The October Zombie-Thon! - Day 24: Die You Zombie Bastards!
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.24.2007
Every bit as fun to watch as it is to say.
DIE YOU ZOMBIE BASTARDS! (2005)
Directed by: Caleb Emerson
Written by: Caleb Emerson & Haig Demarjian
Country: USA
"Die, you zombie bastards."
Man, that is fun to say. Go ahead, try it. Yell it out.
"DIE, YOU ZOMBIE BASTARDS!"
Feels good, doesn't it?
But does the movie offer as much pleasure and contentment as simply saying the title does? Well, that depends. How do you feel about a super-villain who can only reach orgasm through whacking on his cartoonishly large penis with hammers? Or a super-hero who wears a cape sewn out of human skin? Or a Swedish town full of beautiful blond women, terrorized by a strange creature obsessed with poring scalding hot cheese onto the sleeping resident's nipples? All in all, how do you feel about really, really, REALLY stupid humor?
If you're into that kind of stuff (and for the sake of our friendship, I hope you are), then this might just be the movie for you.
Billed as "the world's first ever Serial-Killer Superhero Rock'n'Roll Zombie Road Movie Romance," Die, You Zombie Bastards! definitely lives up to that description. Gleefully moronic, and unabashedly anarchic, it's the kind of movie that just about defies description which of course makes the task of reviewing it quite difficult. How do I even begin to explain how such an intentionally asinine collection of dick jokes could possibly be as much of a blast as this movie is?
The film's hero is Red Toole (Tim Gerstmar), a serial killer with a soft spot for love. How soft? When he is about to murder a young necking couple in the woods, he has to stop when he hears the girl tell the guy she loves him. No worries Red simply goes off and slaughters a nearby group of hippies instead.
Red has a good reason for these feelings he's madly in love with his wife Violet (Pippi Zornoza), and she with him. Together, they're the ultimate cute couple...if your idea of a cute couple consists of two maniacs feasting on a dead body while on a picnic, or making wild love while surrounded by the severed body parts of their victims.
Reading this, you might be wondering if I was off my rocker when I called Red the film's hero. Trust me, that is the case, because it turns out there's an even worse psychopath out there. Namely, Nefarious Baron Nefarious (no relation to Necropolis Awakened's Nefarious Thorne), an evil alien who, from his secret island hideaway, plans to turn the earth's population into mindless undead slaves with his giant Zombatron. And it looks like his plans could work, judging by the three, topless zombie sex slaves he has already created for his pleasure. Even worse (for Red), Nefarious has his sights set on making Violet his wife, so he dispatches some of his zombie minions to kidnap her, leaving behind nothing but some blue smoke.
This turn of events leads Red to give up his serial killing ways (at least temporarily), and instead don a home-made superhero costume, complete with the aforementioned skin cape and a severed penis codpiece. Red then sets off on an epic quest to rescue Violet and defeat Nefarious, along with the help of a mysterious Rastafarian; a buxom, sex-crazed beauty with mutilated nipples; an alien/angel (played by porn legend Jamie Gillis); and gibberish-mouthed rockabilly legend Hasil Adkins, playing himself.
Sold yet? What if I told you the film's finale features an all-out battle royal involving zombies, ninjas, giant mosquitoes, robots, disobedient dog-men, and even Vlad the Impaler? And yes I'm serious.
Obviously, if you're going to enjoy this movie, you're gonna need a high tolerance for extreme stupidity. But if that is the case, then you should have no problem falling under the spell of its bizarre charm. It takes a certain kind of cheesy-movie lover to enjoy characters like Coconut Head Face Man, a Jason-like killer with a, well, coconut head face. Die You Zombie Bastards! was made to cater specifically to those kind of fans, and it really couldn't care less what anyone else thinks of it. That much is obvious in its brave decision to cast such unrepentant murderers as the heroes, or its refusal to worry about little things like logic or sense of restraint.
Do all the jokes work? No, not quite. And, admittedly, the constant sophomoric dick jokes can begin to feel a little tedious by film's end. But there is a lot of humor here that actually succeeds, particularly the truly funny exchanges between various characters. My personal favorite scenes, for instance, were those involving Red's wife and our villain, in which a bemused Violet continually annoys a flustered Nefarious, who just can't believe she doesn't find him scarier than she does (in fact, she just finds his whole evil plot to be kinda lame).
It goes without saying that a movie trying to go this far over the top just wouldn't work without the right actors, and this is another area where Die gets lucky. These folks know exactly what kind of movie they're in, and are obviously very proud of it. Therefore, they have no problem going as far over-the-top as the movie calls for. Hell, they usually go above and beyond that. Zornoza and Geoff Mosher are both a joy to watch as Violet and Nefarious, but the undisputed star of the show is Gerstmar, who dives into the role of Red with such gusto, you'd think he actually was a serial killing superhero. Yes, his overly-theatric delivery during the films early scenes, while funny, can be a little grating (he essentially seems to be channeling Jon Lovitz's "master thespian" character). But once Violet is snatched and he becomes a caped crime-fighter, he amps up the clueless nobility of Red's character, and ends up delivering one of the funnier lead performances I've ever seen in such a dumb movie.
With its outrageous attitude, juvenile humor, gratuitous nudity, and ample (but goofy) gore, Die You Zombie Bastards! could certainly be considered a non-Troma Troma movie. That's usually a scary proposition plenty of movies have tried to match Troma's style and failed miserably. But Die succeeds where all those others have failed, thanks to devoted actors and a delightfully twisted sense of humor that's actually funny (usually the biggest problem with the majority of the Troma wannabes). If director Caleb Emerson (who also appears as police Officer Peanutch, my favorite supporting character) keeps up this crazy, "anything goes" mentality with whatever his next project may be, he could just be the heir-apparent to Lloyd Kaufman. And, yes, coming from me, that's a hell of a compliment.
