Puppet Monster Massacre director Dustin Mills turns to live action for his latest effort, which weighs itself down with the ‘Z’ word in the title. If you are expecting another low-budget Romero imitation however, this might come as a pleasant surprise, as Mills has taken a more voodoo-inspired direction while crafting an old-fashioned grindhouse experience.

Yes, this is one of those films with a faux ‘film-look’ effect on the video footage, though to his credit, Mills does a better job with this than most – fewer fake scratches and a slightly washed-out look that feels authentic without drawing attention to itself. And like other recent grindhouse-redux efforts, he’s happy to ladle on plenty of gratuitous gore and nudity – in fact, the film opens with a naked girl being murdered by a psycho killer, and goes on from there, with most of the actresses taking their clothes off before being offed by demonic zombie Pollux, who seems to have a thing for twins. As all this mayhem continues, the monster is being hunted by religious cowboy Frank – groan – Fulci (Josh Eal), one-eyed, one-handed surviving victim Mercy (Jessica Cook) and his own twin brother Castor (Brandon Salkil).

There are some interesting ideas in this film, and not all of them are references to other movies (you’ll see Thriller – A Cruel Picture, Machine Girl, Evil Dead and more in here). The foot-tall mummified monkey who is brought to life with a key in its chest and hands out clues to Frank is a great touch, and impressively handled, given the $1000 budget. The (I assume deliberately) cheesy skeletal zombies that Pollux summons up are amusingly trashy, like inflatable versions of the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts, and while the gore is mostly seen as the after-effect of an off-screen killing, there are one or two impressive moments of GCI (and several rather less effective bits to, it has to be said. The three leads do a solid job, and if the female victims are rather less convincing, I assume that a willingness to disrobe was more important than actual acting chops.

The film unfortunately lets itself down by dragging the story out for almost two hours. A good thirty minutes of this could be removed or edited – the endless dialogue scenes unspooling exposition, a couple of the killings (which start to become a bit repetitive) and a general tightening up of the action would help the film immeasurably. However, fans of unabashedly sleazy horror might find this an amusing distraction anyway; and for the amount of money spent on the project, it’s a remarkable achievement.

DAVID FLINT

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