REDNECK ZOMBIES 1987, dir. Pericles Lewnes 90 min. Rated R. Starring: Tyrone Taylor, Martin J. Wolfman, Darla Deans, Bucky Santini Review by Noel Wood

Usually, the worse a movie is, the easier it is for me to write about it. Somehow, the opposite was true when it came to Redneck Zombies. This movie was easily the worst thing I saw during my Zombie tribute this year, and that's saying a lot. And somehow, I couldn't bring myself to start writing a review for over two weeks after seeing it.

I'm surprised, actually, that this movie was so God Awful. I mean, it was a Troma pickup, after all. Not that Troma doesn't make and release a lot of bad movies, but they tend to make bad movies that are fun to watch. In the case of Redneck Zombies, they made one that was just plain boring. Also, the mere concept of "Redneck Zombies" on its own seems completely diggable. Rednecks are funny, Zombies are funny, and they have been rolled together quite nicely in the past (Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, another Troma release, immediately springs to mind.)

Since it has been a few weeks since I actually saw this movie, the plot details have thankfully grown a bit fuzzy. I know that it involves some campers who happen to be floating through some part of the woods they should have known better than to go to. It also involves a bunch of rednecks who make moonshine that gets contaminated with nuclear waste that causes all that drink it to turn in to flesh-hungry zombies. Of course, even before I picked up the DVD, I could have told you all that, because it's pretty generic B-movie fare.

When you actually watch this thing, though, it gets pretty painful. It's shot on video rather than film, and it doesn't look like high-definition Beta or anything, it actually looks like it was done on a full-sized VHS camera. On top of that, the special effects are about as bad as you can possibly imagine. Sometimes, that's part of a movie's charm, but in this one, it just reeks of suck. There are ridiculously and unnecessarily long sequences where people "hallucinate", shown to us by using an electronic filter on the camera with really bad sound effects. This happens for at least 25% of the total length of the movie. There's a lot of blood and gore, but it's not even cool enough looking to make up for any of the other things that suck. Let us not forget that the tainted moonshine is bright green, looking like a Mason Jar full of Listerine. Hell, that's probably what it was. Either way, I don't understand why so many people drank the stuff, inbred redneck or not.

Anyway, zombie stuff happens, and the campers start getting offed one by one. There is a needless subplot involving the military dude who lost the nuclear waste to begin with. One of the campers "dissects" a zombie in a hallucinogenic haze that probably goes on four times longer than it should and provides exactly zero moments of humor. The campers figure out some chemical reaction with spray deodorant causes the redneck zombies to bubble away like they've been dropped in a vat of acid, but this little revelation goes nowhere. One chunky chick survives the massacre, only to be raped (and presumably impregnated) by a zombie. All of it sucks in all kinds of ways.

Fortunately for Troma, they can wash the taint of this movie off their hands since they had nothing at all to do with its production, but there's still the fact that Lloyd Kaufman at some point watched this movie (most likely while under the influence of something illegal in most states) and thought it was good enough to slap his company's name on. Don't even think about bothering with this tremendously bad movie.

Rating: One out of five Brains.