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Zombie 90 - Extreme Pestilence Directed by Andreas Schnaas You know you're in for a real cinematic treat when an entire feature length movie is included as a bonus feature on a DVD. Had Zombie 90 - Extreme Pestilence not been included as a bonus feature on the Zombie Doom DVD I probably never would have watched it. Zombie Doom was terrible on every level, and this offering from the same director, Andreas Schnaas, is a micron better if only because it's has a lot more zombies. Like many terrible films, there is a lesson to be learned from Zombie 90 . The lesson I learned is that while a great movie will make you think, a movie that makes you think is not necessarily great. While watching Zombie 90 , I had lots of thoughts. Most of these thoughts were questions. Questions such as: Why would a zombie use a chainsaw? Why would a group of zombies be carrying machetes? Zombies are just normal people who've died and been reanimated. The zombies in question just looked like normal folks off the street, so why would they be carrying machetes? Is it common for people in Germany , where the movie was shot, to walk around with machetes? Why does the tall white guy who looks like a cross between Bob Saget and Hitler sound like a pimp from a 70's Blaxploitation film? Why do I get the impression that the folks doing the voice over had no idea what the original dialog was? Did they know and just not care? Why does the gore under a woman's tit look exactly the same as the gore from everyone else's intestines? How does 5 full minutes of nothing but zombies eating their victims advance the story? Why would you need a dream sequence to have the Bob Saget/Hitler character kill a bunch of zombies? He kills zombies through the whole movie, what's the point of having a dream sequence to have him do more of the same? Why did I sit through this pile of crap? Perhaps I'm being too hard on this movie. After all, it probably had a budget of about 50 Deutschmarks, and it did have some good qualities. The dubbing was so bad it was comical, and you also get to see a lady in a wheelchair decapitated with an axe, just before a zombie dismembers her baby. Sure the baby was clearly a plastic doll, but that's still something you won't see in any Hollywood production. Zombie Doom Written and Directed by Andreas Schnaas When I was a teenager, one of my goals in life was to memorize the lyrics to every song ever written. It didn't take long for me to realize what a moronic goal that was. Even if it were possible, it would mean I'd have to spend a lot of time listening to shitty songs over and over again. Now that I'm older, and oh so much more mature, one of my goals in life is to see every zombie movie in existence. Tonight I watched Zombie Doom , and it made me rethink my goal. Not only is it probably impossible to see EVERY zombie movie ever made, but it would also mean I'd be watching a lot more shitty zombie movies. To be clear, I'm not calling zombie movies shitty. On the contrary, I love horror movies, and I especially love zombie movies. As a fan of the ever schlock-ridden Return of the Living Dead , I thought I would never meet a zombie movie that I didn't like. That all changed when I met Zombie Doom. Now, you take an island populated by a cult, run by a guy named Karl the Butcher, throw in a mad scientist, some zombies, and even a few ninjas, and you'd think you'd have one hell of an awesome movie. (Sounds like Oscar-worthy material to me anyway.) But when the costumes are straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail , the dubbing sounds like one guy is doing all the voices, and the whole mess looks like someone shot it with a 300 dollar camcorder, the scales of movie suckdom start to tip in the wrong direction. Much like the other efforts of writer/director Andreas Schnaas, Zombie Doom doesn't have the budget to accomplish its desired effect. Schnaas doesn't have the talent to produce a decent low budget film. Instead of trying to work around his monetary constraints he just ignores them. He doesn't seem to care how ridiculous his effects look, as long as they are gory. As I said, the premise had promise, but the execution was all wrong, and I'm not talking about the decapitations. The story is too poorly constructed to compensate for the horrendous production values. The three “sympathetic characters” introduced in the beginning are all dead by the middle of the film. By the time the movie is over, the only two characters left alive are the two who were least developed, and therefore least interesting. By the end you aren't rooting for the good guys to win, or even for the bad guys to win. You're just waiting for the movie to be over. A zombie movie doesn't have to have production values any better than your average porn flick to be enjoyable. It doesn't need great acting, clever dialog, or even an original plot. One thing it does need is zombies. Yes this movie has zombies…about 5 minutes worth of zombies. 5 minutes out of the entire 85-minute runtime, and the US title they go with is Zombie Doom? The alternate title, Violent Shit 3 - Infantry of Doom , is definitely more appropriate. Then again, so is the title I made up for the film, Worthless Shit 3 - Infantry of Poo . by Edward Ellsworth |
Two Zombie Film Reviews 
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