Making a feature film is a tough job, and anyone involved in a film production has quite a difficult profession. Can we all agree on that? It's easy for reviewers - like myself - to claim that a film is bad, while dedication and hard work went into it. Many directors and their crews work with the best intensions to ultimately deliver a bad film. It's difficult to make a good movie. What is even more difficult, though, is to deliberately make a bad film! Can everyone still follow? It might be easier to give an example...
In the fifties of the previous century, a dedicated director named Edward D. Wood really did everything he could to make good and genuinely suspenseful films. He never succeeded, though, because he did not have the financial means and especially not the talent. His films, such as "Bride of the Monster" and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" are notoriously bad. More than 70 years later, the clearly talented Michael Stasko is doing his best to make a film that deliberately looks as bad as the work of Ed Wood.
And Stasko pulls it off, too! "Vampire Zombies... From Space" is very good at being bad! Stasko and his crew, unlike Mr. Wood, know darn well what they're doing, and their tongue-in-cheek parody/homage to zero-budgeted 1950s Sci-Fi horror is simply wonderful to watch. It's all there: measly black-and-white photography, bats on visible strings, buzzing flying saucers, a Bela Lugosi lookalike Dracula, tough rock 'n roll youngsters in convertibles and greasy hair, hopelessly incompetent Sheriffs and deputies, beautiful girls in distress, pubs full of impenetrable cigarette smoke, and - of course - the total annihiliation of the human race. And, just because it was possible, a cameo appearance of Lloyd Kaufman as the village perv who runs around town masturbating in public. Admittedly, not all characters and plot elements are equally funny and successful, but you happily accept the less good moments and the slightly overlong playing time. Hopefully, this will become a cult favorite!
