3.16.2008

Oasis of the Zombies (1981)

Two attractive young women wearing too short tight shorts and tight tank tops with no bras on underneath take a joyride in a desert and come upon the titular oasis. Investigating further they find some old army stuff and skulls and like most people would in that situation they decide to hang around and wait for zombies to kill them.

So obviously Oasis of the Zombies starts out on a high note. Unfortunately, the opening scene is all this movie has going for it.

Then suddenly there are these other guys and they plan on going to this oasis (the one of the zombies) because there is Nazi gold buried there. One guy double crosses the other leaving him dead. So the dead guy's son then decides to carry on his dad's plan, but not before an astonishingly long flashback sequence where we get to watch the dead father's heroics during the war.

So you've got two groups of people going after the same gold and (as established by the opening scene) zombies who are happy to eat all involved. Yeah! I must say, having typed all this out Oasis of the Zombies sounds pretty cool. Don't let my ways with words and commanding personality and good looks fool you! Oasis of the Zombies is a waste of time!

But why?!?! It all comes down to pacing. This movie is so slow and nothing really happens. There are a lot of repeated shots and a lot of scenes of go-nowhere-dialog that only serve as padding (in an 82 minute movie!).

There's only what I would consider to be the bare minimum of exposed ladyparts to make a movie worth watching. And on top of that, for a zombie movie there isn't a lot of gory stuff. Scratch that! For any kind of movie there isn't a lot of gory stuff. I would expect more gore and/or exploitative nudity in a romantic comedy.

So I bring to your attention the lurid and awesome (I know, redundant) movie poster to the right. I found this on this page which is some kind of ridiculously in-depth review of this movie. Now, this scene does sort of happen in this movie. But it happens within the first 10 minutes during the pretty fantastic opening scene. This would be right after one of the girls shows an abnormal interest in a cannon and the other girl, speaking for everyone watching, asks her why she even cares about that old cannon. This movie needs more stuff like that. That is instant comedy! Girls in embarrassing shorts take a joyride in a desert and find a canon in an oasis.

But no! There's none of that in this. I'll bet if the Italians had made this we'd have that in there. Even if they didn't, they would at least have a lot more macho dudes talking about their balls, and that's always good for a laugh.

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