In 1977, a small film was released that added a bit of a new spin to the things. That film was Shock Waves, featuring Peter Cushing, and is perhaps the best aquatic Nazi zombie movie ever made. Admittedly, there is only one other that i know of. The sub genre of Nazi Zombies had been around already, but Shock Waves was the first to give audiences a squad of undead SS troopers who slumbered under the waves and rose to the surface to dispose of the largely disposable cast.

The film opens with a black and white still of a group of German soldiers and an ominous voiceover giving a brief spiel about Third Reich occult experiments to create unstoppable super troops. If you recall what that government guy told Indy and Brody at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark regarding the Nazi’s interest in the occult, “Hitler’s a nut on the subject.” Then the story gets rolling, or should I say drifting, with a group of tourists on a small chartered boat. The boat is kind of old and kind of in need of an overhaul. And, most importantly, it is captained by the great John Carradine.

The film wastes no time getting bogged down with things such as characters and plot, and instead jumps right in to a freak event which shipwrecks the passengers. For some unknown reason, the sky turns orange and the compass breaks, and soon after dark a mysterious freighter bears down on Carradine’s rickety old boat and hits them. The next morning, they see the freighter, which now appears as a wreck, off the coast of an island. Once the characters make their way to the island to look for help, they find an abandoned hotel occupied by Peter Cushing.

Cushing is a reclusive SS officer in a self imposed exile on the island after he sank the freighter carrying his squad of zombie aqua troopers, menacingly called the Death Corps, at the end of World War II. Cushing is a treat as always, hamming it up in his best Hammer Horror fashion, complete with a German accent and a Bond villain styled scar on his face. 

This movie is thin on plot and logic, but what stands out are the zombie troopers. There are some very well shot sequences of the soldiers walking on the sea bed floor, as well as a few nice shots of them menacingly rising up out of the water. This is clearly a PG flick as there is no gore, with the kills being the usual somebody gets grabbed and screams. It feels a bit more like a throw back to the old drive-in days of the 50’s monster movies than the usual horror style of the 70’s. All in all, it’s a fun little flick. Seven out of ten stars. Check it out.