Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 3:3	Budget Small

Rolfe Kanefsky (Nightmare Man, Pretty Cool Too)may be the man who steps up to fill the shoes of Fred Olen Ray. Ironically as Fred has been going more to movies with less plot and more sex, Rolfe has been getting away from the sex comedies of his early career and making more complete films.

As the film opens, we see a security guard looking at a broken display case. He goes outside to see some guys playing baseball with the bat and ball from the trophy case. It turns out the baseball players are zombies that more or less accidentally kill the guard while getting the ball back from him. After the titles the camera pans through a funeral home stopping a coffin which opens to reveal Jerry (Stephen Williams) and Rhonda (Tiffany Shepis, "Nightmare Man", "Scarecrow"). Apparently Jerry finds that having sex in a coffin when the boss might return at any moment is not as much fun as he thought and poor Rhonda is left disappointed. After Rhonda leaves Jerry and Fred (Robert Donavan) try to get back to work, but they are interrupted by some drunk bikers who want to pay their last respects to their buddy. Jerry lets them in and they soon become zombie chow. The next day as Jerry shows up for work he notices that the bikes are still there and that there is an eviction notice from the city. An enraged Fred turns loose some new zombies on the city to raise money for the mortgage. Captain Winston (Jeff Fahey) runs all over town trying to figure out why there is a crime spree in his little town. He also manages to find time to have a fight with his daughter, Rhonda, talk to his fiance Helen (who is also Fred's ex-wife) and serve the final eviction notice to Fred personally. Later that night Winston is called away to a meeting while Fred and the baseball zombies go to his house and abducts Helen. This pushes Winston over the edge and he returns to the funeral home loaded for bear and kicks some zombie butt. Fred runs out of zombie juice at a most inopportune time and the zombies rip him apart just before they die from lack of serum. Meanwhile, Jerry and Rhonda apparently get killed but come back as zombies and take over the funeral home.

This is really a nicely written little film. Typical of Kanefsky, the plot moves right along, the jokes are just thrown out there without a lot of fanfare. When Rhonda makes a Dawn of the Dead reference, Jerry just glances at her and continues on without pause. Also typical of Kanefsky film is the great physical acting of the entire cast. Pretty Cool and Pretty Cool Too feature some nice physical comedy from the supporting cast. In Corpses the zombies get all the funny bits. The early scene of the zombies playing baseball is very nicely done. They were supposed to just go to the school and steal stuff from the chemistry lab, but as they pass by the trophy case they see the bat and ball. The unfortunate guard who interrupts their game of catch is killed not because they want to eat his brains, but because they want the ball back.

Kanefsky's zombies are not entirely mindless. In fact, a couple of them can speak a little and most have some memories of their lives. Fred even teaches them to make the zombie juice, which is of course florescent green. This tends to go against most zombie movies. In the early days zombies were mindless reanimated corpses that would do the bidding of a voodoo priest. In Night of the Living Dead the zombies are mindless killers without any control or purpose. In Dawn of the Dead they are mindless drones meant to represent the masses, but they still want to eat brains. Clearly Kanefsky is doing this so that his ending makes sense and as he is consistent within his own rules I am okay with it. He allows his zombies to show their advanced abilities slowly. First he gives them a bit of pathos by letting them play baseball. Then he has Fred discover that some of them can talk. We later see that they have rudimentary decision making ability and are aware of when they are doing something that will upset Fred (killing a cop). At the end we see that they are self aware and know what it means that Fred has accidentally spilled the last of the zombie juice. The ending is a little confusing. I think that Jerry and Rhonda are now zombies, but I am not sure. If they were both killed, how did they get reanimated?

Tiffany Shepis, one of my favorite scream queens, plays Rhonda, a 19 year old girl whose mother has died and who does not get along with the father's new live in girlfriend. Tiffany does not have any nude scenes in this one, but does have a lot of lines of dialogue. I think Rolfe may have let Tiffany go a little under directed in this one. Most of the time she plays Rhonda as a sarcastic brat, but I would have liked to see a bit more of a dark side for her. She thinks the funeral home is cool and I think the character would have done better to have been drawn to death more. Tiffany was way too lively and vital for the role. But hey, we are not talking great movie making here. Don't get me wrong, it is not like Kanefsky does not put time and effort into his films. Clearly he does. The writing is well thought out. The jokes are not allowed to dominate or change the mood of the film. The post production work is carefully done as well. The editing gets rid of most of the filler and we don't often just look at the screen just waiting for the scene to get over with. Still, there clearly was not a huge budget for the movie. Some of the zombies don't even have any make up. When the foreclosure letter arrives it is hand written with no return address and no stamp, but it does have Urgent written on it. The way to make a good movie without a big budget is careful planning beforehand and being willing to put a lot of extra hours into the project.

So is it worth seeing? Absolutely. I find Kanefsky's films to be great B movie fare. He frequently rehashes old plots and gimmicks, but he gets a lot out of his actors and all of his projects seem to have a deeper layer than the obvious theme to the film. Not a socially significant layer, more of a wink to the audience. When Rhonda mentions that tearing down the funeral home to put up a mall would be very Dawn of the Dead-ish, it is just a comment in passing. Later in the film, Fred has Rhonda and Jerry tied up. Jerry warns Fred not to lay a finger on her or else. Fred looks at Jerry and then very deliberately places a finger on Rhonda's shoulder. Jerry immediately starts struggling vainly against the ropes and the scene changes and I have an amused smile on my face. This is quite funny if it is underplayed. If it is overplayed it would quickly wear out its welcome. I just forced myself to sit through Talladega Nights with Will Farrell. For two hours I watched as Ferrell took anything that might be funny and dragged it out and repeated it and generally ran it so far into the ground that you couldn't even remember what he started with. Compared to Corpses where Kanefsky flashes some great wit during a zombie movie, Talladega Nights makes some obvious jokes and then tries to force them down our throats. Movies like Corpses are why I love B movies.

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