The Mad

A father, a daughter, a future stepmother and a boyfriend are traveling when they stop in a small town (isn't it always a small town?) for some dinner and a place to sleep. The restaurant gets its meat locally, but sometimes local doesn't always mean healthy. There's a new kind of mad cow disease in town.

When this film showed up in the mail, I was undecided on how to take it. It had "Billy Zane" written on the cover, which seemed like a promising thing. Because Zane, for whatever reason, seems to suggest greatness -- despite my inability to determine why. And then I watched the trailer on my DVD of "Bottom Feeder", and this looked like a possible American answer to England's "Shaun of the Dead". Boy, is that giving it way too much credit.

The company behind this film is 235 Films (a new company behind such greats as "Bottom Feeder" and "UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine"). Their gimmick seems to be get a half-baked script, an unknown director, and then find one B-league star and put his/her name prominently on the cover. First Michael Madsen, then Tom Sizemore and now Billy Zane.

Now, Billy Zane ("Demon Knight", "Back to the Future") is a great actor and a wonderful action star and comedian. I think I could say he was the best part of this film without much debate. But he just couldn't save it. They gave him no good lines and he was just way too big to fill such a small character (not a small part, mind you, just such a one-dimensional character).

You see, the cool parts only take up ten minutes of the film. The rest is mostly a bunch of scenes where the daughter and future stepmother fight with each other. It's overdone, poorly scripted, poorly acted and really doesn't tie in to the overall plot. I was quite bored through much of this. I guess the daughter was sort of cute, but that didn't even come close to making up for the sheer blahness of it all.

Best scene was the "zombie debate" scene where they were trying to determine if the people they were fighting were zombies or not. They were flesh-eating and not dead... but were they undead? It's a good scene, and way too short. This sort of discourse could have carried the movie if it came in copious amounts.

Also, as with many films, I enjoyed the deleted scene. It was a music scene and nothing really happened in it, but it had artistic merit. And if you're going to give me a boring, pointless film -- you can at least make it artistic. Instead, they excised it out.

This film wasn't worthless. It had some good scenes, it had some humor, it had Billy Zane and I think the story was interesting. Maybe it had the wrong writer or director or editor. Maybe it had the wrong actors. It's hard to pinpoint it, because it seems like something that should have been kick-butt. If someone wants to remake this twenty years from now, or even a year from now (heck, "The Incredible Hulk" gets away with it) I support your cause. Because I think this one has a piece of hope buried under its large, bulbous morass.

Billy zane and co get up to mischief in this 80-some minute long movie.

It definitely has its moments that warrant a good chuckle, and the writing had decent flow, but it rapidly overstays its welcome.

The cinematography is kinda all over the place, and the editing leaves much to desire, what with the whole early 2000s vignette, which was the style at the time.

There's not much else to critique it on, ultimately the movie is okay and will get a few giggles out of you, it doesn't do much new. If I had to pick a specific issue, it's that it runs for way too long and boils down to them repeating the same joke for the entire span of the movie, kinda like a bad SNL skit, but they don't look at the camera after doing something they think is funny.

You could do worse, maybe it'll be right up your alley, give it a shot if you want, but you'll not miss much by skipping over it.

Having screened The Mad at the Gala Opening at the 2007 Canadian Filmmakers Festival, I can say that it would be a shame for this movie to be relegated to the 'Direct to Video Pile'. It's likely to become a cult movie in a similar vein to "Shaun of the Dead", "Evil Dead", "Return of the Living Dead", etc.

A tad slow in places, the intelligent humour and earnestness of the characters more than makes up for any shortcomings. This movie makes no pretense to being anything other than fun.

Nice to see Billy Zane in something other than a dramatic role, with luck we'll see more comedic acting from Zane in the future as he seemed to have a great deal of fun with this role.

Go 'Team Chris'

"The Mad" is a decent but very silly horror flick.

The Plot: Jason Hunt (Zane) and his family stop at a small town restaurant. While there, the townspeople turn into zombies after eating the hamburgers. Now Jason and his surviving daughter Amy (Maggie Castle) have to escape and figure out the mystery.

For a direct-to-video horror movie, this wasn't so bad. I expected the worst because it's distributed by the same company that put out UKM. Zane saved the movie with a funny performance. There was some good gore scenes too. The only flaw in the movie is the editing. There's no need for the movie to turn into a epileptic fit. It only happens a few times though.

"The Mad" is a good rainy day movie. It's fast-paced and gory, topped with an entertaining Zane performance. Recommended.

For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

THE MAD concerns a family vacation interrupted by a hamburger-induced zombie outbreak. Billy Zane is the dad who must face the hideous horde, with the help of his daughter, her boyfriend, and a handful of other survivors.

The first half of the movie is very good. Zane and company are hilarious. Things bog down a bit during the middle part, but there are just enough funny bits to keep it rolling.

Besides, how often do you get a chance to witness a hamburger patty crawl around, bubble green goo, and fly onto someone's face?...