The October Zombie-Thon! - Day 31: Shadow:Dead Riot
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.31.2007
The month ends the way it should...with boobs, blood, and kung-fu.
In last year's Zombie-Thon, the coveted Halloween spot went to Hard Rock Zombies, a movie so enjoyably awful it approached Plan 9 from Outer Space proportions. The pressure was on to find a film that could live up to that high standard again this year. However, after I had watched the following film – originally intended to run much earlier in the month – I knew I had found the one. Just like Hard Rock Zombies, this too is a film sorely lacking the cult following I think it deserves. Unlike last year's finale, however, this is no hilarious crap-fest, but rather a true unheralded gem of the recent direct-to-video zombie wave. Ladies and gents, I give you:
SHADOW: DEAD RIOT (2006)
Directed by: Derek Wan
Screenplay by: Michael Gingold
Story by: Richard Siegel
Country: USA
"Zombie Death House…is a rip-roaring blast of trashy fun. The only way it could possibly be any more entertaining is it if were a "women-in-prison" zombie-exploitation film. Hmmmm. Somebody get John Saxon on the phone, I think I have his next directorial effort figured out."
That's how I concluded my review of the Saxon-directed Zombie Death House in last year's Zombie-Thon. Well, sorry John, but we might have to cancel that idea – for I have now seen Shadow: Dead Riot. And no offense to Mr. Saxon, but having seen his directing "skills," I'm confident there's no way he could ever hope to create a film as awesome as Shadow.
Tony Todd stars as Shadow, a Satan-worshipping murderer on death row. We know the guy is bad news – not just because he's on death row, and played by Tony Todd (although those are both pretty good hints), but also because we see him performing some kind of strange blood ritual in his cell before his scheduled lethal injection. Maybe he's calling on the dark lords to bring him a better dreadlock wig, because, quite frankly, the one he's rocking at the moment is pretty bad.
Anyway, Shadow explodes during his execution. Yeah, that's right. I'm no expert on the finer intricacies of lethal injection, but I'm fairly confident that prisoners are not supposed to explode during the process. So it goes without saying that something went terribly wrong. Gasp! Do you think it had anything to do with that blood ritual Shadow was performing?
In the resultant chaos, a massive prison riot breaks out, and the staff is forced to react in the only possible way – killing every single prisoner and secretly burying them out in the prison yard. And yes, I said "secretly." You'd think the authorities would notice a little thing like all the inmates at the local prison suddenly going missing, but I guess that kind of thing just isn't that high of a priority around these parts.
20 years later, the former prison is re-opened, now as an experimental women's rehabilitation center. What's so experimental about it? Easy; the inmates' uniforms are all pastel oranges, pinks, and purples. It's madness! Oh, wait, there's also some hoo-ha about "spiritual rehabilitation through physical rehabilitation," but I'm still pretty sure the bright outfits are the kicker.
As pleasant as this whole "spiritual rehabilitation" thing might sound to you or me, it doesn't seem to comfort the mysterious new inmate, Solitaire (Carla Greene), who comes in with a chip on her shoulder and soon makes enemies of both the head guard and the muscle-bound Mondo – who fancies herself the current queen of the prison. Things don't get any better for Solitaire, either, once she starts having strange visions involving Shadow and her mother (don't ask – I just watched the thing and I'm still not totally clear on the backstory here). Phew, thankfully, they're just visions, right? And there's no way anything could happen that might awaken Shadow and his fellow dead inmates, trapping the women inside the prison with a horde of ravenous zombies?
Oops. Turns out the prison doctor, who worked at the prison back in its hey-day, kept samples of Shadow's blood and has been experimenting with them ever since. What exactly he was trying to accomplish, I'm not 100% sure. But I know what he does end up accomplishing…and I bet so do you!
Now, I don't know about you, but I love me some women-in-prison exploitation movies. And, judging by what we have here, so do the makers of Shadow: Dead Riot. All the usual WIP elements are present. The mandatory shower scenes? Check. The pervy male prison-doctor? Check. The lesbian head guard who forces the inmates to perform special "favors?" Check. The zombified, flesh-eating mutant baby?
Well, OK, that last one is a new addition to the scene – but that's exactly what makes Shadow: Dead Riot so much fun. The insanely over-the-top combination of the most outrageous elements from both the WIP and zombie genres turns out to be one of those perfect pairings that works so well, you can't believe nobody thought of it before. I mean, c'mon, everyone loves zombies, and everyone loves women-in-prison, right? So why wouldn't the merging of the two be incredibly awesome? Throw in a healthy dose of onscreen carnage, and you've got yourself a winner.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Trevor, are you really about to recommend this movie just because of the boobs, blood, and zombies?"
No, of course not…there's also kung-fu.
That's right, this baby takes things one step further, and throws in some crazy ass-kicking action along with the more typical horror elements – Solitaire is revealed to be quite the master at kicking ass, whether it be her fellow inmates, guards, or eventually the undead. As writers Richard Siegel and Michael Gingold reveal in the DVD's "making-of" featurette, their initial inspiration for Shadow was not the typical WIP flicks that you might expect, but rather the ultra-violent Japanese prison/martial-arts opus Ricky-Oh. And although Shadow never quite reaches that film's obscene gore level, it's still every bit as ridiculous – which I mean as a total compliment.
And let me make it clear, while I'm at it: this isn't that crappy play-fighting that counts as "kung-fu" in most low-budget flicks. You know, the kind we've already seen in films like Swamp Zombies or Corpses Are Forever, where errant kicks that miss their mark by two feet still somehow manage to knock down the opponent. No, Shadow delivers the goods. The filmmakers wisely brought in legendary Hong Kong fight-choreographer Tony Leung Siu-Hung (Drunken Master II), and the result is a series of genuinely exciting fight scenes that – while not exactly on par with a Jackie Chan movie or anything – are a damn sight better than you usually get in a film of this kind.
Of course, a lot of the credit for the film's ass-kicking quotient must also go to the very-appealing Carla Greene. If the part of Solitaire had been given to a decent actress who just couldn't grasp the fighting, the film would have suffered from the constant obvious switches to fight doubles (if you've seen as many cheesy movies as I have, you know exactly what I'm talking about). Likewise, a professional stunt woman or trained fighter with no acting ability might have brought everything down, as well. Thankfully, the ultra-athletic Greene is the perfect mix of braun, beauty, and butt-whooping (the oh-so-important "three B's"). Not only is she able to pull off both the physicality and emotion of the role, but she is also always believable in every single moment she's onscreen – a pretty tall order when you're talking about a movie like this. Just take my word for it, the girl rocks. She's probably one more kung-fu exploitation flick away from being asked to appear in Quentin Tarantino's next movie.
The rest of the cast does quite nicely, as well. The character of Shadow is the kind of evil baddie that Tony Todd could by now play in his sleep – and it's a good thing they did get someone with the gravitas of Todd, who somehow manages to still make the character look cool even while he sometimes just stands in place and waves his cape-like coat around, as if he's playing Dracula at a children's haunted house. Meanwhile, I really enjoyed the performance of Andrea Langi as the film's required wicked lesbian guard, Elsa Thorne (a clever nod to the infamous Ilsa series of exploitation films, starring Dyane Thorne). Langi has just the right mix of bitch and bad-ass (the equally important "two B's"), and almost steals the show every time she's onscreen.
And, just when you think it can't possibly get any better, did I mention scream-queen and softcore legend Misty Mundae herself is in it. Errr, sorry, not "Misty Mundae," but "Erin Brown." Forgot about the whole "trying to go legit" thing. Anyway, it's always nice to get a Mundae/Brown appearance. Here, she shows up to get naked (shock!), and prove my long-standing theory that almost any movie would be better if only Misty Mundae ate someone's tongue in it.
Shadow: Dead Riot is clearly a movie made by exploitation fans, for exploitation fans (as Siegel says, it's "torn from a hundred movies and a thousand comic books). The filmmakers do a great job emulating the best elements of several different exploitation genres, in turn delivering a film in the same loving style as Rodriguez and Tarantino's Grindhouse (in fact, a recent DVD re-release of Shadow has given the film the Grindhouse treatment – digitally degrading and scratching up the film – although it was the original version I saw, so I can't comment on how that one looks).
It's sometimes tough to pay proper tribute to the kind of movies that influenced a film like Shadow: Dead Riot, without ending up with a too-clever-for-its-own-good mess. In fact, that's what many detractors said about Grindhouse, and I'm sure it's what many will say about Shadow. As for me, though, I was completely won over by the film's over-the-top blend of gratuitous nudity, kung-fu, great stuntwork, and zombies. Call me crazy all you want, but this was definitely the most fun I ever had with a DTV zombie film, and feel no shame at all in awarding it:
