Shock Waves, the film that aims to fill your required daily allowance of aquatic Nazi zombie's hits the shores in an all region NTSC DVD courtesy of newcomers Blue Underground. Such is life; the result is a mixed bag, as the presentation is impressive while the film itself after all these years still remains not. Alas, it's all not a loss as Blue Underground comes through with the "best" home video presentation to date for Shock Waves and an assortment of crowd-pleasing extras.

In the film Shock Waves, a group of stereotypes on a relaxing boat/scuba diving trip wind up getting more than they bargained for. Led by their Captain (John Carradine; What were you thinking?) the group of vacationers and crew wind up with a damaged boat on an island inhabited by a reclusive crazed nazi commander (Peter Cushing; What were you thinking?) and about 6 or so of the aforementioned aquatic nazi zombies. For some reason or another, these "nazi zombies" are awakened from their slumber under the sea. We're told that the Nazis crafted these "invincible soldiers" and the present troop was the last to be accounted for. Yeah, sure, why not? Do I even need to tell you what happens next? Needless to say the zombies periodically appear and disappear from the ocean only to drag one unsuspecting victim after another into a shallow watery grave. Since the film is essentially told as one big flash back, there's really no surprise as to who survives and who doesn't, smooth move there.

Even for a true connoisseur of bad cinema such as myself, Shock Waves is a tough one to get through. The action unfolds at such a slow and tedious pace. Despite the brief 85-minute running time it really feels like absolutely NOTHING happens. Poor genre veterans Cushing and Carradine are really wasted here as they are given little to work with (at least Cushing went on to do Star Wars after this). The complete absence of any gore or nudity in this PG-Rated horror film doesn't help either. I'm not saying that a film needs copious amounts of gore and nudity to be good, but hey, at least give me SOMETHING, ya know? This isn't to say that the film is a total waste of time as the actual zombie-nazis themselves are pretty damn cool. The way they appear out of nowhere in the middle of the water and creep up on people, very nice indeed. Unfortunately, shots like this are very few and far between. Hell, we don't even see a zombie until well into the film (at least 30-minutes or so). Unfortunately this film just doesn't work for me. Not as a classic, not as a B movie, and certainly not as a "so bad it's good film". It was however nice to see Brooke Adams fill out that bikini so nicely for much of the films running time, but it wasn't so nice to see this guy fill out his jockey's so nice, bleech!

OK folks, so you know that I don't care for the movie all that much. I do know however that there are plenty of fans out there that want to know how this disc looks. Well, I hope you ordered the grain platter with a side of grain and a heaping bowl of grain for dessert. Yeah, there's a lot of grain here. Seriously though, from what I understand, this film was shot 16 and then blown up to Super-35 for theatrical viewing. Apparently the original negative went missing a while back, so the director's own personal print of the film was used in the transfer here. It's understandable that there is gonna be heavy grain, and it's heavy alright as it's present in nearly every scene. Aside from that there are some instances of print damage in some specs etc. and the color scheme is a bit muted out. All things considered, this is the best that this film has looked on home video so far, and unless the original negative decides to surface along with those nazi zombies, this is probable the best we can expect. The disc isn't reference quality but for aquatic nazi zombies it's pretty damn good.

Audio is presented in a respectable mono mix. Once again, there's not much that one can do with mono. Dialogue is nice and clear, while music and effects seem properly balanced. The Nazi zombies approve.

Extras, Extras, read all about. Once again, Blue Underground strikes gold in the extras department. First up are an awesome 70's era trailer in great shape (that I enjoyed more than the feature itself) and a TV spot. Next up are 2 radio spots and a very cool still gallery with behind the scenes shots along with posters and promotional materials. We're also provided with an 8-minute interview with actor Luke Halpin entitled From Flipper to Shock Waves. Last but not least is a very entertaining feature length commentary with Director/Co-Writer Ken Wiederhorn (Return of the Living Dead 2), Make-up guy Alan Ormsby (Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things) and B-Movie filmmaker Fred Olen Ray. The film may be the pits but the commentary most certainly is not, as it turned out to be highly enjoyable.

Overall we have a fine presentation of a film that I personally just can't stand. But please, don't take my word for it. Fans of the film itself would be wise to go ahead and snatch these up rather quickly. As for the rest of you, well for what it's worth, I like Shock Waves more than Zombie Lake. So there.