Garden of the Dead (1972) — Triskaidekafiles

GARDEN OF THE DEAD

WRITER: Jack Matcha

DIRECTOR: John Hayes

STARRING: Phil Kenneally as Warden
Duncan McCloud as Dr. Saunders
John Dullaghan as Sgt. Burns
John Dennis as Jablonski
Susan Charney as Carol Johnson
Marland Proctor as Paul Johnson
Tony Vorno as Mitchell
Jerome Guardino as Gravedigger
Lee Frost as McGee
Eric Stern as Coler

QUICK CUT: After narrowly surviving an attack, a man is reunited with his wife, only to find she has other suitors interested in her now.

THE MORGUE - Given how short this movie is, and not giving us much time to get to know the many characters in in depth ways, I am half tempted to skip this section, but there are a FEW characters still worth mentioning.

Paul - A convict serving his sentence working in a prison camp gathering…mining? for formaldehyde. He’s your typical sort in these movies who is either innocent, or just made a few mistakes. He’s a nice guy, and just wants to serve his time and go back to his wife.

Carol - The aforementioned wife. She loves her husband, and is staying close to him, seeing him as much as she can, but the strain the incarceration is causing their relationship is starting to show.

Braddock - Paul’s opposite number. Almost certainly guilty as sin. The brains of the operation, which is admittedly a low bar, but he’s planning a prison break, and has been dumbing down his fellow inmates with forlmadehyde fumes.

Samedi, Samedi, baron of zombies, how does your garden grow?

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Spring has technically arrived, so it's time to trim the lawn, and plant some goodies, so we are looking at Garden of the Dead!

As the credits roll, and I struggle to read them thanks to low quality red lettering on a busy background, I notice the name "Duncan McCloud" and I cannot tell you how sad I am that I don't do riff commentaries of movies. That alone would keep things going.

The movie actually begins on a prison work camp, where the inmates are being used to pull up formaldehyde from the ground, and barrel it up. If nothing else about this movie, I now know where formaldehyde comes from.

And over here, you can see where we keep the ghosts chained up.

As the Warden looks around the camp, he comments how the place is on the verge of falling apart, but it's a good thing they're shutting down soon, and everyone is about to be reassigned.

One of the prisoners overhears this, and knows his plan to escape has to be done tonight, so he gets the rest of the cons busy digging as fast as possible.

Also, he takes a long, long huff of formaldehyde vapours, and they spend a lotta time passing the gas around the camp.

Guys, this movie is only an hour long, do we really have time for a lunch break?

There's a lot of milling about before we get to the escape and these convicts are saying things, but it's all muttering and peas-and-carrotsing...is there something you'd like to share with the rest of the class??

Vaping on the gas makes them all a bit loopy, which seems a bad headspace for a prison break, but the lead guy is using it as a means to make the rest of his crew subservient.

Meanwhile, Carol, shows up to stare longingly at Paul, her husband. Paul's a nice guy who was in a bad situation, so the guards look the other way a bit with him, and let him sneak juuust outside the gates for a second, so the couple can have a moment.

Guys, gals, prison pen pals, this movie is *less than an hour* can we do something besides standing and making furtive, longing looks??

Night falls, and Braddock gets ready to implement his plan. He pulls Paul aside to clue him in, and hes not too keen on how it might lead to violence. So, Braddock stabs Paul dead in the gut, and says if anyone has any problems, he'll do the same to them.

Well...so much for our lead character. And I wouldn't worry too much about Braddock, I'm sure he'll go missing in action during the escape.

I know I've made fun of this movie being so short and not doing much so far, but starting the prison break after 20 minutes, a third of the way through, is fair enough.

The cons kill one of the guards, the same one that let Paul out earlier, take his gun, and slowly make their way to the loading area so they can steal a truck.

Unfortunately, as they make their way to the truck, one of the cons trips, and the gun he took from McGee goes off, alerting the authorities that a prison break is going on.

No wonder they escaped so easily, the doors are unlocked!

The warden checks out the barracks, and realises, Braddock is escaping! Quick, contact his sister Elizabeth, he'll contact her first, or maybe the other members of Excalibur!

Braddock and his crew make it to the truck, but the fuzz is hot on their heels. They don't make it very far before a shootout breaks out. The cons are out-manned and outgunned, and things end pretty quickly for them. Oh well, time to go home!

The warden has several prisoners chained up outside, because they knew of the plan and said nothing/ Because of this, they're going to stay there with only bread and water for the next three days.

Meanwhile, the rest of the prisoners are made to dig the unmarked graves for the escapees, and dump their bodies in.

Before they can finish the job though, oop, actual zombies claw their way out of the shallow graves. Because SOMEhow, the formaldehyde vapor turned them into the undead.

Y'know what? Sure. Whatever. I'm down. Let's do this.

The undead inmates quickly kill the burial squad, and gather as Braddock himself rises from the grave. Do we have to call him Britannic now?

Deaddock and his men gather tools from the truck to take out their revenge, and they *actually speak* which at least sets this apart from like...every other zombie movie.

The camp's doctor visits Carol, to help her calm down, and we find out Paul is actually alive, and he got lucky. He's not in great shape right now, but he should survive. Still, a weird call to take out your seeming main character like that.

Braddock and friends show up and murder the nice old couple letting Carol stay in their RV, then torment the poor girl who is so drugged up at this point, she probably thinks this is some awful nightmare.

Y'know, for a dumb movie with no budget, the zombies actually don't look half bad. I'll try and get a few good shots in. They look as bit more dodgy when light is shining RIGHT on ‘em, but it’s got a unique, striking look.

Carol drives to the work camp, and tries to get inside. The warden orders officer Jablowme...er, Jablonski, to get back inside, and forget the girl.

They see the ex-dead ex-cons, and the warden is, understandably, reluctant to believe it. He has them get to defensive positions, and disregards the safety of the prisoners chained in the yard.

Kids today just don’t remember back when all trucks were flammable.

Braddock and his men break back INTO the prison, which amuses me, and they spend some time getting some more formaldehyde, while the warden continues to assume the best.

The conbies get to work disabling all the vehicles, and most of what follows is just a big fight between both sides of the living and the dead, with casualties on both sides.

Eventually, Jablowme decides to let the cons chained up free, what with a zombie apocalypse going on, and more hands is good.

They work to gather everyone at the generator plant, since it's a building made of solid concrete, and will be a good defensive position. A good movie would be setting us up for a solid act of siege tactics.

Unfortunately, this is Garden of the Dead, so we sit, we wait, we watch, and then they decide to use Carol as bait. Yes, convicts horny for girl is the solution to the movie.

While they're distracted and ogling, the living just...shoot all the cons dead. This movie just kinda shambles along for a bit, until it suddenly just...stops.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It doesn’t look awful, if you take into consideration an early 70s indie movie that Troma picked up. It’s a bit too dark and murky at times, but that helps it a bit atmospherically.

Audio: It’s not the best, but when the dialogue is important, it’s audible enough. Most of the mumbly talk was meant to just be filler and unimportant.

Sound Bite: “Formaldehyde has never hurt anyone!"

Body Count: Quite a few deaths, even if a few of them are doubled up. Not terrible for a short short movie, but the downside is, you don’t really care about too many of them.

1 - The escapees kill one of the cops
2 - One of the cons is killed by another
3 - Braddock gets shot trying to drive away.
4 - One of the cons gets shot running away
5 - 8 - Four more cons get shot on the back of the truck.
9 - The newly born zombies kill their gravedigger
10 - And another
11 - The formaldehyde zombies kill a woman
12 - And the man she was with
13- The zombies kill one of the guards
14 - One of the guards gets killed
15 - And then another
16 - One of the zombies gets hit
17 - The warden takes a pickaxe to the face
18 - Another zombie is shot
19 - The cops shoot down the rest of the zombie cons

Best Corpse: The warden, for sheer delight.

Blood Type - F+: Not a lot of blood in this movie, despite all the deaths. And while the zombie makeup is interesting, they don’t do much to show them being dead.

Drink Up! Every time someone takes a huff of formaldehyde

Movie Review: This isn’t TERRIBLE but there also isn’t a whole lot here. There’s too many characters, dressed the same, and they all blur together. One of the few characters you do care about, they take out of the plot 15 minutes in. And it’s a very simple plot, with a very odd plot device. It’s big selling point is that it’s under an hour, so it’s not a huge waste of time. The acting could be better, but it’s not the worst. They just don’t have a lot to go on here. If there were a few less characters, with more time to set them up, and a bit more attacking, this would’ve been a fine, campy, cult classic. Two out of five garden rakes.

Entertainment Value: Not a whole lot here, since the movie is very run and gun and get it done. Most of the humour comes from some goofy cons high on formaldehyde. And once the zombies come out, there’s at least stuff going on. The makeup is cool at times, and there’s an attempt at tension, but it never quite all comes together. For zombie completists only, I fear. One out of five deep breaths at the formaldehyde hose.