Garden of the Dead (1974)

Quick..get the formaldehyde! We have to shoot..it's the only way!

Ok..I gotta say..if you hate this film..then you just don't have a sense of humor.
It is retarded,silly, badly acted..and the zombies are great! Who knew you could kill a zombie with just a spotlight. I didn't know zombies liked girls either!
Man..whoever made this movie should get an award for best cheese zombie epic. It's a hoot and a half! Did you know that zombies know how to trash truck engines too! The best line in all zombie-dom. "We have to shoot..it's the only way!" I want a t-shirt with that on the back. Please somebody...get the formaldehyde! The zombies are frothing at the mouth! If we get em' high and laid..maybe they won't be so mad that we killed em!
Brilliant! June 9, 2008

Nothing good grows in this garden...

Being a fan of not only zombie movies but also the weird and obscure, I bought this movie thinking it might be a lost horror gem.
Upon viewing the film I wanted to throw a bowling ball through the television like "Son of Ghoul" does before the movie begins.
Lets just give a run-down on whats really wrong here.
First of all the DVD claims to have an original trailer for the film but instead we get a trailer for a totally different but equally cheesy looking movie called "Grave of the Vampire".
The movie is hosted by a late night creature feature host wannabe named "Son of Ghoul".
Son of Ghoul does a horrible job of reading from cue cards before the movie begins, trying to describe the film.
Then he needlessly has some guy he pulled off the street, throw a bowling ball through a TV set, which was the only exciting thing on the whole DVD to be honest.
Then we come to the movie itself.
Why are there barrels of Formaldahyde all over the prison camp?
The zombies to be get high off this junk and then later on, upon digging an escape route from the camp, they are shot and killed.
Somehow sniffing stuff that preserves dead bodies, can also bring people back from the dead.
They go on a killing spree with garden tools (Scary!) and apparently can be destroyed if a high powered spot light is shone on them.
Bullets cannot stop them, or at least not until it is convenient for the plot.
They try to grab the token damsel in distress who is the girlfriend of one of the inmates and then they suddenly become vulnerable to bullets.
Surprisingly, the zombies speak on occasion.
Saying things like "We must destroy the living" and "Show us the girl".
Wow, spooky!
They stop anyone from escaping by bashing the engine blocks of the vehicles (which happen to be neatly parked in a row) with a pick axe.
In between killing people and running around like idiots, the zombies indulge in their favorite pastime of getting high on formaldahyde fumes.
Im guessing the only way to enjoy this film is to actually get high.
If you really like horrible, low budget trash, then this is the film for you!
The video quality is very poor and looks like it was transfered directly from some old VHS tape.
The make-up effects of the zombies must have took five minutes to create.
There is one funny point in the movie where a spot light is shone on a zombie and alkaselzter bubbles from his mouth.
A hundred thumbs down to this stinker!
Simply put, this movie is really retarded.
I am a fan of the weird and obscure but this one should have been left buried in the garden.

July 3, 2007

garbage

Dont buy , put your money toward something else good. This movie is truly horrible. June 22, 2005

The Garden Hoe Horror...

Every once in awhile, I purchase a movie with absolutely no prior knowledge of the film, not even reading the various reviews that may be posted here. Sometimes I find an unpolished gem, and sometimes I find a road apple...the latter being the case with Garden of the Dead (1972). Directed by John Hayes, who's other credits include The Farmer's Other Daughter (1965), Sweet Trash (1970), All the Lovin' Kinfolk (1970), and Jailbait Babysitter (1978), Garden of the Dead is a no budget zombie movie that failed to evoke nary a scare or a chill in this viewer.

The film takes place in Camp Hoover, a prison/work camp located somewhere in Colorado, or at least that's what the crude sign sez...we see convicts rolling 55 gallon barrels onto a flatbed truck, and based on the stenciled printing on the side of the drums, they all contain formaldehyde. We quickly learn the camp produces the foul smelling stuff, and also that the camp is about to be closed down, with the prisoners and guards to be relocated to different prisons, while the warden will be let go, as, apparently, his style of running things doesn't fit in with the department of corrections idea of how things should be done. I think the thing is the warden is `old school', and the department of corrections, being the progressive institution that they are, is looking towards the future. Anyway, this figures little into the plot of the film, so I am unsure why they wasted time with this point. Anyway, we soon get to hang with the prisoners, as they enjoy a midday break/meal. This prompts a number of prisoners to converge on the formaldehyde distiller, to which they begin huffing the vapors. No, really, they seem to be getting a high off the stuff, and this was pretty funny to watch. The prison guards don't seem to notice the men's absence, which I thought was a little strange as there's about 20 inmates in the prison camp, and about eight of them were hiding behind the shack-like structure housing the distiller. After getting their fill of the vapors, they move a tank next to the structure, which reveals a hole, one that leads to a tunnel. Seems the prisoners have been digging said tunnel in hopes of using it to escape. Later that night, while the prisoners are in the barracks, they begin their escape. I guess they completed the tunnel, and now their plan is to kill a guard, get his gun, follow the tunnel out to a vehicle depot and steal a flatbed truck to aid in their getaway. Everything goes well, that is until the prisoner with the stolen shotgun from the now deceased prison guard trips and fires the shotgun, alerting the other, still-living guards. Well, the jig is up, so to speak, but the escapees proceed with their plans. They pile onto the back of the flatbed, and are soon being pursued by the warden and the guards. The pursuers quickly catch up to the slow flatbed truck, and begin to open fire on the escapees. The truck crashes, and the warden and the guards proceed to shoot all the escape convicts. On returning to the camp, the warden punishes the remaining prisoners for not relating the escape plan, thusly allowing the death of the guard. He the locks these guys up in a makeshift stockade, and tells them that the dead escaped convicts will all be buried in shallow graves. Cut to a scene of the burying of the dead prisoners. Now here's something I didn't know, but apparently inhaling large amounts of formaldehyde vapors causes zombification shortly after the death of the inhaler. As the dead prisoners begin to rise from their graves, they decide the living must die. I guess it's a whole `revenge/the dead hate the living' motif...whatever...soon the once prisoners/now zombies break into the tool locker on the prison truck, steal various garden implements (See the horror of the hoe! See the terror of the trowel! See the barbarity of the bulb planter! Okay, it doesn't always work...) Once the zombies arm, no pun intended, themselves, they begin to make their way back to the prisoner, and the real horror begins...sort of...

Okay, there are zombies in this film, but there is absolutely no consuming of living flesh by these creatures. They basically run around killing various members, mostly prison guards, with axes, hoes, whatever. We really don't get to see any of this clearly, as the last ¾ of the movie takes place at night, and the lighting is poor. The zombies don't actually look half bad, but the level of decomposition displayed through the liberal use of makeup surely doesn't relay the fact that all these men are of the recently deceased. No real scares or horror to be had here, but the one thing I did appreciate was that the makers of the film decided to stick with a short running time (58 minutes), rather than pad out the story with loads of filler and/or stock footage. As far as the actors go, well, there was one recognizable face in character actor Carmen Filpi, whose latter roles mostly consisted of winos, hoboes, and old codgers in general, appearing in films like Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Wayne's World (1992), and The Wedding Singer (1998), to name a few.

Retromedia Entertainment provides a print of fairly funky quality here, but it is watchable. Special features include an intro bit by Son of Ghoul, a semi-famous creature feature host from Akron, Ohio. Also included is a theatrical trailer for another film titled Grave of the Vampire (1972), a film that was also directed by John Hayes, the same man who directed this film. I guess if I learned anything from this film, it's that formaldehyde, while not only being highly addictive, can actually bring the dead back to life...sort of...whatever...

Cookieman108 May 28, 2004

-10000000 stars!

Starts off at a prison filled with prisoners and cops. The (prisoners) start dosing up on formaldihyde. Then they make an escape and the cops chase after them and kills them and buries them in the ground. The formaldihyde in their system made them return to life as zombies. They go back to the prison to rage war against the cops with pick axes and shovels. These zombies don't eat flesh, they eat formaldihyde. Then they are melted by flashlights and the movie ends.

This movie is one of the worst zombie films i have ever seen. No person in his right mind would say this movie is great. The movie was only 67 min. long and the plot, the gore, everything about this movie was stupid!

(8 zombies)

most entertaining part: | uh......... yeh! | September 6, 2003

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