The Dead and the Damned

I have only watched half of this movie as of the time this review is being written.

according to IMDb, this film was made with a budget of $30,000 (thirty thousand, not million) dollars.

if that is correct- then FANTASTIC results for the money spent.

I agree with most of the other reviewers: C-grade acting, D-grade script, but the film looks and sounds great.

so again, good news: if you have $30K, and if you have a bunch of friends who want to work cheap, and if you are talented enough to tell a good story, then this movie will be an inspiration.

... Hey, even Kevin Smith started with nothing.

Initially just by the DVD cover alone you know what kind of movies you will be in for when you pick up this movie. But still, being the zombie aficionado that I am, I just had to watch it regardless.

The story in "The Dead and the Damned" or "Cowboys & Zombies" as it is titled on the DVD cover and in the actual movie, is some prospectors uncover what appears to be a meteor and brings it into town, attempts to crack it open and something green spews out. This green haze turns the prospectors into, yeah you guessed it, zombies! However, this puzzled me, because in a very short time the prospectors were quite decayed and decomposed, but still they remained their agility and ability to jump, run, sprint and do acrobatics.

However, the movie actually have good production and good cinematography and that shines through the movie and actually makes it worth sitting through.

The zombies, well I prefer shambling zombies that are unable of running and zombies that doesn't sound like marauding lions from the sound they make. That was a real bummer in the movie. The zombies also had that classic, low-budget-way-too-gray make-up on their faces, and for some reason their blood was green. And I just loved how the blood would spray up into the air whenever a zombie was shot, and then the blood simply just dissipated into thin air. That was just hilarious.

Effects-wise, then "Cowboys & Zombies" wasn't actually too shabby. The zombies, aside from the lame sounds and the gray-skin, actually looked decent enough and the effects were alright. The setting of the movie was also quite good and believable, aside from the poor choice of music, which seemed really unsuitable for a horror western.

I have sat through a lot of low-budget zombies movies in my time, and "Cowboys & Zombies" is actually on the better end of the scale of low-budget zombie movies. There are a lot of zombie movies out there far worse than this one.

And what was up with the guy on the DVD cover? I don't believe I even saw him in the movie! Epic!

Mixing cowboys/westerns and zombies have been done before. And in my personal opinion, it is not really the best of combinations. That period of time just doesn't work well with the living dead.

after the watching super 8 last night and struggling to stay awake through a group of stupid kids running around a one horse town this film made a refreshing change yes it is low budget but that is part of the appeal and the guns well i reckon they are the most realistic sounding guns that i have seen and heard when you remember its what they had in the real wild west zombies looked good and just enough story line to keep it entertaining right to the end, well done and certainly worth a watch. i have found many films like this are more enjoyable than the so called big movies which for some reason get rave reviews no matter how bad they are, a movie is about some time out from reality for relaxation and entertainment and this is both, well done what happened to the horse lol

It's a very cheap, very badly acted waste of time that seems to have been put together by a bunch of Wild West theme park employees during their lunch break. It's not even bad enough to be funny.

1/10 but only because we can't give 0.

When one comes across a movie like this, you tend to lower expectations to a pretty base level. Zombie action, some scares, low budget cheese, and an overall good cheeky time.

The 30,000 dollar budget is apparent, but not as much as you'd think. There's some good bang for the buck, but not nearly enough bang. We'll start with the lead actor. Forgoing all subtlety, he's AWFUL. Most of the laughs in this came from cringes induced by his ridiculous and amateur performance, gun handling, smirks that scream "I look like a cool action hero to myself" only to look idiotic and embarrassing to the audience.

There is some gratuitous nudity that likewise illicit some groans here and there. It's as if the filmmakers did not realize that with the production value they had, a GOOD zombie cowboy movie could have been made. If you're going at it from the view that no matter what you do, the movie will be crap, then at least make it entertaining crap.

There must have been several 15-20 minute stretches in this movie where characters fall victim to the "we must sit down and tell our sad story" syndrome, when due to the level of acting, or lack thereof, a greater focus on the action and horror would have been preferable whereas to not make the audience feel like they've been ripped off in the end.

That said, there are two scenes that come pretty close to showing how this could have been a GOOD little low budget genre mash-up and both of those scenes involve the main actress encountering zombies (a standout being a creepy hide and go seek scene that belongs in a better movie). What both of these scenes have in common? The horrible lead actor is nowhere to be found. Also these two scenes (due to their isolation from his awfulness) seem to have been filmed after the fact (after shooting was completed?) to fill out what is already a pretty short movie.

All in all, don't let the cover fool you. There's not much action to be had here. Just long stretches of characters talking about back story that would have been better left in the subtext in place of what your audience was told to expect: Action.

The good: A few inventive zombie make-ups, a couple genuinely creepy scenes with the main actress escaping zombies, and some nice location photography.

The bad: Most of the performances, the music, pacing, and lack of action.

The ugly: Every time the main actor shows his face or opens his mouth. He really is that bad.