Outposts

Back in the day, I found a low budget film by the name of Outpost (2007) and decided to give it a go. It's awesome. A tense horror film with “undead” Nazis. What's not to love? Well I'll tell you, read on.

Yesterday I decided to watch the sequel, Outpost: Black Sun (2012) and today I saw Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz (2013), and although we still have “undead” Nazis, unlike the original, here we have very little to love.

SPOILER ALERT

First off, I spell undead with quotation marks because they aren't really risen from the grave, (mostly, it get's confusing at times) but rather stuck in a strange electromagnetic field. See, the Nazis wanted to create invincible soldiers, and thus injected them with some kind of miracle goo and exposed them to a field generated by a super science device that created a unified field. This made them unkillable, but also uncontrollable and the project was shut down.

Now enter our “heroes” in Outpost. A scientist named Hunt has hired a team of mercenaries to find said machine although it's been 65+ years since the war ended. They arrive at this creepy bunker somewhere in eastern Europe. The exact location is cleverly unspecified but we know it's war-torn and bleak. Inside the bunker they find the machine and it still works! Just go with it, it's not the weirdest thing that's going to happen.

Unfortunately this allows the Ghost-Nazis to manifest (though it is possible they could do that anyway), and it's on!

I have to say the Ghost-Nazis are terrifying in this movie. They appear anywhere, shadowy and massive, they kill with bayonets and disappear just like they came. Very creepy indeed! To top it off, you can shoot them all you like, but they don't care. They just keep coming, and then you die.

I'm not spoiling the ending, you'll just have to watch it yourself.

In Outpost: Black Sun, we are introduced to a young woman, Lena, who's a Nazi Hunter. A bit late for all that these days, but why not? She travels to the area the Outpost is in to find and kill/arrest the creator of the machine, one Klausener. She has no idea about “undead” Nazis, she's just there to get this evil old man for being a Nazi.

Along the way, she meets an old acquaintance, Wallace, who's a scientist and he's there to find the machine (of course). They team up just as U.N. troops move in to the area, to contain some vague chemical weapon.

The duo encounters some “undead” Nazis but they are pretty different from the original version. Instead of being creepy Ghost-Nazis, they now charge around and roar a lot. And where their faces used to be shadowy, they now look like stereotypical zombies. This is such a shame! All the suspense is gone and all we have now are rage zombies in SS uniforms.

Along the way, they team up with a reluctant U.N. special forces team who's in the area to destroy the unified field machine, because the field is spreading and with it, the “undead” Nazis, and they are still killing pretty much everything in sight.

If this all sounds kind of crappy, it's because it kind of is. The movie itself is pretty well written. The characters mostly act logically, like when the soldiers bring Wallace along since their scientist got killed, but refuse to take Lena since she's a useless civilian. (She goes after them anyway). But this is in no way as good as the original.

Again I won't spoil the ending too much, it was OK, but the scene with the guy shooting lighting like Emperor Palpatine, I could have done without.

So over all, a totally watchable film if you liked the first Outpost. Sad about the “undead” Nazis, but I guess you can't have everything.

The third installment though, Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz, was terrible. Absolute garbage. Instead of continuing the story from the first two movies, they decided to do a prequel, (insert theatrical sigh of frustration here), even though the second movies ending practically begs for continuity.

Here we're introduced to a group of Soviet partisans who get tangled up in the whole “undead” Nazi business when they ambush a German convoy. Soon enough most of them are dead and the survivors, including their commander are taken to the Outpost to be experimented upon.

There are three major flaws in this film.

First off, the Nazi Commandant, Strasser, is so campy and cliched, that the only thing he's missing is a limp and a monocle. He even zpeaks in a riddikkulous zheatrical fashion, which is even lamer considering none of his men do. They talk perfectly normally.

Secondly, the “undead” Nazis are even dumber than in the second movie. They are all huge hulking men with bald heads and even worse zombie makeup than in Black Sun. To be fair, they were prototypes, since at that point the Nazi scientists hadn't perfected the formula yet. But it really does nothing for the film.

Thirdly, the partisan commander is ridiculously bad-ass. He even outfights the Rage-Nazi-Zombies hand to hand. And, of course, being the hero, he really cares about his men. In the end, he's as cliched as Commandant Strasser.

I don't want to nitpick this film, since I don't care enough about it, as this is simply a pointless action movie set in the Outpost universe. But it does the series a disservice by going against things already established by the earlier films. And that I can't forgive it for. I had low expectations going in to this, but I was still let down. Do yourself a favor and avoid it.

A last couple of points. Both the “undead” General who leads the “undead” Nazis in the first two films as well as Commandant Strasser wear black SS uniforms, even though it's supposed to be towards the end of the war. The uniforms should have been gray, since Himmler banned the black uniform from common use. Parades only and such.

Also at the end of Black Sun, a cackling “undead” hag-nurse appears. In the third film we learn a little bit more about her, but the way she's shuffling around in a tattered black cloak, wielding a syringe and goes: “hehehehihihihehehehiiiiii” is so stupid! They should have left her on the cutting room floor.

So to sum up, the first Outpost is pretty damn good, the second is watchable and the third is foul.

Until next week, I hope you don't have to deal with any Ghost-Nazis, because they are scary.

Have a great week!