A delightfully schlocky premise is given straight faced treatment here, as a Nazi scientist named Norberg (a slumming Dana Andrews) goes about the business of keeping various Nazi characters on ice and experimenting on them so that they can, one day, be resurrected successfully. A problem arises when his visiting niece Jean (the gorgeous Anna Palk) becomes VERY concerned about the sudden disappearance of her friend / traveling companion Elsa (Kathleen Breck).

While somewhat disappointing - this doesn't play out the way that some people might want it to - it's an okay forerunner to the "Nazi zombie" genre that eventually flourished. There might be too much talk and too little action for some audience members, but everything is played with admirable sincerity, and the movie isn't completely lacking in memorable imagery. Writer / producer / director Herbert J. Leder ("Pretty Boy Floyd", "It!") gives us a pitiable decapitated head on a table, and the sight of severed arms attached to a wall. Filmed in Britain, this is limited in its color palette, and in fact was apparently originally shown in theatres in black & white. It features a wonderful schlock movie score composed by Don Banks.

The cast is fun to watch, especially Andrews, as he makes an attempt at a German accent. Palk is an appealing leading lady, but Philip Gilbert is rather bland as the nice guy American scientist who becomes party to the machinations of our bad guys. Karel Stepanek and Basil Henson are entertainingly malevolent as Nazi goons. Alan Tilvern delivers a standout performance as Norbergs' crazed assistant. A young Edward Fox pops in and out of the story as one of the unfrozen dead. Breck is ultimately quite the sight, and she does earn ones' sympathies.

An amusing, diverting bit of rubbish that may be worth a look for schlock enthusiasts looking for golden oldies of decades past.

Seven out of 10.

OK, so this isn't the greatest of horror films and perhaps there are moments when the film slows to a crawl, but it also has some truly chilling moments! I first saw this film on late-night TV as a young one and I'll always remember the creepy ending and the decapitated head pleading to be killed. Dana Andrews heads the cast and does a nice job as the Nazi Dr trying to bring the frozen soldiers of the Third Reich back to life. I was thrilled to find this film on DVD as part of a double-feature with the truly horrid film, 'They Saved Hitler's Brain'. If you have an opportunity to watch this film, you really should give it a try.....it's not nearly as bad as some would have you believe!

One of the triumvirate of iconic '60s disembodied head movies and thematic intermediate between the heady love story of "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (1962) and the neo-Nazi delirium of "They Saved Hitler's Brain" (1968),"The Frozen Dead" finds former Third Reich scientist Doktor Norberg (Dana Andrews) attempting to revive frozen members of the master race two decades after the end of the war. Unfortunately, the thawed übermensch are mentally defective and without a living human brain to study, Norberg suspects that resuscitating the rest of the Nazicles is doomed. Hoping to head off failure, his whinging assistant Essen (Alan Tilvern) kills Norberg's visiting niece's friend (Kathleen Breck),whose head the pernicious but resourceful doktor manages to keep alive in a box in the lab (complete with an cranial observation dome). The niece gets suspicious, a romance blossoms, more Nazis show up, Norberg wires up the head to a wall of arms...it just gets better and better! The movie effectively evokes a sense of trapped helplessness - you can almost feel the disembodied head's powerless anguish or the panic of the poor henchman left to freeze to death amongst the icy Nazis. While not great art, "The Frozen Dead" is a well done, low-budget shocker that deserves an extra rating point for being surprisingly creepy despite the inherent silliness of the premise.