Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 5:5	Budget Low

Topless green zombies? Life is good.

We are introduced to Red as he contemplates killing a couple making out in a car. He demurs when they profess their love for each other, but not to fear, it turns out there are some stoners near by that will fit the bill. Red brings various body parts back home to Violet and as they play with their food we segue to another scene at Hell Island with three blond scientists searching for some prehistoric humanoid life form. Just as they are about to realize their discovery, a mysterious caped figure captures them. Red and Violet are soon visited by the police asking about the missing scientists. Oddly the police don't notice the various body parts that the couple are munching on. After appearing on a game show, Violet is noticed by the evil Nefarious and kidnapped. Red begins a search for his missing wife encountering many odd characters before finally being reunited with his one true love.

This is a very low budget movie with peripheral ties to Troma, maybe only a quick voice over by Lloyd Kaufmann. Which is a shame in a way. This is exactly the type of movie that Troma should be producing. Again the key to a good low budget movie is to start with a plan. A carefully thought out script, well understood characters and clear plot line are often the difference between diamonds in the rough and crap. Add to that some good videography and proper editing and you are well on your way to a good movie. Caleb Emerson and Haig Demarjian did a great job of prepping and shooting the movie and Daniel Strange did some very good editing. So even with the movies' faults there is a lot to recommend the film. The pace is quite good and there are enough things going on through the film to keep it interesting. Tim Gerstmar plays Red as an innocent who reacts to all manner of interesting situations. He listens to everyone else's story with wide eyed rapture, chiming in with ohhs and ahhs at appropriate times. These stories add some amusing side trips to Red's journey. We are introduced to CoconutHeadFaceMan, and the cheese monster and Jamie Gillis. Yes, that Jamie Gillis, star of about 1,000 porno movies. Here he simply moves the plot along by sending Red hither and yon looking for various people who might know where Violet is.

Oftentimes young movie makers will populate their early efforts with friends and people that they are overly fond of. Also oftentimes these people are not as entertaining as they think. In this one, however, most of the side trips are worth it. If the actors don't always get the most out of the material there is usually at least enough there to make it interesting. Super Inga is a good example. When we are introduced to her, we not only get to see her, but we see the bar along with a backstory about no men in the area, Inga relates a tale about a cheese monster, the place is attacked by zombies and then just to make sure it is a little over the top, we get a rehash of the entire scene with Red as a Mexican wrestler with a gay sidekick. Like a lot of good films if you don't like a joke, just wait a moment and another will come along. Another great exchange takes place at the Bahamian's place. Red is sent by Stavros to Pittsburgh to talk to Barundeb Duttah who tells him a story and gives him another clue as to where he is supposed to go next. Rather then set this up as a throw away scene, Emerson puts a lot of effort into making this interesting. First there is the basic setup; we have a Rastafarian seer in an old free standing tub with lit candles and a topless girl playing Operation and giggling. This is an odd variation on the classic "visit the delphi" where the oracle would be shrouded in mystery with acolytes doing undecipherable things on the sidelines. Then he launches into the story of CoconutHeadFaceMan; a guy who wears a coconut mask and hides in the trees where the villagers can't see him. Red immediately recognizes that this is because of the mask. Clearly the logic here is from the children's jokes "how does an elephant hide in the strawberry patch? He paints his toenails red.". Obviously a mask is not going to let him hide in a tree, but the writers are setting Red up to have a child-like naivety. Then at the height of the story we find out that CoconutHeadFaceMan sneaks up on the villagers and "scares them very badly". A fleeting WTF expression crosses Red's face before he is properly horrified by the plight of the mildly upset Bahamians. Eventually Red gets sent off to his next rendezvous with a storyteller that will bring him one step closer to finding Violet.

Yeah, Violet. You remember her, right? Red's girlfriend? The one kidnapped by Zombies? Red is trying to find her? I guess I can understand why you keep forgetting about her, because it seems like the writers don't mention her all that often. The set pieces we see are all very much like Red's rendezvous in Pittsburgh. We are introduced to a strange character who provides us with an unrelated story and then a clue to move Red along. We catch occasional glimpses of Violet and Nefarious but the real meat of the movie are the side trips that Red makes ands the characters he meets. Seriously we get more potential ideas for movies in this film than what comes out of Hollywood in a year. Besides CoconutHeadFaceMan there is the Cheese Monster, the Amphibian Guy, Stavros as an alien from an indentured planet, Nefarious and his zombie ray, not to mention the Maldonato sisters.

Oh, yes, the Maldonato sisters. When we are introduced to them shortly after the movie introduced Red as the protagonist. We get a major shift of style, location and character. We go from trailer trash serial killers in dark, dingy settings to three hot blond scientists searching for a prehistoric amphibious monster in a beautiful lake setting. A couple quick references to Loch Ness and the girls have an "all work and no play" discussion and go skinny dipping. Their camp is visited that night by Amphibian guy and Shannon Maldonato (Jennifer K. Beal) chases after him through the woods in her t-shirt and thong. He gets away but the girls' luck turns worse as Nefarious captures them. After a bit of exposition he turns them into topless green zombies and we see them and hear about them a lot through the rest of the movie.

Nefarious wears a mask that reminds me of a cartoon villain. While his main plan lives up to his name, we don't see anything else as too dangerous. He happens to see Violet on a game show and is smitten with her when she takes a bite out of one of the production assistants. He kidnaps her but she never quite takes him seriously probably because his plans for her include breast enlargement (for obvious reasons) and gills (not for breathing underwater, think Linda Lovelace). She echoes the audiences concerns that Nefarious may not be the super villain he is purported to be. The final big fight scene gets progressively more ridiculous as more and more of the mad scientist's failed experiments join the fray and just as we have had tons of ludicrous movie plots thrown at us, now we have dog men, robots, ninjas, and a pizza delivery. Much the same way as we never take Red too seriously as a serial killer, we never really view Nefarious as all that evil. Actually, we don't take anything all that serious in the movie. Red's consistently quirky character, Violet's monotone delivery of her lines, the frequent wandering off the main story arc, nothing about the movie screams realism and nothing ever meant to. I'm not sure how to classify this movie other than run and gun comedy. It makes fun of itself and horror movies, and monster movies, and romance movies. There are spaceships and Swedish blondes, Chinese rice fields and possibly even a reference to Bergman. Jokes and sight gags are quickly thrown up on the screen and then we move on.

This is a movie along the same lines as Teenage Catgirls in Heat and Wedding Slashers. Very low budget movies made by people with virtually no other film credits. Caleb Emerson would play a small part in Troma's recent big budget movie release "Poultrygeist", and was the first assistant director. It would be interesting to see what Caleb can do with a bigger budget and a different type of film. Everyone in Die You Zombie Bastards plays their roles like a bad actor in very exaggerated ways and there is a general sense that everyone involved had a good time. Unlike a lot of B movies it is obvious that Emerson spent a lot of time on this movie and it shows. I would highly recommend this to B movie aficionados.

Got a comment or different opinion? Send a message.