[2] Archie Melville is a teenager with a
problem. He has to work in his uncle's morgue or he won't get to go
to college. Four of his class-mates (two bimbos, two bozos) delight
in making his life hell, at least until they are involved in a car
accident and killed. By a quirk of fate (!), the truck they were hit
by was carrying some nasty chemicals and before you can say "Return
of the Living Dead ripoff", they're back, they're hungry and they're
not worried about getting sued for violation of copyright.
That's
actually a little unfair. The zombie don't really get their rotting
act together until the last third of the film - the first third is
almost standard high school fare with the usual assortment of sexual
innuendo, etc. Enjoyable enough, if a little too well-worn to be
more than fast-food film-making. Then, suddenly, CLICK! We switch
to Morgue Mode and a few scenes in the mortuary which, while not
especially bloody, have a nasty edge to them that wouldn't be out of
place in one of the tackier Italian movies and is completely at odds
with what's gone before. Gloomy stuff. Finally, just as you
realise it's the American version of Nekromantik, CLICK! The
zombies are out, roaming the streets and after our hero.
Although
there's just the four of them, which might seem a little cheap-
skate, good use is made of them and we get the first real gore of
the festival; power-drill through the eye, exploding body and sundry
other juicy bits of entertainment. This is probably when the film is
at it's best as the director finally pushes his foot to the floor to
give us the excitement that is a little lacking in the film. The
ending is pretty much as you would expect from a teen-age horror
pic, though for one glorious moment I thought the director was going
to give us a real downbeat finish. He wimped out, which just about
sums up the tone of the movie. If it had tried to be just one thing
it would have worked better - still, I enjoyed it as a whole, and
you can't say fairer than that!
