FleshEater

Bill Hinzman (who played the zombie on the cemetery in the great horror-classic "Night of the Living Dead") was responsible for the production, the script and the directing of this flick, that is even better than the similar Romero-rip off "The Dead Next Door", which was shot about five years earlier! Of course, the plot and nearly all ideas were stolen from Romero´s brilliant cult movie, but in comparison to J.R. Bookwalter´s homage there´s just more suspense, a plenty of gore and sometimes surprisingly good acting! Hinzman himself plays a zombie named "Flesheater" and I wonder somehow that he still looks the same he did more than 25 years ago... If semi-professional shots like Peter Jackson´s "Bad Taste" or even "The Dead Next Door" blew your mind this is exactly the right stuff for you! Recommended to all zombie-lovers and the fans of Romero´s movies - you won´t bore a second!!!

As other reviewers have mentioned, Flesheater stars Bill Hinzman of Night of the Living Dead fame as the title zombie in an all out attack in the undead. The film by no means gets close to the entertainment level of the movie it draws inspiration from, Night of the Living Dead, but is still entertaining to a degree despite being highly predictable. As stated before, a farmer uncovers a wooden box with a bizarre warning on it that had obviously been buried for decades, and upon opening it releases the zombie Hinzman who starts his rampage of undead terror. The acting is not the greatest and the story drags at times, but some scenes are pretty spooky, such as when Hinzman and some other zombies wander into town and attack a family in a suburban house. The ending, which I won't reveal here, is highly predictable and you can see it coming a long time off. All in all, Flesheater may not be the greatest horror film ever made, or even a great zombie movie, but it's not totally awful, either.

As you can probably tell by my nickname, I love horror films, zombie films in particular. I have pride in my knowledge of horror films, as I own close to a thousand of them and have seen many more. But I have to admit, I had never heard of this flick before yesterday. Browsing through a video store in another town, I came across it,scratching my head wondering how good could this be if I've never heard of it before. I was pleasantly surprised by this film. I think it was just as good as The Dead Next Door(a B grade zombie flick that gets a lot of attention as being an unknown classic). This is a fun film to watch if you don't expect too much from it. Don't expect great acting,top quality production, and whatever else most people think it takes to make a good film. But if your a fan of B grade horror movies, or on a quest to see and own every zombie movie ever made(such as myself), give this one a chance. I was surprised to see one of the zombies in this movie was Bill Hinzman, the cemetery zombie who chases after Barbara in the original Night Of The Living Dead. I guess you could say he is reprising his role, so to speak. I think he also directed and produced this film. I must admit, this film does seem to borrow a little from the original Night Of The Living Dead, but I don't care. This movie was fun and entertaining to watch and that's all I ask for. I was surprised at the amount of gore as well. The version I got was an uncut one entitled Revenge Of The Living Zombies. Once again, a pleasant surprise. Well, I have to go now and find a copy of this movie to buy somewhere! Later.

This movie would seem like your average low budget zombie movie when you look at it but it's much more. It's surprising that a movie with only around a 60,000 dollar budget ended up being so good. It also feels like if Night of the Living Dead met exploitation with slasher vibes thrown in for good major. The plot is really simple, teens go into the woods for a hay ride on Halloween and the guy running the hay ride accidentally awakens a zombie. The obvious result spreads from there and that's the plot. Now i will tell you what the movie succeeds and fails at. First the main thing is the gore, this movie is meant for gore hounds and the effects are for the most part good, there are a few scenes where with a keen eye you can see how the effects were achieved but I'm a big sfx guy so I notice it a lot easier than most. The film also has a crazy good atmosphere where it feels like combination of horror genres, also the sound track and music is mostly a repeating synth like sound that actually helps the film, this surprised me quite a bit since it's in the background a lot and it adds a fair bit of tension. There are also frequent gratuitous nude scenes if your into that you could even make a drinking game around it, take a shot for every nude scene. The movie does also fail at a few things, this isn't a spoiler but the ending isn't much of a shock, it didn't ruin the film but is a detractors. The acting in the film also ranges from slightly above average, to average to really, really bad, but it almost adds to how much of a B movie it is. Finally the sound and film quality is subpar on most but I feel like a remastered cut with a bit of editing could really help it out. It may seem like I'm giving this movie a high rating with all of the detractors but this film in it's respect is extremely underrated and often misunderstood and should become a mainstay of the zombie films, especially during Halloween. If you want to get this film there are a lot of versions mostly on dvd but my recommendation is the most recent dvd release or blu ray but if you want a bit more bang for your buck you can get it in the zombie pack volume 2 with 2 other zombie films and I see the set as low as 10 dollars on ebay. Definitely check this flick out you might be surprised at what you find.

My review was written in July 1989 after watching the movie on Magnum video cassette.

"Revenge of the Living Zombies" is a 20-years-after tribute to George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", made by one of the pic's zombie thesps, Bill Hinzman. Gory direct-to-video release is aimed at cult fans.

Shot in the Pittsburgh area (as was the original), pic has Hinzman literally rising from the ground to reprise his role as "Flesh Eater" (pic's alternate title). He attacks two sets of partying teens on Halloween, turning them into flesh-eating ghouls.

Several scenes, notably a siege at a farmhouse and the mistaken identity finale, are direct re-dos of the Romero film. Hinzman also stresses that pic's invention that the sure way to destroy a zombie is shoot it in the head.

Some of the thesping here is amateurish but pic generally achieves its modest aims.