When some tourists head out on a cruise, little do they know that the boat’s engine will fail. And no one expected a strange orange haze that messes with the navigation. Is this a Blind Dead movie? No. Next, as night falls, a massive, rusted cargo ship materializes out of nowhere and sideswipes their vessel before disappearing. Is this Death Ship? No. The next morning, the tourists are further shocked when their boat’s captain (John Carradine) vanishes, and the ship sinks, leading them to an island.
On the shore, they discover the massive wreck stranded on a reef, along with the body of their drowned captain. Exploring further, they find a rundown, seemingly deserted hotel inhabited by a reclusive, bitter old man (Peter Cushing). When the castaways recount their encounter with the ship, the man grows panicked. Down on the beach, pale-eyed, goggled figures emerge from the ocean floor, walking straight from the sunken wreck toward the island.
The cook, Dobbs, is cornered and killed in the shallows, and the first mate, Keith (Luke Halpin), finds a tattered uniform piece bearing Nazi SS insignia clutched in the dead man’s hand. Confronted with the truth, the hotel’s host confesses his past: he was once an SS commander overseeing the Death Corps, an experimental unit of aquatic super-soldiers designed to thrive in any environment. Too ruthless and uncontrollable to deploy during the war, he deliberately sank their vessel when Germany fell, retreating to lifelong exile. Now, the ocean has given them back.
As the undead close in, the commander tries and fails to command his former troops, meeting his own end in the surf. The surviving tourists attempt to flee via various boats and hideouts, but the relentless, silent zombies pick them off one by one, dragging them to watery graves. By the time two fishermen rescue the lone surviving tourist, Rose (Brooke Adams), the psychological toll has shattered her mind completely, leaving her institutionalized and writing nonsensical loops in a journal.
Before making Shock Waves, director/writer Ken Widerhorn and producer Reuben Trane were film students at Columbia University, where they won the 1973 Academy Award for Best Dramatic Student Film. Shock Waves marked their transition directly into commercial feature filmmaking. Originally shot under the working title Death Corps, they had a tight budget of $150,000 to shoot the movie in 16mm (which was later blown up to 35mm for theatrical distribution). They later raised an additional $200,000 to complete post-production and release the film.
Wiederhorn noted that the film’s premise was born out of pragmatic constraints and literary inspiration. Investors explicitly requested a horror movie because genre films were reliable financial investments. While brainstorming ideas tailored to a Florida shoot, Wiederhorn drew inspiration from the famous esoteric book The Morning of the Magicians and its theories regarding the Third Reich’s fascination with occultism and fringe science.
Say what you will about this movie, but the image of the Nazi soldiers emerging from the ocean remains an indelible image. It’s slow-moving and there’s hardly any blood. Yet it’s a comfort movie for me, one I put on and just smile as I let it wash over me.
