Thursday 11 February 2016

The great Nazi zombie DVD sleeve mystery

Take a look at this DVD sleeve. I don’t know if it’s real, but it’s very odd.



There are a lot of films out there about Nazi zombies. This looks like it might be the Pat Higgins/Jim Eaves/Al Ronald anthology filmed as Battlefield Death Tales, which was released in the UK as Nazi Zombie Death Tales and in the States as Angry Nazi Zombies. This artwork was used by the German distributor who called the film Nazi Zombie Battleground. (Although it's not the artwork used on Amazon.de, which resembles the UK sleeve.)


However, exactly the same artwork was used in the UK for an American film originally titled Maplewoods which was released over there as Operation: Nazi Zombies and over here as just Nazi Zombies. Adding to the confusion is that Zombis Nazis is the Spanish title for the Norwegian film Dead Snow. All the text here is in Spanish but the back of the sleeve promises subtitles in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Danish.

The synopsis on the back of the sleeve is for Nazi Zombies – but two of the small pictures are from Nazi Zombie Death Tales! Neither of those films has been released in Spain. I don’t know what this is or where it’s from or whether it’s real, but I think it more likely relates to the movie formerly known as Maplewoods than the movie formerly known as Battlefield Death Tales.

And because life’s not complicated enough, Nazi Zombies and Nazi Zombie Battleground were released together last year in a German four-pack called Nazi Zombie Invasion which also included Nazi Sky (a retitling of The Asylum’s Iron Sky rip-off Nazis at the Center of the Earth) and Scottish comedy Attack of the Herbals (known over there as Attack of the Nazi Herbals).

Boy, those Germans sure love their Nazis, don’t they? Wait – what?

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