MY CALL: For lovers of truly bad horror and bad, cheesy horror comedy, this is a God-awful winner. All others should keep a safe distance. IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH: Killer Workout (1987), Death Spa (1989) and Hellgate (1990) are all served with extra cheese as well; lots of laughs.
This cheesy 80s horror comedy comes with a moral lesson: adultery is wrong. In order to demonstrate the accurate real life consequences of adultery, this articulate film afflicts adulteresses with an STD. The symptoms? No biggie. Just uncontrollable compulsive cannibalistic infanticide in the form of sexually-transmitted zombiism.
“Infanticide is a solid $5 vocab word meaning the intentional killing of infants or, more generally, one’s offspring.”
Everybody in this movie is unpleasant. The mothers are all catty, spiteful, unfaithful, gossiping alcoholics who speak pure vitriol. The fathers are all cheaters or wife-beating alcoholics. The kids, proving that the apple doesn’t fall far from the proverbial slutty tree, are sassy and promiscuous. A local well-to-do nurse flagrantly ignores HIPPA laws. The ice cream truck man is dating a baby-faced high schooler while making eyes at every other young girl in town. At one point, we actually see a cop and the coroner having a beer while discussing an autopsy…standing over the body in the morgue…drinking beer!
See? EVERYBODY is unpleasant.
Once infected with this STD, the mothers behave like silly, flesh-eating monsters. You know that saying “I actually think she would eat her own young”? Yeah, it’s pretty much like that. Mothers start eating their smallest and most vulnerable children first with cheesy zombie gore and cheesy zombie facial expressions. Some of them are more tactful, trying to fatten up their kids with milk-heavy diets. Others have super strength and unhinging jaws–really funny and weak effects on the jaw, but it was an enjoyable brief highlight.
When witnesses to these horror speak up they are naturally not taken seriously…”Really, I came home and saw my mother eating my baby brother.” “My mother…she ate my father.” “She’s never done anything like this before.”
Somehow the oddly short lovesick coroner and the irregularly tall amorous nurse work together to create an antivirus with no educational background in immunology, no lab rats or human trials, and no access to a biomedical research facility.
The director of this masterpiece could never seem to decide if the STD-virus turned them into living zombies or methodical cannibals, but that was surely forgivable among the melee of other flaws in this fun-spirited FUBARed mess. The effects were obviously weak, but festively cheesy and accompanied by entertaining sloppy chewing sound effects. But there’s dismemberment, flesh-tearing and over-the-top zombie make-ups and dental inserts–these things are inherently fun to any horrorhound. The make-up work is so silly. It reminds me of Killer Klowns from Outer Space meets the Joker.
To refer to the acting quality as wooden would be far too complimentary. These actors–if we dare to call them actors–seem to just “say” their lines at the camera with a faltering pace as if they were struggling to remember them like a 4th grader reciting a speech in front of his class.
For lovers of truly bad horror and bad, cheesy horror comedy, this is a God-awful winner.
