Shadow: Dead Riot

Bad ass phychopath, Shadow (Candyman's Tony Todd) is executed, but not before starting a full scale riot resulting in many prisoner deaths. Twenty years later the prison is now a womens' penitentiary. Focusing on the new inmate, Solitaire (Carla Greene), a tough girl who Shadow was planning to sacrifice when she was a baby, it isn't long before the zombies of the prisoners led by Shadow himself are out to finish what he started. This cheesy b-grade horror flick might have had a little promise in the beginning and I like Tony Todd, but once the film gets to the women's prison and focuses on it's inhabitants, the film becomes simply dreadfully lame, not even the shower scene or other nudity could save it from sub-par mediocrity. The film does pick up in the last 30 minutes or so, but not enough to make it watchable.

my grade: D

Eye Candy: Toy, and Aggie Valdez show tits; Misty Mundae gives full frontal; Danielle Riley shows EVERYthing; and various extras show much skin as well

If you're looking for a halfway decent women-in-prison film, look elsewhere. This one isn't campy-fun, it's campy-boring. What really irritates me is that some of the casting is excellent, with Margaret Baker just right as a predatory lesbian guard looking to enjoy the bodies of pretty female inmates like Misty Mundae and Ruby Larocca. But aside from some brief conversation, nothing remotely kinky or erotic ever happens! It's a waste of perfectly good female talent! And if you're not going to have at least one good girl/girl moment then WHY bother with a women-in-prison setting in the first place? The silly zombie plot would have been far more palatable had more attention been paid to the pretty girls-with-other-girls behind bars!

Or even D-movie? I like me a really low-to-no budget movie from time to time. Because they don't take themselves serious. This is the case here too, but still I couldn't enjoy the movie. Yes I knew the budget was tight and that there would not be so much money at hand, but seeing they could hire a martial Arts expert, for the fight scenes, makes you wonder why they didn't also spend money on a funnier script (w/o every cliché in the book)!

Although the tone of the movie is not to be serious, the main actress does take her job a bit too seriously, which contradicts the whole thing and feels stupid. So while there is one or two original things here, the overall feeling, for me was "boring"!

This movie's trailer stood out. The movie delievered. This is not a typical zombie flick. The action scenes deliver way before the 1st undead lurches onto the screen. The lead Solitaire has a quiet intensity that carries the mood. She delivers just before the edge of cliche. It is a crime why she had not accelerated to that of a higher budget star. Hollywood still has a way to go. Worth a Friday night and popcorn.

If you are fond of over the top, camp experiences like Brain Dead or Ricky-O (Story of Ricky), then you should enjoy this. It is totally ridiculous and a not even close to being a good film, but that doesn't stop it being loads of fun.

I saw this at a horror festival with a really appreciative audience (which definitely helped it out), and the audience was in hysterics throughout and there was regular applause too. OK, some people walked out as well, but that is to be expected with films like this.

There is good gore, loads of tits, terrible dialogue ("I see you're going to be a handful....maybe 2 handfulls"), bad acting, (with a couple of half decent performances thrown in too), zombie babies, shower scenes, mad professor type doctors, bad kung fu, female body builders and probably loads more that I have forgotten.

Quite clearly a "so bad it's good" classic. Can't wait to get the DVD.