| Cover Art |
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| Credits |
Director: Andreas
Schnaas
Starring: Mattias Kerl,
Ralf Hess, Mathias Abbes, Mark Trinkhaus, Christian
Biallis, Wolfgang Hinz
Tagline: The ultimate
gore film!
Country: Germany |
Warning: The motion picture
you are about to see contains scenes of extreme
graphic violence and gore.
Watchat your own risk...
That is the warning which precedes the presentation
of Zombie 90: Extreme Pestilence, the outrageous
low budget "home movie" style effort by
German director Andreas Schnaas. This is a
very responsible move on behalf of the makers of
this film, and in these sensitive times where on
screen violence can be seen as having a detrimental
effect on some viewers, they should be commended
for giving an early indication of what the audience
is in for. However, after sitting through
the feature presentation one gets the feeling that
several important issues were not addressed in this
very brief forewarning. While the violence
in the film was indeed very graphic and the gore
level was extremely high, many will find themselves
suffering permanent mental scarring as a result
of the dire acting, shoddy camera work, ridiculous
dialogue, poor production values and the general
stench of amateurism that is on display all throughout
this film. I can't help but think that if those
involved were truly concerned about the welfare
of the viewer, then these facts would have also
been presentedprior to the opening of the
movie.
Ok, that is probably not the best way to open
a review that is actually intended to be positive,
but I didn't want the reader to be under any illusions.
This is a bad movie, and you could make something
that looks fairly similar to this yourself with
about four hours of your time, a group of friends,
a cheap home video camera and several tons of
meat and tomato sauce. So why did I find
this film so enjoyable? Who knows...
A military cargo plane carrying a top secret
chemical crashes while on a secret mission.
The government assures the population that everything
is under control and that there is no cause for
alarm, but that is clearly not the case as the
town closest to the crash site is quickly overrun
by an army of rabid, flesh eating zombies who
set about devouring the population in a most brutal
and graphic manner. The only two people
who actually seem to know that something unusual
is going on are two doctors who initially set
out to investigate the cause of the zombie phenomena,
but end up becoming nothing more than a zombie
extermination squad, using their detailed knowledge
of the human anatomical structure to put the zombies
out of their misery once and for all.
In Zombie 90: Extreme Pestilence the
plot is almost non-existent and takes a back seat
to the films' constant gore effects. Interestingly,
there is no screenwriting credit given here, which
suggests that either the person who wrote the
script didn't want to be credited with it, or
that there simply was no script to begin with
(my money is on the latter of the two).
The lack of a decent script simply means there
are more excuses for gory mayhem, and splatter
fans will be delighted with the on screen carnage
that director Schnaas serves up. The movie
is a virtual wall-to-wall gore-fest, with barely
2 minutes passing by without more blood and guts
being tossed around. We are treated to constant
scenes of intestinal spillage, spurting fountains
of arterial blood, chainsaw dismemberments, exploding
heads, disembowellings, stabbings, flesh and internal
organ consumption, beheadings, and much, much
more. While some of the gore effects
look fairly cheesy, they are piled on so heavily
that even the most hardened of gore hounds will
at some stage find themselves feeling a little
ill.
Apart from the gore, there is little else to
recommend, with dreadful acting and poor production
values that make this movie look like something
that has been submitted to the "Funniest
Home Videos" show. The dubbed English
language track is so terrible that it inadvertently
adds to the films entertainment value. Some
of the lines of dialogue used here are priceless,
and you may find yourself laughing hysterically
on more than one occasion at lines like "I
love the smell of zombies in the morning",
"I wonder if she farted and didn't tell me"
and the classic "Now I'm gonna run this mo'
fuckers dick over!". There is even
a female character whose voiceover is quite obviously
being performed by a man. Classic stuff!
Even with its numerous faults and poor production
values, this film is a thoroughly enjoyable splatter
romp. If you are a fan of low budget gore
movies and can tolerate the cheesiness then you
can't go wrong with Zombie 90: Extreme Pestilence. |
