Zombie Wars Call to Arms
Johnny Butane
|
I almost passed up a news item on Twitch Films about yet another low budget zombie flick on the horizon, but then I saw the name David A. Prior listed as the filmmaker and immediately knew this was a zombie flick worth looking into…
David A. Prior’s name may not be well known to most, but his presence was definitely felt throughout the late 80s and 90s as the writer/producer/director of a plethora of low rent, often schlocky, in a few unfortunate cases – downright awful, B-grade flicks, usually of the action variety, often war movies. He does have a few genre flicks to his credit. Anyone else besides me ever seen the Predator knock-off Mutant Species, the Michael Ironside horror flick Mardi Gras for the Devil, or the vampiric war flick The Lost Platoon?
I was under the impression that the Priors (a good number of his films starred his actor brother Ted Prior) had dropped out of the movie biz about 1998; at least that’s the last year anything is credited to David Prior on IMDB. It seems he’s back and this time he’s melding the zombie genre with the war movie in the form of Zombie Wars. Here’s the plot synopsis from the American World Pictures website:
“Nobody knows exactly how it happened. Some think it was the tail of a comet that passed too close to the earth, while others believed that it was simply time for man to atone for thousands of years of sinning. Whatever the reason, the dead had risen from the ground, and they were hungry! After years of war, only small rebel bands of humans remain in the war against the undead. When Brian, the leader of a military group, is captured by the enemy, he is taken to a nearby farm where he learns of a horrific secret – the zombies are farming groups of humans, and harvesting them as food. Now it is up to Brian to organize an uprising, and reclaim the freedom of his fellow humans. However, once the battle is over an even more insidious secret waits in the nearby town … With non-stop action, hordes of zombies, and some of the most realistic makeup FX seen in years, Zombie Wars has earned its place in the annals of horror.”
Well, I don’t know about that last sentence there. I can appreciate some good hyperbole, but that’s pushing it just a bit, especially after viewing the Zombie Wars trailer. The movie looks like vintage Prior: cheap and cheesy, but with a certain element of charm to it that gives you hope that it might actually be fun to watch. There’s a downloadable trailer currently available from AWP’s website and you really should give it a look, assuming you, like me, have an affinity for films like this. It still looks infinitely better than most of the backyard zombie/slasher productions that keep taking up space on DVD racks. I look forward to seeing this one appear on those racks, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Who would win in a zombie war? Discuss in our forums!
Categorized:News
