Oasis of the Zombies (1983)

Oasis of the Zombies is a Spanish movie turned into a French movie and then dubbed in English. It was written and directed by Jess Franco, a Spanish director of over 100 films and self-proclaimed hater of zombies ("they're stupid" he says in a DVD interview). Watching Oasis, it's easy to see that Franco is not enamored with the living dead, so why did he have to go write and direct a movie about them?

The movie ultimately follows a young medical student (Manuel Gelin), who, upon finding his father's diary which tells (in slow, plodding flashback sequences that take up the first half hour) the story of his father fighting Nazi soldiers for their treasure as well as the forbidden love affair of his parents, his father being British and his mother Muslim (the combinations leads to the conception of a French son which kills the mother), says with all the sentimentality he talks about nothing but the gold and its worth.

For the next half hour, Gelin and his medical school buddies head off to find Nazi gold where they experience Muslim culture, tour the area, and one student friend falls for a professor's assistant (played by French porn superstar France Lomay). They also meet a man who was attacked by the Nazi zombies, along with his wife, while searching for the gold. The man was bitten and finally collapses in pain after seemingly endless staggering which gives Gelin the opportunity to jump on top of him and demand: "Where's the Oasis?  Where is it?" If Gelin was half as obsessed with his studies as he was in the gold, he'd be quite successful!

Oasis of the Zombies is far from a gore fest. The scene in which the couple is attacked looking for the gold is probably the goriest sequence of the movie, with a little blood and some stray organs being strewn about, but it isn't much. Franco prefers to use close-ups of the zombies's faces with their poor make-up and crawling earthworms to do the horror dirty work.

Once they students make it to the Oasis, they begin digging for the gold, but as they do, the zombies begin their slow, and it is extremely slow, rise from the sand's depths to protect their  treasure. Not only do you see countless hands bursting from the sand before any of the zombiesactually get out, but Franco also uses his "zombie sounds" which sounds like rope getting twisted together. Its ominous intention gets absolutely lost, instead it's confusing.

Knowing they are surrounded by zombies, the students resort to using fire to detroy the undead brood. "Let's get some bottles to make molotovs," says a student. "Like in school!" What medical procedure requires a molotov?

All the molotovs and circle of fire accomplish, however, is to make the ending climax really difficult to decipher, leaving the screen a mess of bodies and smoke.

I think there's a jeep back there...

Ultimately, Gelin learns a critical lesson at the Oasis, whcich he tells to the same Sheik his father met in a flashback but who hasn't aged a day: "I mainly found myself."

It's a very deep and probing statement. One that makes zero fucking sense in the context of the movie. For Franco, the director of a zombie film who hates zombies, it was personally profound, seeing as Franco never entered the zombie realm again.