Corpses (2004)

JUNE 14, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

A few Horror Movie A Day reviews have been for unreleased films. In a couple cases, the film’s own director gave me a DVD he burned himself. In these cases, I don’t care about the lack of professionalism on the DVD itself. Having taken a course and played around with DVD authoring software, I know it’s pretty goddamn easy to put in chapters, a title menu, and other basic stuff like that, but if its skipped on these “homemade” discs, it’s not a concern. But when a movie like Corpses is actually available for retail (i.e. people are PAYING for it) and the menu is just 4 boxes, one of which reads Title 1 (the other 3 are blank), the chapter stops are just placed every 10 minutes regardless of where they fall in a particular scene, and the film’s only “bonus material” is a collection of muted video clips meant to be used for the effects team later on, I am a bit insulted as a consumer.

The movie itself is reasonably OK. Like Nightmare Man (also directed by Rolfe Kanefsky), I don’t particularly find many of the jokes funny, but there is a continual sense of amusement to the proceedings that the other film didn’t have (since it went off on a rape tangent at the end). And I can see that Kanefsky and his crew are genuinely interested in making a fun movie, not a quick buck. I just wish that he could learn to rely less on trying to be funny and focus on simply making the movie fun. I don’t need a joke to enjoy myself – for example, Dawn of the Dead (the remake) doesn’t have wall to wall jokes, but it’s a blast all the way through. Character and action alone are enough – having them make inane puns and such every other time they speak is just too much.

The movie also contains the most obvious standin since Lugosi’s in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Jeff Fahey (who is fucking great in it otherwise, playing the straight man turned Ash-esque asskicker) is in a scene with a blond zombie, and halfway through he abruptly disappears. For the rest of the scene we only hear him via recycled dialogue, and see a hand meant to be his. It’s not a very successful ruse, and since the scene is hardly one of the film’s highlights, one must wonder why they didn’t just cut it entirely (or edit it down in a way that it could be ended as soon as Fahey took off) rather than draw attention to the cheapness of it all. Maybe it’s another joke I don’t get, I dunno.

But hey, everyone’s having a good time, and there’s a refreshing lack of cynicism or pandering in the movie, so I won’t be too hard on it. It’s not that great, but it’s harmless. I’ll take 10 of these over a single Doomed.

You might wonder why I’m not taking the standard route of bitching about every minor problem in the film, but I’m in too good/nervous of a mood. Tonight is my Q&A with John Carpenter (!!!!) and thus I have an equal feeling of “Everyone and everything is great!” and “I better not do anything to earn bad karma.” You know, like point out that one of the zombies in this movie had all of these bloody holes on his shirt, but no actual wounds on the skin beneath.

Dammit!

What say you?