Rent Nazi Zombies (2003)

Slow. - Nazi Zombies review by NP

This opens with two soldiers, an officer and his prisoner, slowly smoking cigarettes with such elongated silent intensity, you wonder if they intend ever to speak at all. When they do, it is simply to invite the telling of a story that started at the beginning of their last mission …

‘Nazi Zombies’ or ‘Maplewood’ as it has been known, is directed by David B Stewart III, who also writes it, provides the evocative music (with great use made of the relentless chimes of a funereal church bell); he is a film editor, production designer, set decorator, costume designer and camera operator. He also plays Brig. Gen. Abrams. He’s not credited as ‘cigarette financier’, which is probably just as well because throughout, characters are puffing thoughtfully on a smoke. The grainy images and relentless close-ups betray a lower than low budget, and with little reason to care for the characters in the first place, by half way through, we don’t know who is who or what is what. Helpfully, we keep cutting back to the officer and prisoner who try and patch the story together story for us.

Events take place at a sluggish pace and the production tries to take itself far too seriously. Angsty, square-jawed, testosterone filled men strut around in a confined secret military base infiltrated by badly lit zombies. I feel awkward in finding it so dull, because some effort has clearly gone into it – the setting is claustrophobic, some of the acting is good and the zombies are a lot more impressive than the realisation of others in such low-financed productions. But the lack of budget stifles it, robs it of tension and pace, and the characters are simply ultra-serious military men (and Lt Meyer played by Elissa Mullen). The night-time scenes are under-lit to the point of obscurity and there are sound problems typical with films of this type. Recorded in 1999, this project failed to see the light of day for almost four years.