Dead Survivors

A group of survivors led by some Rambo-wanna-be, walk around an empty city trying to escape from zombies. They run into some military group that ends up wanting to kill the tough guy and have their way with the girls. He ends up wiping out the military and they hide in some mansion, that turns out to be a pharmaceutical lab. We learn how the zombies came about. There's also an imminent attack on the facility so they've got to get out of there in time.

Dead Survivors is nothing but an elaborate home movie about zombies. No one can act. The crew had little resources. And worst of all they had no concept of their own limitations. So they decided to re-record audio. And the folks who did the voice-overs couldn't act either. And the technical people had a hard time syncing the voices with the lip movements. You end up with something that sounds like an Asian king-fu movie of the 70s. There are no ambient or foley sounds. There's just a lot of loud and intrusive music.

The tough guy has the martial arts moves; the director knows more or less where to place the camera; overall the movie has a decent look like many contemporary movies, it's all a shade of brown. But other than that there isn't anything worthwhile here. I thought that only in America any lousy movie can get DVD distribution- apparently it's also possible in Germany.

Even for an indie movie, this flick is rather atrocious. A bunch of school kids (one of them still has braces!) stroll through so-called "Raccoon City", which looks suspiciously like an East German town, call each other by English names and ranks they can't even pronounce correctly ("Cornel" Templar?), shoot other kids with bad makeup using what's obviously blank guns, and mumble silly dialogs that could've been written by a fifth grader, with no acting skills whatsoever. I'm referring to the original German audio, the English dub is even worse. Some errors are funny and likely deliberate, e.g. fumbling with an ammo box with the logo of a well-known fireworks brand and a "9mm blank" designation in plain view. But there are not enough of these ironic moments to save this trash-fest. Avoid, unless you dig the worst of the worst in movie making.

It's strange that a low budget flick like this has a release on the shock label. It's a German flick and it shows on a few ways. It is gory in some scene's but naturally the language is awful. it's overdubbed in English, but the one that has a German accent. the lines are ridiculous too.

But it's the acting that is below zero that makes it an awful flick and the effects used. Fightscene's are really funny to see because you can easily spot that they hit against the victim or zombie or when a machete is used you can see it slowly hitting the victims. But there are other scene's that are gory with hands and legs being cut but again, the props used are laughable.

It made me remember the early splatter flicks from Ittenbach and others, the way that was done was also laughable. I had a few laughs like with the zombie walking around with a severed arm.

Overall a low budget zombie flick with bad effects and terrible acting. But there are people out who love this kind of trash.

Gore 2/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5