Zombie '90: Extreme Pestilence

The opening disclaimer states that the film you're about to see `contains scenes of extreme graphic violence and gore' and that we should watch `at your own risk'. Zombie 90 is only available by underground means, way too low budget to be officially released by anyone but its makers, and due to the violence unlikely to be released in most censorious quarters. That in mind it seems unlikely then that anyone who watches this tape can't be in any doubt as to what they're in for. However once you've seen it, the watch at your own risk part becomes obvious as well, because as well as being bloody in the extreme, Zombie 90 also turns out to be bloody awful. From the director of Violent Shit, the imaginatively titled Violent Shit 2 and the soon to be released (whether you wanted it or not) Violent Shit 3. In all those films nothing much happens but people being disemboweled by a masked psycho, and as a harsh change of pace for Schnaas nothing happens in Zombie90 but people being disemboweled by zombies! The threadbare plot has a plane carrying the cure for Aids crashing thus turning people into zombies. The rest of the film follows the misadventures of two of the most unlikely scientists ever committed to celluloid, (played by two of the most unlikely actors ever committed to celluloid) who stumble about talking scientific babble in between gory set pieces where they graphically dispose of zombies. Eventually one of them is bitten and has to be disemboweled. The remaining scientist then chainsaws and blows the heads off various zombie extras till he knocks himself out and we're treated to a very long and boring ten minute plus dream sequence. With the scientist stumbling through a `haunted house' and being chased by famous dead rock star zombies (a terrible idea). And boy if you thought that the makers hadn't even the talent to make the most basic of gore scenes interesting, wait until you see them try and make the movie scary, suspenseful and atmospheric. The rest of the film consists of people walking on, saying a line or two before they're butchered by zombies. A man's car breaks down and he's cut in half with a chainsaw, a group of spotty students are chopped up with machetes and/or pulled apart, two ugly women have their breasts eaten, you get the general idea. Hard to know if we're supposed take any of these effects seriously because the general effect is of a bunch of the director's slow witted friends chewing down on butchers cuts, while someone off camera throws red paint on them. We've all seen low budget movies before, but Zombie 90 is truly poverty row. Most noticeable is the shoddy dubbing, which involves giving the actors, effeminate squeaky Monty Python style voices or badass jive talk (even if most of the cast consists of weedy honkeys). Sure its funny for about the first ten minutes, but when you realize that there is another hour of this its not so funny after all. Most of it is so out of synch with what is happening that it looks as if the dubbers were just making it up as they go along, with passages like `come on, come on, err lets go'. In a perfect world the wide availability of camcorders should have given young filmmakers the opportunity to flood the market with the sort of sick, demented and creative movies that flourished in cinemas of the Sixties and Seventies. Sadly we don't live in a perfect world and most camcorder epics are happy to recycle the same material- erotic vampire movies, dull slasher and zombie movies all of which have been done a thousand times before and a thousand times better. Zombie 90's lighting, editing, not to mention acting are unbearable and the soundtrack hissy (God knows what bootlegs of this must look like) they've even left in video edits. This in mind its hard to judge any of the movies positive traits and poses the question `Why bother paying money for a film when you could make a better movie yourself possibly with less cash?'. In the cold light of day all Zombie 90 really is, is 70 minutes of bad special effects, with a smug attitude which suggests that anyone whose cinematic tastes range to viewing lots of lovely gratuitous violence is an imbecile with an attention span of two seconds and doesn't really deserve anything more than a puerile plot and childish dubbing. Not true, you can make a gore film and have talent, Frank Henenlotter, Stuart Gordon, Sam Raimi prove that you can make genre movies, which combine black humour, style and irony without the end result seeming like one long tedious gore scene. It seems unlikely that any censor board would pass the film although in its defence most of the gore is slapstick, tongue in cheek and enjoyable- like a Monty Python skit. However Schnaas loves to go over the top with scenes of sexual mutilation (both male and female) which isn't going to endure it to most people. The fact that Schnaas and friends can't be bothered to provide half decent acting, direction or original story (in fact the only surprise is that the hero isn't mistaken for a zombie and shot) casts doubts over their undertakings. Are they really trying to provide an alternative to the banal, tasteful and bloodless stance of most of today's genre movies? Or are they just shysters and junk merchants, trying to palm their useless home movies off on the public, Extreme Pestilence indeed.