The Dead and the Damned

After a pair of miners crack open a strange meteor, alien spores infect the townsfolk of a small mining community, turning them into ravenous zombies. High-pitched bounty hunter Mortimer (David A. Lockhart), noble Indian brave Brother Wolf (Rick Mora) and winsome wench Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery) attempt to escape the area before becoming zombie chow.

Originally called The Dead and the Damned, this was retitled as Cowboys & Zombies for its DVD release, no doubt in a desperate attempt to associate itself with recent Hollywood blockbuster Cowboys & Aliens. Those dumb enough to confuse the two films should count themselves lucky, though: its budget might have been a fraction of the Daniel Craig/Harrison Ford movie, but Cowboys & Zombies actually proves to be the marginally more enjoyable effort.

Unlike Cowboys & Aliens, which given its huge budget and A-list talent was a huge disappointment, Cowboys & Zombies actually lives up to expectations ie., it's a poorly acted, shot on a shoestring, goofy B-movie horror that hasn't a clue what to do with its initial premise (the film meanders aimlessly before ending abruptly) but it at least manages to deliver blood, guts, zombies, and good looking, big breasted gals shedding their clothes, which is better than 118 minutes and $163 million worth of dreary, poorly written, CGI enhanced drivel in my book.

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.

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.

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

Bad production, bad script, bad premise, horrible deus ex machina type ending. And quite possibly the worst acting I've ever seen, especially from the lead David Lockhart. This guy is the WORST on screen cowboy ever. He needs both hands to pull the hammer back on a revolver. He walks like he's got a stick up his butt. I don't think his voice ever changed at puberty... he sounds like he's on helium the whole time. I dunno. I stayed up and watched it on the Horror channel because I'm in the middle of writing my own cowboys versus zombies script and when I saw this was coming on, I thought, "Oh crap." But I have nothing to worry about. At all. Avoid this.