GardenoftheDead

Garden of the Dead (1974)

I’ve been dying to check out this movie for a long time and it didn’t disappoint. The story here is about a group of criminals serving their time at a work camp. A small group of them sit around sniffing formaldehyde and planning an escape. But when their plans fail (proving why you never give the gun to the old goofy guy!) the warden and guards gun them all down and bury them in shallow graves at the prison’s garden/cemetery. A couple of days later they come back as zombies and lay siege to the camp, killing anyone and everyone they encounter. In the end the zombies are driven not just by revenge, but also by the need for them to get high on the formaldehyde! The guards and remaining prisoners must work together to figure a way out to make it until morning or become victims to the drugged out dead.

The key to watching a movie like Garden of the Dead is to get in the right frame of mind. The story is cheesy with the convicts sniffing formaldehyde fumes to get high and coming back from the dead to get another fix! But this is a goofy 70s drive-in flick and shouldn’t be taken seriously. So if you sit down looking for a serious horror movie with a message you are going to be disappointed. Zombie “purists” might be turned off by the fact that these zombies don’t eat the living (preferring to sniff their next fix), are vulnerable to light (they melt away!), and move around pretty fast using weapons to kill their victims. Oh and the best and most bizarre thing is that they are somehow stunned or kept at bay by a pretty girl. I guess being in prison for all those years must have had a strange effect on them. But in a movie like Garden of the Dead I’m not really bugged by this. See my expectations were much different, as I was looking for a nice way to kill an hour and be entertained. The movie is paced really well and the runtime, which is already pretty short, just flies by.

Can’t talk about a zombie movie and not mention the special effects. There are a lot of decent old school gunshots and squibs that I appreciate (too much CGI in modern flicks for my taste). The zombies aren’t that impressive and are basically some face paint on the actors. There is a cool scene with a zombie melting to establish why they fear the light. Again it isn’t the greatest effect in the world, but for a cheap drive-in movie from the early 70s it was surprisingly good. The editing, audio, and camera work are all really well done. From a technical standpoint you can tell this was a low budget effort, but those working on the movie clearly had some skill and it shows.

Some movies are just meant to be stupid fun, and Garden of the Dead is one of those. I recommend that everyone try and track a copy down. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer