Zombie Nosh (1988)

Director: S. William Hinzman

Screenplay: S. William Hinzman and Bill Randolph

Cast: S. William Hinzman as FleshEater; John Mowod as Bob; Leslie Ann Wick as Sally; Kevin Kindlin as Ralph; Charis Kirkpatrik Acuff as Lisa; James J. Rutan as Eddie; Lisa Smith as Kim; Denise Morrone as Carrie; Mark Strycula as Bill; Kathleen Marie Rupnik as Julie; Matthew C. Danilko as Tony

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #177

 

I'm going to drink you to death.

Some may laugh, but I had always wanted to see Zombie Nosh, just for that title. Not the original one FleshEater, but Zombie Nosh as it was titled in the United Kingdom on DVD; it was another I had read of in the DVD review section of a film magazine, a tiny little dismissive review in the bracket for all the straight-to-video releases dammed and deemed unworthy of a slightly bigger paragraph. It is also a Vipco release which is itself with cultural baggage. They are a company I saw adverts for in my childhood on channels like Sci-Fi Channel late at night, making their name for releasing Video Nasties in the VHS era even at the time when most were still being censored by the British Board of Film Classification. They no longer exist; they were replaced by distributors who would release most of their catalogue in uncut and even high definition form. Zombie Nosh was one of the ones even by the 2020s left to rot, deliberately going for the pun there.

What I did not know going into the film was its direct connection to George A. Romero, as director/main star S. William Hinzman is arguably an iconic figure. He is the first zombie seen in Night of the Living Dead (1968), shuffling on just after the iconic line "They're coming to get you Barbara!", thus arguably the gate opener for all the zombie related material that came to be because of that film. Zombies in folklore were usually of Haitian culture, though always in danger of exoticising it in colonial bias, based on the idea of poisoning a person, to the point they seemed dead and were buried, and then bringing "them back to life" as mindless slaves. I would not be surprised if there were zombies in films which were like Romero's before Night of the Living Dead, but Hinzman can be called the first of the new zombies. He, in his suit shuffling along, is a decaying flag bearer for the army of zombie media which is still marching on decades later.

That film's influence, and how it would lead to zombies in media existing, is profound but in mind of all the tangents director from Romero's Pennsylvanian born franchise, it is not a surprise the man who immediately shuffles onscreen as the first zombie also directed two films himself...most everyone involved with that film or the sequels probably did. Zombie Nosh itself is Night of the Living Dead adapted for a new audience, with none of the potential political commentary and instead a lurid mix of gore and, even as a film in context of a less restrictive era, a surprising amount of female nudity.

An ill-advised decision to move a stone, with ritualistic symbols and warning text carved into it, off land by a disgruntled farmer unleashes a zombie named the Flesh Eater (Hinzman himself). On a hay ride, a sea of denim jackets between them, is a group of young adults wanting to hang out in the countryside. It is also Halloween, which will lead to carnage when the zombies reach the nearest town. Beyond this, we have seen so many zombie films in the years and decades passing that this is wash and repeat, where the victims bitten become zombies too and multiply, with not a lot more in the narrative beyond that. Considering that children are bitten too, such as a young girl answering for trick or treaters, Zombie Nosh does swing for some shock value which differentiates it.

Why would one make a film like this though? An odd, even damning question to asking, but Zombie Nosh is definitely a case, in a slower paced film, purely made for its visceral content and for prurient content for the nudity of bared breasts and one actress, eventually becoming a zombie, willing to do full nudity. Bear in mind this was made in a period where zombie films were on a decline. They were still being made regardless of budget - ask someone like Todd Sheets, a micro budget filmmaker who made a few between 1989 to the mid nineties among others - so even that is a fallacy, but there is a period after George Romero's original trilogy of zombie films, causing a boom of them, that was a fallow period until the resurgence and eventual pop cultural domination of the undead into the 2000s. In the midst of this fallow period, what was the reason for Zombie Nosh to be made?

Truthfully, most cinema or culture in general is made for the visceral thrills, even if this is to be questioned. A zombie film like this also predates a lot of the reason these films became so common, beyond even the admiration for Romero's films or the films inspired by his from horror fans. Zombie films are so prolific in nature, and in pop culture in general, likely because they are cultureless, easy to grasp, and for films easy to make even in your back garden. When they lost the history to Haitian culture, a zombie could be anything you want, and I suspect as much their lasting popularity is that they became easy to digest in the visceral pleasures. Zombie Nosh has a lot more sexual content in the nudity but it has the aspects which make zombies appealing regardless; not even the gore, but the visceral nature of zombies attacking people, or people defending them off, becoming something taken further, even in the latter leading to uncomfortable politics being raised in later films of a survivalist mentality.

The notion of the flesh being bitten. The shock of missed head shots. The fact in spite of them being lumbering drones here, unless you sadly get the ones that run, they do not even have to have the basic symbolism of our fears of death but can be merely a mass of fiends in the background coming closer to feel adrenaline in the reaction of. They appeal clearly for gruesomeness but as much, like unicorns, we have abruptly decided zombies make anything better, even Jane Austin novels. They have a marketable freakishness whose dominance is by mass swarming, as both zombies but also as pop culture figures, and can be colourful in the types to show, an excuse for anyone to be an extra if they wish and be made up as one.

This has to be brought up - why make this film, and for me the viewer, why watch it - because Zombie Nosh belongs to that realm of horror cinema which is not going to be defended for its technical style or any depth. Obscurer for a horror film, it is a very slow paced film entirely based on the pleasures that could be seen as juvenile or, with the nudity, crass. I will argue that for a film which I let in willingly into my central nervous system and consciousness, the quirks are where the more rewarding details are. Of a higher budget than a micro-budget but still felt as homemade, the local flavour compelling even if this is very late in time for a regional horror film to be made. Life in the Pennsylvania countryside and small towns, of Halloween parties in barns and DJs on the radio heard over the full moon, is pretty banal but fascinating. All that denim worn by working class adults, sat in the woods with nothing to do but drink and even wander off in couples to have private fun.

A Halloween party here is not the elaborate ones of the Hollywood horror films I have seen even at this time or before Zombie Nosh, but a few people in costume sat on hay bales, the women lamented one of them is catching all the men's attention for a cheerleader's outfit, whilst the host is a drunk vampire getting more surly as he drinks and fumbles to put his plastic fangs in. I hoped the guy in the chicken costume became a zombie as, in one of this sub-genre's great virtues, you can a creative amount of zombies, even ridiculous ones, depending on the narrative because anything and anyone can be a zombie. We do get a zombie karate guy, for an example from this film, as this proves karate chops to a zombie's neck does not work.

Zombie Nosh is not a great film, subjectively, because it holds nothing profound nor is anything distinct. Probably the most effective scenes, actually "good", is the prolonged disposal of all the zombies. It turns into a lesser version of the ending of Night of the Living Dead, of guys with guns randomly shooting people even if they are not zombies, but at first, the prolonged and meandering disposal of all the zombies is significant. A monotonous task made worse as they, wandering around the countryside on mass, have to shoot young kids who have turned, or when someone has to watch on his colleagues in their shooting party dispose of his zombified daughter and cannot stop them.

Truthfully, most horror cinema was made with mind of the purely visceral, not even to create sequences like that one with an odd profoundness. On a heavily scratched disc I acquired, that I nearly would not play in the machine until I used another designed for multi region discs and can play anything, this is not even a film from an older time, when there were not so many zombie films being made, that can stand out as there are obscurer films from the eighties which are more striking. It exists for a primal sense of scariness, such as being impaled on a pitchfork shaft impaled in a zombie through the forks, and just the base obsession with scares and jolts.

I neither say that as dismissive either, just stating merely what Zombie Nosh is g. I mean, come on, that title was the selling point for me for years and nothing else. Vipco DVD releases for the most part were black with no images on the front cover, only their titles covering the whole of it emblazoned in giant gold letters. I came here unsure what to expect, only from that title, and got this film as a result, so I cannot complain.