Camp Hoover is a prison camp out in the middle of nowhere. The rundown camp makes some experimental form of formaldehyde. Several of the prisoners have developed an addiction to sniffing the fumes. The warden (Phil Kenneally) receives notification that the camp is to be shut down, the prisoners sent to other prisons and the staff reassigned.
One of the prisoners is Paul Johnson (Marland Proctor). His wife, Carol (Susan Charney) lives in an RV near the camp and works at the local diner so she can be near her husband. She often visits the camp and stands outside the gate hoping to see her husband each day, if only for a few minutes. One of the guards takes pity on them and lets Paul out of the gate so he can hug his wife. He then returns to the prison.
Braddock (Virgil Frye) is one of the prisons more violent inmates. Along with other prisoners he has hatched a plan to escape. When Paul refuses to join the escape, Braddock stabs him. Braddock lives but he is bedridden. Braddock and the others then escape through a tunnel they dug under the shed that houses the formaldehyde. The gang then steals a flatbed truck loaded with a several barrels of the experimental chemical.
One of the prisoners, Nolan (Carmen Filpi), steals a shotgun from a guard but trips. The gun goes off, notifying the camp of the escape attempt. The warden sends out some of his deputies to stop the escape. The truck crashes and the barrels of formaldehyde fall and burst open, coating the ground. The escapees are shot and buried in a shallow grave in the same spot.
The formaldehyde reanimates the prisoners who decide to return to the camp to kill everyone and get the remaining barrels of formaldehyde.
“Garden of the Dead” AKA “Tombs of the Undead” was released in 1972 and was directed by John Hayes. It is an American low budget science fiction horror film.
Clocking in at just under an hour, the film boasts mostly of the actors that are either no-names or were predominately extras in other films.
Great title, strange movie. It’s not all that good, but there is a quirky 70’s appeal to it. The low budget is obvious and the acting marginal. There also isn’t a lot of blood or gore. Even with the drawbacks there is a campy feel that makes it more palatable than most low budget independent films of the 70’s.
Done only a few years after Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” 1968, the zombies in this movie are very different than Romero’s. Here the zombies are fast, use weapons and can talk. They also don’t eat people, just formaldehyde. The zombies can be killed by intense light and point-blank shotgun blasts.
The special zombie make-up effects were done by Joe Blasco, who would go on to do far more interesting stuff than what we have here.