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Released by: Troma
Released on: February 12, 2013.
Director: Joe Badiali, Art Brainard, Shawn Haran, Steven Shea
Cast: Paul Petrus, Michael Santi, Paul Alessi
Year: 2010
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The Movie:
A reasonably new anthology film that comes courtesy of directors Joe Badiali, Art Brainard, Shawn Haran and Steven Shea, 2010's Doomsday County tells four stories, each one linked by the final story. All four stories take place in the same town and within the same short period of time.
The first story is Vampire Academy and it follows a bunch of jock frat boy types who hang out and drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of pizza. When the pizza delivery guy shows up, they invite him in but we soon realize they're not after the pizza so much as they are his blood.
Xenombie is the second story and it follows a bunch of students at a film school as one of them drops a toxic 'Xenon' light bulb. When the glass shatters, some gas escapes and it quickly turns the students into flesh eating zombies. This leaves their teacher, Professor Eddie Tapia (Paul Petrus), to deal with the mess and do what he can to save the day.
The third story Is The Curse Of Doctor Mongoo and it follows two cops, P.T. Chops (Paul Alessi) and Montgomery Kilgore (Mike Santi), who wind up shooting a man after a bar fight. When he hits the ground and his body starts to rot almost instantly, they realize that local mad scientist Doctor Mongoo (John Archer Lundgren) is up to no good again.
In the final story, the one that brings everything together, we meet Betty Beretta (Tara Lightfoot), a punk princess who secretly works as a government agent. When it turns out that the feds have every reason in the world to suspect that an alien invasion is pending, they call her in to do her thing and put a stop to it while there's still time. Meanwhile, Mongoo and his minions are attempting to take over the Fed's base of operations. Betty tries to stop Mongoo but he's more powerful than she realized - but thankfully Professor Tapia, local cops Chops and Montgomery, and even a few vampire frat boys are onboard to lend a helping hand.
Not to be taken seriously at all, Doomsday County quite obviously has its heart in the right place even if it isn't always completely successful. The main problem is one that's typical with anthology films made by multiple directors, and that's that the tone changes fairly drastically between the shorts. If the stories weren't connected this might not be a problem but as the movie does tie everything together in the end, it does make the earlier chapter seem a bit… off. Additionally, there are moments where the acting isn't perfect and some of the jokes fall flat. More often than not though, the humor does work and you've got to love leading lady Tara Lightfoot, a great casting choice for the part who not only looks right for the role but also delivers a pretty decent performance too. The effects are better than you'd probably expect here and the movie is paced well. It's also generally quite well shot and makes good use of color and lighting to create some interesting comic book inspired mood. Not a perfect film, but one that definitely dose amuse and entertain.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Doomsday County arrives on DVD in 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen. For the most part, this transfer is pretty decent, especially when you take into account that this was a low budget indy production. Primary colors are used a lot, loads of reds and blues here to give the movie an interesting feel, and though some scenes suffer from some crush and some compression artifacts, overall the movie looks just fine on DVD.
Audio chores are handled by a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track, in English with no alternate language options or subtitles. The dialogue is easy enough to understand and the levels are well balanced and there are no hiss or distortion related issues. No problems here, the movie sounds pretty decent.
Extras? There are a few. You get a couple of trailers for the feature, trailers for a few other movies that the filmmakers were involved with, a fake Mongoo Industries television commercial, trailers for unrelated Troma properties and a few minutes worth of outtakes. You also get some of those odd Tromatic extras that appear on Troma DVDs the world over, including the completely played out Radiation March, and a goofy short film entitled 'Why Is Lloyd Kaufman Living In A Refrigerator Box?.' An introduction to the feature courtesy of Lloyd Kaufman is also included as are menus and chapter selection for the feature.
The Final Word:
This was more fun than it first looked like it was going to, thanks to a charismatic and appealing leading lady, some surprisingly decent effects work and a good sense of humor. Yes, it does deal in clichés and no, it doesn't really bring anything new to the table but the four shorts that make up Doomsday County are all entertaining enough that, despite the uneven tone, if you're a fan of low budget monster movies, this is worth checking out.
