Redneck Zombies

Review

All apologies to Todd Sheets, and his ultra-low budget zom-romp Zombie Bloodbath, but my new favorite ultra-low budget zomb-romp is going to have to be this one: Redneck Zombies. I don't think I can review it at length and still make it look like a good movie, without lying, but I can say that it is enjoyable as long as you don't mind copious gore and really silly jokes passed off in a straight face.

The plot is the old zombie standby. A 55-gallon drum full of goo gets waylaid by the US Army. Once it gets converted to moonshine, it spreads its vile taint to the community, wrecking families and destroying lives. Coming into this foul mix of Deliverance and a prohibition-propaganda film are a group of hikers, led by an old buddy who has family in the area. Gore. Guts. Desperation. Panic. Etc. It all ensues.

The events are nothing groundbreaking. Zombies are made. Zombies kill. People are caught off guard. People die.

The gore works out fair. It never quite convinces you that it is anything NOT made of gelatin, but it does look appropriately disgusting here and there. The zombie make-up is fair enough. The weird psychedelic camera tricks in some scenes (to represent the change to zombies in one place, and panic in another) are sort of odd and out of place, but fun, so I'll allow it. The setting makes fair sense. The editing is occassionally near amazing. I'm not kidding. The scene towards the end with the farm house in the distance was a good shot. Really.

The bulk of this movie, though, is the fun factor. The hundreds of jokes major and minor, the goofy but somewhat controlled overacting, the rough puns, and the rougher shout-outs to bad redneck stereotypes. Never does this movie demand you take it serious. It just asks you to sit back, have some beer, and have a good time. If you don't drink, you might want to find some other way to shed a few brain cells. That sense of floating helps to move the movie along.

Just to break down some of the humor, one of the scenes involves an autopsy with a pre-vet major who is past the point of freaking out. He starts hallucinating and picturing the organs, removed from a zombie's victim, as everyday objects inside the the body. He pulls out one, thinks its an aluminum can, and then chastises the recently dead guy for not recycling, while the pre-vet's friends look on in disgust. In several scenes, the older friend keeps telling the other hikers that the spot he wants to camp will involve a "lake to piss in." Then, when they get there, the one hiker, the pre-vet, now that I think about it, spends several minutes of screen time doing just that. "It's deep and cold," he proclaims. It doesn't make much sense, but there you go. Jokes involving breasts, gore, cleanliness, and other random bodily functions also show up. It's a gas.

Perhaps the best joke in the movie, to me, was the shoutout to Texas Chainsaw Massacre's hitch-hiker scene. Perhaps the worst was when an obviously gay soldier, facing down a group of rednecks he doesn't realize are undead, says "Let me handle this, didn't you see Deliverance?" Ah, nothing like a little homophobia mixed into a movie to add that dash of flavor. "What about water SPORTS?" he shouts as the zombies tackle him. It's good for your soul to get reamed out every once in a while, I guess. No pun intended.

Not a good movie, actually a bad one, but very recommended if you like cheese, camp, Troma, zombies, indie horror, or cheap gore. I like most of those things, and had a good time. Will watch again. If, for nothing else, the guy who makes it through a zombie outbreak by staying smashed out of his head with constant bottles of booze inexplicably brought out of nowhere (mixed signals, movie? Some drink and turn to zombies, some drink and stay happy?) and the zombie baby happily slurping down gore towards the end. That had to violate some sort of labor laws. It had to.