Shock Waves 2003 Horror Movie Review

Shock Waves starts out promisingly enough, with a great intro about the Nazi ‘death corps’ and a girl who gets rescued after floating at sea in a dinghy. Things pretty much go downhill from here as a series of slow moving disappointing sequences follows, as the annoying characters are shipwrecked and are picked of one by one by the Nazi zombies. The death scenes were kind of anticlimactic. If these were scarier, gorier or more inventive the film would definitely benefit but I thought the concept of the film was just wasted. Shock Waves was a low budget horror movie with few special effects… actually not very special effects at all. We’re talking half a dozen “zombies” which are basically people in Nazi uniforms holding their breath underwater. The cast apart from Brooke Adams (The Dead Zone) are unknowns, with guest appearances from horror legends John Carradine and Peter Cushing. The concept of underwater Nazi zombies is very interesting and was also used in to other films during the early 80’s with Oasis of the Zombies and Zombie Lake, I really haven’t seen either one of those films so I can’t really compare this with those two but I heard that this was the best out of the other two which share the same concept. When a boat cruise crashes into a deserted battleship they end up stranded on a deserted island that’s only inhabitant is Nazi doctor Peter Cushing who’s been living in an abandoned hotel for countless years. Things get even worse when it turns out the island is surrounded by some underwater, goggle-wearing Nazi super-soldier zombies that have come out of their watery graves to prey on them.


This low-budgeter has garnered a cult following since its 1976 release, the good thing is that it was decent and wasn’t half bad, while this isn’t the most exciting flick it’s still quite watchable thanks to director/co-writer Ken Wiederhorn (who’d go on to do Return Of The Living Dead Part II) who fills the movie with lots of striking images of the zombies rising from the water, stalking their prey and doing all the bad things Nazi zombies generally do. However the film was a bit talky and a bit slow going; but there’s enough here to make it worth a viewing and it also benefits from having genre veteran Peter Cushing in a side role (even if he’s really only on hand to help explain the plot). I was actually surprised by this dvd from Blue Underground which has more special features than expected, which is kind of strange for an obscure cult zombie flick. There’s a trailer, TV spots, radio spots, comprehensive still galleries (of posters, promo shots and production shots), a interview with co-star Luke Halpin and an enjoyable commentary track with Weiderhorn, Alan Ormsby (who did the make-up) and Fred Olen Ray. The picture quality was kind of weak, this only manages to be a step above video in the quality department with so-so clarity and a bunch of grain; but it’s the first time the film has been in widescreen and it’s been long out-of-print so I understand if the image wasn’t so good. Overall I would say that it was average, if you’re a hard core horror or zombie fan then you might be interested in watching this, enjoy.