Death Metal Zombies (1995)

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Director: Todd Jason Cook

Screenplay: Todd Jason Cook

Cast: Milton Rush as Johnny; C. Jo Vela as Kathy; Lisa Cook as Angel; Todd Jason Cook as Tony / Nixon Killer; Bill DeWild as Brad / Nixon Killer; Mike Gebbie as Tommy; Terry Aden as Eddie

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

A passionate fan of the death metal band Living Corpse wins a tape with an exclusive track on the cassette, one called Zombified that turns listeners into the undead and commands them, the band demonic, to go out and kill. Thus, we have a no-budget film with a heart for both this type of schlocky horror premise and the music with affection full a little winking mirth.

At this point for me covering them, no budget (micro budget) cinema has to be reviewed on an entirely subjective level, as while there are great examples which traverse the limitations they had to a higher level, Peter Jackson starting off with Bad Taste (1987), there are films were the limitations and rough edges are their virtue too. There are examples of Francis Ford Coppola's "little fat girl" theory, that anyone with a camera can make a masterpiece, but the empathy a viewer like myself has means I couldn't discard the imperfect either if they have heart. Said theory didn't take into account that film fans and cineastes of a certain type can gain as much love from something fun too.

Whilst technical craft is a scale of skill, art is subjective, only in rare cases when a certain level of craft is entirely needed where this is truly a concern. (Food preparation needing to be a craft to avoid food poisoning for example.) The problem is that, well, whether one enjoys or admires a piece is entirely subjective except when its tedious, and not deliberately so or to the point of being perversely watching either, just tedious, also a subjective concept but one which is a bugbear regardless of film budget or the taste of the audience, a factor which can either lose you a majority of viewers or win them over. Thankfully we have a film here in Death Metal Zombies which, whilst its lags badly in the final half, was made with a lot better pace and mind to this issue than other films of similar budgets.

Cinema like this is inherently to be considered from the initial perspective of why they were made, as that's of considerable importance. Here, friends came together create a death metal zombie film, significantly better than the premise could've been. Controversially, this is definitely a better film than Deathgasm (2015), a New Zealand heavy metal horror film whose jokey tone and generalness really peeved me off when it was highly rated. This is much more entertaining, knowing there was less funds to work with, shot over weekends where you can admire the strained but earnest amateur acting and the signs of the era of flannel on half of the cast. Hell, even soundtrack, which I'll get to, is a time capsule to the fact that, contrary to the idea this was a dark age for metal music, the nineties gave us a lot of weirdo and unique bands. Here I spotted a band like Pyogenesis this time that've I have come to learn of as being the kind of underappreciated idiosyncratic band I'd love, all alongside the kind of death metal bands whose fan base probably were aware that they were to be taken with some tongue in cheek.

This micro budget genre, circling around any film made on a very low budget but pinned especially on the shot-on-VHS form, or shot-on-standard-digital of the early 2000s, is also a distinct creation with its own tropes. Earnest, non professional acting as if found throughout this tale as the cast, introduced a while before a zombie outbreak ever happens, is actually likeable from the get-go and throughout; director Todd Jason Cook, a celebrated skateboarder, peppers these characters with more passion in terms of loving heavy metal than a large dramatic range, but that's a lot more than some of these micro budget films sadly don't. Made over time, effected to the point a main character had to be bumped off abruptly "under" a bed sheet, the film shows the flaws of the production history but never feels negated by them.

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The buzz of the VHS it was shot on, fuzzy and capturing all in its own time capsule, feels apt if somewhat distorted in the version I saw. A necessary lack of logic found in these films is to be found as well, mainly that whilst the zombies are the main subject, the film starts by abruptly introducing a serial killer with a Richard Nixon mask on. Nixon is never explicitly tied to the film but just a side dish off in his own little world; it took an inserted epilogue shot ten years later to have Nixon be a prick as well as a vicious killer as he adds to the carnage that already transpired. Certainly, whilst he has nothing to do with the plot originally, this figure just adds to the quirks which I love in films like this, his rubberised thinning black hair and large proboscis as ridiculous as the tone needed.

Vignette heavy, (or is it really tangent heavy?), is the best way to describe Death Metal Zombies. An initial prologue sets up a group of multi-gendered death metal loving friends, even getting into a brawl with another gang in the open woodlands that has nothing to do with the plot barring being cool looking. Thankfully, the film has two virtues from this. One is that, alongside charm, this is inherently all with humour without becoming ironic - three random victims for one scene, two men and one woman, get more character just from one of them being a man so muscular and jacked he can have two belts on at once and a pink body builder top, a man despite his size also in the middle of a break which is comically portrayed with his friends trying to get him to feel at peace. It's also a scene, whilst contrived, which leads to someone sitting on a knife blade arse first, so this film isn't daring to take itself seriously in the slightest.

I have to admit there's also a really diverse cast at hand, particularly with a lot of women involved. There's nudity, which is actually rarer in these films at times then you'd think, but it's interesting that it's a variety of people regardless of body shape and not the main crux when gore and gags like country music killing zombies which is the crux of the premise. In fact, due likely to the need to remove a male main character, our protagonist ultimately is one of the women, which does stand out. Some of the material is clearly padding, such as a female thief abruptly introduced halfway through just to be killed off, but when all the main cast are actually charming, be they the lovable figure at first or menacing as Satan's zombie slaves, it's a joy to have. Logic does go out the window, and ideas like country being a weapon aren't as fully implemented as one would hope, but it's the take of knowing humour to the production whilst taking it seriously I have to admire.

The other virtue, the best, is that, managing a deal with Relapse Records, if you like extreme metal this is a quality of soundtrack you rarely get in micro budget cinema due to licensing issues or budgetary ones. Some have done well and succeed in spite of adversity and creativity, but even the ridiculous and somewhat naffer tracks, at least those dated of the era with industrial influences and morbid subject matter, fit the tone perfectly. You'd be surprised to suddenly encounter Amorphis, quite a highly regarded Finnish band bringing graceful euphoric guitar riffs over death metal vocals, sat next to utter oddballs - the notorious Anal Cunt, whose motto was indeed as offensive as the name, sat alongside a strange Jesus Lizard inspired death metal track and what can only be described as a classical waltz that slowly turns into a blast beat grown-athon that still left me sniggering on this viewing. That its licensed music for this low a budgeted work shot on VHS is the real kicker for me - Relapse Records is highly regarded in metal especially in less mainstream circles, so this was a coop for Cook if any to acquire collaboration on.

Obviously Death Metal Zombies is an acquired taste, imaging imagine how the director-writer managed to get enough people to be a good crowd of zombies, better than some films at this scale in many areas, is rewarding. Knowing how hard to just make a film at this scale is makes it worthy of being recognised. A film which can do this and have a sense of humour, such as the impracticalities to actually playing a tape backwards to stop the evil hordes, is a hell of a lot more rewarding than a predictable, technically more polished snorefest. It's simply fun, but a hard won fun due to have its budgetary limitations have to overcome them and is seen.

And in mind as a heavy metal fan, it was befitting I saw this around the same time as a film like Lords of Chaos (2018), a biography of the black metal band Mayhem which had the budget and investment but, alongside problematic artistic choices, was an utterly generic and neutered product not worth investing money in. In comparison, an absurdly low budget (and absurd) film with a simple premise the film actually pulls off is higher in value because it got the attitude right. "Swedish Life Metal" was a swipe used in the dialogue of Lords of Chaos, dismissing "posers" (anyone who likes to listen to metal, drink beer and head bang with friends) when characters instead huffed dead crows to be inspired by death and burn churches, looking both fucking ridiculous and well as problematic edgelords even before you consider their real life counterparts committed real crimes and spouted white supremacist nonsense, regardless of the fact that the music is worthy to be separated from it. Death Metal Zombies isn't Swedish, though the genre stemmed from Florida in the States originally, but manages to be more metal in tone and a lot more watchable.

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