Bad Movie Review 18 - Redneck Zombies

To get to the pretty decent gore in this one, you need to first sit through an hour of terrible writing, acting, and jokes. It starts when a U.S. Army barrel of toxic waste is found by a hillbilly named Wilbur, played by James H. (Big as a) Housely. This guy is so fat, he makes the cop in Don't Go In The Woods look like Karen Carpenter. Anyway, his discovery is taken by the Clemson family (Pa, Junior, Jethro, and Billy-Bob). Without even bothering to wash out the smoking green substance from the barrel, they decide to use it to brew their moonshine. At the same time, a group of campers "from up North" are on vacation, and they're on a collision course with wackiness! Well, not really. Whoever drinks the 'shine start tripping heavily, and eventually become flesh eating zombies.

Then there's the appearance of "The Tobacco Man", who is like an ice cream man, happily handing out chewing tobacco and cigarettes to kids, wears an Elephant Man-like bag on his head, and talks like Harvey Firestein with a cold. There's a few movie in-jokes, like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre homage involving a hitchhiker. There's one camper (of which I thought was the most likeable character in the entire film), who never once talks, but every single scene he is shown in has him guzzling liquor. Sort of an alcoholic Silent Bob, if you will. There's a flamboyantly gay Army soldier. The characters' names are trying to be cute, like having doctors named Kildare and Casey. One character is named Ferd Mertz (you read it right: that's Ferd, not Fred). Billy Bob Clemson feels he is a woman trapped in a man's body, and insists his family call him Ellie May.

Finally, at the end of the film, we get some really good gore, including one of the best exploding heads I have ever seen in a film. There's plenty of zombie-chompin' and guts everywhere! There's green glowing moonshine (and still people decide to drink it!)! There's hillbillies in Maryland! There's breasts (the girl's character is credited as 'Knockers')! There's backwoods, corn-fed, good ol' boy rednecks! There's zombies!

This is the first Troma movie shot entirely on video.

Big Cheese Award goes to Pericles Lewnes, for going down to Troma, tape in hand, and making Lloyd Kaufman sign a deal for this one.

Big Cheese Award goes to William E. Benson, for playing Jed (Pa) Clemson, and for thinking he was fooling people by playing Tobacco Man with a hood over his head and crediting the name, E.W. Nosneb to it. Think about it.

Big Cheese Award goes to the friends and family of the filmmakers, for playing zombies on a perfectly good weekend, when they could have been hanging out at the mall and playing video games, drinking beer, or watching NASCAR.

I give this one 3 1/2 cheeses.