Sign up to add this to your collection
|
Sign up to add this to your favorites
|
|
29%
Overall Rating
|
|
Ranked #11,995
...out of 20,698 movies
|
Sign up to check in!
|
When a group of expecting young couples head to Burt Fleming's mountaintop hotel for a weekend retreat (and discount abortions), they get more than they bargained for when the fetal undead come back for vengeance.
--TMDb
|
|
Review by Crispy
Added: August 24, 2012
Anytime you bring babies into the horror fold, you're completely changing the dynamic, one way or another. And when said babies are undead post-aborted fetuses out for blood, well that dynamic has fallen into the bowels of irreverence.
Nobody is safe from the economy's recent nosedive, and that includes "Dr." Burt Flemming and his man-servant, Teddy. These two have been making their living performing ten-dollar abortions in the cellar of their hotel the old fashioned way (doing work with a wire coat hanger and chucking the fetus onto a nearby pile), but it's just not paying the bills anymore. In a scheme to bring in some extra revenue, the pair sends out invitation for the inaugural abort-a-thon! Boasting a quick procedure followed by a relaxing weekend at the hotel, they get four expecting couples together and do what they do best. Unfortunately, these abortions are not the only thing they use the basement for. You see, Burt has put together a special blend of moonshine that he claims lets him live forever, and it just so happens that the still has exploded, covering that pile of dead babies with the elixir of life. And these buns are none too happy about leaving the oven prematurely.
Obviously, the movie was filmed on half a budget, so I was willing to forgive some of the shoddier effects, but for the most part they were actually halfway decent. Certainly not three-quarters decent, but halfway. The fetuses were mostly brought to life with barely moveable puppets. Hell, I'm pretty sure they were "animated" by a hand holding the puppets off screen and shaking them around a little bit. While that's hardly a compliment in its own right, they matched the pseudo-comedy tone of the movie, so it worked out beautifully. With that said, there were a few times when our film makers used photoshop to edit out the supports holding them up, and besides the blotches being painfully noticeable, there were a few scenes where they flat out missed pieces of the support. I can forgive iffy effects, but that's just laziness.
The sound needed some work as well. Actually, it needed a lot of work. It quickly became apparent that this particular aspect was sadly neglected early on in the movie. There were far too many scenes where the mic's white noise is almost as loud as the dialogue, and the sound quality and volume levels are subject to jump all over the place, especially when the actor begins talking off screen. I'm sure the equipment isn't cheap by any means, but it'd certainly be a worthwhile investment.
Thus far there have been pretty much nothing but complaints about the technical natures of the film, but with a movie called Zombie Babies, it should be obvious that these aren't exactly the selling point. No, people are going to come to see some horrendously irreverent shit, and the movie delivers in spades. While the film isn't going for full-on belly laughs, I found myself shaking my head, more than a little amused, at the depths of depravity writer/director Eamon Hardiman was willing to sink to. If all the abortion jokes aren't going to do it in their own right, there's also plenty of dysfunctional characters and a few scat jokes to get the job done. Naturally, viewers' mileage may vary on this front. Personally, the shit scenes dropped my enjoyment down a lot, but if you find that stuff funny you'll be tickled pink. For me, it was only one scene (it was a dandy though), so there wasn't too much damage done.
While the acting is obviously in the pits, there's some surprises found throughout. First and foremost, I absolutely LOVED Brian Gunnoe as Burt Flemming. He can't act for shit, but he has charisma for days, and I was grinning every time he was on screen. His counterpart Rob Cobb , playing Teddy, also pulled off the dimwitted archetype very nicely. For the most part, the actors playing the various abortees and their boyfriends merely manage not to fuck things up too bad (which is more than anyone could hope), including the closest thing to heroes we have, Kaylee Williams and Trent McKelvin. Ford Austin stood head and shoulders above the rest though. Channeling Foghorn Leghorn, he obviously had a ball with Reginald, and I couldn't stop grinning at his outrageous portrayal.
As you can expect, Zombie Babies is the kind of absolute trash that's a must on every b-movie fan's shelf, just waiting for Drunken MST3K Night. While the gross-out stuff dragged the score down for me personally, some of you will definitely be adding those points back on. Aside from that, it's just the horrid sound problems that drags things down, but again, that does little to detract from what we're all here to see. If you have a horrible taste of black humor, hunt this down! 7.5/10.
|
|
Rate Movie? 
