The film is about an all female motorcycle gang named the ‘Cycle-Sluts’ who cruise into the isolated town of Zariah looking for a good time. Here an evil scientist turned mortician has been killing local townspeople with the aid of his long suffering dwarf assistant (“If god wanted you to do normal things, he would have made you look like normal people”) and turning them into zombies to use as labor at an abandoned mine. The mine is too radioactive after underground nuclear testing to be mined by living people. Although he later admits that the real reason he’s been doing it isn’t the money, it’s because he’s just plain mean.

The zombies escape after a curious little boy removes the lock to explore the mine, becoming the zombies’ first victim (“daddy, is that you? Aaaiiigh!” heheh, funny stuff). Around this point we meet another one of the parties involved, a bus-load of blind orphans, who are stranded just on the outskirts of town as their ride breaks down. Luckily their bus-driver always keeps an Uzi on the bus ‘for sentimental reasons’.

With vague memories of life to guide them, the zombies eventually find their way back to town and begin devouring live flesh. Going against the wishes of their leader and despite some rough treatment from the locals earlier in the film, the Cycle-Sluts ride to the rescue. Driven by a combination of personal history with Zariah, maternal instinct and possibly even a little true love the bad-ass moma’s start hacking off zombie heads using chainsaws, baseball bats, welding torches and a garrott.

In the final scene the Cycle Sluts use fresh meat to lure the remaining zombies to the town church, which they have packed with dynamite. They are now aided by the doctor’s dwarf who has decided that there are better lines of work than henchman. With all the undead on-board and the church sealed up the timer goes off and the church goes up in flames, zombies and all. The Cycle sluts are rewarded with a sack full of cash and induct the dwarf and several of the blind orphans as honorary Cycle-Sluts. They then ride out of town with some of the men folk in tow (their new ‘bitches’) and throw the sack of money to the wind.
Some cool trivia. Early in the movie the Cycle Sluts leader performs a song in the local bar (‘Do what your big mama told ya’). This is an original song written for the film and is pretty catchy (kind of reminiscent of Joan Jett). Another good piece of music is the zombies theme, which is almost like an eastern European marching hymn combined with a slide whistle and the sound of man laughing merrily.

This movie was filmed at a real town and the actual locals were somewhat unappreciative of the noise generated by the motorcycles and the film crew. Several locals actually fired pot-shots at the crew with live ammunition in an attempt to scare them, and Billy Bob Thornton was personally threatened with a knife held to his throat.

This movie features Billy Bob Thornton before he became famous and it also features former MTV veejay Martha Quinn.

This film is notable only for Tom Savini’s appearance as a zombie killer in the beginning and for its near-unanimous poor reviews; the film itself is generally regarded as a bad imitation of the original, though many of the zombie rules are not followed. The actors’ performances and the quality of the movie itself, which contains almost no background sound, have earned this a D class from critics.

Cast

• Tom Savini as Deputy Hughs
• Marty Schiff as Deputy Randolph
• Damien Luvara as Matthew Micheals
• Jamie McCoy as Laurie Danesi
• Sam Nicotero as Dusty
• Heidi Hinzman as Candy Danesi
• Philip Bower as Joseph Michaels
• Tom Stoviak as Gregg Peters
• A. Barrett Worland as Abbott Hayes
• Justin Krauss as Steve

Bride of Re-Animator is the sequel to Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) and is followed by Yuzna’s Beyond Re-Animator (2003).

Cast

• Jeffrey Combs - Dr. Herbert West
• Bruce Abbott - Dr. Dan Cain
• Claude Earl Jones - Lt. Leslie Chapham
• Fabiana Udenio - Francesca Danelli
• David Gale - Dr. Carl Hill
• Kathleen Kinmont - Gloria
• Mel Stewart - Dr. Graves
• Irene Forrest - Nurse Shelley
• Michael Strasser - Ernest
• Mary Sheldon -  Meg Halsey

Braindead is in the same vein as Jackson’s earlier works Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles but Braindead is rather more polished, with a budget of around $3 million. Although it starts with the capture of a zombie-creating creature on the eerie Skull Island, the movie is relatively low-key in its opening half. Only in the second part does it spiral out of control into a blood-filled zombie film.

Jackson reused the song played on the organ as the mourners wait to enter the church prior to the embalming scene. It is Sodomy from Peter Jackson’s previous film Meet the Feebles (1989).

Lawsuit

The film was subject to a lawsuit. In Bradley vs. Wingnut Films Ltd [1993] 1 NZLR 415, it was alleged that the comedy horror film Brain Dead had infringed the privacy of the plaintiffs by containing pictures of the plaintiff’s family tombstone. The tombstone appeared on the film for less than 14 seconds. It never appeared in its entirety, only the letters “BRA” were visible behind a person sitting on the wall at the side of the plot. After reviewing the New Zealand judicial authorities on privacy, Gallen J stated: the present situation in New Zealand … is that there are three strong statements in the High Court in favour of the existence of such a tort in this country and an acceptance by the Court of Appeal that the concept is at least arguable. This case became one of a series of cases which contributed to the introduction of Tort of Invasions of Privacy in New Zealand.

Cast

• Timothy Balme as Lionel Cosgrove
• Diana Peñalver as Paquita Maria Sanchez
• Elizabeth Moody as Mum (Vera Cosgrove)
• Ian Watkin as Uncle Les
• Brenda Kendall as Nurse McTavish
• Stuart Devenie as Father McGruder
• Jed Brophy as Void
• Stephen Papps as Zombie McGruder
• Murray Keane as Scroat
• Glenis Levestam as Nora Matheson
• Lewis Rowe as Mr. Matheson
• Elizabeth Mulfaxe as Rita
• Harry Sinclair as Roger
• Davina Whitehouse as Paquita’s Grandmother

Another remake would follow in 2006, titled Night of the Living Dead 3-D.

Production

The film was handled by the same team as the original, with the exception that directing duties were handled by famed special make-up effects artist Tom Savini, who originally signed up with hopes of doing the make-up effects as he was not able to for the original film. Romero served as producer for the remake, and he recruited some of the original camera and sound crew to participate. Laurence Fishburne, Ving Rhames and Eriq La Salle were all considered for the role of Ben. Subsequently, Rhames would go on to play a male lead in the remakes of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. To avoid an X rating, Savini had to cut several scenes from the film, some of which can be seen on the DVD. Savini sometimes shows the entirety of the cut scenes at conventions.

Cast

• Tony Todd -  Ben
• Patricia Tallman - Barbara
• Tom Towles - Harry Cooper
• McKee Anderson - Helen Cooper
• William Butler -  Tom Landry
• Katie Finneran - Judy Rose Larson
• Bill Moseley - Johnnie
• Walter Berry - Mr. McGruder

The movie had a considerably higher budget than the prior two Evil Dead films. The budget was estimated to be around $11 million; Evil Dead II had a budget of $3.5 million and The Evil Dead a budget of $350,000. At the box office, Army of Darkness was not a big success, barely making back its budget with a gross of $11.5 million domestically. After its video release, however, it has obtained an ever-growing cult following, along with the other two films in the trilogy.

Production

Plans to make a third Evil Dead film had been circulating for a number of years, even prior to the production of Darkman^. Evil Dead II made enough money internationally that Dino De Laurentiis was willing to finance a sequel. Director and script writer Sam Raimi drew from a variety of sources, including literature with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Three Stooges. Evil Dead II, according to Bruce Campbell, “was originally designed to go back into the past to 1300, but we couldn’t muster it at the time, so we decided to make an interim version, not knowing if the 1300 story would ever get made”. Promotional drawings were created and published in Variety during the casting process before the budget was deemed too little for the plot. The working title for the project was Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness. The title “Army of Darkness” came from an idea by Irvin Shapiro, during the production of Evil Dead II. This was used after Sam Raimi was unable to use his original title “The Medieval Dead.”