Die You Zombie Bastards (2005)

This is the worst movie I've ever seen. Before you run to add this to your netflix queue, let me finish. Ok, ready? Again, This is the worst movie I have ever seen AND I don't intend that as a glowing review. This falls into the so bad it's bad category only let's take that a step further. This one is so bad it made my eyes bleed. This film, and I use the term loosely, has not one redeeming quality (well, that's not entirely true. more on that later). The performances suck. The visuals sucks. The writing sucks. The "effects" suck. The director sucks. The production assisting sucks. The makeup sucks. The boom mic operator sucks. Don't get me wrong. All of those things can suck and you can still have an enjoyable movie. Unfortunately, this thing committed the worst crime of all. It WAS boring. Mind numbingly so.

How is it possible to make a movie featuring a serial killing, cannibalistic superhero boring? I'm not sure. Didn't think it possible, but Caleb Emerson, the director, found a way. The movies tagline is "The World's First EVER Serial Killer Superhero Rock'n'Roll Zombie Road Movie Romance". That tagline is, by far, the best thing about this movie. Thanks to these fuckers it will most likely be the first and last movie in the serial killer superhero rock'n'roll zombie genre which is a crying shame. Emerson's biggest mistake was hiring Tim Gerstmar (Red's Breakfast 2: Dawn of the Red) for the lead role of Red, the aforementioned superhero. The guy's idea of acting is puffing out his chest and proclaiming his lines as if he's in a bad high school Shakespeare production. He appears in 99% of the film, so you can imagine how old this gets by the 3rd minute, let alone the 95th. I checked his IMDB page and, not surprising, this and Dawn of the Red are his only two screen credits.

Here is the basic plot. Red and his wife Violet (Pippi Zornoza) enjoy living their days as cannibalistic hippy killers. One night, Red returns from killing some hippies. He opens up his bag of body parts and entrails and he and Violet start making out while lathering themselves up in guts. She presents him with a gift; a superhero costume complete with a cape made out of human flesh and a crotchguard with a severed penis attached (there are a lot of dick jokes in this movie, most involving freakishly large dicks). Red, puffing out chest and reaching his arm to the heavens thanks his "lovely cubesteak". Meanwhile, across the world on Hell Island, Baron Von Nefarious (Geoff Mosher) sees Violet and Red on a white trash talk show. They start having sex on the stage and then Violet kills a girl that tries to stop them. So, of course, Nefarious decides he must HAVE Violet and orchestrates a plan to kidnap her. His plan is successful and now it's up to Red to journey to Skull Castle on Hell Island to rescue her.

Where are the titular zombies you ask? There's a subplot involving three beautiful paleo-archaeologists on Hell Island researching the legendary Half Man Half Fish Amphibious Guy. These girls are pretty much naked the entire time (the ONE redeeming quality i mentioned earlier). Anyway, Baron Nefarious captures them, turns them into green, topless zombies with his zombie ray, and then puts them to work on such important tasks like pounding on his freakishly large penis with hammers. After finishing with this arduous task, Baron Nefarious asks "Now, which one of you is gonna play with my ass?" Again, you would think it would be impossible to make THIS boring.

I guess my first question to the filmmakers would be: Why not just make this a porno? They obviously like dicks and tits. They have no idea how to compose a shot that will actually help maintain viewer interest. The lighting is terrible. It's way too bright and there is zero atmosphere. In other words, they have the perfect skill set for pornographic filmmaking. The acting is just a notch below most porn level acting, but they can work with it I think. The film Spacenuts probably has better acting. The gore is fake, which usually is not a problem, except they purchased their gore at a party store. These guys definitely could make an ok porno. Although porn with a story is not really my cup of tea, I think there are lots of people out there that get off on them. They could have even used the same cast because, let's face it, none of these people are going anywhere in the legit film industry and that INCLUDES Troma pictures AND 99% of Troma pictures are terrible (the lone exception being The Toxic Avenger. Poultrygeist looks promising though. I hear Tromeo & Juliet was ok.). I think Emerson probably made this film as an audition for Troma. Maybe that's his problem. He set his sights WAY too low.

The only way this film could have worked is if the actors played it straight. There is nothing worse than watching a movie where it's obvious the actors are in on a joke, only the joke isn't really a joke. Instead of a joke, it's actually just a piece of dried crusty shit. If played straight, this could have been damned funny. Instead, we have a bunch of retards emoting their brains out while winking to the audience; "Look how clever we are? Aren't we clever for a bunch of retards??".

Just to give you an idea of how funny this entire experience was, I'll spoil the two best jokes for you. After Violet has been kidnapped, Red must search the world for her. He swims across the Atlantic and ends up in Sweden. He questions an inkeeper, who only speaks swedish, but can understand his english. Har har. He asks her if she speaks english. Her reply in subtitles? "No, just in subtitles". Har dee fucking har har. The next joke comes at the 1:20 mark of the film. Red meets his long lost father, who asks him to recount his journey. We're shown a title on the screen that says "one hour and twenty minutes later". Guffaw. These jokes didn't even make the final cut of Repossessed.

I really don't want to waste any more of my time writing about this thing, but I will. What else is there? Like I said before, the guy playing Red overacts while skipping merrily from scene to scene. He yells every line. Seriously. If there was a little bit of this, I could deal with it. Unfortunately, this crap goes on for 95 minutes. I suppose the movie might have been moderately enjoyable on a very basic level if Red had been played by someone else. Anyone else. Pippi Zornoza wasn't much better. At least she had a nice rack. Pippi? Seriously. Smut. It's in your future. I couldn't tell if the actor playing Lord Nefarious was wearing makeup or if he purchased his mask at the mall. My favorite characters were the 3 zombie paleo-archaeologists and Kid Fantastico (the sidekick no one cares about). I still wish them ill will though.

Actually, the filmmakers did score a coup when they managed to convince a couple of important performers to appear in this movie. The first cameo would be Hasil Adkins (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things). I guess Hasil is some sort of rockabilly legend or something. He appears briefly in the beginning to ramble on incoherently for a few minutes about some shit. I didn't really understand what he was saying. I do know he smokes and drinks a lot. He also shows up in an even less coherent scene towards the end. I'll be honest. I have no idea who this guy is, but he's billed on the cover of the DVD, so he must be pretty big. Unfortunately, his sagging man boobs are forever etched in my mind. Hasil died in 2005 and the movie is actually dedicated to him. Um, I guess that's a sweet gesture probably similar to having an issue of Hustler dedicated to you and then having the magazine rolled up and shoved up your ass before burial. Almost the same thing.

The second cameo is porn legend Jamie Gillis (Gang Bang Girl 9 & Walking Toilet Bowl 1). Ok, I'd never heard of him before either, but at least HE was in porn. He looked pretty old though, so I hope he's no longer performing in that particular business. He appeared as some character named Stavros and, by far, did the best job of acting. He was the only actor that played it straight. Unfortunately, he was randomly knifed to death about a minute into his scene. I could hear the director in the background say "that'll teach you to play it straight in my fucking movie". I think they might have killed him for real.

The music was umemorable. Paul Leary, of The Butthole Surfers, wrote the score. Really?? Leary also produced Too High To Die by the Meatpuppets. That's actually a fantastic album. Of course, it's from 1991 and I can't remember the last Butthole Surfers album that came out. Maybe Leary is hard up for work. He should ask to have his name removed from the DVD because I have a feeling his name is a major selling point. I'm just trying to help the guy out. The Buttholes might not let him back in the band if they see this thing.

This movie sort of proves that you can't go into something INTENDING to make a bad movie. If you do, what you'll end up with is just, well, bad. Bad movies are not created out of spite. Spite for the genre. or worse, spite for the audience. You really have to believe in what you're creating. These assholes thought they were making a joke. Well, the jokes on them because their movie sucks. I kissed my remote when it was finally over. With any justice, the film careers of everyone associated with this garbage are over as well.

When I say "film careers" I'm not referring to porn.

Just a quick note: I borrowed this movie from my friend Dan. He ACTUALLY bought it. Let's all laugh derisively at Dan. Don't worry Dan. I used to own Cabin Boy. We've all been there.

One more note: This is the last time I will refer to porn in my reviews for quite a while. I promise.