A handful of tourists are passengers on an old dive boat in the tropics. After a bizarre meteorological phenomenon, the boat is damaged in a collision with a skeletal WWII ship emerging from the depths. Seeking refuge on the nearest island, the passengers and crew find a mysterious former SS commander (Peter Cushing) who seems particularly spooked by the appearance of the ghost ship.

What concerns the Kommandant is not the ship itself, however. It’s the ship’s old crew of Nazi super-soldiers, who have emerged from the ocean along with it. Products of science, the occult, and fascist ideology, they were reformatted decades ago in a secret SS program to be unstoppable killing machines; now they are long dead, waterlogged ... and anxious to kill again.

In between killing, they spend their time swimming around, hiking through the woods, and just chilling. I guess even undead Nazis need a little R&R.

While the undead troopers’ reason for haunting the island is never adequately explained (go figure -- I’m wanting to know what the zombies’ motivation is), most of the movie holds together quite nicely, in that Saturday-matinee sort of way. Even with the zombies’ occasionally amusing behavior, the atmosphere is suspenseful, often tense, and the film makes skillful use of scenery shots and eerie music (original score by Richard Einhorn). The violence is relatively gore- and even blood-free, but there are a few good shockers and plenty of corpses. The ‘70s air is perceptible, but not so outlandish that it impedes on the modern viewer’s experience; the film holds up fairly well by today’s standards. It really has a unique vibe, a combination of light cheese and serious drama that elevates it above other Nazi Zombie schlock such as Oasis of the Zombies.

The most obvious comparison would be to another entry in the tiny “Aquatic Nazi Zombie” sub-sub-subgenre, Zombie Lake; it’s not hard to guess which one is superior. The only area in which Zombie Lake comes out ahead is the nudity department; Brooke Adams in a bikini and Fred Buch in his underwear are the closest you’ll get here. But a movie that’s not already crappy can afford to give that up. Common to both movies is a puzzling form of interior decoration: these 3rd-Reich automatons, ostensibly driven by devotion to the Fatherland and the irrepressible urge to kill, might stop in an unoccupied room to smash up some furnishings. ("Ve haf vays of eliminating bad Feng Shui!”)

A couple other comparisons, however, are warranted. Excepting the Nazis themselves, the general structure closely parallels Lucio Fulci’s classic Zombi 2: A boat trip with scuba-diving Americans. Zombies swimming around in the ocean. An isolated island, increasingly overrun by zombies. A mysterious European living on the island, who knows more about the zombies than he initially lets on. The thing is, Shock Waves came first. I’m quick to defend Zombi 2 against charges that it ripped off George A. Romero’s ideas, but I do wonder if Uncle Lucio borrowed a few themes from this movie.

Speaking of Romero, the famous line from Dawn of the Dead (“When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth”) is anticipated in Shock Waves when an alcoholic galley hand remarks that the “Sea spits up what it can’t keep down.” I’m not accusing Uncle George of anything, but again, Shock Waves came first.

The Performances
Brooke Adams, in her first credited movie role, gives a very realistic performance as the movie’s heroine (for whom most of the movie is a flashback). She proves that a horror-movie actress can act terrified without appearing either helpless or ridiculous. Peter Cushing is also very good as the SS commander, his superficial arrogance masking his inner sense of age and fear. In his second Nazi Zombie flick (after Revenge of the Zombies), John Carradine is in top form as the salty, cantankerous captain of the dive boat. Most of the cast were newcomers to the big screen, and all of them are good or excellent, overcoming the clichés of their characters to lend the movie a credibility that its inherent absurdities might otherwise smother (we’re talking about Nazi zombies, here).

The Zombies
With their goggles, white hair, decrepit SS uniforms, and aquatic tendencies, these goose-shamblers are perhaps the most distinct set of zombies I’ve seen. Their strengths and weaknesses are unique among zombies, as well. While they’re more weird-looking than scary, and the way they pop out of the wilderness can make for some laughs, their silence, patience, and singlemindedness evoke the inexorable-doom qualities that’s part of what makes zombies so frightening to begin with.

Other Thoughts
Gracing screens sporadically since the early 1940s, the zombie-Nazi connection seems like it has great potential for the kind of social satire that zombie cinema is so good at in general. Shock Waves may go the farthest of any Nazi Zombie film toward using that potential, but unfortunately that’s not terribly far. There are subtle themes of living with past trauma and forgotten crimes, and the threat of forced conformity and uniformity. And the historical metaphors are there; in a moment of particularly grim irony, for example, two characters invert the image of death camp cremations by hiding in a large oven to escape the Nazis. Common to modern zombie movies is a group of people confining themselves to an apparently safe location while the zombies spread around them; in a Nazi Zombie movie like this one, the same motif carries echoes of Western European concessions to pre-WWII German expansionism.

However, the largest sociopolitical statement of the film seems to rest simply with the fact of these Nazis being zombies; their virtual identicality to each other, especially, combines with the mindlessness fundamental to all zombies in order to make a clear statement about the fascist ideal of brainwashed homogeneity. For more probing critique or satire than that, zombiphiles in 1977 would have to wait another year for Dawn of the Dead.

Whatever its shortcomings, Shock Waves is well made and peculiar enough to be entertaining, and I’d recommend it for any fan of cult flicks and pre-‘80s horror who’s not just looking for gore. At least until the Dutch indie Worst Case Scenario is finally made, I expect that Shock Waves will easily retain its position as the foremost Nazi Zombie film, Aquatic or otherwise.

Review Rating
7.2 out of 10 unsafe ways to handle a flare gun