The October Zombie-Thon 2009 - Day 10: Dead Country

Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.10.2009

Boob Country would have been just as fitting a title. Probably better, actually.

DEAD COUNTRY (2008)




Directed by: Andrew Merkelbach
Written by: Anthony Davis, Clifford Hoeft, & Kaye Redhead
Country: Australia

I gotta be honest – at this point in the Zombie-Thon, I was kinda hoping a movie like Dead Country would come along. Not only did I need a movie to restore my faith in the Australian zombie genre following Zombie Brigade, but after movies like Zombie Cop, Pot Zombies and Wiseguys vs. Zombies, I also needed reminding of the value shoestring-budget flicks like these can have.

That's not to say Dead Country is a good movie, mind you. Far from it. Dead Country is not just bad – it's spectacularly awful. But whereas the aforementioned low-budget films were just boring, Dead Country serves up that special kind of glorious inanity that crosses over into true entertainment. You keep watching, thinking there's now way it's going to get even stupider, but sure enough it suddenly kicks it up another notch. "Pure" cinema fans will find nothing to love here, but trash-cinema lovers should have a field day.

The film opens with a "thrilling" (insert heavy sarcasm) chase/battle between two alien spaceships – and ILM-level CGI this is not. An extraterrestrial smuggler named Orion (director Andrew Merkelbach) has been betrayed by his partner, and when his ship takes a critical hit, he has no choice but to beam down to earth – more specifically, to the small rural town of Romero (of course) in Australia. That Orion already speaks with an Australian accent will just have to be chalked up as one of those weird cosmic coincidences.

Unfortunately, the explosion of Orion's ship in our atmosphere also sends his cargo – an alien virus – raining down onto the area, resurrecting the dead as ravenous zombies. Well, I guess it's a good thing Orion is here to sort it all out and protect us, right? Yeah, about that…it seems Orion is just as scared shitless and incompetent as everyone else. Oh well, I guess that's all you can expect from a pudgy alien wearing a black trench-coat and white camouflage pants.

The rest of the movie consists of nothing more than scene after scene of Orion and other town residents encountering (and usually being slaughtered) by the zombies. Characters just kind of come and go with no rhyme or reason. In fact, at least one character – a horny housewife – is introduced, given a couple scenes, and then completely forgotten about. She never encounters our main characters, and we never find out what the heck happened to her, so what the hell was the point of even featuring her at all? So, no, a coherent plot isn't exactly one of the the movie's strong points.

Neither, for that matter, is technical filmmaking prowess – the whole thing has a haphazard look and feel, with a crappy VHS quality image and some pretty pitiful sound design (what's up the weird overdubbing of Orion's voice when he first arrives on earth?).

The upside, however, is that these segments are consistently hilarious in their ineptitude. It's hard not to be amused by the fact that the same crappy zombie mask in used for several of the undead fiends – there's even one "attack" scene that is clearly nothing more than somebody holding the mask and waving it around in front of the camera. Even better is when the movie tries to get some production value out of what is obviously one of those novelty severed arms you can buy at just about any supermarket come Halloween. Or that it sometimes relies on random onscreen text jokes, like when we see a dog eating a severed hand and a graphic helpfully informs us that this is to teach the lesson of "don't bite the hand that feeds you." Did the writers actually think that was funny? Probably.

I also liked that the movie was set on Christmas day, apparently for no other reason than to have two zombies dressed as Santa Claus – never mind the fact that none of the characters ever mention anything about it being Christmas. Hell, we even see the aforementioned horny housewife talk to her hired gardener in the yard. So either this guy is such a pro that he even works on Christmas, or the filmmakers temporarily forgot when the movie was supposed to be taking place while filming this scene. Given how sloppy the whole thing seems in general, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

And just in case my description only has you halfway sold on this movie's "trash masterpiece" credentials, let me take this time to also inform you of its copious amounts of female flesh. That's right – no matter how terrible they might be, lame-brain films like these regularly have the ability to scam attractive girls into disrobing for the sake of "art" (I guess). This one is no exception, with a number of hotties prancing around in their underwear or usually less. I'm tempted to call it gratuitous, but I don't know. Who am I to say that if I was a hot chick on the run from zombies, I wouldn't stop to take off my shirt and wash my breasts in a birdbath?

Finally, in the hardcore horror fanboy department, there are some impressively obscure cameos worth mentioning. For one thing, Lloyd Kaufman lends his voice to an announcement that plays over the radio. But one of the things I've learned over the years doing the Zombie-Thon is that it's really not that difficult or even unexpected to get Kaufman for your shitty zombie movie. Far more interesting, though, is a voice-cameo from William Butler, one of the stars of Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead. Butler serves as Dead Country's narrator, as himself, and gets in a kinda funny line about having experience with this sort of thing himself.

Even better is an appearance from cult-legend writer/director Ted V. Mikels (perhaps best known for 1968's The Astro-Zombies), who shows up as the Minister of Defense, assuring the military that these are not zombies of the "astro" variety. Not a whole lot of folks are gonna get that one, but it made me giggle.

Dead Country isn't the kind of movie that's going to win any awards for…well…anything. But at least it's the kind of bad movie that you can throw on and enjoyably mock with your buddies, something sorely missing from the rest of the dreary indie movie in this year's Zombie-Thon so far. Grab some beers, turn off the more discerning parts of your brain, and enjoy.

FINAL SCORE: 2.5 out of 4 Bubs (Mildly Recommended)



For more living dead goodies, check out my countdown of the 10 Hottest Zombie Babes at Night of the Living Trev.