The zombifination
We're smack dab in the middle of a particularly unpleasant summer, as temperatures continue to hover in the 90s, punctuated by brief rainstorms that only cause slightly less damage than the crippling drought that is currently decimating the country's agricultural fortunes. When I think of summer, this is exactly the level of heat-sickness misery I picture. Why not revel in it by staying inside and enduring a particularly awful movie? Some annual traditions are worth keeping!
As longtime chums may recall, in summers past, I have set aside time to watch the worst movie I can access. I have long worked from a list of dream subjects: "Getting Even with Dad," "Monkey Trouble," "Zeus and Roxanne," "Ed," the "K-9" trilogy. Yes, I traditionally choose movies involving wacky animals and/or aimed at an audience of undemanding children, as those are usually the most senseless and aggravating. However, this year, I admit that I was unable to think of something on my own that looked suitably awful.
There is no shortage of "bad" movies out there for me to endure. I own many books on the subject, and one of my favorite podcasts is about almost nothing but them. However, the goal for this endeavor has always been to find something no one in their right mind would choose to watch for pleasure, even the ironic kind, so that rules out any "so bad it's good" titles. I've been pretty busy, so I really didn't have time to plan ahead. I also have limited time to complete my review this weekend (wife is only out of town for a few days, saw Agalloch play an amazing 2+ hour set on Friday night, went out with mom for her birthday yesterday, also needed to clean the bathroom, buy some groceries...). All this paved the way to a desperate new approach for choosing a film. Like countless lazy writers before me, I let the Internet decide.
I assume you're familiar with the IMDb and its user-based ranking system, particularly the controversial Bottom 100. This ever-changing list compiles the 100 films to which users of the web's most comprehensive movie info site have given the lowest overall ratings. Sure, it's prone to manipulation by voters and is thus subject to the whims of grudge holders and bandwagon riders, but like Wikipedia, consensus tends to keep the Bottom 100 pretty honest for the most part. For instance, as a bad movie aficionado who prefers the less obvious titles, I am encouraged that the absolute worst movie I've ever seen remains in the top 10 today. I decided I would start at the top (bottom?) of the list and watch the first title I came to that I'd never seen, and that was also available on NetFlix Instant Watch for my convenience. Here's how the list looked at lunchtime Friday, when I selected my instrument of torture:
Of course, I've already seen the '60s stinkers "Manos" and "Monster A Go-Go!," the latter being the aforementioned worst movie I have ever seen. The "Titanic" title is apparently a cheap, offensive Italian cartoon ripoff of James Cameron's grossly overrated Oscar magnet. Sounds great, but it's not on NetFlix, nor is "Daniel the Wizard," the vanity project of some supposedly annoying guy who lost a German TV singing contest. NetFlix does have "Superbabies," the reportedly abysmal final film by the great Bob Clark, and "Ben & Arthur," which piques my curiosity with its growing reputation as a gay cousin of Tommy Wiseau's "The Room." Sadly, these two are only available on disc, and I don't have time to wait for them in the mail. This brings me to "Zombie Nation," which was made the same year as "Daniel" by the same director, and which completely meets my criteria. Although I have thus far avoided horror movies for this project because, as a fan of the genre, I already suffer through plenty of bad ones on a regular basis, the Bottom 100 has spoken. Besides, I would never consider watching "Zombie Nation" of my own volition, making it quite an appropriate choice.
Within the past decade, veteran German director Ulli Lommel has become almost as infamous as his countryman Uwe Boll. Having experienced very little of his output, this always surprised me, especially considering that his early career was marked by professional collaborations with such artistic icons as Rainer Werner Fassbender and Andy Warhol. I know Lommel mostly by reputation from college film classes (my prof was big on the German New Wave). In the horror realm, I'd only previously seen my recently-sold Anchor Bay double feature DVD of "The Boogeyman," his cheesy and weird supernatural shocker that actually became a grindhouse hit (Lommel later crapped out one of these unbelievable '80s sequels that was mostly comprised of footage from the original, and then put out a third version in the '90s), and "The Devonsville Terror," a forgettable witch-revenge snoozer. Those are both low budget early '80s horror flicks, and as such, I gave them some leeway. They're not good, but I still found it hard to fathom the level of rancor thrown at Lommel's recent movies, particularly his string of direct-to-video "true crime" serial killer flicks ("Green River Killer," "Borderline Cult," "D.C. Sniper," etc.).
"Zombie Nation" actually came out just prior to those. From a marketing standpoint, it also sort-of anticipates the flood of z-grade zombie knockoffs that followed Zack Snyder's excellent remake of "Dawn of the Dead," which hit U.S. theaters about half a year before this film was dumped on the rental market. "Nation" is precisely the type of cheap, cynical modern horror movie I usually avoid. See, back in the '90s, I would have told you the zombie was my favorite kind of movie monster, and although its appeal has been greatly cheapened by the aforementioned overexposure (the "Resident Evil" movies, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," sub-ironic cutesy zombie girlie t-shirts), it still is. Fuck, I still enjoy "The Walking Dead," even though a lot of people seem bored after the leisurely paced second season. "Zombie Nation" is more emblematic of the depressing deep end of the opportunistic zombie entertainment cesspool, floating among the excruciating likes of "Zombie '90: Extreme Pestilence" or "Zombiez." It's better than those by virtue of having something resembling a plot, but still manages to make "Zombi 3" look like "Zombi 2."
Its first offense is that it's less a zombie film than a serial killer film. Our protagonist, if you can call him that, is Joe Singer, a fiftysomething Iraq vet from Alabama with a thick Austrian accent. Due to being psychologically and physically abused by his wheelchair-bound, psycho ward administrator mother, he grew up to be a misogynistic murderer who hides behind a police badge. We are introduced to this creep as he demeans and pulls over a woman who looks like a trashier Cynthia Nixon for applying lipstick in her car. He makes her get into his car, and drives to some sort of warehouse. Singer brings the woman inside, where, among clusters of furniture curiously arranged as if this were a depressingly threadbare homeware shop, he proceeds to look in her mouth with a doctor's flashlight. He emerges some time later carrying a conspicuously gigantic black duffel bag. And, oh yeah, he does all of this while his partner, a young hunk of simple named Vitalio, rides along and waits outside.
Vitalio does muster the nuts to ask what happened to the woman, the reply being that Singer let her go. When asked about the bag, crafty ol' Joe replies with a reassuring Teutonic purr, "We enforcink the law, son, but that's a task more difficult ant complex than you thought." Singer later buries the bag of law in the woods, at some point having ditched Vitalio, who goes home to his wife and broods. This leads to an astounding exchange that sums up the alien paradigm for natural human interaction that guides the entire film:
Wife: What's wrong? You okay?
Vitalio: I'm all right.
Wife: No, you're not.
Vitalio: (pause) I'm fine.
Wife: No, you're not. (long pause) I think I'm pregnant.
Vitalio: You think? Wow, baby, that's awesome. Are you sure?
Wife: (nods)
Gripping stuff. Next, we're treated to Singer picking up another random woman and bringing her to the warehouse/furniture store. He injects her with something in the butt, and she dies. As this happens, there are flashes of the woman with black circles drawn around her eyes and something bloody in her mouth. These are similar to flashes seen near the beginning, when the Cynthia Nixon lady was saying goodbye to her boyfriend. Having read a bit about Ulli Lommel's filmmaking tropes as well as the film's synopsis on NetFlix, I gathered these were flash-forwards to when the women take their zombie revenge, although I had no idea how long it would be before that actually happened.
I guess Singer takes a really long time with this victim, because Vitalio eventually comes inside, only to get yelled at and told he has dirty clothes. (As is reiterated in just about every nightmare childhood flashback sequence, Joe's mom was a neat freak.) Singer refers to himself as "we," which only seems to cause mild confusion for the young clod. Later, Vitalio's hanging out with his cop friend, a dude with a pointy '00s haircut whose name I'll never bother to learn, along with their wives. He tells the group what he observed and they each immediately know what's going on, although Hairhorn rightfully points out that Joe's protected by his old Marine buddies, who happen to all be cops and work at the same precinct, including the captain. It's a cartoonish level of corruption, but what can you expect from a cop shop where they never finished building the cubicles?
Concerned lovers and family report the missing girls to deaf ears at the station, especially when they drop the nugget that their loved ones were last seen speaking with uniformed policemen. One of the USMC cronies, who looks like a hardass but sounds like the late Davy Jones, even beats up a missing girl's brother after he freaks out on the captain. The same dude ends up knocking the stuffing out of Vitalio once Officer Pointy-Hair airs his friend's suspicions about Singer, despite his own recent warning not to do so. This astounding scene takes place at what appears to be a cop Fight Club staged in some warehouse. Also, Vitalio's wife was invited for some reason. The cops frame some dude from their shit list for the disappearances (no bodies have been found), then bust into Vitalio's house wearing ski masks, roughing up the unlucky doofus and terrorizing his wife. However, none of the crooked cops ever say they think Singer is innocent.
The movie's about 1/3 over, and we've seen neither hide nor hair of a zombie, unless you count those flashes. As if to address this, we suddenly cut to a group of African-American women huddled over a tube-topped white girl, who is laying prone on a zebra-print altar. They have a dresser with some candles and a pig head sitting on it, from which one of the women retrieves blood to drip on the girl. There are also a set of shark jaws laying on the altar, as well as a tarantula and a snake which both seem to be making a beeline to the girl's crotch. She spits up some Ecto Cooler, and some of it gets in her nose. It looks uncomfortable.
Back in the other movie we were watching, Singer is pouring his heart out to Officer Pencil-Topper, going into his relationship with his Southern priest dad while we see blurry snapshots of random buildings. His uncharacteristic candor is naturally interrupted when he spies a jaywalking Romanian stripper. He picks her up and takes her to the spot. His kill ritual is more elaborate this time: being thorough, Singer uses the doctor's flashlight to check the girl's ears and nose along with her mouth, and he also pauses to fondle her boobs before injecting her. He then walks over to a chair and watches Christian television (I think it's actually footage from "The Devonsville Terror"). After a long while, he makes a journal entry about the girl, then puts her corpse in a bed, unzips his pants and gets in. He makes like he's gonna kiss her, but then just gets up, saving us from a simulated necrophilia sequence. True to form, Singer leaves Pointy-Hair outside the whole time, so he shouldn't be surprised when the dude rats on him to Internal Affairs.
It is around here, just past the halfway point, when "Zombie Nation" totally gives up on trying to be a linear movie and becomes a loosely connected series of events. For starters, we never check back with Vitalio. We do see Singer watching religious TV again, and he's back at the warehouse/furniture store. Does he live there, or is he just breaking in to kill chicks and catch up on his favorite preachers? Before you can really ponder his living arrangements, he changes to the Exposition News channel, where they're reporting on the missing Romanian girl. In an interview, her brother asserts that she is OK, being protected because she visited "some voodoo priestesses after too many girls started disappearing." (Only now do I realize that the Ecto Cooler girl and the dead stripper are the same person.) He tells the incredulous reporter, "You Americans never understand."
Before you can really ponder the United States' ignorance about the connection between Romanian immigrants and voodoo, we cut to Joe Singer sleeping and yelling, "No! No! No!" Next are shots of the voodoo ladies chanting over the snake and spider and shark jaws. The snake starts crawling around in some dry grass. The spider crawls around in the same dry grass. Sadly, the shark jaws do not crawl around in the dry grass. Finally, we see a lady coming out of a body of water, and you can tell from the black rings drawn around her eyes and her... well, the makeup rings are pretty much the only indication that she is a zombie. 50 minutes in, we have a zombie. She meets up with the zombie girl who looks like Cynthia Nixon, and they wander upon a guy in a suit who is talking on a cell phone. His half of the conversation is worth transcribing verbatim:
"Look, Jennifer, I told you I don't want to talk business today. Not today! All right, fine, fine. Go ahead, buy the Euro, buy... two million Euros. Yes, yes, yes, a million yen. Unload all of the pesos. Yes, all of the pesos. And cancel the business with Ramirez and company..."
Before you can really ponder what the fuck this guy is talking about and why he's doing it outside of his parked car in the middle of the woods, he notices the zombie girls. After asking them about 100 unanswered questions, including if they're from Russia or Belgium, he invites them into his car. Then, after another minute of silent leering, he suggests they get out. The one who looks like Courtney Love's cuter cousin says in a totally non-zombie voice, "Give us a kiss." Cue some cheesy Eurotrash club music as they lock lips, and she predictably chews his tongue out in an extremely anticlimactic bit. Cynthia Nixon makes exaggerated facial gestures suggesting horniness or hunger or something. Then the car drives away.
Before you can really ponder who was driving, 2 other zombie girls do pretty much the same thing to another guy. These zombies yank off this guy's dick in a poorly-blocked, confusing effects shot, during which there is also Eurotrash club music.
Before you can really ponder why this jaunty shit was chosen as theme music for zombies, we see Joe being informed by Internal Affairs that he's being investigated. One of the IA folks clearly states that Singer is on leave while he's under investigation.
Now we're back with the zombie girls, who are all crashing in the room where the voodoo ladies apparently live. They all talk normally, no growling or anything. The priestesses, possibly test-marketing a self-improvement retreat for strong independent undead womyn, ask them about their inner desires. One replies that she wants to dance and sing. Another is thirsty, so she gets a few drops of that handy pig blood. Cynthia Nixon wants to see her boyfriend, and we see her run over to his house, only to run away when he slams the door in shock upon seeing her. She is surprised to learn that she looks like a bloody zombie in a mirror, although she looks pretty normal otherwise. This phenomenon is not explained.
David Hess, the 1970s' go-to character actor for creepo rapist roles, makes a cameo as Singer's dad, who drops by the police station to visit his boy. Lucky for him, Joe must have forgotten being told he had to go on leave, since he's still skulking around the place. Hess is almost drowned out by loud Gregorian chants on the soundtrack, but it's OK, since he seems to be making up his dialog anyway. Vitalio's rhino-topped friend overhears him talking about how they used to study the Bible and good and evil and stuff. As if to underscore the complete pointlessness of the scene, or maybe that of of the film itself, he does nothing with this non-information, as this is Hornhair's final appearance.
The captain tells Singer not to worry about the investigation, shortly before being put on leave by Internal Affairs himself. Meanwhile, Joe has finally gone back to his crib, where a woman enters pushing Ulli Lommel in a wheelchair. The director plays a psychiatrist who examines Singer's teeth and keeps asking, "Is it safe?" (Because, you know, "Marathon Man.") After a seeming eternity of this, Singer explodes, "It is NOT SAFE!" I'm not sure how the wheelchair got up the stairs to Joe's "bedroom," or what this sequence has to do with anything, probably because I spent it trying to figure out if this Panama-hatted quack was supposed to be a mental manifestation of the priest dad from the prior scene. Since we never see either character again, it ultimately doesn't matter.
Meanwhile, the voodoo priestesses are giving the zombie girls a curious pep talk about how they can't go back to their previous lives (they seem mostly OK with that) and that they need to take revenge. Their grand plan for this is to put on identical mirrored aviator shades and go to the police station, where the officer on duty assumes they want to apply for jobs.
I'd like to briefly discuss this officer on duty, who is actually the best character in the entire movie. Officer Malloy, as brought to life by Lommel's stock player and longtime co-producer Nola Roeper, is a cranky, no-nonsense gal in an otherwise all-male precinct. Earlier, she provides one of its few believable human reactions, when she sardonically calls out the crooked cops on their frame job. It's a brief moment, but as a rare instance of lucidity amid all the silliness, it made me root for Malloy and wish she was the main focus. Of course, the whole assuming the bespectacled girls are all showing up at once to apply for jobs sort of kills this, but she remains the most likeable person in the entire production.
While the girls are roaming freely about the station, Joe inexplicably shows up just to holler at a random cop: "Tell your captain I've had it! I am transferrink out of this precink, periot!" Then he leaves again, but not before the zombies see him. They do the classic unison shade-lowering move, except they are not in unison. Next, we see them hanging out someplace dark, where they decide they will now be guardian angels for the people they love. They ponder whether there are more of them somewhere, thousands or millions just waiting to be reunited with their zombie pals. Cynthia Nixon helpfully offers a name: "Zombie Nation!"
Oh, OK, they're outside the warehouse/furniture store waiting for Singer. Shortly after the creep shows up, a woman comes through the garage door entrance (which only ever opens halfway). She tells Singer she drove a long way and has a 5 o'clock appointment to buy a sofa. So, this is a functioning store after all? Who did she make this appointment with? Why do you even need an appointment to buy furniture? Singer tells her they're closed, and she screams and swears at him for about a minute before vanishing forever, sliding past the five zombie girls gathered in the doorway.
Of course, Joe doesn't notice them, preferring to go upstairs and have more flashbacks. The girls sneak up, given away only by their cheery techno theme music. He evades them pretty easily, retreating to his yacht (he used this earlier to dump a corpse). Perhaps in hamfisted homage to William Lustig's venerated "Maniac," the climax features Singer's former victims setting upon him while he's laying prone in bed. They pull out his guts, unenthusiastically rubbing their teeth on the innards as if that somehow looks like they're eating them. Cynthia Nixon pulls out an eyeball and makes a hilarious face while regarding it.
Then, the girls are back in the room of voodoo priestesses, who realize that they forgot to tell their undead slaves that if they eat someone, that person will also become a zombie. Confused, one of the girls asks what they're supposed to eat. The answer? "Cheeseburgers." They look grossed out.
Cut to six months later. Officer Malloy is now the precinct's captain, and the entire police force consists of zombie girls sporting sexy cop Halloween costumes with plunging necklines. They salute the camera one by one as we see zombie Joe coming out of the water, stumbling toward the camera in blurry furor while a horrific Rob Zombie ripoff song sweeps us into the merciful arms of the end credits.
In "Zombie Nation," the actors are awkward and stiff. All the sets appear to be constructed inside the same warehouse space. The plot is ludicrous when it even bothers to be coherent. The gore effects are fakey and used far too sparingly. The music, all done by a guy who scored episodes of "The Glo Friends," "Defenders of the Earth" and "Potato Head Kids," is uniformly irritating. Lommel used two different cameras to film it, resulting in noticeable variances in image quality from one shot to the next.
Yet, while thoroughly sucking in every way imaginable, it's not the worst film (or even the worst zombie film) I've ever seen. My perfunctory research on Lommel lead me to expect a far less professional looking product than it actually is. Internet people rightfully bag on the guy, but I think the sheer hyperbole out there regarding his technical capabilities is a case of web cranks trying to entertain their readers. Compared with other direct-to-video swill, you can see and hear what's going on here, even if it makes no sense. I'm also pleased to report that "Zombie Nation" contains no rape, despite what the IMDb says. Having read that Lommel frequently lingers on violent sexual assault in his killer pictures, and considering that this is now somehow an OK thing to do even in mainstream hits, I was prepared to go on a huge diatribe about that were I subjected to it. Thankfully, aside from a bit of titplay, the woman-hating scumbag here is content to insert his hypodermic and then watch TV.
I think that sums up the few merits of "Zombie Nation": you can see and hear what's going on and it contains no rape. Now I will go wash my eyes with some quality schlocky splatter sleaze, as the NetFlix gods just delivered the director's cut of "Pieces."
As longtime chums may recall, in summers past, I have set aside time to watch the worst movie I can access. I have long worked from a list of dream subjects: "Getting Even with Dad," "Monkey Trouble," "Zeus and Roxanne," "Ed," the "K-9" trilogy. Yes, I traditionally choose movies involving wacky animals and/or aimed at an audience of undemanding children, as those are usually the most senseless and aggravating. However, this year, I admit that I was unable to think of something on my own that looked suitably awful.
There is no shortage of "bad" movies out there for me to endure. I own many books on the subject, and one of my favorite podcasts is about almost nothing but them. However, the goal for this endeavor has always been to find something no one in their right mind would choose to watch for pleasure, even the ironic kind, so that rules out any "so bad it's good" titles. I've been pretty busy, so I really didn't have time to plan ahead. I also have limited time to complete my review this weekend (wife is only out of town for a few days, saw Agalloch play an amazing 2+ hour set on Friday night, went out with mom for her birthday yesterday, also needed to clean the bathroom, buy some groceries...). All this paved the way to a desperate new approach for choosing a film. Like countless lazy writers before me, I let the Internet decide.
I assume you're familiar with the IMDb and its user-based ranking system, particularly the controversial Bottom 100. This ever-changing list compiles the 100 films to which users of the web's most comprehensive movie info site have given the lowest overall ratings. Sure, it's prone to manipulation by voters and is thus subject to the whims of grudge holders and bandwagon riders, but like Wikipedia, consensus tends to keep the Bottom 100 pretty honest for the most part. For instance, as a bad movie aficionado who prefers the less obvious titles, I am encouraged that the absolute worst movie I've ever seen remains in the top 10 today. I decided I would start at the top (bottom?) of the list and watch the first title I came to that I'd never seen, and that was also available on NetFlix Instant Watch for my convenience. Here's how the list looked at lunchtime Friday, when I selected my instrument of torture:
Of course, I've already seen the '60s stinkers "Manos" and "Monster A Go-Go!," the latter being the aforementioned worst movie I have ever seen. The "Titanic" title is apparently a cheap, offensive Italian cartoon ripoff of James Cameron's grossly overrated Oscar magnet. Sounds great, but it's not on NetFlix, nor is "Daniel the Wizard," the vanity project of some supposedly annoying guy who lost a German TV singing contest. NetFlix does have "Superbabies," the reportedly abysmal final film by the great Bob Clark, and "Ben & Arthur," which piques my curiosity with its growing reputation as a gay cousin of Tommy Wiseau's "The Room." Sadly, these two are only available on disc, and I don't have time to wait for them in the mail. This brings me to "Zombie Nation," which was made the same year as "Daniel" by the same director, and which completely meets my criteria. Although I have thus far avoided horror movies for this project because, as a fan of the genre, I already suffer through plenty of bad ones on a regular basis, the Bottom 100 has spoken. Besides, I would never consider watching "Zombie Nation" of my own volition, making it quite an appropriate choice.
"Zombie Nation"
(2004)
(2004)
Within the past decade, veteran German director Ulli Lommel has become almost as infamous as his countryman Uwe Boll. Having experienced very little of his output, this always surprised me, especially considering that his early career was marked by professional collaborations with such artistic icons as Rainer Werner Fassbender and Andy Warhol. I know Lommel mostly by reputation from college film classes (my prof was big on the German New Wave). In the horror realm, I'd only previously seen my recently-sold Anchor Bay double feature DVD of "The Boogeyman," his cheesy and weird supernatural shocker that actually became a grindhouse hit (Lommel later crapped out one of these unbelievable '80s sequels that was mostly comprised of footage from the original, and then put out a third version in the '90s), and "The Devonsville Terror," a forgettable witch-revenge snoozer. Those are both low budget early '80s horror flicks, and as such, I gave them some leeway. They're not good, but I still found it hard to fathom the level of rancor thrown at Lommel's recent movies, particularly his string of direct-to-video "true crime" serial killer flicks ("Green River Killer," "Borderline Cult," "D.C. Sniper," etc.).
"Zombie Nation" actually came out just prior to those. From a marketing standpoint, it also sort-of anticipates the flood of z-grade zombie knockoffs that followed Zack Snyder's excellent remake of "Dawn of the Dead," which hit U.S. theaters about half a year before this film was dumped on the rental market. "Nation" is precisely the type of cheap, cynical modern horror movie I usually avoid. See, back in the '90s, I would have told you the zombie was my favorite kind of movie monster, and although its appeal has been greatly cheapened by the aforementioned overexposure (the "Resident Evil" movies, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," sub-ironic cutesy zombie girlie t-shirts), it still is. Fuck, I still enjoy "The Walking Dead," even though a lot of people seem bored after the leisurely paced second season. "Zombie Nation" is more emblematic of the depressing deep end of the opportunistic zombie entertainment cesspool, floating among the excruciating likes of "Zombie '90: Extreme Pestilence" or "Zombiez." It's better than those by virtue of having something resembling a plot, but still manages to make "Zombi 3" look like "Zombi 2."
Its first offense is that it's less a zombie film than a serial killer film. Our protagonist, if you can call him that, is Joe Singer, a fiftysomething Iraq vet from Alabama with a thick Austrian accent. Due to being psychologically and physically abused by his wheelchair-bound, psycho ward administrator mother, he grew up to be a misogynistic murderer who hides behind a police badge. We are introduced to this creep as he demeans and pulls over a woman who looks like a trashier Cynthia Nixon for applying lipstick in her car. He makes her get into his car, and drives to some sort of warehouse. Singer brings the woman inside, where, among clusters of furniture curiously arranged as if this were a depressingly threadbare homeware shop, he proceeds to look in her mouth with a doctor's flashlight. He emerges some time later carrying a conspicuously gigantic black duffel bag. And, oh yeah, he does all of this while his partner, a young hunk of simple named Vitalio, rides along and waits outside.
Vitalio does muster the nuts to ask what happened to the woman, the reply being that Singer let her go. When asked about the bag, crafty ol' Joe replies with a reassuring Teutonic purr, "We enforcink the law, son, but that's a task more difficult ant complex than you thought." Singer later buries the bag of law in the woods, at some point having ditched Vitalio, who goes home to his wife and broods. This leads to an astounding exchange that sums up the alien paradigm for natural human interaction that guides the entire film:
Wife: What's wrong? You okay?
Vitalio: I'm all right.
Wife: No, you're not.
Vitalio: (pause) I'm fine.
Wife: No, you're not. (long pause) I think I'm pregnant.
Vitalio: You think? Wow, baby, that's awesome. Are you sure?
Wife: (nods)
Gripping stuff. Next, we're treated to Singer picking up another random woman and bringing her to the warehouse/furniture store. He injects her with something in the butt, and she dies. As this happens, there are flashes of the woman with black circles drawn around her eyes and something bloody in her mouth. These are similar to flashes seen near the beginning, when the Cynthia Nixon lady was saying goodbye to her boyfriend. Having read a bit about Ulli Lommel's filmmaking tropes as well as the film's synopsis on NetFlix, I gathered these were flash-forwards to when the women take their zombie revenge, although I had no idea how long it would be before that actually happened.
I guess Singer takes a really long time with this victim, because Vitalio eventually comes inside, only to get yelled at and told he has dirty clothes. (As is reiterated in just about every nightmare childhood flashback sequence, Joe's mom was a neat freak.) Singer refers to himself as "we," which only seems to cause mild confusion for the young clod. Later, Vitalio's hanging out with his cop friend, a dude with a pointy '00s haircut whose name I'll never bother to learn, along with their wives. He tells the group what he observed and they each immediately know what's going on, although Hairhorn rightfully points out that Joe's protected by his old Marine buddies, who happen to all be cops and work at the same precinct, including the captain. It's a cartoonish level of corruption, but what can you expect from a cop shop where they never finished building the cubicles?
Concerned lovers and family report the missing girls to deaf ears at the station, especially when they drop the nugget that their loved ones were last seen speaking with uniformed policemen. One of the USMC cronies, who looks like a hardass but sounds like the late Davy Jones, even beats up a missing girl's brother after he freaks out on the captain. The same dude ends up knocking the stuffing out of Vitalio once Officer Pointy-Hair airs his friend's suspicions about Singer, despite his own recent warning not to do so. This astounding scene takes place at what appears to be a cop Fight Club staged in some warehouse. Also, Vitalio's wife was invited for some reason. The cops frame some dude from their shit list for the disappearances (no bodies have been found), then bust into Vitalio's house wearing ski masks, roughing up the unlucky doofus and terrorizing his wife. However, none of the crooked cops ever say they think Singer is innocent.
The movie's about 1/3 over, and we've seen neither hide nor hair of a zombie, unless you count those flashes. As if to address this, we suddenly cut to a group of African-American women huddled over a tube-topped white girl, who is laying prone on a zebra-print altar. They have a dresser with some candles and a pig head sitting on it, from which one of the women retrieves blood to drip on the girl. There are also a set of shark jaws laying on the altar, as well as a tarantula and a snake which both seem to be making a beeline to the girl's crotch. She spits up some Ecto Cooler, and some of it gets in her nose. It looks uncomfortable.
Back in the other movie we were watching, Singer is pouring his heart out to Officer Pencil-Topper, going into his relationship with his Southern priest dad while we see blurry snapshots of random buildings. His uncharacteristic candor is naturally interrupted when he spies a jaywalking Romanian stripper. He picks her up and takes her to the spot. His kill ritual is more elaborate this time: being thorough, Singer uses the doctor's flashlight to check the girl's ears and nose along with her mouth, and he also pauses to fondle her boobs before injecting her. He then walks over to a chair and watches Christian television (I think it's actually footage from "The Devonsville Terror"). After a long while, he makes a journal entry about the girl, then puts her corpse in a bed, unzips his pants and gets in. He makes like he's gonna kiss her, but then just gets up, saving us from a simulated necrophilia sequence. True to form, Singer leaves Pointy-Hair outside the whole time, so he shouldn't be surprised when the dude rats on him to Internal Affairs.
It is around here, just past the halfway point, when "Zombie Nation" totally gives up on trying to be a linear movie and becomes a loosely connected series of events. For starters, we never check back with Vitalio. We do see Singer watching religious TV again, and he's back at the warehouse/furniture store. Does he live there, or is he just breaking in to kill chicks and catch up on his favorite preachers? Before you can really ponder his living arrangements, he changes to the Exposition News channel, where they're reporting on the missing Romanian girl. In an interview, her brother asserts that she is OK, being protected because she visited "some voodoo priestesses after too many girls started disappearing." (Only now do I realize that the Ecto Cooler girl and the dead stripper are the same person.) He tells the incredulous reporter, "You Americans never understand."
Before you can really ponder the United States' ignorance about the connection between Romanian immigrants and voodoo, we cut to Joe Singer sleeping and yelling, "No! No! No!" Next are shots of the voodoo ladies chanting over the snake and spider and shark jaws. The snake starts crawling around in some dry grass. The spider crawls around in the same dry grass. Sadly, the shark jaws do not crawl around in the dry grass. Finally, we see a lady coming out of a body of water, and you can tell from the black rings drawn around her eyes and her... well, the makeup rings are pretty much the only indication that she is a zombie. 50 minutes in, we have a zombie. She meets up with the zombie girl who looks like Cynthia Nixon, and they wander upon a guy in a suit who is talking on a cell phone. His half of the conversation is worth transcribing verbatim:
"Look, Jennifer, I told you I don't want to talk business today. Not today! All right, fine, fine. Go ahead, buy the Euro, buy... two million Euros. Yes, yes, yes, a million yen. Unload all of the pesos. Yes, all of the pesos. And cancel the business with Ramirez and company..."
Before you can really ponder what the fuck this guy is talking about and why he's doing it outside of his parked car in the middle of the woods, he notices the zombie girls. After asking them about 100 unanswered questions, including if they're from Russia or Belgium, he invites them into his car. Then, after another minute of silent leering, he suggests they get out. The one who looks like Courtney Love's cuter cousin says in a totally non-zombie voice, "Give us a kiss." Cue some cheesy Eurotrash club music as they lock lips, and she predictably chews his tongue out in an extremely anticlimactic bit. Cynthia Nixon makes exaggerated facial gestures suggesting horniness or hunger or something. Then the car drives away.
Before you can really ponder who was driving, 2 other zombie girls do pretty much the same thing to another guy. These zombies yank off this guy's dick in a poorly-blocked, confusing effects shot, during which there is also Eurotrash club music.
Before you can really ponder why this jaunty shit was chosen as theme music for zombies, we see Joe being informed by Internal Affairs that he's being investigated. One of the IA folks clearly states that Singer is on leave while he's under investigation.
Now we're back with the zombie girls, who are all crashing in the room where the voodoo ladies apparently live. They all talk normally, no growling or anything. The priestesses, possibly test-marketing a self-improvement retreat for strong independent undead womyn, ask them about their inner desires. One replies that she wants to dance and sing. Another is thirsty, so she gets a few drops of that handy pig blood. Cynthia Nixon wants to see her boyfriend, and we see her run over to his house, only to run away when he slams the door in shock upon seeing her. She is surprised to learn that she looks like a bloody zombie in a mirror, although she looks pretty normal otherwise. This phenomenon is not explained.
David Hess, the 1970s' go-to character actor for creepo rapist roles, makes a cameo as Singer's dad, who drops by the police station to visit his boy. Lucky for him, Joe must have forgotten being told he had to go on leave, since he's still skulking around the place. Hess is almost drowned out by loud Gregorian chants on the soundtrack, but it's OK, since he seems to be making up his dialog anyway. Vitalio's rhino-topped friend overhears him talking about how they used to study the Bible and good and evil and stuff. As if to underscore the complete pointlessness of the scene, or maybe that of of the film itself, he does nothing with this non-information, as this is Hornhair's final appearance.
The captain tells Singer not to worry about the investigation, shortly before being put on leave by Internal Affairs himself. Meanwhile, Joe has finally gone back to his crib, where a woman enters pushing Ulli Lommel in a wheelchair. The director plays a psychiatrist who examines Singer's teeth and keeps asking, "Is it safe?" (Because, you know, "Marathon Man.") After a seeming eternity of this, Singer explodes, "It is NOT SAFE!" I'm not sure how the wheelchair got up the stairs to Joe's "bedroom," or what this sequence has to do with anything, probably because I spent it trying to figure out if this Panama-hatted quack was supposed to be a mental manifestation of the priest dad from the prior scene. Since we never see either character again, it ultimately doesn't matter.
Meanwhile, the voodoo priestesses are giving the zombie girls a curious pep talk about how they can't go back to their previous lives (they seem mostly OK with that) and that they need to take revenge. Their grand plan for this is to put on identical mirrored aviator shades and go to the police station, where the officer on duty assumes they want to apply for jobs.
I'd like to briefly discuss this officer on duty, who is actually the best character in the entire movie. Officer Malloy, as brought to life by Lommel's stock player and longtime co-producer Nola Roeper, is a cranky, no-nonsense gal in an otherwise all-male precinct. Earlier, she provides one of its few believable human reactions, when she sardonically calls out the crooked cops on their frame job. It's a brief moment, but as a rare instance of lucidity amid all the silliness, it made me root for Malloy and wish she was the main focus. Of course, the whole assuming the bespectacled girls are all showing up at once to apply for jobs sort of kills this, but she remains the most likeable person in the entire production.
While the girls are roaming freely about the station, Joe inexplicably shows up just to holler at a random cop: "Tell your captain I've had it! I am transferrink out of this precink, periot!" Then he leaves again, but not before the zombies see him. They do the classic unison shade-lowering move, except they are not in unison. Next, we see them hanging out someplace dark, where they decide they will now be guardian angels for the people they love. They ponder whether there are more of them somewhere, thousands or millions just waiting to be reunited with their zombie pals. Cynthia Nixon helpfully offers a name: "Zombie Nation!"
Oh, OK, they're outside the warehouse/furniture store waiting for Singer. Shortly after the creep shows up, a woman comes through the garage door entrance (which only ever opens halfway). She tells Singer she drove a long way and has a 5 o'clock appointment to buy a sofa. So, this is a functioning store after all? Who did she make this appointment with? Why do you even need an appointment to buy furniture? Singer tells her they're closed, and she screams and swears at him for about a minute before vanishing forever, sliding past the five zombie girls gathered in the doorway.
Of course, Joe doesn't notice them, preferring to go upstairs and have more flashbacks. The girls sneak up, given away only by their cheery techno theme music. He evades them pretty easily, retreating to his yacht (he used this earlier to dump a corpse). Perhaps in hamfisted homage to William Lustig's venerated "Maniac," the climax features Singer's former victims setting upon him while he's laying prone in bed. They pull out his guts, unenthusiastically rubbing their teeth on the innards as if that somehow looks like they're eating them. Cynthia Nixon pulls out an eyeball and makes a hilarious face while regarding it.
Then, the girls are back in the room of voodoo priestesses, who realize that they forgot to tell their undead slaves that if they eat someone, that person will also become a zombie. Confused, one of the girls asks what they're supposed to eat. The answer? "Cheeseburgers." They look grossed out.
Cut to six months later. Officer Malloy is now the precinct's captain, and the entire police force consists of zombie girls sporting sexy cop Halloween costumes with plunging necklines. They salute the camera one by one as we see zombie Joe coming out of the water, stumbling toward the camera in blurry furor while a horrific Rob Zombie ripoff song sweeps us into the merciful arms of the end credits.
In "Zombie Nation," the actors are awkward and stiff. All the sets appear to be constructed inside the same warehouse space. The plot is ludicrous when it even bothers to be coherent. The gore effects are fakey and used far too sparingly. The music, all done by a guy who scored episodes of "The Glo Friends," "Defenders of the Earth" and "Potato Head Kids," is uniformly irritating. Lommel used two different cameras to film it, resulting in noticeable variances in image quality from one shot to the next.
Yet, while thoroughly sucking in every way imaginable, it's not the worst film (or even the worst zombie film) I've ever seen. My perfunctory research on Lommel lead me to expect a far less professional looking product than it actually is. Internet people rightfully bag on the guy, but I think the sheer hyperbole out there regarding his technical capabilities is a case of web cranks trying to entertain their readers. Compared with other direct-to-video swill, you can see and hear what's going on here, even if it makes no sense. I'm also pleased to report that "Zombie Nation" contains no rape, despite what the IMDb says. Having read that Lommel frequently lingers on violent sexual assault in his killer pictures, and considering that this is now somehow an OK thing to do even in mainstream hits, I was prepared to go on a huge diatribe about that were I subjected to it. Thankfully, aside from a bit of titplay, the woman-hating scumbag here is content to insert his hypodermic and then watch TV.
I think that sums up the few merits of "Zombie Nation": you can see and hear what's going on and it contains no rape. Now I will go wash my eyes with some quality schlocky splatter sleaze, as the NetFlix gods just delivered the director's cut of "Pieces."
posted by SoulReaper at 12:03 PM
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