Trash Or Terror Tuesday: Garden of the Dead (1972)

It’s time for #TrashOrTerrorTuesday

…when I examine a film that’s been languishing in my personal library to determine if it is #Trash or #Terror

– or more importantly, if it deserves to stay in my collection.

And so, out from the dusty shelves of #VHS tapes & DVDs comes…

Poster art for Garden of the Dead (1972)Garden of the Dead (1972) by #JohnHayes

Formaldehyde sniffing prisoners are killed during a breakout. After burial, the inmates return from the dead to exact revenge on the prison guards who killed them.

“filmed in DEAD color”

#Horror #SciFi #Zombies

#TrashOrTerrorTuesday

 

Some friends and I rented Garden of the Dead (1972) back in high school. The poster, which was featured on the VHS box, looked so damn amazing that we were convinced that we were about to watch the greatest zombie movie since Dawn of the Dead (1978). A mere fifteen minutes into the movie, everyone in the room wanted to stop the tape and move on to something else. I, already a completist at such a young age, argued for continuing to watch “in case it gets better.” My friends allowed it to keep playing until about 30 minutes in and then they ejected that tape as fast they could and smashed it into a million pieces (okay, I may be exaggerating slightly – but they wanted to smash it, believe me).

Garden of the Dead was, without a doubt, the cheapest and shoddiest looking movie that any of us had ever seen at that point in our lives. For years it was legendary among our gang. We would reference it from time to time, whenever we needed a measuring stick for badness. “Oh it’s bad, but it’s not Garden of the Dead bad,” would be something we might have said. Even so, I always felt a little guilty about not finishing the movie…

More than ten years later, a friend who worked for a video distribution company gave me a bag of DVDs that he thought I might appreciate. They were mostly “bad” movies, he said, but perhaps they were “bad” in an enjoyable way. I was surprised and intrigued to see that Garden of the Dead was one of them.

Watching it again, as an adult (and finishing it for the first time), I was surprised by how much better it was than I remembered. It no longer looked as cheap and shoddy to me – as I had seen much cheaper and shoddier movies by that point in my life. It wasn’t exactly good, but it seemed on par with many of the drive-in type movies that I enjoy to watch on a Friday night. So, much to my surprise, I put the Garden of the Dead DVD onto my shelf where it has remained for almost twenty years now. I was a bit nervous that one of my high school friends would see it there and accuse me of betraying the old gang, but… I was prepared to tell them that it was better than we had thought. Still, I never got around to watching it again. So, I figured it was time to put it to the #TrashOrTerrorTuesday test.

The front gate of the "prison" in Garden of the Dead (1972)

The front gate of the “prison” in Garden of the Dead (1972)

Garden of the Dead is bad. I think my expectations were so low when I first re-watched it as an adult, that I was pleasantly surprised by it. It’s still not as cheap and shoddy as it had seemed back in high school, but it’s pretty cheap and shoddy. The “prison” consists of a few old shacks in the middle of a desert-like area, surrounded by a fence made out of barb wire and plywood. It would not effectively keep anyone from leaving.

The warden wears a suit, as if he’s attending a board meeting in a corporate head office, but he’s in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of prisoners and guards. Why would he bother to dress up?

The prisoners get high by sniffing formaldehyde (not sure if that’s a thing), and I guess that’s why they return from the dead (they’re pre-embalmed?).The movie clocks in, mercifully, at just under an hour. If we had known that back in high school, maybe we would have kept watching – but I doubt it.

So what’s the verdict?

Garden of the Dead (1972) is Trash. It has a few moments of inadvertent humour, which might make it watchable for die hard aficionados of bad movies. I don’t think that there are any moments of legitimate terror or suspense. And it’s not really trashy enough to be a truly fun watch.

Oddly enough, the DVD is introduced by Son of Ghoul (a horror host), and he says that it’s the kind of movie that makes you want to smash the TV after watching it. Not a bad description – and if that makes you want to watch Garden of the Dead, then you probably should. I, having already seen it three (well, two and half) times in my life, will not be joining you.

2 thoughts on “Trash Or Terror Tuesday: Garden of the Dead (1972)

  1. Pingback: Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Scream Bloody Murder (1972) - 100% Certified Angus Kohm

  2. Pingback: Trash Or Terror Tuesday: Zombie High (1987) - 100% Certified Angus Kohm

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