Zombie 4: After Death (1989)
Directed By: Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2)
The Prologue
In another case of, "Chuck tortures himself", after I had the..um..honor, of watching Zombie 3, I decided to go ahead and check out the other notoriously bad, Zombie 4: After Death. Keep in mind here that I didn't pay over $4 for this, so I don't think I got ripped too much on it. And to be fair, perhaps we should mentioned that this was a sequel to the classic Zombie 2 (yeah, 3 came after that but whatever) in name only. Basically, this movie's title is, After Death. The Zombie was tossed on to cash in and doesn't even appear in the film's title screen. I will at least give them credit for trying to be honest.
The Movie
A woman goes back to the island where her parents were killed. They had been working on a cure for cancer and accidentally raised the dead by angering a voodoo priest. With the woman is a group of mercenaries and they meet up with some other researchers. They raise the dead again and all hell breaks loose. Of course, these zombies look like hobos and it's all rather funny in it's awful nature, but what more could we expect from the man who gave us Troll 2?
"Zombie 4" here doesn't bring anything to the table that we haven't already seen before. It also doesn't give us much to remember outside of some nice gore and a cheesy hair metal song that they seem to play at any chance they can get. Going back to the roots of the zombie lore, by way of a evil voodoo man who seems to unleash these awkward zombies upon the land, I found it really hard not to roll my eyes at different times while watching. But I could perhaps still see where a movie like this could be fun at a party, or while watching with friends. Bad movies are great for that type of stuff after all.
The old saying with zombies, that I tend to really push, states that Zombies DON'T Run. If the zombie here simply ran we could perhaps look over it. These zombies hop around, talk, and even shoot machine guns. Making matters worse, they look like monks, or hobos, or maybe even decayed retarded ninjas. It's really a sight to see and a sight to see for all the wrong reasons. And don't bother looking for a cast of people to get behind and root for either. We have a large cast of dull actors that are overacting and just looking really out of place and lost in the whole mix of things. It makes the film funny to watch, but not by any means good.
In perspective of everything I seen in this movie, nothing makes a whole lot of sense. Apparently the door to hell is a group of candles on a table? And our attractive but underwhelming blonde lead has a necklace that is supposed to be able to close this door? Did I get that right? It's really such a mess it's hard to say. And I can pretty much guarantee you won't be able to make any sorta logic out of the ending. While the goofy nature of everything in, After Death, might be good for a laugh, I don't think it'll be the end of the world if you skip this one.
The Conclusion
Well, if I must be blunt, the movie kinda sucks. It not something you want to watch more than once for fun alone, but the cheesiness might come in handy with a group of friends. Their was recently a blu-ray of this released, but I went with the dvd. It's a lot cheaper and plus, I don't think the blu-ray would look THAT great anyway. Do I dare try my luck now with Zombie 5?? Only if I can find it really REALLY cheap.
The Rating (4.5/10)
