Let's clarify something first. This is not a review of Bruno Mattei's Night of the Zombies released in 1983, also known as Hell of the Living Dead. This is the Joel M. Reed's Night of the Zombies released in 1979 as Gamma 693 and in 1981 as Night of the Wehrmacht Zombies. When it surfaced again in 1983, the title sequence revealed the title Night of the Zombies II, perhaps used in an attempt to differentiate itself from Mattei's version. Whatver it's called, it's a rare find these days, though streaming versions are available online. It's either that, trying your luck in a VHS bin wherever you can find one. Considering it's rarity, and the fact that it has Nazi zombies, Night of the Zombies has earned a place in the zombie movie history books, regardless of whether it deserves it or not.
The movie opens with two men in the Alps looking for the remains of soldiers killed in battle during World War II. They are treated to a long lecture by a Bavarian policeman in a room covered in black cloth. The men are warned of the zombies, but like kids heading out to Camp Blood, they ignore it and soon after meet the zombies only to killed by their gnashing, overpowering...gunfire. Yup. Later, another man is sliced in the throat. These Nazi zombies do the unexpected!
Sent to recover cannisters of Gamma 693, a noxious and dangerous gas used in the Alps during World War II (smart to put that off), is CIA operative Nick Monroe, played by porn star Jamie Gillis, who does his very best late-70's Elliot Gould impersonation as he cruises the streets of Germany. Cruises them to get what he needs: good, long...conversation. Gillis then meets up with a chemist and his niece and the Bavarian police officer, and travels with them to the Bavarian Alps for some undisturbed and intense...gas cannister searching.
You can probably guess what happens next here...That's right. Gillis takes the chair and smashes the mirror on the wall.
Once in the Alps, Susan, the niece is kidnapped, and then returned. Unharmed! Very scary. Then, in the night, the Bavarian cop is killed! With a knife to the throat! The zombie carnage in Night of the Zombies is unstoppable! Even with these occurances before him, Gillis still needs convincing that the zombies exist. What, a kidnapping and a throat-slit murder aren't enough evidence of zombies?
Nazi Zombies WILL eat your flesh! Once the meat is cooked to the proper temperature.
Once Gillis decides that, ok, maybe zombies do exist, he figures that the only way to solve the case is to become one himself. You guessed it, he dresses up like them! It's easy! An old German soldier jacket, a little dark make-up around the face, and voila! You can hang out amongst a group of friendly, jovial zombies with blue, decaying flesh just shooting the shit in their tent without ever being discovered! And when you wake up, they're just bones! All of them! Just bones and clothes! Gillis didn't even need to use the foam the chemist brought to destroy them! Nice boning, Gillis.
In any other Jamie Gillis film, this benign scene would turn into an all-out fuck fest.
But chilling out zombie-style teaches Gillis the truth. See, the Gamma 693 gas keeps the U.S. and German soldiers alive, as long as they eat human flesh. Of course they are never shown eating the flesh of humans, that would distract from talking about it. eventually, Gillis is cornered by the Nazi zombies - and by cornered I mean three of them - and is left with a choice, a choice that will satisfy all four of them. That's right, join them or die.
Even though the movie was very slow, lacked much zombies or gore, and the streamed copy looked like the VHS had previously chewed up the tape, Night of the Zombies was far from the worst zombie ever made. In better hands than Joel M. Reed, who knows? Fans of Reed's Bloodsucking Freaks will be disappointed by the lack of gore and overall gratuity, especially with a porn star in the lead role. Fans of cheesy dialogue, however, will be delighted. Fans of Gillis will probably just think this is soft core and spank away anyway.