After Dark Horrorfest 4: Zombies of Mass Destruction [DVD]

Description

Zombies continue to prove their applicability to all genres with the low-budget political comedy Zombies of Mass Destruction, which pits a conservative small town--and its few liberal citizens--against an army of the walking and ravenous dead. Director Kevin Hamedani's obvious template is George Romero's zombie series, which uses the flesh eaters to address all manner of social ills, but neither Hamedani's targets nor his protagonists have much meat on their bones--his heroes are defined largely by what sets them apart from the rest of the town (Iranian, gay, liberal) and his antagonists are cartoonish neocons and intolerant religious types, both of which have been done to death, and by better filmmakers. Once the living dead start popping up, the film gains some momentum, and the tone turns broad and bloody, but again, Shaun of the Dead and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive did the zombie comedy with greater verve. What's left are a few amusing moments of splatter humor (one involving a young girl and a speeding car is both shocking and hilarious) and little else. The Zombies of Mass Destruction DVD, which is part of the fourth After Dark Horrorfest series, includes a short featurette that discusses Hamedani's reasons for making the film, which are more politically charged than anything in the picture itself. --Paul Gaita