The October Zombie-Thon 2009 - Day 9: Zombie Brigade
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.09.2009
If they're actually organizing into brigades now, we might be in trouble.
ZOMBIE BRIGADE (1986)
Written & Directed by: Carmelo Musca & Barrie Pattison
Country: Australia
A small town under siege from a deadly squad of vampire soldiers has no choice but to resurrect their own band of deceased soldiers for protection, thus pitting the good zombies against the evil blood-suckers.
What a great f'n concept. I'm serious. It might not be "high-brow," but c'mon, it's a pretty awesome idea. In fact, I would normally even go so far as to suggest it might be a "cant-miss" idea.
Except that I just watched the 1988 Australian film Zombie Brigade, and it missed. Oh, how it missed.
Now, it sure didn't help matters any that the DVD I watched was a particularly bad transfer. You know how sometimes a once forgotten horror gem from the ‘80s will be resurrected on DVD with a new and improved digitally-remastered transfer? Well, the folks behind the Zombie Brigade sure didn't bother with that. Perhaps they felt the movie didn't deserve that kind of loving attention, and they're absolutely right. But it's still frustrating whenever you watch a DVD that looks and sounds more like a fourth-generation VHS dub. And the poor audio is especially aggravating here – I probably would have had a tough enough time with the ultra-thick Australian accents, but it definitely doesn't help matters any when all the film's dialogue sounds like it was recorded with the actors down a well and pillow wrapped over the microphone.
Having said that, though, let me clarify – no amount of digital trickery would have saved this thing, unless they just went ahead and digitally inserted in another movie instead. Because the main problem with the Zombie Brigade DVD isn't the poor picture and sound quality, it's the fact that it has Zombie Brigade on it.
The movie concerns an evil and greedy mayor (how unusual for a horror movie!) who has no problem selling out his town's historical legacy for a quick buck. He strikes a deal with a Japanese company to build a theme-park devoted to the cartoon character Robot-Man on the outskirts of the town. There's only one slight hitch – the area is also home to the town's Vietnam War memorial, which rests atop the graves of the local soldiers who died in that war. Well, no problem – the mayor simply has his flunkies blow the memorial up. I see no potential flaws with that plan.
Oh, except, of course, for the fact that the soldiers buried underneath weren't exactly dead, but were instead purposely trapped underneath the memorial. It seems the men were all turned into vampires during their time in Vietnam, and clunking a big stone statue on top of their resting place seemed to be the best way to keep them out of everyone's hair. Thanks to the mayor, though, the blood-suckers are now loose, and none-too-pleased about the destruction of their memorial (given that they're evil vampires, I'm pretty sure they would have been pissed anyway - but that memorial thing is just the icing on the cake). Now the town has to deal with attacks from these undead fang-heads every night.
Now let me pause here so that you can ask the obvious question – "Trevor, if the vampires only attack at night, why don't all the residents just hightail it out of town during the day and not come back?" Good question, but the movie does actually address this. The Australian government, aware of the problem, has quarantined the town, putting fields of landmines around the area to prevent anyone from leaving. "But, wait a second, Trevor, that raises an even more obvious question. That being – why on earth would the government do that? If the only people who would be trying to leave during the day are those who have clearly not been bit and turned into vampires yet, then what does the government possibly gain by sealing them in the town and leaving them to die?"
Uhhhh, well, you see…anyway, moving on.
So, with the government having wisely (*ahem*) quarantined them in, the townsfolk have no choice but to go along with the plan of a local Aborigine, who convinces them he can resurrect the deceased WWII soldiers in the local cemetery to fight the vampires on their behalf. And thus begins the mother of all dead-on-dead smackdowns, right?
Yeah, about that…here's the big problem with Zombie Brigade. It's a movie about zombie soldiers fighting vampire soldiers, but for some reason it seems to think its audience wants to see as little of that confrontation as possible. In fact, even before the zombies show up, we're not given very much vampire mayhem, either. Instead, the movie consists mostly of long drawn-out conversations between the human characters in which they try to figure out what is going on and then come up with plans to stop it. Is that what you want from a movie like Zombie Brigade – lots of talking? Maybe if it's written by Quentin Tarantino, I suppose, but otherwise you're really asking a lot of your audiences patience to expect them to sit through extended dialogue sequences when they know they could be watching zombies fighting vampires. Hell, the movie begins with a 5-minute City Council meeting discussing the theme park deal. What an exciting way to start a monster movie!
What's even worse is that when the big battle finally does happen, it's woefully short. It's the moment the movie has been building up to, and it consists of about a minute of lame fist-fighting between the two opposing undead gangs. That's right…about a minute. We get a few fun shots of the two sides tossing each other around, before suddenly we jump-cut to hours later, and an on-screen graphic tells us the zombies eventually won. WHAT? Are you kidding me?? I waited almost 90 minutes for that? Have these people ever heard of "show, don't tell?" On the plus side, the movie then goes on to culminate in one of the most amusingly abrupt endings I have ever seen, but by that point my goodwill was so sapped I couldn't adequately appreciate it.
Proof positive that not all forgotten ‘80s horror films are hidden-gems waiting to be rediscovered, Zombie Brigade is unbelievably maddening in its stubborn refusal to deliver its own goods. Perhaps the problem was the filmmakers couldn't quite figure out what kind of movie they wanted to make. At times it feels like a comedy, other times a straight horror. There are even moments where it seems like it's trying to be a serious commentary on the racism towards Aborigines in Australia. It's like three different movies wrapped in one, all of which have only one thing in common – they all suck.
FINAL SCORE: 1 out of 4 Bubs (Skip It)
For more living dead goodies, check out my countdown of the 10 Hottest Zombie Babes at Night of the Living Trev.
