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Released By: Camp Motion Pictures
Released On: 06-12-2007
Director:Todd Sheets
Cast: Various
Year: Various
The Movies:
Spread across a two disc set courtesy of Camp Motion Pictures the Zombie Bloodbath Trilogy compiles all three film in the series into one handy little package. The long and short of it? Four hours of camcorder-constructed chaos and carnage, shot fast, dirty and cheap.
ZOMBIE BLOODBATH
For some reason the government decided to build a massive subterranean nuclear power plant on top of an Indian burial ground. This is never a good idea. Be it a nuclear power plant, a new suburb or even a bowling alley, don't piss off the dead Indians because it always ends poorly. At any rate, zombies rise and wreak havoc in the plant and then make their way towards the surface where they wreak more havoc across the metropolis that is Kansas City. Thankfully there's a group of hero types who grab some guns and get to work, doing their best to ensure that Kansas City stays safe from the hordes of undead Mid-westerners that are fast approaching.
ZOMBIE BLOODBATH 2: RAGE OF THE UNDEAD
Somewhere out in the boonies is an evil scarecrow that may or may not have some sort of Satanic powers. At any rate, this scarecrow manages to re-animate a bunch of corpses buried in the area, and once they're agile, mobile and hostile the get to chowing down on the living. While this is going on, some bad guys break out of jail and some college kids are cruising around being obnoxious. The bad guys team up with the college kids to fight the zombies and save the day.
ZOMBIE BLOODBATH 3: ZOMBIE ARMAGEDDON
In the future, our government will create zombies to use for whatever but they're gonna screw everything up as the government tends to do and before you know it, zombies are going to travel through time to the present day and wind up in a highschool basement! Thankfully, when that happens some guys will be upstairs teaching karate and the local punks will be serving out their detention time in one of the classrooms. We'll probably be okay cause they'll all team up to stop the zombies.
These movies are bad. Really bad. But they're also a lot of fun. Director Todd Sheets keeps things moving quickly and he makes no false pretenses with his work. These are low budget gore movies made for fans of low budget gore movies and on that level they work. Everyone seems to be having a good time here and if the performances are bad and the gore completely phoney at least there's some love shining through - those involved seem to dig what they're doing here and it shows, even if they don't do it all that well. Enjoyable in a sloppy but completely entertaining way, these three films are as good as any of the other home grown splatter platters made around the same time, if not a little bit better. Sheets isn't so hot with his compositions though there are a few memorable and creative kill scenes in the pictures that make them stand out a little bit from the bazillion other shot on video zombie films that have emerged over the years. The zombie make up is pretty bad but the gore effects aren't as awful as you might think. Some dated fashions and hair styles give the pictures a bit of unintentional humor as do a few obvious blunders evident throughout. Enjoy these for what they are - cheap schlock films made by fans for fans.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.33.1 fullscreen transfer presents these shot on video bad boys in their original aspect ratio and it looks about as good as a pair of two decade old low budget cheapies has any right to look. The picture is soft, as is the case with most 'camcorder' productions of the era, and everything is a bit on the fuzzy side but it's perfectly watchable. Not a reference quality disc by any stretch but it's doubtful the movies looked any better when originally released than they do on this DVD
The audio is on par with the video, in terms of quality, in that it's far from perfect but it's acceptable enough when you take into account the low budget nature of the productions. Dialogue is usually clear and the score and effects don't sound half bad even if at times things are muffled in the mix a bit. Don't expect any alternate language dubs, subtitles or surround mixes here, all we get is the plain vanilla 2.0 tracks, but they does the trick even if they're rather unremarkable.
Sheets and his son offer up commentary tracks for the first two films, though not the third. There are plenty of interesting stories told here, from how money was saved on certain aspects of the production, about shooting locally and using local talent, about how certain effects were pulled off and more.
Each of the three movies in the set gets its own 'making of' featurette that isn't much more than some random footage shot on set while the movies were being made. It's interesting to see some of this footage but some better editing of it would have made it more interesting and more worthwhile.
Rounding out the extras are trailers for other Camp Motion Pictures releases as well as a short film that Sheets made called Dead Things that is truly and genuinely awful to the point where it's hard to make it all the way through.
The Final Word:
As a time capsule, the Zombie Bloodbath Trilogy is a whole lot of sloppy, dumb, gory fun. Good movies these are not but there's a manic enthusiasm evident here that is somewhat infectious, particularly if you were one of those kids who grew up making your own sloppy, dumb, gory movies with a camcorder.