Inmates under the influence at formaldehyde at the worst run prison ever (guards don't even notice when at least eight inmates vanish at the same time to sniff gas behind the corner) undertake an unsuccessful escape attempt. Unsuccessful because they're all shot dead by the guards. The prisoners must have been really drugged to mess this up, because the guards and management of this facility were way too stupid to prevent this. Either way, the prisoners' truck strand in the middle of a prison cemetery and several barrels of formaldehyde are spilled into the soil. Zombies emerge from two inches underneath the surface and – like most members of the living dead society – they're only out to do one thing … Score more formaldehyde, of course! "Garden of the Dead" is a pretty pointless and redundant early 70's exploitation that drags tremendously even though it's barely one hour long. There's hardly any gore and the make-up effects on the zombies are quite pathetic, but the film nevertheless benefices from a fairly sinister atmosphere and a bizarrely unsettling jazzy music score. The zombies easily rank amongst the lamest and least threatening living dead members ever. They just want to get drugged, so they're pretty easy to kill. It's definitely not the worst movie in its league, but nothing memorable neither.

I'd never heard of "Garden of the Dead" till I picked up a DVD at the dollar store which included it as a double feature with 1983's "Frightmare." I didn't think "Frightmare" was that great, but it looked a lot better after I sat through "Garden of the Dead." At least "Garden of the Dead's" running time was mercifully short (just over an hour!) so my suffering was minimal.This micro-budget early 70s zombie cheese fest takes place almost entirely inside a prison compound (whose fence appears to be constructed of plywood, 2x4's and chicken wire), where the evil Warden apparently has a side business manufacturing formaldehyde (?). Inmates are shown loading large barrels of it onto trucks at the beginning of the film, and later on are shown sniffing the formaldehyde fumes in order to get high (!) when nobody's looking. This formaldehyde must be some pretty powerful stuff, because when a half dozen of the fume-huffing inmates end up getting killed during an escape attempt, they've barely even been buried in shallow graves by the prison authorities before they're popping back up again as Undead Looking For Revenge. These are not your average slow moving Romero zombies either, they're athletic, can talk (though their dialogue is limited to "Reeeeeevenge on the liiiii-ving!" and "We want the girl! Send her ouuuuuuut!") and use shovels, pickaxes and other tools to murder their victims. I wondered at first why the film was called "Garden of the Dead" and not "Prison of the Dead," but I guess the zombies' use of gardening implements justifies the title.Anyway, once our monsters arrive on the scene, the remaining running time is then padded out by scenes of prison guards stumbling around firing their shotguns into the darkness before getting hacked (bloodlessly) to death, until a small group of survivors holes up inside the prison office. The zombies demand that they send out "the girl" (the hot girlfriend of one of the surviving inmates, who's hiding out inside), the guards throw open the door, blast the zombies all to hell with their shotguns, the end. Seriously. It's that abrupt. (Door opens) BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! (Zombies all die, Girl cries, prison guard pokes one of the unmoving zombies with his gun, THE END title card pops up). I bet anyone who paid to see this thing in a drive in back in 1974 asked for their money back. Hell, I only paid a buck and *I* wanted my money back.The lone point in "Garden of the Dead's" favor (aside from the hot girl, whom we don't see nearly enough of) is its zombie makeup, which is pretty well done. Other than that, it isn't scary, isn't gory, and isn't even silly enough to be considered "so bad it's good." I would only recommend this title to obsessive compulsives who have to see absolutely every movie with zombies in it. Everyone else can find better things to spend their dollar on.

When I come home late from work and I had a rough day, I don't want to go to bed right away, but I don't want to start a 2h00 complicated movie either...So, this one is a very good option! About an hour long, dumb characters, scary ambiance music as well as jazzy, old Spider-Man-cartoon-feel music, the french dubbed version I have is totally hilarious! It goes down very easily with a few beers, there's just a good cheap feel to it. The prisoner I like the best is the one small bald guy with the big eyes, over-acting all the way through! Not that the other actors are better, but this guy does it like it was his last shot to make it big and be discovered! See it if you're a zombie-maniac-low-budget like me.

A group of convicts in a corruptly administered work camp get a cheap high by huffing from a tin drum of formaldehyde. They are later killed during an escape attempt, only to rise from their graves and set about doing all the terrible things we've come to expect of zombies.This is a fairly starch example of skinflint 70s horror, although it does deserve the small-beans honor of being, most likely, the first film to represent zombies as cognitive and dexterous in speech and movement(as opposed to the fish-eyed, lumbering customary type). It would stand to reason that these enhanced capacities should result in more formidable and frightening zombies...unfortunately, they come off as awkward and occasionally laughable.A slight film of no real importance, GARDEN OF THE DEAD is, at best, sufficient fodder for independent TV station "Tweaking Til Dawn" type shows. Meh.4/10