O Congelamento

So, it was corny... extremely corny. I loved this movie, though. It has been given horrible reviews by pretty much everyone who has seen it. This, however, has been one of my favorite corny horror movies for many years. It is worth many laughs.

The zombies in it are the most creative I have seen in any horror movie, and I have seen a lot of them. The whole idea and plot are trite, but I think that it embodies the B movie... right down to Linda Blair playing a main character.

In short, and I know this was already short... watch this movie or I'll make you watch it.

As to be expected, there's a pretty good reason why this film is so obscure and unknown in spite of dealing with the always-popular premise of zombies and starring the 80's B-movie queen Linda Blair, namely: it sucks! "The Chilling" is trying enormously hard – way too hard – to be a story with depth and factual background, whereas it should have just been a light-headed and gore-packed horror flick about frozen zombies. It takes an incredibly long time before anything remotely interesting or significant happens. There's a lot of drivel about cryogenics, which I learned in my physics class is the study of products and their behavior at extremely low temperatures. So naturally, in this film a bunch of people are studying the behavior of human corpses when deep frozen. Needless to say this is extremely boring, until two dim-witted night watchmen decide, during an electric power failure, that it's a good idea to put the metal-constructed cool cells outside at the heights of a thunderstorm. The coolers are struck by lightening, obviously, and the bodies spontaneously defrost and come to live to go on a murderous zombie rampage. "The Chilling" is a boring and surprisingly (for a late 80's effort, at least) gore-free horror film that doesn't even use up a quarter of its potential. All the painful attempts to build up an atmosphere of suspense and eeriness fail tremendously and I can't think of any reason why the zombie-attacks had to be so bloodless. Even in spite of the low budget available, they could have done better. The set pieces, make-up effects and costumes are pitiable. The research lab, for example, looks like a proper apartment flat whilst the zombies couldn't look less menacing with their green faces and foil-wrapped outfits. How Linda Blair managed to get involved yet again in such an embarrassing low-budgeted horror flick is a complete mystery. She's attracted to lousy B-movies like bees are to honey.

When I decided to try watching a movie about cryogenic zombies ("cryonoids"), I wasn't expecting a whole lot. That's exactly what I got, and then even less. Aside from a shortage of special effects (squibs?) and a severe lack of any acting talent, "The Chilling" also sports the absolute worst script I've ever seen made into a movie. I had to stop the tape numerous times during the first 45 minutes in order to repair the damage done to my intellect for witnessing such atrocious dialogue as there is found here.

Furthermore, the collection of characters is so formulaic and one-dimensional it's ridiculous: the corrupt doctor; his assistant, played by Linda Blair (we know she's his "assistant" because he repeatedly refers to her by that title); the recently-widowed businessman with a heart of gold who develops a romantic interest with Blair's character; his criminal son; the Blair character's alcoholic, abusive, unemployed boyfriend, whom we are introduced to in the most contrived use of a flashback; and, of course, the rough, tough, bearded security guard who becomes the hero.

Apparently, the preserving fluid which some cryogenics lab uses on its bodies is highly conductive, naturally resulting in disaster when all of the lab's containers end up outdoors in a remarkable sequence of events during a lightning storm (on Halloween night, no less). As for the zombies themselves, if you enjoy watching people in green latex masks walking around in aluminum foil suits, then "The Chilling" is the movie for you. The zombie action is very weak at its best; the zombies' primary killing method seems to be grabbing people by the shoulders and shaking them to death. The businessman and the security guard do most of the zombie fighting, including a highly suspenseful scene of re-freezing the undead with liquid nitrogen. Let me tell you, the steel mill scene in "T2" has got nothing on "The Chilling" in portraying an enemy getting frozen in his tracks like that.

How Linda Blair ended up stuck in the middle of this piece of dreck is indeed a mystery. True, her career didn't exactly skyrocket during the 80s (sadly), but this movie is an embarrassment for her. The script doesn't even have the decency to put her to any good use. The most that her character is given to do is shriek out things like "Here they come", "Do something", "Hurry!". The only thing I can figure is that poor Linda was compensated for her work on this film in rations of food. The hero is played by Grizzly Adams himself, Dan Haggerty. In this picture, he faces stiff acting competition from his beard and the security dog, and he does his best to outperform them both.

The only frightening part of "The Chilling" is the introduction which brings up the factual elements of cryogenics and suggests that "the film you are about to see could happen in your own community". As I was counting the number of times a few of the names are repeated in the closing credits, I was floored to suddenly see Lucasfilm get credited. Fortunately, it was only for the movie's sound production. 1/10.

Alright, well I had no idea this movie was from 1989, I just saw the DVD cover, and it looked interesting enough. Anything with zombies usually has my attention right away. So I picked this movie up and went home to watch it.

Now, cryogenics is not a bad thing in a movie, but in this? Wow, what where they thinking? I thought that it was common knowledge that when you freeze something it is preserved in its present state. Yet, however, the bodies in this movie were decaying and rotten when they came out of the cryo tanks. What was up with that? Were the tanks not properly closed? Leaking? What was up with that...

The movie took well over 35 minutes before anything real interesting happened. And during these 35 minutes you are just sitting around waiting for something to happen, and you are acquainted with a bunch of dull and personality-depraved characters.

Okay, lightning strikes and it is one in a how many thousand chance of happening? I am not sure, but for lightning to strike over 11 times in the same place in a 5 meter radius that is just ridiculous. When that scene took place, the movie went downhill, and it went downhill fast!

Alright, moving on to the revived frozen dead, or zombies (let's call them what they really were). Some of the masks actually looked decent enough. But why where they all a murky color of brownish-green? And what was up with the glowing eyes? I just didn't get that. Moving on, how come some times the zombies were only able to stagger and walk with a limping gait, but other times they were able to run and jump? Pick one and stick with it, wow! Still not done here with the zombies, the sound they were making? Again, wow! It sounded like a young elephant in pain or a horse in labor. It was terrible.

The cover had Linda Blair on it, and right enough for that, sure her name is legendary for her role in "The Exorcist", but come on, that was back then, and her name was on the cover here just to lure people in.

For a horror movie, then "The Chilling" is really boring and uneventful. And I am sure for a 1989 movie, it wasn't even really scary back then. I remember having seen horror movies from the 80's that were far more scary; "C.H.U.D." for example.

"The Chilling" might be worth giving a chance if you are a fan of Linda Blair, but otherwise, there is nothing interesting to be had from this movie. Except for the ending perhaps, that was the lamest ending I have seen in ages.

Linda Blair, plays an emplyee at cryogenic centre, where bodies are being defrosted, not long afterward they turn into zombies. The Chilling is a not a very good 80s horror, the acting is ok though, but the script is just useless.