Zombiethon

One of serval direct-to-video tapes by exploitation king, Charles Band that showed gory highlights from films distributed by Wizard Video. The framing of this clip show centers around various women who are drawn for one reason or another to the El Rey theatre where an audience of zombies are watching clips from different zombie movies.

The warp-around segments featuring the women in trances and rubber masked zombies are goofy Halloween style fun. The clips are a spoiler reel of the highlights from grindhouse titles like Zombi 2, Zombie Lake and The Astro-Zombies. The clips themselves condense the films into a 5 to 10 minute highlight-reel of the gore and the nudity with very little plot points.

If you grew up a horror fan in the 1980's, this may have some nostalgia for this kind pre-internet "best of" film. And while some what entertaining, its serves nothing more than a interesting curio from the VHS-era.

A compilation of zombie clips whose only true reason for existence is showing a lot of movies that have never reached our shores here in Brazil, due to the fact we were living in a hardcore military dictatorship at the time of the depicted movies release. So, it was an undying pleasure to finally see some scenes from "Zombie" and "Fear", of Lucio Fulci, that were censored and banned in my country. The other clips are all right, but the poor production and involuntarily funny special effects shown, together with the nudity exploitation, harm a little the experience of watching them; although it is always interesting to see European horror movies because of the different atmosphere and general delirious climate of such flicks. The linking segments are OK, but nothing memorable and with a glimpse of welcome irony. I give thumbs up, but stays in the average.

Zombiethon (1986)

** (out of 4)

Charles Band and Wizard Video made three compilation movies beginning with THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE and followed by FILMGORE and finally this film, which takes a look at the zombie films in their library. It's easy to see why so many of these compilation videos were released during the VHS boom since it was an easy way for studios to put something out there and gain attention for movies that fans might enjoy. I mean, someone could rent this, enjoy the film clips and then want to rent or buy the movie, which just means more money into the pocket of the company. This documentary offers clips from ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE LAKE, OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES, FEAR, DR. ORLOFF'S INVISIBLE MONSTER, A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD and THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES. When viewed today, this documentary is mainly going to be for those who enjoy the throwback of watching something from the 80s. Outside of that this thing really doesn't offer too much because all of these films are now available in much better editions so if you want to see them there are better options. The quality of the clips are quite low and stuff like ZOMBIE are shown P&S, which is just a horrid way to see the clips. The funny thing is that the clips shows are all the 'big' scenes so if you hadn't seen the movie, watching the clips here would pretty much ruin the experience. It's also worth noting that Jess Franco's A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD, the best film of the group, isn't even a zombie movie but when Wizard released it they hired Jean Rollin to film new zombie scenes and add it into the film. So, needless to say, it would best to see the original version but at least the alternate scenes are here to view. ZOMBIETHON also features some new scenes of beautiful women being chased into the El Ray theater being chased by solo zombies.

This isn't really a flick, there is a story involved but it's more about a compilation of existing zombie flicks. Was it worth watching? Yes, because for example from "Zombie" you will see the best shots, the zombie on the yacht, some nudity and the shark fighting with the zombie. But there is worse too, the fragments from "The Invisible Dead" are so bad, the zombies aren't frightening, the mos scary part is when the girl undresses in gratuitous style and shows her body for the camera, full frontal and you see how many pubic hair there could be on a pussy. Man, that's frightening, wake up with something like that laying beside you! And the worst zombie flick is in it too, worth watching, Zombie Lake, the zombies are just face painted in green and some really bad acting but the most important part of this flick is the nudity. So this flick here, Zombiethon, isn't really bad but it is a docu on zombies, one to see with your friends and lot of beer.

"Zombiethon" is basically a plotless compilation of much of the gore and nudity from various zombie movies. Clips are shown from "Zombie," "Astro-Zombies," "The Invisible Dead," "Zombie Lake," "Zombie 4: After Death," "Fear" (which actually does not contain zombies), and "Oasis of the Zombies." The clips for each of these movies vary in length. If the zombie sub-genre is a personal favorite, then this is truly a treat, but for most people this is not worthwhile.

The "plot" tells of a bunch of zombies in a movie theater watching zombie movies. This really just acts for linkage between the previously mentioned clips. From "Zombie," the shark scene, the infamous eye scene, and most of the rest of the zombie carnage are shown (along with the topless scuba diving and the scene in which Olga Karlatos takes a shower). From "Astro-Zombies," many pathetic looking scenes are shown, all of which lack gore and nudity. From "Zombie Lake," the scene in which a busload of girls go skinny dipping only to be fondled by the rising Nazi undead is shown. Clips from "Invisible Dead" bring many shots of nude women being fondled and undressed by an invisible force, and also give away the ending. The clips from the rest of the movies are in the same vein.

The few original scenes seem to have been well directed, there is no original script to judge, and acting varies based on what clips you are watching. The gore effects made specifically for this movie are campy and obviously fake, and, once again, gore effects taken from other movies vary (Zombie outshines everything else in this department).

"Zombiethon" is meant for those with a love for the zombie sub-genre. My rating: six out of ten.