Sometimes you just know you’re going to love a movie. Even
if - as in the case of Joe Chein’s Zombie 108 - it goes against your better
judgement. Chein had a game plan going into this. He knows that there’s a
market for this kind of filth. So he ramped it up, repackaged it, and booted it
into the stratosphere.
Zombie 108 isn’t just a zombie movie. Chein knows – with
the walking dead sprouting up all over the place – you need to take a bigger bite
if you’re going to satisfy an insatiable zombie horror fan base. So not only is
he launching a horde of decaying corpses at your TV screen, he’s throwing in a
huge dollop of torture porn for added detestation. Zombies, torture porn, naked
flesh and degradation. Chein’s film was made for a certain breed of film fan.
That would be us then.
After surviving a deadly car crash, a young lady pulls
herself from the wreckage and tries to find her daughter. Unbeknown to her, a
catastrophic accident at a top-secret research lab has released a deadly virus
into the city. All hell is breaking loose. Chein is happy to obey the rules
of zombie horror in the opening act, with an all out assault on the sense and
senseless.
Our protagonists - if you can call them that - are a ragtag bunch of
misfits, murderers, gangsters and police officers. Controlled by a local crime
lord, District 108 is the one place in the city the police don't want to go on a normal day. But today is not a normal day, and the crack SWAT team ordered to
help evacuate the uninfected must do just that. The local gangs don’t take too
kindly to the intrusion, and both sides suffer heavy casualties before they
realise that the enemy is not – by definition – living among them.
It’s your traditional zombie horror movie, then? Yes and
no. At the halfway point, Chein gets bored of rampaging corpses, and decides to
throw a spanner in the works. A rubber faced, murderous serial killer who preys
on survivors and tortures them for his own perverse pleasure. It’s a neat hook
in the right hands, one that could have seen a more established director
digging into the human psyche.
It’s the age-old question really, even if it is
presented in such an extreme manner. If you knew you could get away with
something, is there anything that would stop you from doing it? Especially when
the world has fallen apart and you might not live to see another day. It
could have been an exploration of the twisted, tortured soul. A bleak and biting
journey through the darkest doors of the mind. In Chein’s hands, however, it’s
just another excuse for gratuitous rape scenes.
The second act gives way to
exploitation, farce and sleaze, but with so much going on you won't have time to
notice. Production values aren’t high, but Chein makes the most of meagre
funding and utilises his shoestring budget to great effect. There are too many
characters, and some of the performances – particularly those of the
western actors – are incredibly weak. Zombie 108 is blessed with a detestable
bunch, but sometimes that works in a horror movie's favour,
because it’s always fun to watch an irritating character die in a satisfyingly
brutal fashion. Chein ensures that his characters come to a grisly end, and
Zombie 108 pushes the boundaries of bad taste to its limits on several
occasions.
The final act descends into comedy, unintentional or not,
and some of the bizarre make up effects only serve to frustrate. Yes, mutated
gangster arm, I’m talking to you. But despite its limitations, Zombie 108
embraces the scattershot approach to filmmaking and makes for an evening of
guilty pleasure. Naked flesh, bloody heroines (why are girls covered in blood
so attractive?), a sprinkling of comedy, zombie carnage, cool effects and
terrifying effects - what more could you ask for on a Saturday night? Unless its
date night of course.
Zombie 108 does feel like two horror shorts thrown together
in a blender, but with so much energy, bloodshed and vulgarity, it’s hard to
ignore such a chaotic waste of time. If Chein is able to rein it in a little
next time out, his could be a name to look out for. Bizarre but occasionally brilliant,
crude yet incredibly colourful, Zombie 108 is as frustrating as it is engaging.
But I liked it. I liked it a lot. AW
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