Peter Cushing, John Carradine, Brooke Adams in a bikini and invincible Nazi zombies hiding in the Florida Keys?  No, it's not Mrs. Doubtfire, it's the 1976 horror Shock Waves.  You know you've lost the thread in life when you spend Friday night watching this baby.

Everyone's seen Shock Waves.  Even if you don't know it, you've seen it.  If you've seen, read or played games featuring Nazi zombies, you know all about Shock Waves.  And Oasis of the Zombies.   But  Shock Waves is more the first person shooter type movie. You'll think to yourself, whenever someone dies, that it's a shame movies like this aren't being released today.  Can you imagine the product tie-ins?  The movie just screams video game, then there are the sanitized "Nazi" uniforms (jack boots and what appear to be mechanic outfits) and the groovy zombie goggles.  Come to Burger King today and get your own Generic Hotel Mirror, just like the ones Peter Cushing's character collected.

Oh, let's pause there.  This is one of those Executive Decision type movies.  When they say it stars John Carradine and Peter Cushing, what they mean is that it stars them for about five minutes each.  Especially in the case of Cushing, it feels like they don't even belong in the film.  As if they were brought in and had no idea what the movie was about.  Many of Cushing's scenes involve running around the beach and through the jungle, completely out of sync with the rest of the film.

We open with a nice little prologue about a deadly force of super Nazi soldiers who vanished at the end of the war.  Remember "In Search Of..." hosted by Leonard Nimoy?  Think like that, except narrated by the guy who did the voiceover intro for Evil Dead II.

Turns out the Nazi's escaped to "the islands off of" Florida in a "Nazi freighter" at the end of the war, where they were so zombified and terrible their commander (Cushing) trapped them aboard and scuttled the ship.  Ever since then, he has lived undetected in an abandoned hotel.  All of that is just dandy until a pleasure ship crosses over the wreckage of the freighter and does absolutely nothing to incur the wrath of the trapped zombies.  Why they waited 30 years to get mad, we'll never know. 

Aboard the pleasure boat are our seven stranded castaways here on Nazi Isle - the babe, the wealthy and whiney married couple, the smart guy, the goofball cook, the skipper and the tough guy.  Carradine plays the skipper and he dies after delivering his twelve lines, all of which refer to cut scenes from the final release and make no sense at all.  After that, we're off.  Spooky Florida Key, occupant:  One.  SS Commander Peter Cushing, who is either "involuntarily exiled" or "in voluntary exile."  He slurs his lines after his big monologue, so we may never know the truth. 

Meanwhile, our no-name heroes, headed up by Brooke's breasts, get knocked off one by one in the most painfully formulaic way imaginable.  Well, 28 years later, I guess it might be unfair to say such things.  Nazi zombies hunting down hapless tourists may not have been formulaic in 1976, but that sort of thing happens every day in 2004!

Filmed in 30 days on no budget, Shock Waves is also one of those weird movie wonders.  Scrape up 15 grand and you get a movie that not only stars two big names and is filmed entirely outdoors, on location, but you also get two releases - 1975 for the drive-ins and 1980 for the indoor theaters - and a multi-region DVD release that makes more than those two theatrical releases combined.  The location is an old hotel in Florida - building and grounds rented for $250.  Cheap locations make the film, again and again.  <i>Session 9</i> has that same story, as does Pi.  Pi just went ahead and filmed illegally - hey, why pay even $250?  Film until the cops show up, then play dumb and run away. 

Not that I would ever, in my sober moments, mention those two films and Shock Waves in the same paragraph. 

There's only one good way to get through the film - turn it into a drinking game.  There are even very clear chugging moments - Brooke Adams falling on her face.  She falls twice, and she hits the ground like a sack of flour, face first, both times.  I don't know how they filmed that without laughing. 

Drinking will help you cope with the overall story problems.   For instance, the zombies, who are sensitive to daylight (it's the only thing that can defeat them), hunt and kill primarily in the daytime.  Yes, I know, cheaper to film during the day, but then why make daylight their only weakness?    It is possible that the Daylight Factor is just a script error, though.  First of all, our heroes seem to learn through osmosis that removing the zombie goggles kills the zombies.  They all start doing it without explaining anything to the audience.  But then one of the zombies who gets de-goggled appears, some time after his blinding and death, to kill one of our girls, only then to reappear in a totally unrelated scene, roughly intercut in the finale showdown, blind and stumbling once again, dying a second time in the sunlight.   (Take a drink whenever you see zombie goggles.)

The Nazi zombies spend much of the movie in the water.  This is the one great effect in the film - uniformed zombies walking around on the sea bed, dropping below the waves, appearing from the muck in the disused swimming pool.  They grab our folks and drag them down to a silent, watery grave.  They can do this because, inexplicably, all of our heroes stay waist deep in the water whenever possible.  Instead of taking the forest path, for example, they wade through a creek that cuts through the island.  Sometimes they'll even take off their shoes or their blouses.   To avoid a zombie Nazi, they'll climb down into the muck of a swimming pool and splash around frantically.  It's a very watery movie and, traditionally, I avoid watery movies, but I'm on my fifth vodka tonic and, let's face it, the whole world loves Nazi zombies.

If you're 15 and you're sitting on your bud's rat infested couch in his mom's basement, staring at the weird 1982 cabinet TV, then go rent Shock Waves.  If you're 30 and you're drinking vodka tonics and wondering what's happened with everything, watch something else.  But, at some point, everyone will have to see Shock Waves.  Now that I've mentioned it, it'll come up at a Christmas party, and you'll get laid if you're able to say, "Yes, Bernadette, I'm aware of the work.  Is this real caviar or is it from California White Sturgeon?"