Blitzkrieg of the Damned: Overlord, Dead Snow & Horrors of War

In this episode, we dive headfirst into the frozen trenches of Nazi horror with a triple feature of undead Reich terror.

We break down Overlord (2018) — J.J. Abrams’ explosive WWII action-horror about American paratroopers who stumble upon a secret Nazi experiment far worse than anything the battlefield can offer. Then we charge into the snowy Norwegian mountains with Dead Snow, the gory cult classic where a group of friends awaken an ancient army of Nazi zombies. Finally, we explore the grim, low-budget nightmare Horrors of War, which delivers brutal supernatural terror behind enemy lines.

From goose-stepping zombies to mad science and wartime atrocities, we discuss what makes Nazi horror so disturbingly effective — and which of these films delivers the biggest scares and best kills.

If you love your horror with a side of swastikas and the walking dead, this episode is for you.

Transcript

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Welcome to season one, episode 20 of Dad Bot of Horror. I'm your host, Butch Barr, still no co-host. Wow, episode 20. That's pretty cool. My original plan was to go 10 episodes and see how I was doing, and here I am at 20. So, hey, awesome. So, no uh housekeeping to do, so we'll move right into the first movie, which is Overlord from 2018. You can find it on Prime and Pluto. The production companies are Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures. The director is Julius Avery. The writers are Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith, stars. I'm not sure how to pronounce this name. Is it Joven Adepo, Odipo, Jovan? I don't know. Uh White Russell and Matilda Olivier. I'm gonna assume Olivier. The plot. A small group of American soldiers find horror behind enemy lines on the eve of D-Day. So why this movie? So uh Memorial Day is coming up. So I thought I would do movies that were related to war or or uh World War II. Horror movies. So how did I see it? So um I saw this was coming out, um, Overlord, that it was a horror movie um that took place during World War II, and I'm a big fan of World War II. I mean, uh, you know, like uh reading books, seeing movies, whatnot, related to World War II. I also happen to really enjoy horror movies, so a horror movie that takes place during World War II, seen right up my alley. I did not see it in the theater, but as soon as it was on a streaming service, I did watch it and really enjoyed it. So, my favorite kill. So, um, so as you know by the plot, American soldiers down behind enemy lines. It's the uh they got dropped the night before the uh the D-Day assaults on Normandy. And uh they're to take out a certain objective. So at one point, uh the American soldiers they capture a German soldier who was on a motorcycle. He was heading back to the camp, you know, his base, and the Americans wanted to attack that base. So what they did is uh to try to help their assault on this base, they sent him back to the base on his motorcycle, and he was tied to the motorcycle. His hands were tied to the to the handlebars, and uh his mouth was taped shut. So he gets to the base, the guard lets him through the gate, and he's in the base at the gate area, and one of the higher-ranking Germans, let's say, comes by and is yelling, like, hey, what's going on? blah, blah, blah. All in German, of course. And he's like, you know, panicked and whatnot. And the uh the German removed the tape from his mouth. Well, the tape was caught up in a pin that was in the grenade, which was in the soldier's mouth who was on the motorcycle. So he pulls the pin, realizes what it is, panics, the grenade goes off, blows up the soldier's head, and takes out a bunch of the other soldiers that were at the gate at the camp, which led to the assault of that particular place. It was really cool, it was really smart. You kind of knew everybody that saw it knew what was gonna happen, except for you know the people in the movie, of course. So it was kind of fun. One of my issues with this movie, weirdly enough, I'm gonna say involves historical inaccuracies. So, right around this time this made this movie is being made, there was a lot of pushback about what they called whitewashing in Hollywood. And uh, if you know if you're not unfamiliar with the term, whitewashing is basically putting a white person in an ethnic role. So, a good example would be John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in a movie. Um, there's plenty of others. Uh um I can't think any off the top of my head, but there are others. And studios will tell you they do this to make money. I mean, what they're gonna say is, you know, John Wayne is a bigger draw than whoever, you know, whoever, whatever Asian or Mongol descendant they would have had in that position. You know, and they're right, you know, the thing is if you don't ever put people of different races into roles so that people can familiarize themselves with them, you're never gonna get them to be box office draws. So although what they say is correct, it just you know, it just keeps that same system intact. I think now you see a lot more African Americans, a lot more Asians, a lot more Latinos, um in more box office draw positions because they have been in a lot of movies. People have seen them, can see what talents they are, can like them, and therefore will see them in the theater, will be box office draws. So, anyway, going back to this movie. Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox about that. So get on my soapbox about this. This movie starts out on planes flying over probably France at the time, really. And the idea was you know, it was the night before D-Day, so a lot of paratroopers are going to be dropping into German-held France to help with the invasion. And in this case, it was the 101st squadron airborne, I'm sorry, airborne should have been part of this assault, and they are the ones, and I'll tell you why, that are in this plane. And the problem is that they are two black members of this particular group. This is World War II. This is before the Normandy invasion of World War II. There are no black people mixed in with white outfits, especially the 101st Airborne. That just didn't happen. Granted, I know I am seeing a movie about monsters during World War II. I get it. But this is the type of historical inaccuracy that bugs me. I know we all want to believe that we got along back then, but we didn't. Blacks were segregated, they just were. They had their own units. You know, there's a fine movie called Red Tails, which is about, you know, the American army didn't think that blacks could fly planes, that they were smart enough. I mean, it was it's an idiotic concept, but yes, that's what they thought. So they ended up the Tuskegee airmen, you know, where they learned to be pilots and they had their own unit and and they were completely segregated. And that's the way it was. It's not our history, isn't pretty, but that's how it was. And to me, I just thought it was so inaccurate, it bugged me. Because the one guy was even a sergeant. There was certainly not going to be a way where there was a black man giving orders to a white guy in the 101st at the time of the Normandy invasion. I refuse to believe it. I kind of looked it up, I didn't find it anywhere just to make sure that I wasn't just being wrong. Regardless, it didn't hurt the movie at all. It just bugged me because I felt it was historically inaccurate. It's kind of why I'm never gonna see uh Hamilton. I just it just doesn't interest me because it'll be bugging me the whole time. So this really is like a good war movie that becomes a horror movie. I should say great war movie. It really is great, you know. The whole the whole idea of them, you know, flying over, getting shot in getting shot down, jumping, da da da. It was amazing. It was really well done. You could tell there was money behind this. Um, you know, all the interactions between the the soldiers and then when the Germans get brought into it, and then also the civilians, it was great. It was done really well. Um it's also you know, a really good zombie movie, too, because you kind of know something's going on, you know. You know it's a horror movie, you knew from everything else that going into it was a horror movie. But there was all these little things like uh the uh the woman that they deal with, um, like her her grandmother is like sick, but you hear this like moaning, like like zombie-ish, like moaning, and they're talking about experiments that the Germans are doing, and this, that, and the other thing, and it's just really creepy. And then you finally kind of see what happened, what what it is. You know, what it is is this the the Germans found while they were in France there was this material that they found deep under a mountain, or at least what ends up being under the base that the Americans need to take out is this material, and this material seems to bring the dead back to life. The problem is they're not cooperative when they're brought back, so they're doing more and more experiments on this. Cough. I mean, they're uh doing experiments, um, you know, try to control them. And uh eventually one of the one of the Germans, one of the Nazis, I should say, uh, shoots the material into himself, like injects himself in the material, and it turns out it turns him into a super soldier, really. A kind of deformed and ugly super soldier, but he's super soldier nonetheless. So that's kind of the gist going forward there. Uh the movie was again well done, great practical effects. Um, the reason I know it's the 101st Airborne is uh again something very historically accurate. The uh before they they they took off, they were given these little kid toys, and you it was like a little clicker that you clicked on it and it made it sound like a cricket, like I don't I'm not even making the right noise. And the idea was if you were hiding in the brush because it's nighttime, and now you're in a far country, and they know you know, as you parachute in, you're gonna get separated. If you heard a noise, you would click on this, you know, click, click, and then you know, the other person, if they hear this, they're to use the challenge command, which was thunder, and then you reply with crash, and there that way you know we're all Americans here. Awesome. But this was only given out to 101st Airborne, so that's how I know. Since these guys had the cricket, I knew they were 101st Airborne. Really nothing to do with the movie. I just thought it was neat. I like that kind of historical accuracy and detail. So, um, storing in this is that Yovan Odepo, Adepo, however you pronounce it. Again, he's been in a bunch of stuff since. He's a great job. He did a great job in this movie. Most recently, he's been in Welcome to Derry, which I myself have liked quite a bit. And then you have Kurt Goalie's little kid, Wyatt, a White Russell. Looks and sounds just like his old man. He again did a terrific job in this. Um, he, you know, is supposed to be this seems like this grumpy gus, but of course, in the end, he becomes kind-hearted and saves a day. Um, again, he's still working, putting out a lot of good work. Um, he's in the MCU in Thunderbolts as US agent, and also most recently has been in the TV show Monarch on Apple Plus. So you should watch it if you get a chance. It is good. It's uh, you know, Monarch, it's uh King Kong, Godzilla, that kind of stuff. So yeah. So that was movie number one. So movie number two is called Dead Snow from 2009, and of course, this is season one, episode 20 of Dead Bot of Horror. So you can find Dead Snow on AMC Plus, Sundance Now, and Plex. The production companies are Euphoria Films, Miho Film, and Barronce Film. The director is Tommy Workola. Workola? Rekola. No, I think it's Workola. The writer is Tommy Workola, Steg Fruda Hendrickson. And yes, I did have to look how to pronounce that name. And it stars Yeppa Beck Larsen. I had to look up Yeppa, Charlotte Frogner, and Jenny Skavlan. Skavlin, Skavlin. Uh, this is a Norwegian-made film. If you couldn't tell by the names, my inability to pronunciate them so much to the point that I had to go and look them up. So the plot. A ski vacation terms horrific for a group of medical students as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace. Nazi zombies. That is an unimaginable menace, and yet a menace we'd love to see in movies, at least I do, because the only thing more fun than killing Nazi zombies is like watching Nazis get killed. So, you know, there it is. Why this movie? Again, Memorial Day is coming up. So, how did I see it? This is another one of those movies that I was over at my friend Jamie's house to watch. I would go over there and uh we would watch bad horror movies on on demand from Comcast. And this is another one of those that we picked out, and another one that we picked out to be bad, and yet we really enjoyed it. It was it's a it's a really fun movie. Absolutely a fun movie. My favorite kill. Okay. So my favorite kill is um there's this girl who's being killed and chased and killed by a Nazi zombie. And she's laying there, and it was, you know, it was interesting camera work, I say, because she's kind of like in and out of consciousness, and like her vision isn't great, but she sees this at least one zombie, I think it was two, like kind of like kind of sitting there, not sitting, but like on his knees, like pulling her intestines out and eating them. And she's like watching, she knows she's dead. And she looks down and she sees that he's sporting a potato masher. And uh, for those that know what a potato masher is, that is what is affectionately referred to is what the grenade the Germans carried was uh perfectionately referred to. It looks like it's like a long stick with a cylinder on the end. It looks like something you would mash potatoes with. So while she's laying there getting eaten, she basically sets off the potato masher and you know, destroys a zombie and kills herself in the long run. But again, that's a good death in this situation. So this movie's awesome. I really enjoy this movie. I've seen it multiple times. Um, it's got this great beginning where you're pulled into it right away, where there's a girl running through the woods and she's being chased, and eventually she gets killed. And it's like right first thing in the movie, and then it kind of like pulls back, and her friends are showing up like the next morning to meet with her. Of course, they're not going to. And the story like starts you start to, you know, the build the the characters and build the story. So yeah, it's it's neat. They, you know, you're getting the backstory, you're getting you're finding out about these people, you're starting to care about these people, you're you're getting to see who's who and what's what, and learn, you know, the difference between them, which I like. But you know, like having seen what happens to her in the beginning of the movie, then you know, kind of builds like a suspense because you've already seen her get killed. And so now it's like the whole time, like, is something gonna happen? When's something gonna happen? You know, to someone else. It it again is it was really well done. Great writing, uh, great directing, just fantastic job. Now, I can tell you I'll never be in a situation that they're in. So the idea is these people uh they park their cars and they're about to walk 45 minutes in the snow to a cabin in the woods. This is for vacation. 45 minutes walking in the snow to go to a cabin. Okay. First of all, I probably would never work walk 45 minutes in the snow to get to a cabin. I'm not sure I would walk 45 minutes in the snow to get to a luxury, you know, hotel where I would be waiting on hand and foot. But uh I certainly would never ever be in this situation, walk 45 minutes in the snow to get to a cabin that you have to go outside to an outhouse to use a bathroom. There's no way. Ridiculous. So since this is literally a cabin in the woods, I was thinking of the movie Cabin in the Woods. And did we have all of the archetypes here that uh fulfill the concept going on in that particular movie? And we do, they're all there. You know, the jock the fool, the the virgin, the tramp slight, whatever it was, and then the nerd. They're all there. And added bonus, you also have uh the person there, the older guy that shows up to try to warn them away. Um, I don't know if you remember that in Cabinet Woods. It was uh like a gas station, the guy tries to warn them away. Here, someone shows up in their cabin and tells them to leave, and of course they don't listen to them. So there's actually an English version and a Norwegian version. I am pretty sure when Jamie and I watched it, we watched the English version. So some of the sheet, some of the scenes are not, it's not really dubbed. It's that when the makers are making it, some of the scenes I would imagine the ones with the most dialogue, some were shot in English, and then it was shot again in Norwegian or or or vice versa. So that's kind of interesting and different. Now, the idea behind the movie, they don't really give a whole lot here, but the the story is that in Norway, when it was being occupied by the Germans, there was a port in this fjord that the Germans used, and they treated the Norwegians there very poorly. So eventually these uh Norwegians revolted and chased the Germans up into the hills here, into the into the snowy hills where they assumed they died. And now this is the idea is that people are on this mountain again, and apparently these Norwegian German Nazi soldiers just come back from the dead to kill them. I mean, I guess that's just what the deal is. Doesn't say why, it just happens. So, as these people are on their 45-minute death march in the snow to the cabin, the people realize that they are going to a cabin in the woods. So they bring up other, the one guy brings up other horror movies that take place in a cabin in the woods, like you know, because I guess try to scare themselves. So the first one they bring up is Friday the 13th, which was not a cabin in the woods. There was a camp on a lake. I get it, the lake is in the woods, and there are cabins as part of this camp. So, I guess technically, but I would not consider Friday 13th a cabin in the woods type movie. I just don't. Then they bring up Evil Dead movies, both of them, which is very accurate. Those are very much cabins in the woods. The last one they bring up was April Fool's Day. I love April Fool's Day. I think it's a fantastic movie. Um really enjoyed it. It is not a cabin in the woods, it is a mansion on an island. I mean, I guess there might be woods near it, but like they don't ever go in the woods. There's like beach, house, and water. It's not a cabin in the woods. I mean, in fact, like the nerd who brings up this whole thing, they're laughing, and he's laughing with like the hot girl he hooks up with later on. They bond over this being a cabin in the woods. It's not. It's not a cabin of the woods. Sorry, I get weird about certain things, as you can tell by how I've talked so far this entire episode. So, along with uh, you know, Nazi zombies, which everybody loves, this movie also contains Nazi Gold, which is like the most funnest MacGuffin there is. For those of you who don't know what a McGuffin is, a McGuffin is a plot device that motivates characters but marry but matters very little to the audience. So, like uh also, well, I actually says popularized but legendary director Alfred Hitchcock, is something that drives the story forward but triggers the conflict. So in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Lost Ark was the MacGuffin. In Avengers Endgame, you know, the uh Infinity Stones are the McGuffin. The Maltese Falcon, the Multi Falcon itself was the MacGuffin. The the item itself is almost meaningless, but it helps move, it's what the story, what brings the story along, what drives the plot. So this is Nazi Gold as the MacGuffin. And it's kind of neat. I enjoyed it. Um, they they get they start, they get to it and then they go away from it and they come back to it. So it was not the greatest MacGuffin, but it is the MacGuffin. Um, towards the end, and I don't want to spoil this, but there is definitely a point in this movie where you're gonna, if you watch it, you're when you're gonna go, like you're definitely gonna do that. If you have seen the movie and don't remember it, watch the movie again. But there's definitely a point at the end towards the end where you're gonna go, it's it's awesome, horrible, but awesome. Um, this movie, I don't know if it's because of the if it's a Norwegian thing or if it's just to throw people off. There is no final girl in this, but it has a fantastic ending, no doubt fantastic. All right. Well, I will move on to movie number three of season one, episode 20, which is Horrors of War from 2006. You can find it on Toobito. The production companies are Arbor Avenue Films, Sunny Boo Productions, and Hollywood Wizard. The directors are Peter John Ross and John Whitney. The writers are Peter John Ross, John Whitney, and Philip R. Garrett. Stars John Osbeck, Joe Lorenzo, and Daniel Allen Keely. The plot, feeling the pressure from the Alloy Advance, Allied Advance, not Alloy Advance, Hitler unleashes his secret weapons giving rise to a type of warfare the world has never seen. Again, why this movie? Because Memorial Day coming up. How did I see it? The first time was for this podcast. I don't have a favorite kill. This wasn't the kind of movie that would cause that. So this movie is actually really tough for me to put my fingers on because, or finger on, because like sometimes it really succeeds, and sometimes it really fails, and it really is like 50-50. Like the movie seems like it's good, and then and it seems like it's not. When the movie starts out, it's kind of blurry. Um, at some points, it looks like they kind of stretch the screen dimension, like they tried to zoom in and they just stretch the film so it doesn't look right. Um, but then sometimes it's absolutely fine. There's flashbacks that are grainy that are like grainy on purpose, but then there are times where it's not a flashback and the film looks grainy on purpose. The flashbacks themselves actually look like they're just reenactors. It doesn't look like it doesn't look like it was being like I thought that's why they did it grainy. Because it looks like someone just took a camera and watched some reenactors do things, so it's kind of funny. And like in the beginning, uh the actors, the the soldiers are wearing like mismatched uniforms, like they're not wearing the same uniform. Um, some are wearing helmets and they're in combat, but they're not like some are in combat and not wearing helmets. Um, but then later in the movie, everything looks much better. Everybody's dressed the same, they're all wearing helmets in combat. It just seems like it seems like two different production companies and directors made this movie, and then they just kind of patch it together like using segments from each other's films. Maybe it's because they had two directors, I don't know, but it it just the movie feels uneven, would be the best way to use it, I think. Uneven. I am impressed that we're actually some real World War II vehicles in it, including an M3A3 Stewart tank. So that was kind of cool. Like you said, there's some really neat things in this movie, there really are, and then there's some terrible things in it. Oh, you know, like one of the terrible things is I never really knew what the Nazis horrors were. Like I thought they were zombies, but then I thought, well, maybe they're Frankenstein monsters, and then I thought, well, maybe they're vampires. I really I couldn't tell you. Maybe they're super soldiers. It was hard to tell. The masks were terrible and the makeup was not great. They just looked like these purple things. At one point, like the one guy kind of reminded me of a purple version of like Chet from um Weird Science when he got made into a pile of Chet. It was really bad. Um, the only thing I did know is that the United States had a werewolf, which was interesting. So, again, you know, at some point I thought these things were zombies and I thought they were vampires. I couldn't really tell. So that was a bad part of the movie. So, you know, the idea by, you know, and you see this a lot in in horror movies that that deal in this area where you know Nazi scientists are creating trying to create a super soldier. And there's a lot about the occult. Well, Hitler wasn't into the occult, Hitler was, but Hitler definitely was trying to get his scientists to create kind of a super soldier. So the way they tried to do it was through kind of kind of like chemically engineering soldiers who could go without sleeping, feeling pain, or experiencing fears. And they did it by this like cocktail of drugs that they would give to them. They never did anything to the point of like, you know, Captain America super soldier stuff. But that was what the whole idea was behind. There were, they were actually giving their their certain soldiers were getting these pills, getting the amphetamines, getting different types of drugs to make them into better soldiers. But of course, it doesn't work long term, it never does. Um, now I have to say, for this movie, I really feel like an effort was put forward into this to make it a good movie. And I think some of the the decisions that were made were to try to hide the deficiencies in the movie. Like they they do this weird uh camera trick while the vampire or zombie or whatever it was was fighting the American Wolfman. Like it looked poor, but it was obvious they were trying to hide that. So at least they knew. So I would still suggest seeing horrors of war, to tell you the truth. So that's all I have for movie three. Um, my next episode is probably gonna be two weeks, and I don't know if you would call the person a co-host or a guest. I think they're only gonna be on one podcast. I guess they would be more of a guest than a co host, but I should have one. We're happy there is an agreement in place. So, yeah, so go out there, enjoy yourselves, and have some fun. And I guess I'll talk to you next time.