When we reviewed “Zombie Cheerleading Camp” for Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2014 we… were not kind. It sucked. Sorry. However I’ve recently learned that the theme song for the movie, “We’re Out for Blood“, was commissioned from one of my very favorite people, Marian Call!

I wondered how I missed this as we watched the movie, but my family reminded me that I spent the first few minutes of the actual movie ranting about the terrible PowerPoint comic-book thing that preceded the actual movie. Admittedly, my loss, but I still blame the movie.

You can, and should, buy the song – and all her others, which sound nothing like this one, but are all amazing and worth twice the pennies at any price – at her Bandcamp page!

“Detention of the Dead” on IMDB

Comedy/Horror – 2012 – 90 Minutes

This was our fourth selection for Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2014. Literally 95% of the mentions made of this movie compare it to “The Breakfast Club“. Maybe more. It doesn’t really deserve the comparison. Oh, it’s like exactly like it, it just doesn’t really deserve to be compared to it.

There’s some “kids” (I say “kids” because the average age of the actors has got to be in the mid-thirties) who are stuck in detention. There are six of them cut directly from the cheapest, simplest cardboard that could be found. There’s a goth, a nerd, a stoner, a cheerleader, a jock and… another jock. Not really clear on the thinking there.

Anyway they’re all fine, but the rest of the school has caught, as my grandmother might say, “the zombie”. There’s really no explanation. They run around trying  not to be eaten while half-assedly exploring their differences in some of the most clichéd ways possible. Hey, there’s even a love triangle! A really, terribly depressing love triangle.

On the plus side, the effects were actually pretty good. Well, except for that one horrifyingly bad muppet-zombie-rat-thing. That wasn’t good. The acting isn’t half-bad; most of the problems there come from the casting.  The jokes are easy, at least, if not particularly funny. You like fart jokes? This has got them! Personally, I’m not a huge fan.

It wasn’t that great, but hell: it wasn’t that bad either. It was also, oddly, the third movie of BEBE 2014 that featured a stoner getting a zombie high. Does that say more than it should about the kind of people making zombie movies these days?

“Rise of the Zombies” on IMDB

Horror – 2012 – 89 Minutes

This was our third selection for Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2014. It wasn’t good. It was, in fact, so not good that I needed to watch it again. I literally could not remember enough about it to start this review.

The only thing they did right was plastering Danny Trejo [IMDB] on the box. That’s honestly the only reason we, and I assume others, watched the movie. Seeing Levar Burton’s [IMDB] name was just icing on the cake. Of course neither one of them really stars (although Burton’s comes much closer than Trejo) and most of the time is spent in other locations with other people.

That’s one of the biggest problems with the movie: it sets up the trite, but still potentially interesting, idea of people riding out the zombie apocalypse on Alcatraz island. It’s a perfect place, really, if you could stock it. An empty super-max prison on an island; what’s not to like?  Apparently, something, because we spend almost no time there. Instead the story splits into several confusing threads and ping-pongs between them in a frantic attempt to keep it all straight.

There are a few moments where interesting things actually happen, but they’re scattered and completely overwhelmed by the schlock. Burton’s thread revolves around the science of zombies and is probably the most successful overall, but is hamstrung by the terrible script. It forces him to do ridiculously silly things that completely undermine everything else. A few other moments come close to working only to fall apart.

I won’t begrudge anybody an easy paycheck, but the cast deserves better. It’s as formulaic as they come and poorly executed to boot. Watch something good again before you waste your time on this.

“Zombie Cheerleading Camp” on IMDB

Comedy/Horror – 2007 – 85 Minutes

This was our second selection for Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2014. It was a tough one.

The movie starts with a horrible little comic-strip, slide-show thing. Set to cliched public-domain “monster music” it wordlessly gives the audience the hackneyed back-story.  Nazi’s made zombies, U.S. soldiers took the formula home and buried it and, finally, a curious squirrel dove into it. It was coarse, ugly, poorly-done and, as bad as it was, so very much more interesting than the actual movie. Imagine, to illustrate, if the entire story of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was condensed into a terrible five-minute PowerPoint presentation and the actual movie was all about janitors in in the warehouse where they stored the Ark.

The idea, of course, was to do an 80’s-style teenage romp. The ingredients are pretty simple: a bunch of hot teens, a despicable authority figure with a comically inept toadie and a place. The absolute worst version of all of these are collected and then zombies, which have become a kind of universal condiment for bad movies, are tossed in. The villainous authority figure, the camp’s trainer, is totally forgettable. Her toadie/son is the most insulting and humorless version of the traditional gay stereotype. The camp is… a camp. I guess some things you really can’t screw up.

The 20- and 30-something “hot teens” are each assigned a single personality trait; each more annoying than the last. The movie really wants to be a low-budget teenage romp but it doesn’t have the budget for it. Instead it seems to have blackmailed one poor actress, out of eight or nine, to carry all of the nudity in the film. While she’s admittedly hot enough, her scenes feel forced, out-of-place and terribly, terribly sad.

When the highlight of your movie is a ridiculous two-minute fist-fight between a man and a non-animated, stuffed squirrel you may want to rethink your plans. Completionist genre fans with absolutely no other choices  might want to give this a try. Everybody else should steer clear.

“Deadheads” on IMDB

Comedy/Horror – 2011 – 96 Minutes

This was our first selection for Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2014 and, it turns out, our pick of the day. When I was a teenager seeing “The Return of the Living Dead” for the first time it would have never occurred to me that at some point there would be too many zombie movies, much less zombie comedies, to keep up with. Zombies were niche, at best, and would be forever also-ran to slashers and vampires. Now, nearly 30 years later, zombies are king and everybody that can scrape together enough cash, gumption or weed (or any combination of the three) thinks that they can produce the next great zom-com.

Most of them suck. This one doesn’t; at least not much.

The gimmick here is that some zombies, just a tiny few, don’t actually lose their minds during the reanimation. We follow Mike, a regular Joe who finds himself dead-but-moving and decides to track down his fiancé. He meets Brent, a stoner free-spirit who is altogether more comfortable in his zombie-hood. They’re being hunted down by a nefarious company that wants to take them apart and see what makes them still tick.

Most of the humor revolves around our slackers failing up as Mike and Brent shamble their way across the country, constantly on the verge of disaster. Mike’s uptight and Brent’s an ass. They’re losers, but they’re likable losers. There’s plenty of harmless (and some armless) slapstick and a horde of fun genre references. Some hits and some misses, but there are multiple laugh-out-loud moments.

There are problems, but nothing you wouldn’t  expect at this budget level. Many of the characters push past cliché into caricature territory and there are definite teeth-marks on the scenery, but there’s a “when in Rome” kind of vibe that lessens the impact. The effects suffers for the budget, but are kept simple and effective to compensate. The script tries to work just a few too many angles and ends up bogged down in places.

As these things go this is one of the better family zombie flicks. There’s some gore, blood, sexual references and pot-use, but nothing too serious for your average tween. It’s a fun movie that was clearly spawned from a love of the genre. It’s the kind of movie that you like because it’s the kind of movie that you’d make if you didn’t spend all your time with your fat ass planted on the couch watching movies. Or maybe that’s just me.