Revolt Of The Zombies

JANUARY 4, 2008

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

I can remember the running time of every Halloween sequel, the number of kills in each Friday the 13th movie, and the phone number of my friend from grade school who I haven’t called since, well, grade school. And yet for the life of me, I can never remember that any “zombie” movie made prior to Night of the Living Dead will have absolutely nothing to do with flesh eaters. This is why I get so easily bored with a film like Revolt Of The Zombies, though by any account (that I have found on the IMDb anyway) this one’s a dud with or without expectations of cannibalism.

In 61 minutes, I was only occasionally amused, usually by odd lines delivered by bad actors, such as “Gentlemen, the Priest was murdered. Murdered by someone who did not want the Allies to benefit by his power to create robot soldiers.” There’s also a hilarious scene where someone checks an injured person’s pulse. This is standard movie behavior; checking the pulse to see if the guy is unconscious or dead. All well and good, except the injured party is TALKING throughout the scene, rendering the pulse checking a bit pointless. Besides that, the only highlight is Bela Lugosi, or at least his eyes, which are super-imposed over about 40% of the film (it’s an image taken from the superior White Zombie, which this film is a sort-of sequel to, but has no actual connection except for the damn eyes):

In fact, the “Revolt” doesn’t even occur until the film’s final two minutes, and making matters stupider, they aren’t even in their zombie state at the time! Talk about a misleading title.

No, seriously, go talk about misleading titles. Beats watching this movie.

So what DOES happen in the film? Well, most of it is comprised of boring, talky scenes where the characters constantly “mock” one another. I use mock in quotes because their jokes seem quite funny to the other characters, but don’t seem particularly funny to me, the viewer, who doesn’t know and thus far doesn’t care about any of these assholes. They all sound like the jokes your girlfriend’s lame but well-meaning uncle might make at dinner the first time you meet him, and you’re just sort of “what the FUCK does that mean?” while smiling politely and eating your stuffing.

Oh well, it’s good to know that even in the golden age of horror cinema, there was still a few turkeys to balance things out and forever ensure that the horror genre would be more miss than hit. Thanks, guys.

What say you?