It's always a bad sign when a film was produced in 1977, but not even officially released in its home country until 1986. That means the producers of DARK ECHOES had a finished product, but thought it would be a waste of everyone's time to even release it. Ouch! Indeed, DARK ECHOES is pretty much a complete waste of your time; it's not scary, not entertaining and a much, much inferior version of THE FOG or SHOCK WAVES.Many moons ago in a small lakeside Austrian town, Captain Manfred Gohr led a failed voyage which ended with his ship at the bottom of the water. The townspeople have always blamed the captain for the sinking, and as fitting for a man named Manfred Gohr, he comes back as a zombie with excellent swimming skills and terrorizes his old home. It's up to the police chief and a martini-swigging detective who can see the future for some reason to save the day!If you decide to unearth DARK ECHOES from its deserved obscurity, prepare for an endless stream of badly written conversation scenes for the first hour of the film. Watch a detective get a ride from a nice teenager! Watch the mayor discuss the town with the local barkeep! Listen to a bunch of people with radically different accents all speak English in an Austrian town! Not only are the scenes dull as dishwater, they are poorly written as well, so you get plenty of wonderful lines like, "You may be the world's worst reprobate, but you're loyal!"The deaths are almost all off-screen, there's a random cult subplot that never explains itself, and the climax is a dull whimper of an ending. While you do get one fun decapitation, a gooey villain and some wonderful lakeside scenery, it's hard not to spend most of DARK ECHOES' running time daydreaming about a Balkan vacation. It's probably better than ZOMBIE LAKE, but so is gouging out your own eyes. Skip it. 3 out of 10, +1 for a sick score that deserves a vinyl re-mastering!

I don't know of the Argentine VHS release but I own an original Japanese VHS release on the TCC Video label. It's not even that good of a film. Rather hokey but perhaps enjoyable for fans of trash cinema (like myself). I doubt that any major U.S. video companies will be jumping at the chance to put this one out on DVD. However, it would be nice to see it in a nice widescreen transfer. The Japanese VHS is full screen (pan & scan) with only letterboxed opening credits. I don;t know much about the director but was wondering if he did any other horror flicks or if this was just a cash in attempt at the zombie craze of the late 70's into early 80's.

Video Search of Miami lists the film as one you'll never find in reference sources and until they laid that challenge down you didn't. Between the time they offered it for sale and when I bought it it appeared on IMDb.The movie was tonight's offering...Its a strange European film co production made in English by two Balkan countries. It concerns the return of a ferry captain from the dead to get revenge on the descendants of the people who had laid blame on him for the ferry accident in which he died along with 86 other people. There's no question he's doing it since you see him during the opening credits.The film isn't bad. Its by no means scary or even tense, but it is interesting, the sort of film they don't make any more... or even when it was released, which was 1986. I would have sworn it was made no later than say 1981 or 1982 and more probably in the late 1970's. This is after all a movie about a zombie in a rubber mask and a pea coat going around killing people in a nice quiet mountain village.Who made this film and who thought they could release it in '86? I have no idea. This had to be someone's idea to make a quick buck,but I can't see this being made as late as 86 unless the people involved were completely out of touch with world wide trends.Unless of course it was made earlier but sat on the shelf until someone thought they could do something with it. The clothes lead me to believe that was the case. This is a movie that even in say 1982 was on the edge of being eclipsed by films like the Thing or Friday the 13th and any of the gore films. This is mostly a gore free movie, except for a rather badly done mid-head decapitation- watch where the axe hits the head and watch where the head comes apart...they are not the same place... nor is the monsters head ever the same size....This is in its way a rather sweet movie. Possibly too sweet and nice and gentle... which is an odd thing to say, its as if the film makers didn't want to really scare you. If it wasn't for the blood it could be a a kids film.Did I like it? Yes I did.Do I need to see it again? No, no I don't. However it would make an excellent double feature with Spirits of Jupiter another lost drive-in horror film from the early 80's. All I need now is some popcorn a few friends and a game to play while watching and we're set....

It's too bad that DARK ECHO never really gels, because it is an interesting ultra-low budget production, made in Austria & Hungary by people with good intentions who just didn't seem to understand the horror genre. Apart from a couple of effective underwater sequences, a nice gross-out horror moment and the film's unique mittel-European flavorings it really doesn't have much zest and seems unsure of exactly what it wants to be. But it IS interesting ...Unknown actor Wolfgang Brook stars as a psychic brought in by the local police detective to solve a series of bizarre attacks on the local populace of a sleepy Austrian village nestled between the mountains ringing a cold, deep, icy clear lake that was the site of a tragedy a hundred years before. It seems than an excursion craft loaded with sightseers sank under mysterious circumstances, and apparently it's captain is seeking revenge for having been abandoned -- ala John Carpenter's THE FOG. A still lovely Karin Dor wanders into the film from her retirement as a distant relative of one of the victims, and joins forces with the plucky detective to try and get to the bottom of the mystery.The film does have some really nice atmospheric scenes filmed in and around some nice, crumbled old ruins of local medieval monasteries & castles, filled with the skulls of long dead worshipers with their names and dates of death painted on the bones. A subplot about some sort of cult practicing blasphemy in the catacombs of an old church provides some brief frissons but doesn't really go anywhere and seems tacked on just to provide some salacious content. There's also a cackling old witch played by veteran supporting actress Hanna Hertelendy, who's presence is the most interesting role in the film aside from the captain, who's rotting carcass is remarkably spry and intact for a body that has supposedly been festering in the wreck of a ship for a century.The film was the sole directorial effort of George Robotham, a stuntman turned sometimes actor famed for his double work for John Wayne and Rock Hudson, amongst others, and his affinity for staging fight scenes and underwater photography. And indeed the underwater scenes provide the film's most interesting moments, especially the evocative images of the zombified captain swimming up from the depths to claim more victims. Zombies living in lakes or waterlogged conditions are of course nothing new, with Jean Rollin's ZOMBIE LAKE being perhaps the most well known example aside from Carpenter's THE FOG, which may indeed have been inspired in part by DARK ECHO's basic story.Mostly however the film serves as a sort of travelogue of the sights & sounds of the regions in which it was filmed, with ample trips to the local tavern for mugs of fine Austrian beer, performances by musicians playing traditional instruments, trips to the ornately magnificent churches and centuries old town halls, and lots of conversation scenes between the principal actors as they wander about the picturesque settings. If only the film knew what it wanted to be: There's one dynamite scene where the captain returns to pester the old witch and actually slices her skull in half, providing a great barf-bagger moment that is in stark contrast with the rest of the film's somewhat lethargic pacing. This is not a film for those with low attention spans and in fact it's primary interest besides the presence of Ms. Dor is probably how it's absolutely obscure and difficult to find.If only those who made it perhaps had a bit more experience with horror as a genre. The images of the rotting carcass sliming out of the lake is pretty creepy and the low budget sort of works in the film's favor, allowing it to be a study in moods rather than the all out assault on taste and senses that it probably should have been. Then again you can't fault art for simply being what it is, and for my money this is an interesting example of regional Euro Horror that defies the usual formula of bloodshed & breasts.4/10