Lake Of The Dead

Lake of the Dead (De Dodes Tjern) (1958)

Runtime: 76 minutes

Directed by: Kare Bergstrom

Starring: Erling Lindahl, Bjorg Engh, Henny Moan, Andre Bjerk, Georg Richter

From: Norsk Film

Back during Halloween season 2020, I saw the Norwegian movie Lake of Death; that 2019 picture was rather dull & flaccid, not to mention predictable. At the time I noted it was a remake of of a movie from the late 50's I hadn't seen before. Well, because it's on Shudder I had the chance to discover that indeed the original film is quite a bit better.

It does not star young adults playing the role of young adults. Rather, it's characters who are middle aged like me that go off for vacation to a cabin in the woods as it's owned by the brother (Bjorn; not Ulvaeus) of a girl in the party. When they get there, the brother is gone, his dog is dead (you do briefly see its corpse, for those that are passionately against the dog dying) and much of the movie is spent with these adults conversating as to what's the cause of the oddities & scares that are happening. You see, the lake has a hell of a lore attached to it: a killer who has a peg leg and a one-legged immortal crow!

It's more about the dialogue than the scares; much to the movie's credit the talk was all engaging to me and what creepy moments occur are effective. Could it be paranoia that is driving everyone's fears or is there actually a ghost and undead crow? The fact that all the characters are different and thus they all have varying interpretations of the same data points was of interest to a dork like me. So was the creepy as hell score. While much of the movie was spent in a cabin, the lake setting was quite scenic. With the right expectations it is more likely you'll have as good of a time as I did.

Oh, and this is a rare example where the star of the movie was primarily an author and the movie's plot was based on a novel he wrote. Andre Bjerke's prose was primarily centered around psychologist Kai Bugge so why not have him be in the movie but not play Bugge? Instead he was a key supporting character and considering it's his own acting credit, he was good.