Zombie King and the Legion of Doom

This movie was made to watch and laugh at. It was on afternoon TV, and thats the category it should be judged in. It's cheesy, the acting is dubious, and make up is terrible. All of that comes together in a way that makes it campy fun. Don't watch it expecting Titanic or Dawn of the Dead; think Lost Skeleton of Cadavera, and you'll be on the right track. Just turn off the higher functions, crack a beer, and relax. Its a movie where Luchador heroes battle outrageous villains that would be at home in any Saban live action show, with over the top everything and a decent soundtrack to boot. I can only hope that more equally cheesy movies come out to balance the epic films that seem to be in vogue right now. Viva los Luchadors!

In my quest to watch every zombie movie ever made, I've seen some super greats, and some sorta greats, and some not so great, and some that need to be placed under a sewer grate. This one, this one's sorta great. Much better than a lot of fare I've been force-feeding myself lately. I know nothing of the culture of "luchadora" wrestling--I feel like I've walked in half-way through the first season of "Heroes" or "Lost", and there's some big backstory going on with these people I know nothing about. But that's OK, because I'm here at the important time--when the ZOMBIES come around! And they are GOOD zombies--decent make up and gore, they eat brains and human flesh like they should, nice, decent, Romero Zombies (All hail "Dr. G Andrew Romero" of "Zombies: an authorized guide"). It's not "Night of the Living Dead" and it's not trying to be. It's just a sit back and enjoy the silly gory fun-popcorn movie--a perfect way to end a work week on a late Friday night!

'Enter…Plaga Zombie 1.5' could be an alternate title since it could almost be a missing higher no-budgeted spin-off from that series. Actually, the 2nd Plaga Zombie movie was better than this. Ugh…will someone please stop this sub-genre! Did people learn nothing from the Santo film series? I'm sure there will be some people who love luchadores and may find camp humor here to enjoy, but it's a bad film that acts like its based off a non-existent comic book. I'm tired of watching luchador fanboys fawn over wrestlers in low budget zombie films; it gives me flashbacks to that John West theme song… (Zombie completionists will know what I'm talking about).

Ulysses, the 'hero' of the film drives around in his car continuously spouting 'I'm in my freshman year of college' philosophy quotes to the audience in an attempt to lull us into sleep, which he hopes we will awaken from having dreamt that this was a good film. Another reviewer tried to compare it to Bruce Campbell's narration in Don Coscarelli's "Bubba Ho-Tep", but there's a bit of a difference in that Ho-Tep was a brilliant film and this is cheesy garbage. Then there's Tiki and his wrestling zombies, which may or may not have killed some local civilians. There are several other wrestlers including bad guys, but you probably won't care.

Being a luchador film, we get to see these idiots running around with their masks constantly on (as is the luchador fashion rage) in an attempt to save on film-making down time due to hair and makeup crew and to save the 'actors' from having to actually emote. I wasn't sure if the acting was bad and the dialogue delivery was stilted intentionally to reinforce the cheese factor or if that was a lack of ability on the part of those cast in the roles. Looking through the credits, several of the cast members names seemed to be aliases, making me wonder if they didn't want anyone to know that they were in this film.

There were some nods to other horror films and filmmakers including: Ulysses at one point holds onto a book entitled 'Zombies: An Authoritative Study – Collected Edition compiled by Dr. G. Andrew Romero and Dr. Clifford Ruttle'. There's also a dialogue reference to Tod Browning's "Freaks" (take a wild guess what 3 word phrase a crowd shouts repeatedly).

THE PLOT: To bore me to death and cure insomnia once and for all… (wait, that was the filmmakers plot). The film's plot is: Our fearless wrestling heroes have to stop a plot involving genetically engineered zombies and a zombie breeding scheme involving human incubators in Zombie King and friends' bid to take over the world -- all while running around looking like bargain basement trick-or-treaters.

MAKEUP: basic low-budget zombie makeup with decent low-budget gore fx.

FEASTING: Yeah kinda DE-ANIMATION METHODS: cabesa removal CONTAGION LEVEL: I couldn't exactly tell if the victims turned into zombies themselves, but at least one did. There was mention of a way to turn people into zombies by forcing them to drink zombie blood.

The reported budget for this film according to IMDb, makes it about 9 times the budget of "Clerks", thereby proving that having a good script can do things for the quality of a low budget film that throwing a little more money onto the screen and watching it burn could not do for this film. I have seen several dozen zombie films and EZK rates pretty low.

This film is recommended only for zombie completionists and for devotees of the fake and annoying sport known as pro wrestling.

I can't believe that a movie that is supposed to be about both luchadore wrestlers and zombies is somehow boring, but somehow this braindead, zero budget doo-doo-fest came along and proved me wrong.

Apparently I have to write more lines so I guess I will give more info and details... uh... so this boring movie is very dull. I wouldn't have believed it could be this sleep inducing but it proved me completely, totally, unfortunately wrong, wrong, wrong. So very wrong indeed that I had to write about it using as many words as possible.

Still more? Okay then. The acting stinks, the filmmaker is completely devoid of any talent either as a writer or cinematographer or even editing, because even that stood out as crappy. I guess the sound was okay and even some of the music, although I can't really remember any specifics about that. Talk about bad acting, particularly the small parts in this were basically played by people who are not just pulled randomly off the street, it seems like they don't even want to be there or care at all about what they are making.

Do yourself a big fave and skip this terribly boring, pointless mess of a movie. Even as a huge zombie fan who watches every zombie film I can get my hands on, I wish I had skipped this one and just re-watched one of the Living Dead movies or a couple episodes of TWD instead.

I bought this on DVD for my roommate as a joke gift, but after watching it the joke was on me. If you are a fan of comic books, this flick deserves a look. The main characters are larger-than-life celebrity heroes and who eat, drink, and sleep with their wrestling masks on and have to fend off autograph-hounds when they go for smokes. The story is minimal (Zombie King wants to take over the world) but each of the heroes has a past with at least one of the antagonists, adding a feeling of depth to the story world. The fight scenes are fun, if you go along with the idea that pro-wrestling moves are the best way to subdue an opponent. The music, mostly surf music by the Tijuana Bibles, carries the action very well. All-in-all, surprisingly entertaining. Just goes to show that low-budget movies can work, if done right. Also props for a cameo by Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart of WWF fame as the butt-kicking local sheriff.