Dead End

I like gory movies, but a baby Zombie returning to the womb is simply going too far. In "Dawn of the Dead," George Romero deliberately used off-color blood. It was red, but it didn't exactly LOOK like blood, and I think that was good. It added a slight non-real look to the film. The producers of "Dead End" supposedly used real blood and real gore, and that's just gross. There's an unusual "realism" to this movie which is unnerving, and at times I felt like I was watching a snuff film. There's so much screaming and so much misery, it's hard to believe any of these people were just acting. The zombie attacks in this movie aren't scary, they're simply ugly. It's like the filmmakers wanted to remind viewers that people bleed when they die, and they don't stop screaming until the lights go out. SOME of the gore would have worked, if not for the ugly documentary-style of film-making, constantly jolting the viewer. The characters are more or less believable, but none of them are very likable. The dialogue is fast and funny, but again, we don't like these people. The lead character is a reckless, devil-may-care jerk who thoughtlessly endangers the lives of everyone around him, just for the sake of "getting the shot."

However, in between all the disgusting deaths and the restraints of what must have been a non-existent budget, this movie leapfrogs to Naked Gun-like comedy, much of which is laugh-out-loud hysterical. The filmmakers take jabs at everything from Rocky Horror and Star Trek to President Reagan and Scientology, and numerous '50's horror movies, including a hilarious homage to Howard Hawks' "The Thing." There's even a character named Romero who starts kicking a dead horse.

It's too bad this movie can't be edited and re-released, minus most of the bloodshed. It could've been one of the funniest movies ever, but instead it's just one of the ugliest, redeemed by some imaginative deaths and some very funny moments.

I saw this weird little movie years ago at a friend's house, and no one else seems to have ever heard of it. A military germ warfare satellite crash lands in a small town, turning its inhabitants into zombies. A few people are also in the town, including a documentary film crew who believed the satellite was a UFO. This movie was shot on video, and like Blair Witch Project, pretends to be a true account of actual events. It's not perfect, and perhaps someone should have told the director to ease off just a tad on the blood and gore, but Dead End has moments of comic genius. The zombies are great! not their makeup, but their characters. One zombie endlessly drags a dead dog around the block, stopping at fire hydrants, while another zombie, a postman, walks up and down empty streets, placing items into mailboxes; rocks, dead birds, fingers, and so on, while several zombies dressed as characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show just stand patiently in front of a closed theater throughout the entire picture, never chasing or eating anyone. Perhaps too many ideas for such a low budget, but filled with in-jokes for film and television buffs, and some of the most truly grotesque death scenes ever imagined.