). At which the zombies graciously shuffle off their immortal
coil. There are not many zombies in here, maybe a dozen or so, so it aint exactly "Dawn of The Dead 1978". But what we do have
is a pretty dry and flaky bunch, with the occasional gory, gooey, worm ridden phisog. Oasis isn't exactly fast paced, it takes a hell of a long time for the young gold hunters do actually get to the desert, and even
longer to get to the oasis. These Nazi zombies must have rotten wooden limbs as a creaking always precedes their appearance, like 2 tree branches
rubbing together in the wind. And talking of wind! Though there is a lot of desert wind sound effects on the soundtrack, I
can't remember seeing a single grain of sand being blown about! There is really only one gory death in there, where a woman is stripped (of course! It is Jesus Franco movie after all!) and
has herself promptly disembowelled. The rest of the zombie munchings are quick and nowhere near as gory as this one
scene. The print of the film looked quite good for such an obscure piece. The lighting looked a bit screwed, though maybe this was
the fault of the dodgy "Saturn Productions", extended play video version I saw. All of the night-time scenes were either
filmed during the day in dark surroundings, big trees and all that, or were shot when it was time for the sun to be going
down. So there are a lot of shots of dark images of people in the foreground with lots of light in the sky in the background, I
guess this is "day for night" shooting. Whether it is genuine day for night shooting, or just Franco shooting against the sun
I'm not so sure. Not Franco's best but seemingly not the worst zombie movie of which "Zombie Lake " holds the title, but which, as of yet I
have not seen. It's also not the only Nazi Zombie movie, there are supposed to be quite a few, one which comes to mind is
"Shock Waves 1975" with Peter Cushing, John Carradine and an early performance from Brooke Adams. Shock Waves for
sure though is better than Oasis, and actually does have a couple of good scary bits in it, which well Oasis, I think, lacks. Franco uses the pseudonyms of A.M Frank for director here and Daniel Le Soeur for producer. Word has it that another
version out there (isn't there always with Franco movies?!) a Spanish version, has Jesus Franco's wife Lina Romay, in a
small part, and is seeminlgy a better version than the one I saw, with better music, and a couple of extra scenes, which may
sound like total masochism, but it seemingly makes for a better film. This other version is called Tombs Of The Living
Dead and is out on DVD somewhere."

Just when you thought you'd seen the worst.....

Eric S. Brown | Sylva, NC United States | 01/29/2001

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This is one the worst zombie films ever made. One would think given that it's one of those rare films to cross Nazi soliders with zombies that it would be great, but it makes Zombie Lake look like an oscar contender and Shock Waves a masterpiece. Some of the zombie effect are so bad you can see the eye-slits in the rubber masks. Once again, buy this one only if your a completest and need every zombie film in your personal collection. Check out Peter Jackson's Dead Alive or Fulci's classic Zombie before you decide to throw your money away on this poor attempt at a horror film."

If you watch in a certain way

Joe the Wise | 01/29/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"If you watch this in a certain way, with your tongue in cheek, ready for a pastiche of almost unrelated scenes knit together into a plot, willing to look aside and admire the beauty of the sand shots and the classy interiors when things get boring, able to throb along with the drum/organ soundtrack, ready for some shocks, willing to accept (and enjoy) the limitations of a low budget film, well ... this film just might change your life! All of Jess Franco's films, even his "bad" ones, make me happy. I was laughing all the way through this - till the end. What else do you want? It's art meets the cannibal zombies."

Midnight At The Oasis

Eric S. Brown | 08/14/2001

(2 out of 5 stars)

"this piece of undead unhealthy guilty pleasure was almost entirely shot on location at the Maspalomas Dunes in the Canary Islands- rent it, if only for that incredible opening with the girls- you must hear them dubbed in spanish- messing round the oasis in shorts and high heels!!"