Monday, June 30, 2014

Film #16: Zombie 5: Killing Birds (1988)


Plot - Although I was hoping this would be like the Italian version of the Birds, I wasn't totally disappointed by the convoluted story. Nothing really makes sense: there's a zombie running around killing people, but it's supposed to somehow linked to a guy who killed a ton of people in the first five minutes. Weird...

Form -  Boring. Half the time the camera's really out of focus, so everyone looks fuzzy. I think this was a problem in Zombie 3 as well.

F/X - Mostly good. The main effect used throughout the film is a sliced throat deal that's obviously just some caked on foam shit. They probably used that one little slit throat thing for every scene! Some of the other visual effects are presented in really weird ways: there's one part where a zombie is holding someone's head out of the back of a car. As the car moves about one inch forward out of some dirt, the person's neck slowly starts to get ripped from their body. Wouldn't the person get pulled out of the car before their head fell off? You don't even see the decapitation really, making it even more confusing. There is a really cool bird pecking out a guy's eye and a zombie bursting through a wall though.

Acting - While the mostly European actors are supposed to be in Louisiana, you wouldn't guess that based on how often their accents change. It's funny that they can nail an American accent if they try, yet they can't seem to pick which one. New Orleans? New York?

Mise en scene - The locales are mostly barren, although one character has the raddest laptop in the entire universe.

Quotables - Most of the quotable lines are great because of the foreign cast. They'll randomly mispronounce words, start slurring together the wrong syllables, etc.

Cool stuff - One death in particular is striking. Three characters are in a barn. A zombie grabs one and starts pulling them up. What ensues is probably the most drawn out somebody-getting-pulled-into-the-ceiling bit ever, with all of the characters screaming and crying for minutes. "It's like I killed him with my own haahhnds" whimpers some Italian guy. It's funny and surreal for mostly the wrong reasons. Also, the birds only do anything twice in the entire film. Yuck.

2.5/7

No comments:

Post a Comment