Kategoria: Zombie

#1839 Halloween 2023: The Chilling (1989)

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The Chilling is one of those B-movies that fell in between of being of a good enough quality for the masses, while also failing to gain a cult status for themselves as many horror movies do.

While the story of people in cryogenic sleep waking up to terrorise a facualty was never a contender for Oscars, I did enjoy the overall theme and atmosphere here. And while movie is cheaply put together, there’s nothing totally bad in here. The reanimated corpses are vicious and look menacing.

The handsome, chiselled Dan Haggerty makes for a great charismatic hero who single handedly manages to bring up the movie a notch or two.

80s-o-meter: 87%

Total: 72%

#1836 Halloween 2023: Ozone: The Attack of the Redneck Mutants (1986)

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I’ve seen the premise before: country hicks getting infected by virus turning them into undead creatures. Bloodsuckers from Outer Space and Redneck Zombies were both surprisingly entertaining zombie movies, but Ozone: The Attack of the Redneck Mutants unfortunately falls far behind of both.

The movie makes a maximum effort of being just plain disgusting. There’s endless scenes of people turning into zombies, gushing black ooze and puking yellow excrement. On top of this the movie has been dubbed completely, with voice actors really working for their money adding all kinds of moaning, gushing and cacophony, making the movie really hard to watch through.

The zombies look, well, passable, but that’s just about the only good thing I can say about the movie.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 2%

#1764 Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

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I feel it’s apt to start reviewing Hard Rock Zombies with its most interesting piece of trivia: the film was originally supposed to be only twenty minutes long and solely used as the feature played during the movie American Drive-In – also directed by Krishna Shah – but was then seen wacky and interesting enough concept so the decision was made to extend the short movie to full 90 minutes.

This wacky origin also means that the movie is weird by design, very much intentionally. You have a rock band turning to zombies, battling against Hitler and his cultists, on paper something that would end up hilariously funny.

Unfortunately despite this outrageous premise, Hard Rock Zombies is surprisingly tame. Sure, it has its moments, but this is not the hidden cult classic made for side-splitting movie night with friends it could’ve been in more capable hands.

80s-o-meter: 75%

Total: 60%

#1574 Halloween 2021: I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987)

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Don’t let the (relatively) nice poster fool you: I Was a Teenage Zombie is a shoelace budgeted, amateurish horror movie that has nothing to offer but horrible production quality and bad makeup.

And it’s not even the teenage main character that gets turned into a zombie but a 70s style hispanic pimp (read: falls into a river and climbs up with his face mucked with green body paint). Then, he then goes around humping people. I kid you not.

You have to wait until the one hour mark for anything interesting to happen to the actual teenager, and even after that it’s not too interesting. He gets body painted in a similar fashion and walks around cluelessly until he fights the pimp, and the end credits roll.

It’s not every day that one comes across something this inadequate.

80s-o-meter: 52%

Total: 0%

#1572 Halloween 2021: Toxic Zombies aka Bloodeaters aka Forest of Fear (1980)

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One more low budget indie zombie movie to shy away from, Toxic Zombies does little or nothing better than any of its contemporary rivals.

A pesticide is dropped on top of a few teenage campers, turning them into – you guessed it – blood lusting zombies. Typically with these kind of cheap productions the primus motor has been ”that weird neighbour kid” into gory special effects, who’s then all grown up and releases that one uninspired cookie cutter horror movie with horrid production quality, but inventive use of special effects.

Toxic Zombies doesn’t even have that going for it. Story wise there’s a bit more effort to it than other indie horror films, and the mood gets ok at times, but really, there’s nothing here to phone home about.

80s-o-meter: 57%

Total: 26%

#1447 The Alien Dead (1980)

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A subpar zombie movie disguised as a subpar scifi movie, The Alien Dead tries to sell a concept of living dead sort of aliens living in the bottom of a swamp who devour local fauna and humans.

Directed by Fred Olen Ray also known from abominations such as The Phantom Empire and Biohazard, The Alien Dead is bad even by his standards. Not only is The Alien Dead super uninteresting, but every imaginable technical shortcoming is to be found here as well.

80s-o-meter: 40%

Total: 9%

#1407 Halloween 2020: Death House aka Zombie Death House (1988)

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John Saxon directs and stars in Death House, a zombie horror game taking place in one of these special movie prisons. And as always, the authorities that run the penitentiary are up to no good, this time around using the convicts on a death row as guinea pigs for experimental drugs.

After one of the experiments goes south, turning the prisoner a bubbling pile of flesh, the jail goes to lockdown and everyone inside still not zombified try make it out one way or another.

Death House is almost as plain 80s action thriller horror as they come, but in a good way; the movie delivers what it promises in a positively entertaining package.

80s-o-meter: 93%

Total: 80%

#1393 Halloween 2020: Zombie Nosh aka FleshEater aka Revenge of the Living Zombies (1988)

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Who knew a low budget zombie movie that innovates very little could be one of the highlights of this Halloween?

Directed and written by Bill Hinzman who originally starred in the genre classic Night of the Living Dead (1968), Zombie Nosh (and its dozen releases under different titles) is a much better stab into film making than his 1986 directorial debut slasher The Majorettes.

Sure, it’s low quality, low production value and definitely looks older than its release year 1988 suggests, but Zombie Nosh manages to be quite effective at times like when the living dead creep out of the darkness to devour the flesh of the living. Plus, some of its inventive special effects punch in one or two weight classes above the movie itself.

80s-o-meter: 71%

Total: 62%