Creature (1985)

1985
Directed by William Malone
Starring Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Lyman Ward, Robert Jaffe, Diane Salinger, Marie Laurin and Klaus Kinski

Creature is an interesting little beast of an '80s horror flick.  It's not good by any conventional definition, but in the realm of all the Alien ripoffs, I've got to hand it to this movie for no other reason other than that it actually does feel like a movie.  'Cus let me tell you something (brother), I've seen some crappy horror films set in space.  'Memba Star Crystal?  I 'memba.  In contrast to that film and many others, this film has actors that actually fit that descriptor and production values that, while they aren't Ridley Scott, are at least closer to that standard than any film with this plot has a right to have.  High praise from the Lick Ness Monster.

Right about now is where I tell you the personal background I have with the film in question.  With Creature, I didn't see the film as a kid or even in college.  I first read about it in college on one of my favorite blog sites, and had it on the back burner for several years before finally finding an old beat-up VHS tape online.  Yeah, I own a VHS copy of this film and that is how I re-watched it in preparation for this review.  Old-school all the way, baby.  When it comes to crappy sci-fi/horror films, this is actually the ONLY way to go, because the experience of watching it with the telltale grain and lines of being watched many times as a rental probably added a good half-star rating.  If I'd watched the Leprechaun films this way, who knows, maybe I wouldn't have quit doing this blog for almost a full calendar year.  So I guess the point of this meandering paragraph is that VHS rules.  Now that all of that introductory drivel designed to make myself sound like I plan these things out in a manner other than scribbled notes during my down time at work is out of the way, let's get to the film.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.  One spaceship/space station is invaded by an unseen evil force, and another one is sent to salvage the operation.  Said salvage ship then encounters whatever it was that caused the catastrophe in the first place.  It's the plot of something like 12,738 sci/horror films.  Spoiler alert - it's also what we get here.  The specifics are that it's a space station that gets decimated on Saturn's Titan moon, and that the crew was largely German which helps us out later with the casting of the one survivor.  The sequence is actually fairly well-done from an execution and special effects standpoint, with the crew finding this weird-looking egg that promptly hatches.  Whatever is inside kills the dick out of everyone on the station, and the thing does its job well.  Time for the rescuers to arrive. 

Something that I love about all of the lower-budgeted variations of this plot is how the crew of the salvage ship almost always universally are a bunch of people who don't get along.  You'd think that the crews of these ships would be a pretty tight-knit unit, but nope, it's primarily bitchy douchebags.  This includes Lyman Ward, a.k.a. the guy who played Ferris Bueller's dad, and a few other jokers.  The main characters are Captain Davison (Stan Ivar, who I recognize from exactly zero other films) and the aforementioned Lyman Ward as his assistant David Perkins.  Ward was really good as Ferris' father, but he's unfortunately a big block of cardboard here.  There's also the ship's doctor (who isn't worth mentioning by name), security officer Melanie Bryce (Diane Salinger), Beth Sladen (Wendy Schaal), and the ship's romantic couple, Jon (Robert Jaffe) and Susan (former Penthouse pet Marie Laurin).  I don't think it's spoiler-ific to anyone who might sit down to watch this film that as you watch it Davison and Melanie are the only ones who don't immediately stand out as future victims.  Everyone else is either annoying or entirely disposable, and this method of writing was the first big mistake in the epic script of Creature.

It doesn't take long for the creature to make its presence known.  The first victim?  Surprisingly, slutty Susan.  Most movies like this at least keep this character around to make her especially dislikable for a big crowd-pleasing death later on, but nope.  First one.  I can't say that I blame the director; the quotient of Marie Laurin's scorching hotness is inversely related to her acting ability.  At least we got to see her naked first, and it's an undisputed masterpiece.  The crew finds all of the old bunch's dead bodies inside the space station, and this is where we get a hint of this movie's slightly larger-than-normal budget.  The station...actually looks like a station, and while the music is pretty much awful, the atmosphere ain't half-bad.  It's at least good enough to distract us from the surviving characters.

Hey, kids, it's Klaus Kinski!  You might remember him from movies such as the 1978 remake of Nosferatu...and several other films to be stated later.  Actually, I have seen him in a few things, and he's almost always good.  He's easily the best thing about this film.  He's the surviving crew member from the last ship, and his job is to essentially provide exposition to the new guys and then croak as soon as it becomes convenient.  It might not sound like much...but it's a key role, trust me.

So a few words about how this is a horror film.  The creature in this film is kind of a mix between John Carpenter's The Thing and just a straight-up zombie film.  The thing likes to attach itself to victims with a "parasite" version (Alien much?) and then it transforms into a new host, but kind of a zombified version of its new host.  For an indication of what we're dealing with, Marie shows up after she dies and stripes naked to entice a heartbroken Jon to venture outside onto the moon's surface, where she immediately removes his helmet to let him asphyxiate.  This kind of stuff is Shakesperian.  Sarcasm aside, it's a good way to save money on the budget by having the "jumping from body to body" trope, but the creature itself does show up in the final trimester to sabotage the ship and do other fascinating stuff.  Once it DOES show up in its full form, the design is actually pretty impressive all things considered.  Not Queen Alien quality, but decent.

This film is kind of an odd one with me.  Before watching it, I knew it would be right up my alley, and it was.  But not in the way that I ever wanted to watch it again until two weeks ago.  A lot of horror films that I don't like as much seem to start off with a good concept (I love horror movies, and they rope me in easily!) and then fall apart once they start offing people.  This one is different.  It starts off terminally slow and boring, but gradually gets better as it goes along.  The final trimester or so once the script goes full "s**t hits the fan" on us is pretty fun.  You won't be pissing yourself in terror or anything, but it's fun.  Unfortunately, though, some people had to survive this movie, and that we go to epic fail mode.  If you're looking for a horror flick that will get you emotionally invested, you're not gonna find it here.

Time to dispense some James Cameron-esque judgment.  Creature gets ** out of ****.  It's definitely worth a watch if you like cheesy sci-fi/horror films, but if you don't, you're not going to find much to convert you.  Just stick with Alien.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

1994
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Starring Robert De Niro, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, Aidan Quinn, Ian Holm and John Cleese

My many, many loyal fans no doubt read last week's review of Bram Stoker's Dracula, a slick, big-budget adaptation of the classic novel that aimed to be a more faithful adaptation of the book than ever before with the benefit of a truly awesome cast.  The formula was successful enough that a mere two years later we were graced with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a film in the same vein with a similar budget and a cast that ranked slightly behind Coppola's movie on the hoity-toity factor.  Another big bonus?  We get to see Robert De Niro with a layer cake of makeup cutting promos about the meaning of his life.  And that's it for this review.  I kid, I kid.  The end of the story is that this film wasn't QUITE as successful as Bram Stoker's Dracula, but it still made a nice return.  Hell, it even got its own Super Nintendo game.

The movie was largely the brainchild of Kenneth Branagh, the guy who sat behind the director's chair and the primary dude in front of it despite De Niro's spot above him on the marquee.  It also had a script co-written by Frank Darabont, a dude who is well-known to horror fans as perhaps the most beloved adapter (?) of Stephen King novels ever.  The result is a movie that definitely shows how much talent it employed.  It has atmosphere, practical visual effects, really convincing and awesome exteriors and interiors...you name it.  In 1994, De Niro also wasn't quite as big of a deal as he was today.  He was definitely RESPECTED as all get out, but he was still a LONG way off from the parody of himself that he is now.  The dude gave it his all as Frankenstein's Monster in the flick.  To say nothing of anybody else who is in this movie (and look at that list above), he definitely steals it.  Enough chit-chat.  Time for this dog and pony show to start.

It has a framing device VERY similar to the novel, as a sea captain played by the woefully underrated Aidan Quinn on his way to the North Pole is stuck in the ice and spots a man foraging around outside.  The man, of course, is Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and he has a story to tell.  In flashback form, we're given the people in his life who provide him all the motivation that he needs.  There's his adopted sister Elizabeth, who grows up to be played by 1994 Helena Bonham Carter.  This means that she is smokin' hot and it is thus totally understandable that she is the love of Frankenstein's life.  Things were different in the late 1700s, so what are you gonna do.  As the flashback stuff ends, Frankenstein's mother dies, prompting the good future doctor's obsession with conquering death.

Let's talk about Kenneth Branagh in this movie, kids.  Again, the character is very faithful to the novel.  He's definitely not a hero.  He's also definitely not a villain.  Antihero?  Also, not quite.  Doctor Frankenstein in this go-round is complex, a guy who is driven by his need to bring someone back from the dead and does some very strange things because of it.  With the way he's written, playing him was definitely no small feat, but Branagh was more than game for it.  Since I'm starting to sound like a snooty English major, it might be time to move on from this subject. 

By this point, we've met several of the supporting characters.  Frankenstein is deep into his relationship with Elizabeth, close friends with Henry Cleval (Tom Hulce) and the student of Professor Waldman (John Cleese).  The murder of the latter sets the plot in motion, as Frankenstein finally believes that he has the means to cheat death.  Stealing the body of Waldman's murderer and the brain from Waldman himself, he goes about creating his new body, promptly bringing it back to life and recoiling in horror at what he has done.

Yeah, it's a story that you're more than familiar with if you've even a cursory fan of horror stuff.  But I can guarantee you that what you're NOT used to is how this plays out from this point on.  For starters, this Monster isn't quite Monsterly.  The biggest manifestation of this?  He actually TALKS.  Not so much at first, but he turns into a regular poet laureate as this thing progresses.  We get to see what he does pretty in depth after escaping Frankenstein's lab, taking up residence in a poor family's barn and learning English from an elderly blind man.  It might sound silly, but it's a strangely moving sequence.  Eventually, the Monster learns how to read.  And when he reads Frankenstein's own journal, he goes for revenge.  I know I've said this already, but it bears regurgitating - De Niro is awesome in this movie.  I would even put it up there with his best performances, just a shade below Travis Bickle and miles ahead of anything he's done since, oh, 1998.  Isn't that right, Focker?

People new to what Frankenstein is all about need to know this:  with a few notable exceptions, the movie adaptations all follow the tried-and-true formula that it's kind of a cat-and-mouse game between the doctor and his creation.  In this one, we even get a few emotional scenes as the Monster tracks Frankenstein down and asks him why he has been created in a scene that actually came close to eliciting tears from yours truly.  But don't tell anybody that.  But...it's not like anyone reads this, so what difference does it make?  Really, the whole way that this story unfolds is unsatisfying, particularly when it the Monster learns the best way to hurt Frankenstein.

The first person that I either blame or give credit to depending on my stance on a movie is the screenwriter, and I've got to hand it to both Darabont and his co-writer Steph Lady on this one.  Yeah, it's book faithful.  But it's faithful in a way that's WAY better than you'd ever expect, because let me tell you something (brother) - I did not like that book.  Like, at all.  I said last week that I really loved Bram Stoker's actual "Dracula" book as a kid, but this one was torture.  It's full of long diatribes that go nowhere and words like "thee" and "thine" all over the place, and I don't have the patience for that stuff.  This script modernizes the language while also being pretty damn convincing for its time period.  The characters are also ALL handled deftly, from the main eventers (Frankenstein, the Monster and Elizabeth) to the midcarders (Cleval, Waldman, Captain Walton, and a really great side performance from Richard Briers as the blind grandfather who befriends the Monster at hte farm).  In short, it's all done in a way to make the conclusion emotionally satisfying, and it WORKS, dammit!

I think that's the big reason why I enjoy this film more than Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Yeah, that one had the more famous director, all kinds of Tim Burton-esque dark atmosphere and tons of arty blood and tits being thrown at you.  And while it was definitely an awesome movie to look at, it ultimately wasn't very emotional.  This movie isn't quite as pretty, but it's also more powerful.  And that, folks, is about the highest praise that I can level at a movie these days.  It's not perfect by any means; there's a bit of a stretch in the middle involving Frankenstein preparing for his wedding.  But when this movie throws its emotional wallops at you, believe me, they deliver - especially the final 20 minutes or so that rank right up there with some of the most eerie and disturbing stuff you'll ever see. 

*** 1/2 out of ****.  My FAVORITE Frankenstein movie of all time is still the 1931 James Whale-Boris Karloff masterpiece.  However, if you're looking for pure emotional power with some awesome performances, go with this one.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

1992
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins and Keanu Reeves

Yeah.  A Dracula flick.  See that marquee up above?  It's not just for decoration, people.  I'm pretty much a slasher movie fan first and foremost, but I dig almost all types of horror.  In the past few years, old-school Gothic horror has become something that I've gone from total apathy towards to a genuine affection for, but forget all that stuff that was designed to make me sound smart.  Dracula rocks, and the movies featuring this character tend to be 100% sliced awesome.  Amazingly enough, I am one of the few people on Earth who actually read the book before seeing ANY film adaptations, which has to be some kind of beautiful disaster miracle.  I've said in the past that The Shining was the first truly adult novel that I ever read, and Dracula followed suit.  The first film that I saw?  The movie in question today, but I can't say that I wasn't damn intrigued about this one well before taping it off HBO ('memba that?).

A few years before reading that book, this movie was unleashed on the world.  And I do mean unleashed.  I was in third grade when this bomb dropped, and I was very intrigued by everything that I saw regarding this movie.  Everything about it from the marketing to the buzz to the cast indicated that this flick was a big deal.  And it was.  This was Francis Ford Coppola's first movie after The Godfather Part III, and this is an example of the rare horror film with backing.  A big budget, the most talented set and costume designers, a popular cast, you name it, this movie had the benefits.  And it paid off.  The flick was a HUGE international hit, grossing some $215 million dollars.  It was also nominated for a few Oscars.  And it featured the guy who played Hannibal Lecter ripping vampire girls' heads off.  25 years later, does it hold up?  Well, allow me to be your ever-loyal reporter.

Now, this statement isn't absolute by any stretch, but out of all the Dracula films I've seen, the first thing you need to know about Bram Stoker's Dracula is that the title is accurate.  It's VERY faithful to the book.  It's not exactly a 100% translation, but it's closer than anything that came before.  In short, you're not going to see Renfield laughing like an old Ford pickup in this one.  The book was cool in that it was told in tons of different points of view, and almost always not from a straight narrative.  It was journals and tapes and phonograph recordings that we were reading, and it lent the whole thing this almost documentary-like feel.  The script here by James Hart tries to do the same thing, and it's mostly successful.  It's in the specifics where this movie busts out its memorable stuff, some good, and a few of them not so good.

Just like the book, the movie begins with Jonathan Harker, a lawyer called to the castle of Count Dracula to preside over his purchase of a new home in London.  If you've never read a review of this movie before, Harker is played by Keanu Reeves and...he's pretty bad.  I actually like Keanu a lot as an actor, but he was so far out of his depth here trying to seem sophisticated and speak with a British accent.  Fortunately, everything else about this movie is here to distract us here as we go into the castle.  Still to this day, the set design in this flick is INCREDIBLE and the castle is the early star.  Of course, it also has Gary Oldman...or rather, Gary Oldman in pure white makeup and a fright wig.

Yes, folks, Gary Oldman plays the Count in this film.  He's an amazing actor, and he establishes this from his first scene on camera with Keanu "Dude"-ing his way through the Harker lines.  The opening segments of the film detail Harker's incarceration in the castle, his meeting with Dracula's brides (and what a scene that is - it's a Patrick Bateman-esque undisputed masterpiece featuring certified ten-star hottie Monica Bellucci), and his various attempts at escape.  There's also the connection that he has waiting for him back in London - namely, his fiance, Mina Murray.

With Harker stuck in the castle, the script launches (literally) to London where we meet all of the supporting characters in rapid-fire succession.  With the exception of Winona Ryder, the casting is absolutely spot-on with all of these people.  Sadie Frost as Lucy and especially Richard E. Grant as Dr. Seward are minor revelations here, but if you can name a character from the book, they're represented here and represented well.  Cary Elwes is Arthur Holmwood, Billy Campbell is Quincey Morris, Tom Waits is Renfield, and then the guy that the whole movie was designed to put over like Roman Reigns, Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Van Helsing.

Amazingly, Hopkins' role in this film was supposed to lead to some kind of franchise featuring Van Helsing hunting monsters.  It was also supposed to happen fairly quickly after the November, 1992 [i]Bram Stoker's Dracula[/i] release date.  But this project was put on the back burner.  Like, hard.  For over a decade, it sat in development hell, to the point where we eventually got Van Helsing over a decade later with no connection to this film and with the goddamned Wolverine as the main character.  Just like Oldman, Hopkins is simply awesome and he commits here with everything he has in him.  Still...I'll take Peter Cushing over him.  Call it glandular.

The middle sections of this film lose some momentum, ironically due to the thing that it deviates from the book in the most severe way.  More than any other adaptation of Dracula, this film really was a dark, erotically-charged romance, all built around the idea that Mina is Dracula's former bride reincarnated.  It's an interesting take on the story, I must say, but a lot of it is built on Mina being a compelling character.  Ryder tries, but much like Keanu, she's no Gary Oldman, and a lot of their scenes together kind of fall flat.

Another thing worth commenting on here is all of the LOOKS that Dracula has in this film.  Within the film's running time (and it's a long one - it goes on 2 1/2 hours, which is a very risky proposition for a horror film, but it just BARELY manages to feel justified for making us sit and watch a scary movie for that long), we see the gimpy old man from the opening sections, the handsome man that Oldman himself was at the time this movie was filmed, a bizarre "wolf man" creature, and whatever the hell he's supposed to be at the end as everyone comes hunting for him.  Maybe it wouldn't be so jarring if all of it wasn't done SO WELL; while a couple of these visages are kind of misses in concept, they're major successes in execution.  Coppola will forever get brownie points with me for one thing here, as he refused to use any CGI and did everything practically because he felt this would be much more authentic with the time period that the film was set in.  The result?  It's still a gorgeous movie to look at, while the 2004 Van Helsing looked outdated roughly three years after it came out.  You can't beat practical effects, kids.

Now comes the segment of this review where I have to tell you what I liked and disliked in a bit more detail.  It's kind of a difficult task.  I will never NOT like a horror movie with such obvious love for its source material and attention to detail in this one.  I enjoy the hell out of Bram Stoker's Dracula for how it looks and feels.  Watching it a few days ago actually made me a little sad, because this was a magical time period when film-makers actually KNEW how to make an atmosphere and transport you to a different world.  Within 18 months, we had this, Batman Returns and Jurassic Park.  Shortly after this, CGI would take over, and while movies became much easier to make, they just lost that sense of wonderment that was present here.  So ten stars to this flick for its ability to seem like an experience.

Where it doesn't hold up so well is in its actual story.  It's SO rapid-fire and in-your-face that the whole thing doesn't exactly unfold.  Following the story is really kind of jarring.  And as I've already mentioned, the whole love story THING between Dracula and Mina just really isn't there.  I get the impression that what screenwriter Hart was going for here was a big, powerful tear-jerker ending as the Count bites it (/horrible pun), but instead, it's just kind of there.  Thus, while this movie does have the boast of being really faithful to the novel, from a storytelling standpoint, I'll take the first Hammer adaptation Horror of Dracula any day of the week over this one.  And that film was pretty damn technically impressive for its time, too.

So...does this movie hold up?  The answer is yes, and I give Bram Stoker's Dracula *** out of ****.  Yeah, it's got its faults (dude), but Oldman, Hopkins, and Richard E. Grant at the top of their game AND ungodly sets and costumes?  This one is still more than worth checking out.

Zombie Nightmare (1986)

1986
Directed by Jack Bravman
Starring Adam West, Tia Carrere, Shawn Levy and Jon Mikl Thor

I'm sure that I've proclaimed my love for Mystery Science Theater 3000 on this blog before, so I'll spare everyone the re-re-re-iteration of how awesome that show is.  I owe my love of bad B-movies, micro-budget sci-fi, and even partly horror flicks to it, and it's a debt that I'll never be able to repay.  These days, it even seems to be making quite the comeback.  A new season is on the horizon after a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, and to build up the hype, Netflix has just released a 20-episode "Best-of" collection for everyone to freely peruse.  The movie in question today is one of those episodes, and it's also one of the few movies featured on the show that I've actually seen in its un-MSTed form.

Released in 1986, this movie had to be some kind of labor of love for everyone involved.  It was written by a dude named John Fasano, and he also has a cameo in the movie as the first guy who gets killed.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert (overused phrase #3).  One of the main stars is John Mikl Thor, he of the amazingly named heavy metal band Thorkestra, and the dude also performs most of the background music in the film.  It's also got a fairly recognizable cast, all things considered, but we'll get to them in due time.  Finally, I've got to comment on the atmosphere.  This movie was made in Canada, and it's something that I can't quite explain, but low-budget movies from our friends up North just seem to have this certain...quality.  It's kind of a calmness, very different from the hectic feel of so many movies produced here in the States.  When I'm watching a Canadian horror film, time just seems to slow to a crawl and I enter a dreamlike trance state, it's weird.  And while this movie is pretty bad, it definitely fits that bill.  Enough jibber jabber.  Let's get to the flick.

One of the glories of the horror genre is the unapologetic simplicity of their stories.  Zombie Nightmare takes a different approach, at least with its setup.  In fact, it has an unnecessarily complicated intro switch, as we first get the suburban murder of a father who's in the midst of walking his wife and son back from a baseball game.  Yes, folks, I'm serious.  From here, we warp forward some 10 years to the kid from the intro now grown up as John Mikl Thor, complete with an amazing mane of '80s rock and roll hair and the most amazing tank top you've ever seen.  You'll never forget it, that's for sure.  The script establishes that said son (named Tony Washington, for all two people who might be interested) is a nice guy as we watch him beat up a couple shoplifters.  And while the shopkeeper is grateful to Tony, the local group of trouble-making hooligans are decidedly more hostile as they promptly run their party wagon over Tony as he crosses the street.

This would be our requisite group of teenage victim characters, but amazingly, we're not done setting up the premise yet.  Tony's mother takes his body to a voodoo priestess who resurrects his body with the promise of exacting vengeance on his killers, and he goes about doing just that.  Think John Mikl Thor with green ghoul makeup running around with a baseball bat and you've got your villain.  But these characters...yikes.  It's easy to see why this flick was featured in such a popular MST3K episode, because these characters were something else, ranging from cartoon characters to outright nonentities. 

The former is taken care of by Jim, the leader of the group who was actually driving the car that ran Tony over.  He's one bad dude.  For starters, he likes the fact that he killed somebody due to the thrill it provided.  He also repeatedly attempts to charm/creepily stalks a local waitress.  Jim is also played by Shawn Levy, and he's without a doubt the most successful person connected to this movie.  He's directed a whole bunch of movies you've actually heard of, and he's currently an executive producer on Stranger Things, a show that I haven't seen due to the fact that it sounds like yet another ham-fisted attempt at trying to hook '80s horror fans like myself by paying fan service while capturing none of the dirty atmosphere.  Or am I wrong on that one?  At any rate, it's easy to see why Levy made it big, because he did a damn good job acting like he actually cared about Zombie Nightmare.  He chews scenery every chance he gets and really stands out as a dislikable prick, so it's too bad he's not the last one to die.

What else am I missing?  Well, Tia Carrere is in this movie, as one of the partying teens.  She's also pretty damn good in her role for what it is, and, again, it's easy to see why she was destined for bigger and better things including Wayne's World and starring in some of my late-night dreams.  This movie is different from a lot of horror movies in one big regard.  Most slashers focus on a killer who kills indiscriminately, but there's a smaller group of films that are focused on a specific revenge against specific characters.  That can work really well if we care about the characters, but here...not so much.  Especially when our backup group of characters are a group of police officers who aren't connected at all to the main plot, and when one of them is played by Adam West in "clearly not giving a shit" mode. 

I can't help but think that this movie would have been a LOT better with one simple switch: imagine this same story with minimal involvement from the cops (seriously, they take up like 30 minutes of the movie that I'm not going to bother recapping), the three lesser kids biting it first just like they do here, and the final two being Levy and Carrere.  One of the characters is bad, one is good, and we would get a better catharsis when Thor starts chasing them around.  We get one final "crowd pleaser" kill with Levy, and Carrere could have played an awesome final girl.  I don't know, at least this would have worked for me.  Don't say I never offer constructive criticism.

So what we're left with is a prime slice of '80s horror movie cheese.  It's not scary in the least bit, the characters are laughable to the max (particularly that forensics guy with the ridiculous voice), and it was made for almost zero dollars and clearly shows it.  And while the movie definitely isn't GOOD by any conventional standards, it's a fun enough watch for that reason alone.  It's also got an awesome soundtrack of heavy metal starting with Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" over the opening credits, so if you've in the mood for some prime butt rock, look no further.

Rating time.  Zombie Nightmare gets * 1/2 out of ****.  If you buy horror movies strictly expecting quality, you're barking up the wrong tree on this one.  But the "hilariously bad" label definitely applies here, which means that it was GREAT fodder for Mike and the 'Bots.