Die You Zombie Bastards!

Title: Die You Zombie Bastards!
Rating: 3/5
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Starring: Tim Gerstmar, Geoff Mosher, Pippi Zornoza
Director: Caleb Emerson

“Oh no! Is that Vlad the Impaler again?”

With tongue planted firmly in cheek this is a film that borders many genre boundaries yet remains distinctly 80s style B-movie horror. Complete with excessive fake blood, random violence and nudity, evil mad scientists, superheroes, rock ‘n’ roll legends, and more badly designed monsters - not in the least ‘manphibian’ and ‘coconut-head’ - whilst some of the jokes become excessive and fail to hit the mark, at no point does it feel like a simple mockery of the genre. Instead it points out the lighter side of the genre by pushing things one step further into ridiculousness.

It is in the wilderness of Hell Island that the evil demonic scientist Baron Nefarious (Mosher) dwells, perfecting his Zombotron, a device capable of transforming people into zombies. Testing it on three young nubile archaeopalaeontologists his device is near completion. Plotting to finish his Super Zombotron, he will be capable of unleashing it on the world. Taking young cannibal Violet (Zornoza) as his bride, her husband Theirry Tool (Gerstmer), a secret superhero/serial-killer called Red begins his quest to track him down and retrieve is wife. With his trusty cheese-bombs, human-skin cape and giant dildo, he is faced against an army of zombies standing between him and his wife.

I think it’s safe to say based on the plot that this is not intended to be serious in any way, resulting in a number of over-the-top cliché situations, ridiculous stories and witty one liners, this is a film that deliberately made to be stupid. The budget is clearly small, but is well utilised in creating simplistic claymation and monster suits to lend a genuine ‘blast-from-the-past’ feel to the proceedings, and actually works to its advantage, never feeling constraining on what they can do with it.

The acting is generally fairly poor, most of the comedy arriving from the script rather than the cast’s abilities, but this is not unexpected (when was the last time you saw good acting in a horror spoof?). Many of the jokes admittedly failed to hit the mark, and went on for longer than was necessary as if trying to prolong a laugh that never arrived, but with cameo appearances from Hasil Adkins (notable rockabilly musician) and Jamie Gillis (male porn star), suffice to say it makes up for this shortcoming by sheer originality and silliness.

There’s no shortage of budget horror’s filling the shelves these days, and whilst many seem to try to be serious, it is always the ones that are ‘so bad they’re good’ that work; writing a good horror film is notoriously difficult, and something many fail miserably trying to do. This film has no pretence of being anything but a slapstick spoof of the style they enjoy, and whilst certainly not without its flaws is leaps and bounds ahead of much of the competition. For fans of ‘Army of Darkness’ style mocking, whilst not brilliant is worth a glance.