Zombie Nightmare (1986)

 

Director: Jack Bravman and John Fasano

Screenplay: John Fasano and David Wellington

Cast: Adam West as Capt. Tom Churchman; Jon Mikl Thor as Tony Washington; Tia Carrere as Amy; Manuska Rigaud as Molly Mokembe; Frank Dietz as Frank Sorrell; Linda Singer as Maggie

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Frank, let's not have any more high school kids turn up dead.

Zombie Nightmare does not have a great reputation. From the land of Canada, they have also produced some truly bizarre films, from the Things (1989) of the world to Science Crazed (1991), and in mind to Zombie Nightmare's reputation being so bad, it was chosen for a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode and everyone on the cast hated sitting through it, Zombie Nightmare is just conventional for me. It says a lot of me that I have seen more that I can consider far worse in horror films, and I came to this instead just being reminded that the eighties actually existed. I missed this era being born in 1989, and I can now look at it in films like this with curiousness, a time where Jon Mikl Thor can look resplendent as he does in the first act, but would be a dress sense viewed only in irony in the modern day.

Playing the son of a brave man killed protecting a young voodoo priest, Jon Mikl Thor, the cult Canadian heavy metal singer who used to bend bars in a muscle man stage act, can wander around with luxurious long hair, wearing mascara and almost looking feminine, things which have aged incredibly well in the modern day and would suit a look of people of any gender. He however also contrasts it with a muscle shirt that could not hide anyone's boobs, men's or otherwise, and would be mocked in the modern day by cynical film fans; in the era this film was made, only then would no one bat an eye on the choice of practical day wear to go to a convenience store in. Considering the hair on display even on psychopathic young male hoodlums, who realise killing Thor in an accidental hit and run is almost ecstasy, and are sex pests with knives, and you cannot help to see how each decade is rewarding to see in films, even ones with wavering quality, just to see that once everyone's hairstyle exploded in elaborate mountains of hairspray filled manes.

In mind that the main director later made Night of the Dribbler (1990), which is a poor horror comedy I struggled with, which makes Zombie Nightmare at least passable for trying at something more engaging. The music alone is of the era and also really interesting as a heavy metal fan to take in, where starting your opening credits with Motorhead's Ace of Spades, playing over the credit of cult actor Adam West's name on a green fingerprint, is memorable to say the least. When Thor dies, the young woman who his father rescued, a voodoo priestess whose actress does eat invisibly scenery when she can, resurrects him on his mother's behalf is just to get revenge on everyone in the car that ran him over. The interpretation of voodoo as less an actual religion, but a Western narrative's occult trope, is always problematic, something I accept more in a forties film like Voodoo Man (1944) as of the time, and just to see a cult actor like George Zucco playing bongos onscreen, but by the late eighties it is startling to see how far we did not progress with depicting the religion. Wes Craven, even in context of a horror film with a white outsider as the protagonist, is one of the only people in this genre with The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) to have made a horror film which tackles actual voodoo beliefs, with few other prominent film afterwards made, and that is startling and looks terrible to even consider. Even here too, if the treatment of voodoo as a plot trope is just campy, you are stuck with the problem that eventually, decaying more and more, Thor is effectively replaced by a hulking actor who could have been anyone, in zombie makeup, shambling around with a baseball bat. He can twist a man's neck with his undead hands easily, but a beefy undead Jon Mikl Thor, who you could pick out just from that hairstyle at the start of the film, would have been a huge advantage for the film if just for camp purposes. The film's flaws, as a person with a tolerance for cinema which few might defend, is entirely for being conventional, where the aesthetic of being soaked in late eighties excess becomes the tonic.

You cannot help, least I do, still find a cheesy horror film like this fascinating when it is still about grief, the loss of love ones and revenge from the grave, still trying for high stakes drama, alongside the fact that most of the hit-and-ran culprits are scared young adults, one a young Tia Carrere, scared out of their minds and sympathetic, only to be picked off, whilst it is just the main member of the group whose psychopathic tendencies feels like a fifties juvenile delinquent character for a scuzzier age. The time stamp is compelling, especially because this is part of a wave of heavy metal horror films from the time. A lot of the music will be obscure for many, with bands like Fist I have never heard of, but with some curious choices, such as Girlschool, an all-female British band who collaborated with Motorhead, whose admiration for the band through Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister's helped the band in recognition as much as create a bond between both groups. My biggest disappointment in musical choices is that the Pantera in this film is one of the many Thor himself is involved with who contribute to the soundtrack. This is disappointing on a morbid level because, contrary to belief, the legendary Texas band were recording albums since 1983 and no one wants to admit everything before Cowboys from Hell (1990) exists. It would have been beautiful, even in a sick way, to hear when they were the comically cheesy glam metal band no one wants to admit once existed. Considering as well the film will be sold on Pantera, and not the right one, will make this even more disappointing.

The film tries as well to clearly not "look" and "sound" Canadian either, with the sense its biggest get Adam West is the older bankable American star to sell the film on. It is forty four minute in when West actually appears, but alongside how the film gets some additional drama with his back-story, anyone expecting (as I did) additional camp from the former Batman may be taken aback by what he does instead. Rocking a moustache, he plays a cynical cop with complete seriousness, which actually adds to the film for the better. Even for a film which has impalement with a steel baseball bat, its seriousness actually helps for the movie, with the unintentional cheesiness still able to have some meat to it because of an attempted sincerity. Again, my taste in films and knowledge means that I have seen so much worse that Zombie Nightmare is passingly entertaining and even charming. Truthfully, it was one of many horror films from this era, including from Canada, and this one just got the rotten luck of notoriety.