Back in March of last year, I posted about a film called Living Space getting a limited release in its native Australia. Its since had its title changed to the more exploitable Nazi Undead and is turning up on VOD.
Despite the title change the film still opens with an explanation of the German concept of Lebensraum or “living space” which was used to justify colonial and later Nazi expansion. The plot itself picks up with tourists Brad (Leigh Scully) and Ashley (Georgia Chara) having sudden and unexplained car trouble while traveling through Germany. In short order, they find a dead body and seek help in a nearby house. However, the house is the domain of the spirits of an SS Officer (Andy McPhee) and his family, who do not take kindly to the intrusion.
Despite the new title, this isn’t another Nazi zombie film in the style of Outpost or Overlord. Thankfully it isn’t Scarecrows of the Third Reich either. What it is, is a skillful and brutal ghost story from
The events are told in a manner that’s confusing at first, but once you figure out what’s going on it makes sense and the details fall into place. I’m not going drop a spoiler on just what is happening, you deserve to enjoy that discovery.
Nazi Undead is loaded with excellently done practical gore, among the highlight being a man mangled into a living swastika. The effects team was headed by Steven Boyle who started his career on Undead and has gone on to films like Ghost Ship, Thirty Days of Night and Boar. Apart from the gore there’s also some genuinely unnerving looking apparitions. A significant piece of the film’s budget must have gone into the effects and it was money well spent.
As I mentioned this is an Australian film, and it does an excellent job of making Australia look like Germany. What it doesn’t do so well however is have its Australian leads play Americans. There’s also no real reason for it except possibly to give it better box office potential. It’s not that Scully and Chara are bad, they just have the familiar problem of accents that come and go. Chara is actually quite good, frequently carrying the film as the only person on screen.
The retitling seems to have been a last minute thing. All the posters I can find for it, even on its Facebook page are under the Living Space title. While Nazi Undead certainly makes it clear this is a horror film I hope it doesn’t cause it to get lost in the flood of Nazi zombie films.
Nazi Undead is available on Vimeo and other VOD platforms. You can check its Facebook page for other platforms and release plans.
Great review, Steven Spiel was just a nice down to Earth guy when I met him, I’ve been following his travel this past year on Insta and boy has he done some leg work there. The accents were touched on at question time and were to make it more marketable but I noticed them like you did.
I hope to see more from this guy— he’s got some great flavour.
I definaitly want to see more from him after this.