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Codex Atanicus
Codex Atanicus is a three story anthology by Spanish director Carlos Atanes. Before watching the movie I never heard of the guy, but the introduction video on the DVD by one of his regular actresses Arantxa Peña made me realize that I'm in for a hell of a ride. Experimental, bizarre, sick, strange - these are some of the words that describe the stories contained in Codex Atanicus. The anthology is opened by a 20 minute short from 1995 called Metaminds & Metabodies. I am really not into this kind of experimental videos, but I will try to summarize. It opens with a girl singing in the club. Everything looks ultra underground and the girl is connected with some wires to the walls. Strange people are watching her...
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Movie Review: Garden of the Dead

Story
We are introduced with a typical prison work camp located in American backwoods. One of the prisoners overheard a discussion between the Warden and the chief security guy, where they talked about the usage of formaldehyde for some strange purposes. After they move away, the prisoner crawls to the tent and finds some barrels with formaldehyde fumes. As he doesn't have anything to do, he starts sniffing the fumes and invites his fellow inmates to do the same. As it turns out, formaldehyde has some kind of a drug effect on them. The same night, the guys try to break away.

To cut the story short, the prison guards quickly catch them and in a very boring shootout´, kill all the escapees and decide to bury them in unmarked graves. The same night, dead prisoners come to life and start attacking the work camp.

Comments
For more than twenty days I am in a strange mood that results in watching the most obscure movies from my rather vast collection. "Garden of the Dead" was one of the stranger titles I came across and I decided to check it out.

From the first scene I knew this would be something completely different - I really don't remember seeing a horror movie which had the whole opening credits roll over just one static image from the work camp. After the first set of exchanged sentences, it was clear that this would be another cheap zombiethon with lousy actors, non existent effects and boring plot.

Garden of the Dead Garden of the Dead

The zombies themselves are not something of a stereotype. They want to kill, but use shovels and different "weapons" that can be found in any ordinary tool shed. They don't eat human body parts, but they were ecstatic to break in the work camp to sniff some more formaldehyde. Zombie junkies that adore chemicals used for embalming or disinfecting human remains? Rock on doods...

The movie hosts a typical soundtrack of the 70s B movies, while majority of wannabe eerie scenes are extra powered by special effects that resemble those used in fighting scenes of the good old Adam West powered Batman TV series. You know, just remember the music surrounding all those KAPOWWs and KABANGGs. This kind of a music is present through every second of the movie, without any consideration if it is appropriate. For a couple of times, the combination of the music and stupid scenes made me laugh, and laughing is bad in a when it comes to "serious" horror movies...

Final Comments
The good thing about the movie was its length - just below one hour mark. I really couldn't see myself watching more of this uninspiring and dull movie. The only reason I am not giving this a straight F (or 1/10) is that the zombies in some of the scenes don't look so bad. I must emphasize in some of the scenes, as their looks totally differ in the first and second part of the movie.

If you are a die hard zombie fan, you should probably pick this up, just so you can brag that you actually watched this kind of an obscurity.

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Garden of the Dead

ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Tomb of the Undead
MOVIE YEAR: 1974
DIRECTOR: John Hayes
WRITING CREDITS: Daniel Cady, John Jones
GENRE: Horror, Zombie, Sci-Fi
CAST: Duncan McLeod, Lee Frost, Susan Charney
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 59 min

RATING: 2/10

Garden of the Dead Website/IMDB Click here
Garden of the Dead Trailer Click here

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