Halloween horror marathon: Revolt of the Zombies

poster-revolt-of-the-zombiesI, too, wonder “which one of us is sane” after watching Revolt of the Zombies. The acting is either wooden or overly-emotive. Either way, it’s mind-bogglingly amateurish in a way that even a community theater group wouldn’t tolerate. Although, when the opening five minutes is essentially nothing but expository dialogue, and much that comes after is men sitting at tables, or in chairs, or in bed – lots of not moving – there’s nothing much with which to work.

The whole thing involves an awful lot of sound stages with matte backdrops, and not a lot of zombie action at all. There’s a squad of zombie soldiers entering a first world war trench early on, and it’s creepy as hell: silent, stone-faced soldiers facing down a hail of gunfire and rain of shells to descend into the trench and attack with bayonets at the ready.

What you’re left watching is a crossed lovers story that’s light on the zombies, but highly revolting for the better part of its first half. On a positive note, it’s pretty much terrible for the second half, as well. The “zombies” that eventually appear are just the rest of the cast, which the spurned fiance has hypnotized with a smokey powder. Whoopty-freakin’-do.

To be fair, the movie (which is awfully boring), had to go up against the combined forces of quilt, heating pad, and rainy, overcast weather, making me want to sleep through the end of Revolt of the Zombies, although I did not. I dozed, but I caught the gist of it – that being that dozing through the end did not cause the end to make any less sense than the rest of the film.

You can stream the whole thing below.