| Zombie Chronicles Released: 2001 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Zombie Nuts and Bolts: A whore and a bum meet each other and bedazzle the shit out of one another with tales of ghostly horror. All this free info and the guy doesn't even ask for a blowjob. What gives? Summary: Tara Woodley is an attractive thirty-year-old journalist who is driving to the small midwestern town of Scopesboro in order to write about a few of the area's local legends. Tara is plagued by strange dreams in which she is running around a dilapidated barn chased by zombies. Not bad as far as dreams go. I have this one really weird reoccurring nightmare where a bunch of hermaphrodite midgets with fish heads for hands are chasing me around a carousel singing "My Baby Loves the Hanky Panky" by the Shondells. Weird, huh? Anyway, Tara is driving along not paying attention to what she is doing when she believes that she runs down an old man standing in the middle of the road. She brakes her truck and runs around the back to see if the old fuck is okay. The gentleman's name is Ebenezer Wittington Jackson. Eb seems to be just fine and he has strikes up a conversation with Tara. He agrees to tell her about some of the ghost stories that haunt Scopesboro. They walk over to an old dilapidated barn and Tara recognizes it from her dream. Eb shoots back a couple shots of cheap whiskey and begins telling her the first of two tales. The first of our little vignettes involves a Viet Nam drill sergeant named Ben Draper and his wife Marsha. The story takes place in 1971 despite the fact that Ben drives a sport utility vehicle. But I guess Chevy hadn't worked all the bugs out of the 71 models yet because the damn thing breaks down on the side of the road. Ben tells Marsha that he's going to go look for a gas station somewhere. He gives her a gun and tells her to stay by the car. While he's away, a couple of young studs pull up and try to rape Marsha. But Marsha's quick with the gun and she manages to scare the boyos off. Now Ben on the other hand is having no luck trying to find gas. He flops around in the woods ducking and weaving as if he were avoiding mortar fire. On his way back towards the car, he finds Marsha in the middle of the woods strapped to a tree with dynamite rigged up all around her. Apparently somebody else thought it would be fun to fuck with Marsha as well. Before Sgt. Ben can take action, a strange hollow voice emanates from the trees warning him away from his wife's body. If he tries to rescue her, the stalker will detonate the bombs. From here on, he decides to toy with Draper by running him through all sorts of Marine Corps drills. The mysterious terrorist seems to know everything there is to know about Ben. He has him do 30 push ups, 40 sit ups, jumping jacks and even makes him run a mile. Lastly, he throws a shovel in Ben's direction and instructs him to dig a marine regulation foxhole in under fifteen minutes. I'm not exactly sure what differentiates a marine regulation foxhole from your average garden variety one, but I'm inclined to think that they are much more stylish and palatial. Despite his athletic build, Ben Draper's body can no longer handle the stress. The stalker emerges from the trees as this large skull-faced looking guy with an army helmet. Ben falls over dead from a heart attack. Now you come to find out, that the guy is not a zombie or anything but is actually a boyfriend that Marsha has been fucking on the side. At some point, Marsha had heard Ben tell her about a marine corporal named Donald P Wilson. During the war, Sgt Draper ran the guy so hard he forced the soldier to have a heart attack. Unwilling to share responsibility for the death, he buried him out in the woods. Repulsed, Marsha told the story to her new boyfriend and the two conspired to get revenge on Ben for the death of poor Donald Wilson. Now as the two murderers walk away arm in arm, the zombie of the real Donald Wilson emerges and drives his fist through the boyfriend's stomach ripping out all of his juicy innards. He then chases Marsha back to the car where he tears her eyeballs out of her head. Ironically, the two losers who earlier tried to rape Marsha are blamed and arrested for the crime. Ebenezer's next story involves three campers. Jason, Melinda and Buzz are walking through the woods, kicking back some Jack Daniels and looking to find a good spot to pitch a tent. Buzz and Melinda are dating and both of them are pretty stewed at this point. Jason is the only one who seems to be in any way levelheaded. As they continue along their trek, Jason recounts the tale of an old western outlaw whose family was buried out in these parts. In 1884 Wild Jim Conklin was considered so mistrustful and insane that he stormed into a church during Sunday Mass and shot everyone inside. He thought his wife Crazy Helen was sleeping around on him, so he killed everyone in town just to make sure she didn't accidentally snag her twat on somebody else's dick. And Wild Jim didn't refer to his wife as Crazy Helen for nothing. Apparently, she had a penchant for chewing people's ears off and eating them. Now Jason relates this old tale to Buzz and Melinda who naturally think he's full of shit. They get a little spooked out however when a strange Native American girl runs past them. They quickly forget about her and Buzz takes a piss over a piece of wood set up as a headstone for Wild Jim Conklin's body. Jason criticizes Buzz for doing that, but the latter pretty much ignores him. Later on, they set up camp and Buzz sends Jason out to get firewood leaving him enough time to lay some pipe with wily ole Melinda. While Jason is gone, the body of Wild Jim Conklin rises from the grave and attacks the tent. Buzz screams like a baby monkey and runs away. Buzz eventually runs into Jim (literally) and the two take off to try and find Melinda. Wild Jim's zombie catches up to the trio and rips Buzz's head off of his body. Jason tries to direct Melinda towards the highway, but the two get split up as that goofy Indian broad comes bounding through the woods again. Crazy Helen's zombie appears and tears Melinda's face clean off. She then attacks Jason and bites his ear off adding one more trophy to her collection. You come to find out that the Indian chick is the ghost of Wild Jim and Crazy Helen's daughter from the late 1800s. The zombie/ghost family walks off towards the horizon content in the knowledge that they have avenged the desecration of their resting place. *Sniff*. I love a happy ending. Now after Ebenezer finishes this particularly tall tale, Tara comes to realize that he is full of shit. After all, if no one involved with these adventures survived them, then how do their stories get passed down right? Eb feels as if he is no longer useful to the poor girl and begins to walk away. Tara tries to chase him down but quickly loses him. She drives on down the road until she finds two rednecks working on their broke-ass pickup truck. She inquires with them as to whether they have seen Ebenezer Jackson. They both reply by indicating that Ebenezer died twenty-five years ago in a drunk driving accident. Spooky huh? Tara walks away until a group of zombies attack her and drag her down into a pit to gnaw on her body parts. The End. Acting/Dialogue: The acting blows. I can't say it any more plainly than that. Admittedly, I'm not sure if some of the acting is deliberately crappy of if this film just boasts the worst kind of chemically treated mutants never even considered for membership in the Screen Actors Guild. Joe Haggerty plays the old coot Ebenezer Jackson. Eb speaks in a loud hollow monotone voice that reminds me of the voice-over guys from Dragonball. He's actually pretty funny all things considered. Listening to him speak is like having bad sex; you have no desire to continue, but at the same time you can't find it in your heart to turn away. The only actor worth saving in this mess is Mike Coen, the guy who played Jason. I can easily see him portraying Jason Priestley's stunt double in a Beverly Hills 90210 reunion. Actually, I don't see many future career prospects for either Coen or Priestly. The rest of the cast isn't even worth mentioning. These clowns had very simple lines, and yet failed to deliver them with any kind of believability. How do you fuck up a scream of terror? Gore: I was quite surprised at the admirable quality of the gore. Its nowhere near Romero level mind you, but considering that the movie was made on a budget roughly equitable to the weekly salary of your average McDonald's drive-thru window clerk, it really stands as the pinnacle of achievement for this film. Some of the gore is stringy and a little fake looking, but the FX crew makes up for this with a rather stark looking ear-chomping scene and several other enticing mutilations. Fulci would be proud. Guilty Pleasures: For the life of me, I cannot understand why there is no nudity in this film. They even dare to offer up a sanitized boob-free sex scene! What the fuck? These cheesy flicks don't offer much, but surely the director could've convinced his sister to take her top off for a little added bonus. However if you rent this puppy on VHS you'll find a string of previews for other films by Brain Damage Home Video which includes some nice little flesh-bearing sequences. The Good: This movie actually could have been pretty decent had it been produced under a satisfactory budget. The framework of the script is not altogether different from Creepshow or Tales From the Hood and the individual ghost stories are pretty cool. I like the Ben and Marsha story because it provides an innovative little twist at the end. These fucked up "twist" endings are what made old EC Comics titles like Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror so popular back in the 50s. The Campers' tale likewise tells an intriguing little story-within-a-story. I was totally pulled into the mania of Wild Jim Conklin. Truth to tell, I wouldn't mind seeing a movie that dealt with just him. The zombie effects are surprisingly decent. Which is to say, they don't come off as a bunch of extras wearing makeup. Wild Jim and Crazy Helen are the coolest of the flesh eaters but the troupe of deadheads we see towards the end are pretty wild looking as well. I love the character of Ebenezer. He is so off-the-wall and moronic that its impossible not like this guy. I can easily see him co-starring in a Naked Gun movie or something of that nature. Eb has this tendency to give Tara a new nickname with every line of dialogue. I thought this added a nice bit of humor to the moment and helped to paint Eb as something a bit more charismatic than your standard hitchhiker. There's a popular catch phrase that encircles cult movies like vultures over a rancid kill. This is known as the "so-bad-its-good" tagline. Zombie Chronicles definitely falls into this category. These sorts of movies appeal to a specific type of viewer only. Now this is not to say that every shoestring catsup film is deserving of this platitude. There are many films that are strategically placed under the heading of "so-bad-they-fucking-suck category". But I think Zombie Chronicles has enough charm and goofiness that it's easy to overlook its contrivances and have a lot of fun with. If you are the type of viewer who demands A-list quality entertainment, then put this puppy back on the shelf where it's been collecting dust ere these many long years. This is not for you. But if you are the type that enjoys kicking back with some chums and giving a film the time honored Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment…then give Zombie Chronicles a shot. It can be a real blast if you are in the proper mind frame. I'm definitely going to give the other Brain Damage films a shot. The Bad: What can I say? This movie has all of the cinematic virtues of poop on a stick. This bad boy was shot on video, which adds a distinctive level of odiferous cheese to the ever-growing omelet of cult exploitation. There are a few hilarious looking shots where the camera closes up on a character's face as they are running in fear for their lives. It's obvious that the actor is the one actually holding the camcorder in front of them and their heads bop around out of frame as the viewer begins going into convulsive seizures. I'm also a little bothered by the framing of this turkey. It's pretty much a standard with anthology projects that you need at LEAST three singular stories and one wrap-around story. But here, we only get two. Now Tara doesn't seem all that bright. I'm fairly certain she would've let Eb talk his damn head off all night long. Since the end product only cost them about 12 bucks, surely they could've ponied up enough cash to film one more vignette. The whole thing just feels incomplete. Considering that the two individual yarns are a lot longer than they really need to be, it would have been child's play for a competent editor to whittle them down a bit providing enough time to squeeze in one more tale before tapping the 90-minute running time. Tara is a hard character to get behind. She's easy on the eyes but she's not very believable. Firstly, she's pretty moronic. She's driving down a desolate highway reading a road map. Now this may not seem altogether strange right? Man people get lost and need to balance a road map while keeping their eyes on the road. But Tara is obviously not the type who can multitask. She actually props the map over the entire windshield and completely forgets that she's driving a big ass truck down a highway! She's not even looking! And then she has the gall to act surprised when she runs an old drunk over. But she takes everything in stride after that; a quality I found to be infinitely annoying. She stops the truck and does not seem at all shaken by the fact that this guy just props himself up like nothing ever happened. He's obviously a weirdo and a drunk, but that doesn't stop Tara from inviting him into her vehicle. What the hell is this dingbat's problem? I've run over MANY people in my life and I NEVER offer them a ride afterwards! Of course, I'm also a meticulous sort of a guy, so when I run someone over I make sure that they stay good and dead. But this whore is so desperate for a story that she'll do damn near anything. Her story ends rather abruptly too. Tara is shown to have precognitive dreams, but this is never explained or expanded upon. Why she gets attacked and eaten by zombies is anybody's guess. I guess the writers felt that no one was going to stick with this movie until the bitter end so it didn't really matter how they climaxed it. My biggest problem with the movie is actually in the opening credits. First off, there's this really annoying Satanist guy who intros the film. He's sitting behind a couple of plastic gargoyles spewing out a bunch of nonsense about how overwhelmingly evil he is. This is the kind of guy who dresses up in black robes and supervises the hazing periods for pledges at a college fraternity. From there on, the actual movie starts. But this pisses me off as well, since the movie opens by featuring all of the gory zombie scenes that we are going to see later on! What the fuck is the sense behind this? Would Citizen Kane have become world renowned if they told you what Rosebud was in the BEGINNING of the movie? No, of course not. Would Titanic have become the #1 top grossing film of all time if the audience knew ahead of time that the boat was going to sink? I say thee nay! Great Lines: "What in Hades would you want with a town like that young scamp?" --Ebenezer Jackson "Those are not legends Periwinkle. Legends do not walk the Earth, as do the inhabitants of Scopesboro. -Ebenezer Jackson. "The young think they know everything. The old are truly wise. In between the ages lies an ocean of distrust." -Ebenezer Jackson "The dead always know more than the living. -Ebenezer Jackson Overall Rating: 4 out of 10 severed heads |
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