The Dead Undead

The Dead Undead. What the hell does that mean? Dead is no longer living, and undead means technically dead but reanimated. So does that mean that 'the dead undead' are the undead who have died again? If so, doesn't that mean that they are just dead?

Beats me! As it happens, the dumb title isn't the worst thing about this film. It all starts out promisingly enough with a group of young vacationers (three hot babes, two guys) arriving at a strangely deserted motel, the girls immediately opting to get into their bikinis and go swimming, but goes rapidly downhill when the group is attacked by zombies with vampire like traits. It turns out that these are ZVs—zombie vampires—vampires that have turned into zombies after feeding on bovine blood infected with mad cow disease.

Hot on the heels of these horror hybrids are a highly trained and well-armed team of 'good' vampires (led by Luke Goss) who hope to deal with the problem before it spirals out of control. Cue lots of repetitive action, plenty of random gunfire, much macho posturing, crap CGI blood, stunt-men leaping from hidden trampolines onto the roofs of cars, dreadful flashbacks to pad out the running time (with two of the most unconvincing Vikings imaginable), truly awful acting, a pointless cameo from Forrest J. Ackerman, and Vernon Wells (of Mad Max 2 fame) passing time between signing autographs at movie conventions.

3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up 4 to IMDb.