Shatter Dead (1994)

Director:

Scooter McCrae

Writer:

Scooter McCrae (writer)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

GOD HATES YOU!

Plot:

Depressing tale about a world of the undead and a woman's trek to get home to her boyfriend's house.

Plot Keywords:

Psychotronic | Gun In Vagina | Pubic Hair | Explicit Sex | Cult Favorite

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Stark Raven	...	Susan
Flora Fauna	...	Mary
Daniel 'Smalls' Johnson	...	Dan
Robert Wells	...	The Preacher Man
Marina Del Rey	...	Grandma
John Weiner	...	Jack
Jeff Kushner	...	Patrolman (as Jeffrey Kushner)
Sharon Kingston	...	The Tea Lady
Marco North	...	Crash Test Corpse
Scooter McCrae	...	Corpse In Car (as Robert Ferrapples)
Jill Dearman	...	Kitchen Dead
Ann Goulder	...	Kitchen Dead
Janice Lester	...	Kitchen Dead
Johnny Bravo	...	New Order Dead
Pericles Lewnes	...	New Order Dead

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:16+ (Quebec) | UK:18 | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Middletown, New York, USA

Company:

Tempe Video

Quotes:

Susan: When I look at you I can tell - you're dead!

Deeply disappointed.

After hearing much hype about this supposedly graphic yet thoughtful zombie movie I gave it a shot, much to my dismay.

Strait-jacking Romero's infamous 'Dawn of the Dead' line about there being no more room in hell for it's plot, 'Shatter Dead' follows the exploits of a rather unpleasant female as she attempts to get to her boyfriend in a world were the dead don't die. Along the way she meets assorted boring humans, a wack-job preacher, and some living dead just trying to get by.

The film tries for high-concept, but lays limp at low-execution. The locations look like spots near the director's home, the actors don't ever act, the script is thin past the set up, the gore FX aren't convincing, the direction is uninspired, etc, etc. Just nothing about it ever works. The film could have tried to rely upon the strength of the set-up to at least flirt with some existential examination, but instead the filmmakers fall back on dime-novel psycho-babble and pseudo-religious rhetoric.

As far as providing exploitive thrills, yet again the promise is not delivered. There is some violence and blood/gore, but it's cheaply executed and badly edited together. On the sexploitive front, things fare no better. While there is a fair amount of nudity, it is mostly of the lead female who (I am sorry to say) is not very attractive. For the whole movie only one bit, just one, actually stood out; a late movie sex scene where a blood drained zombie male is forced to strap on a hand-gun in order to engage in intercourse. That one blurb of exploitive lunacy accounts for the 2 rating.

Not much of a horror movie, not much of a sexploitive movie...just not much of a movie.

2/10