Electric Zombies (DVD)
Melissa Bostaph
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Starring Paul Wendell, Jonas Moses, Nicole Ashmore, Jennifer Baggett, Sharon Blane
Directed by John Specht
Released by Terror Vision
Zeus…thirteen seventy-four…one, three, seven, four…Order…Take-out…No MSG’s…No fortune cookie…Jehovah…Tonight…YES Tonight! …(insert address)…End.
Okay…Does that make sense to any of you? Well, neither does the piece of cinematic waste it comes from, but in the call of duty as a DC writer, I forced myself to keep watching. The more I watched, the more I wished for the Grim Reaper himself to enter my living room and end my suffering. To my great woe…he never came! Instead I sat through the most excruciating 90 minutes of my entire life…and I’ve given birth to FIVE children!!!
I took on the task of reviewing this film, and I use that term EXTREMELY loosely, to help out a fellow staffer. He had passed it on to me wondering if he had missed out on something good or dodged a bullet. All I can say to him is… I prayed for that bullet to stray in through my window and into my throbbing temple with every passing moment that Electric Zombies stained my soul!
Now I’m not one to tear apart a movie if it has at least some sort of redeeming quality. I can usually find SOMETHING positive to say about any film I watch, but the fact that I am actually considering taking my poor abused DVD player out in the backyard, shooting it with a high caliber weapon, lighting it on fire, and burying its remains at least ten feet under, just to prevent any of my beloved DVD collection from becoming tainted with the filthy residue of pure undeniable shit that is now festering within it, should give you some indication of how bad Electric Zombies is. There is NOTHING! Not one good thing that I can say about this film!
I have so many problems with this movie that I don’t even know where to begin. I understand that a lot of people probably put a great deal of work into what turned out to be a bunch of wasted time, energy, and film, and I feel sorry for them, but if I had anything to do with Electric Zombies, I would have changed my name and moved out of the country or killed myself by now.
Yeah, it’s that bad.
From the back of the DVD case, I figured out that a secret government plot is under way to use America’s cell phones against their owners using mind control. The plan is to essentially turn people into mindless “zombies” using hidden signals on their cells. Now that’s a stretch…people being controlled by their cell phones. *insert sarcasm* According to the synopsis on the back cover, I was going to witness people being brainwashed into rioting, murder, and even self-mutilation. Sounds like a good time to me! So I sat back and prepared myself for a typical fan-made “kitchen cupboard” zombie flick with lots of over-the-top gore using badly colored corn syrup blood and scraps from the local butcher shop. Even the worst do-it-yourself zombie movies can be fun to watch for these idiotic effects alone. Unfortunately…I didn’t even get that!
What I did get was the sorriest attempt at movie making I have ever had to endure. I don’t even think I should be reviewing Electric Zombies for Dread Central. We cover HORROR! We don’t cover lame ass wanna-be crime drama tripe that tries to sell more copies by disguising itself as a horror film by using the word “Z-O-M-B-I-E” in the title and putting a skull on the front cover! Horror fans are too smart for that, and we take care of our own. I am personally warning all of my fellow horror hounds to avoid this movie at all costs. The only element of horror this film invokes is the slaughter of IQ points and the violent end that must become of any and all DVD players that it comes in contact with. You can stick plastic vampire teeth on a dog turd, but you won’t get Dracula; you’ll just have a dog turd…and one wasted set of fangs!
Nothing in Electric Zombies works. The story tries to be complex but just ends up being muddled and sloppy. The scenes don’t flow properly or even fit together in any distinguishable fashion. The dirty cop, drug dealing, and ghetto rap make the film play more like a bad episode of COPS raped by the Notorious B.I.G that has been thrown into a shredder and pieced back together by Ray Charles.
I am still wracking my brain to find any redeeming thing to say about Electric Zombies, and I’m not able to do so. From the direction to the acting, editing, and sound work… I still can’t come up with one damn decent thing to say about it. My fourteen-year-old daughter is a budding filmmaker, and she gets better results with her broken-ass Magnavox VHS camcorder with the busted microphone and a cast of siblings ranging in age from 13 to 3! She could give the director of Electric Zombies a few lessons on how to properly frame a shot so that it actually works for a scene, and even she can keep the three-year-old from staring into the camera while delivering her lines! The editing is atrocious and the sound work terrible. Between the mumbling actors and the damned airplanes flying by, I was in agony! The film as a whole made me want to pull my own entrails out and writhe around on the floor in them!
My first clue should have been seeing the name Ron Bonk appear in the opening credits as executive producer. I have heard of Mr. Bonk’s work and been thoroughly warned of its crapitude, and I have also been severely scolded for showing any interest in certain titles attached to the Bonk name. Well, I can safely say that I have been “BONKED,” and it is a sad and painful lesson to have learned! I feel like the inquisitive toddler who just discovered why Mommy won’t let him touch the hot pans on the stove.
Oh! Wait! I just thought of one nice thing to say! In the aftermath of one of the most ridiculously shot gunfire scenes I have ever seen, I did notice that some of the make-up effects were relatively well done. One particular gunshot wound to the forehead was very nicely done in fact. Too bad there weren’t any zombies in Electric Zombies because they may have in fact looked okay. Of course you’re never really shown the violence in real time, you only get to see glimpses of the aftermath, so maybe it wouldn’t have been all that great to have zombies after all. All in all, I’d have to say that the most entertaining part of Electric Zombies was when I heard my cat fall into the toilet while I was watching the film.
Quite frankly, Electric Zombies doesn’t deserve the effort it took to sit through the movie, the time it’s taking to write this review, the bandwidth it is using up to post it, or the time it has taken for this page to load and for you to read this. The time would have been better spent picking the lint from between our toes or ass cracks, but in an effort to defend horror’s good name and protect my fellow horror-loving family members from the atrocity that is Electric Zombies, I have sacrificed my own time, energy, brain cells, a little bit of my dignity, and one innocent DVD player. RIP, my old friend…RIP!
Special Features
There is absolutely nothing special about this DVD
0 out of 5
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