User reviews

On the continuum of low budget zombie films marketed direct to video during the time frame that this was released, it is ahead of the pack. The premise works and moves the zombie theme into a new environment nicely. The film has a nice atmosphere and truly has good acting. The makeup and effects will satisfy even the most decerning zombie film conesure. Where most direct to video zombie films couldn't even get an audience to sit through them, much less get a screening at even the most remote film festival, this film would more than likely draw a crowd and have gotten good reviews. It isn't of the kind of quality that would have justified a theatrical release, but it is at the high end of video releases in it's genre.

Zombie film fans will enjoy this one...

For me the movie went down the drain pretty fast after and due to the lack of scriptwriting talents few obviously infected convicts were forced to the canteen, so the hell surely broke loose. Nevertheless the idea of zombie epidemic in a high-security prison was still interesting to follow.

Apart from the script, the camera, most of the acting and especially sound work were killing the concept frame by frame. Ten repetitions of guts being pulled out of the bodies... Constant green toning of the picture, why?.. Gunshots poorly synchronized with video.. I don't know what was making me follow - I guess it was the concept itself again.

But somewhere in middle of this bad taste pride parade I was brought back to life by one totally brilliant scene. It was a shotgun slaughter with classic piano concert in the back (something from Tchaikovsky's "Seasons", I guess). It was so perfect match of time, picture and sound, although this trick is not a novelty (check e.g. The Silence of the Lambs). So while making your mind please take into account that I added one extra star for Thaikovsky.

After killing four persons in his home with a shotgun, Dee Travis (Brandon Stacy) claims that he had accidentally ingested an experimental biotoxin that the company Blackthorn where he worked was researching. Travis is sent visibly ill to the Harwood Maximum Security Prison and the Security Officer Sweeny (Chriss Anglin) sends the inmate to the infirmary. Meanwhile the CDC Agent Samantha Beckett (Bay Bruner) comes to the prison to interview Travis and is received by Warden Mahler (Bobby James). While they are having a conversation, they are informed that Travis has been transferred to the solitary confinement and his infected blood has caused an outbreak among the prisoners and guards. Samantha calls the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the responsible advises the warden that the prison is in quarantine.

The gore "Dead Men Walking" is a zombie movie underrated in IMDb. I have just watched this low-budget movie with the lowest expectation based on the 3.1 User Rating and in the end I found it a flawed but enjoyable feature. The story has many flaws, like for example, how could Travis be only affected by the virus in the prison? The "shotgun killer" killed four people; then he certainly went to the court for the judgment of his crime. Therefore, months (or even years) have passed until he was sent to prison. Even if he was sent directly to prison to wait for the trial, how long have passed for the manifestation of the effect of the virus? Further, he claimed that he had contaminated his friends and none of them was sent to an autopsy to prove his words. Samantha tells that they are in quarantine and if anybody including the warden's son leave Harwood, it would be "hell on Earth". However, she spends half the movie trying to escape with Johnny. The FEMA authority tells that the prison is in quarantine. However, there are only two snipes eliminating any escapee instead of the building under siege by the police. The reverend that believes in God committing a capital sin with his suicide is also weird. I could list many other flaws in the story, but these examples are the worst. Another bad point is the cinematography, too dark and greenish and the camera work with unusual angles and edition. Last but not the least, there are many bad acting among the unknown cast. There are stupid lines but there are some very witty and funny. The good points are the gruesome make-up and special effects that do not spare children. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Os Mortos Estão Vivos" ("The Dead Are Alive")

What an utterly agonizing waste of film....The premise and setting are interesting and had possibilities...A virus spreads through a maximum security prison. Actually in this flick its an abandoned building on a side street. You can see cars whizzing by and the gate into the prison is a shaky mess sitting on some rollers....I suppose the money on this movie was spent on special effects which by low budget standards were OK. Although you can see some actors walk out of a room and not seem to know which way to go since its obvious they are on a set and not a real building. The characters are all stereo types we've seen before which is alright if a movie is entertaining. This one seem to lag and try and give you drama at the same time. One scene in particular which has the female lead and a victim having a heart to heart about life and stuff. God I wanted to vomit just like the zombies in this movie. The actress can actually deliver her lines believably its just she sounds like such a valley girl type that its annoying. The male actors are OK at best. The male lead is a brown haired Russell Crowe wanna be. There's also a lot of vomiting and squirming in agony as victims turn into zombies which can get a little irritable after a while. At the end of the day its an annoying, loud, badly scripted, and overly acted by some, low budget horror flick. Don't get me wrong, I love low budget horror films, but they at least have to have some appeal.

Well, this wasn't an abomination, but it was far from good. I didn't rent this with pre-conceptions of a Romero-esquire entry into the genre. While it did keep me watching throughout its entirety, it brought absolutely nothing interesting, though provoking, or even all too much entertaining to the table. No characters were interesting or endearing whatsoever. Even as a B-Movie, it fails. The only thing wresting it from a Sci-Fi channel original was the gore and violence. When the final credits roll, you wont feel moved at all, just the need to go eject the disc from the player. Sure, I've seen worse, but that's just about the best I can say from this low budget amateurish piece. Sure there are worse entries out there, but this is rubbing elbows with them.

Ever since the release of the highly overrated '28 Days Later', there's been a steady stream of low budget zombie movies being released; and I've been disappointed with most of them. The reason for this, mostly, is that the vast majority have too much humour about them, and although it is difficult to take a movie about the dead returning to life and feasting on the living seriously; things such as dancing zombies are, quite frankly, lame. It was a relief, then, that this film takes itself seriously; and the result is a gory, and loving tribute to the classic zombie films made by genre-icon George A. Romero. It's Day of the Dead that is this film's main focus, but tributes to the other films in the series shine through; as well as a few nods to other genre classics. The plot follows a zombie outbreak, which ends up in a prison after the sole survivor is arresting while trying to dispatch his friends who ended up catching the virus. The prison is maximum security, and this proves a big problem for the guards who become the hunted after their prisoners succumb to the deadly virus.

Before seeing this film, I thought that the prison setting may hinder the movie; but actually, it's definitely an advantage. The closed setting allow the film to present a constantly foreboding atmosphere, as we know that the characters are trapped with the living dead; and it also means that the movie doesn't spoil itself by trying to be too clever. Gore is present by the bucket load, which is sure to please zombie fans; but the action itself is a bit of a turn off as it happens mostly in slow motion. The first half of the film sees the plot build, and while it's not exactly deep; Dead Men Walking sets itself up nicely, and in true Day of the Dead style; the climax is full on action and gore. There's a little too much intestine ripping (I didn't hear the words "Choke on 'em!", though), but mostly the gut-munching is pleasing to the eye. Dead Men Walking looks and feels like it's been made for TV, which is a bit of a shame as either better production values, or a more low budget style would have served it better - but on the whole, I'd definitely take this film over most of the recent zombie flicks without a second thought.

I want the hour and a half of my life spent watching this back. Horrible acting, horrible sound dubbing, randomly added characters which made no sense. Its nice that the director cast his girlfriend as a leading role, but make sure she has even the slightest ability to act. Add on top of that the same rerun action scenes to fill any and all boring and plot lacking scenes. The main question is why? Why give money to make a horrible film like this when I can make more quality cinema on my camera phone. Why was a random Hispanic family living in a maximum security prison? Why was a random inmate having a intimate visit in a broom closet that no one seeming knew about? Where we supposed to be moved by the melodrama of the preacher suicide? The best part of this film? The credits...why, because of the symbolic message that it was finally over and I could stop beating my head against a wall. The most important question? Why did I even bother to watch this entire movie and not switch channels to watch Richard Simmons infomercials?

Dead Men Walking...

Nope, not the Sean Penn film where he plays a killer with hair so fantastic it deserved it's own billing, but a play on the prison term used when someone walks the 'Green Mile'. (Oh gosh, I watch too many films). Y'see, after a 'bio-toxin' (YAWN!) infects a guy who gets sent down, he unintentionally spreads it, and before you know it, the whole place is crammed with zombies in denim.

I speak as someone who had a passion for zombie films a long time before 28 days later and Dawn Of The Dead 04 re-fired the collective film going interest in them, but for fuggs sake, it's getting a little tedious now. It seems that everyone with a camcorder and a pot of latex is trying to make their own un-dead classic.

Me included. Bugger.

The difference between most of them and this film, is that the script, at times, struggles bravely to throw in the odd good, or believable line. The gore is pretty fun, and the whole thing almost over comes its obvious budgetary restraints to turn into something quite worthy.

Well, I liked it.

I've NEVER seen such a stupid zombie movie in my life.

I'm one of those guys that usually TOLERATES the low budget incredibly crappy zombie movies.

This movie is garbage! And that's exactly where I threw the DVD....dead serious, I've never thrown away a DVD in my life until I saw this movie.

The beginning of the movie is AWESOME, that short cut scene or whatever you want to call it, it feels realistic. After that, the movie is a complete flop, plain and simple.

The acting is some of the WORST I have ever seen in my life, I literally cannot explain how intolerable it is....it is THAT bad.

The movie has just HORRIBLE and awkward camera angles, extremely bad acting....the zombie scenes are extremely fake and goofy, its beyond belief.

I know I'm the type of guy that reads reviews for bad zombie movies and thinks to myself ---"How bad could it be, i want to see this for myself"--- TRUST ME, unless you want to LAUGH at how stupid it is, please don't rent,or buy this movie, don't even download it, its that bad. (actually you will laugh for the first few zombie scenes, but after that you get the impression these guys are trying to make a serious zombie movie, and it just becomes flat out UNWATCHABLE.....so its NOT even funny!)

(in fact, their camera work is SO BAD, it should be a felony for these guys to come within 500yards of ANYTHING with a camera lens....they shouldn't even be allowed in a Seven-Eleven store, simply because they sell disposable cameras in there.)

This movie had potential but you can tell they needed an enormous budget and an incredible amount of actors to pull it off, and not to mention good acting.....but this movie falls short in ALL categories. Actually ---"Falls short"--- would be an upgrade to how far off this movie is.

It's like the combination of INCREDIBLY bad acting, ridiculously bad camera work, and general unrealistic prison scenes that make this movie probably the WORST of the worst, if not, it's Definitely in the top 5.

I would actually avoid this movie more than ACTUAL zombies if they ever ran to my front door steps.

Dead Men Walking seems like an ideal title for an undead flick... OK its pretty bad actually, filmed in GREEN-O-VISION, or maybe with expired Kodachrome film. Turn your color down and it bumps it up a star. While it doesn't help the acting or all the water balloon splattering sound effects, I guess you could turn the sound down also, and overdub your own sound. Sound of Music might go well with it. This could make a pretty good undead musical.(Hey don't steal my idea.)The bottom line is, if all the annoying slow motion & vomiting don't get to you, if your reallllly bored and there's nothing but infomercials on...this will pass the time.

I wouldn't either if I was laying on top of Bernadette Perez. There just wasn't anything going on that was more important at the time. I can't wait to see her again in Werewolf in a Women's Prison.

But you are not here for that. What about the movie? It seems to be a remake of Dawn of the Dead/Night of the Living Dead, except this time in a prison, where they hid someone who was infected. The whole prison goes down, including the favorites. Now, that is just a crying shame, as you have to root for Perez, Bay Bruner, and the cat-burglar. No tears for the dude who's "top of the food chain."

Maximum vomiting and entrails all over the place. If you like blood, you'll love this one.

A group of prison guards and inmates band together to fight off an attack by cannibalistic zombies. Sloppily made, atrociously acted, badly written, ineptly directed, poorly shot ripoff of "Night of the Living Dead", made on a bigger budget than that film but with smaller talents. The photography during most of the film is so dark and/or washed out that even the colorized version of "NOTLD" looks better. The editing during the final zombie rampage will give you a headache (cuts last maybe a second or two and often go directly to black before zooming to the next cut, which is incredibly distracting), and although there's a lot of blood, gore and ripping out and eating of various body parts, it's so over the top and badly done it winds up being annoying more than anything else. As previous posters have mentioned, the low budget (e.g., the prison guards' uniforms sport "Security Officer"--rent-a-cop--patches, probably because the producers couldn't get or afford to make real prison guard patches), poor special effects (when the guards fire shotguns or large-caliber automatics it sounds more like small, weak firecrackers going off, and often the sound of gunfire is heard but you can't see any muzzle flashes from the weapons being "fired") and continuity and factual errors (several guards blast away at the zombies with shotguns six or seven times in a row without reloading after each shot) help to sink this almost as much as the stilted direction and bargain-basement acting. Worth a look maybe for the last 15 minutes or so, but it's really nothing you haven't seen done before and done better, and you can see the ending coming a mile away. Overall, a poor effort in pretty much all departments.

I read all the reviews here...went into the watching of this film with the knowledge that, yes, it's low budget...yes, the actors are virtually unknown...yes, it's a B Horror Gore Fest. I was expecting the worst. (Great DVD Cover, by the way.) Despite all of that, this film is not a total train wreck. I even enjoyed it. The story line is pretty clear...straight forward. The special effects are very effective, gore, blood-vomiting and gut-eating at all the right spots. If you are a true fan of that sort of thing...this film delivers.

I've watched many badly made films and usually, when they are total train wrecks, you can't get past a certain point in the film. Eventually, you just stop watching or eject the DVD. That never happened with this one. It piqued my interest from beginning to end. I wanted to see what was going to happen next. Yes, the acting wasn't first rate, but it was good enough to move the film along nicely.

My biggest complaint is the lighting. It was too dark, too often. They used a very greenish filter on most of the scenes and sometimes it was distracting. When you notice the lighting effects too much...it can't be good. Also, the warden's young son wasn't as believable as he could have been. When their are limb-ripping, blood-covered, shrieking zombies running in every direction...you expect fear in a little kid. Instead, he mostly just stands there, looking like he was waiting for direction from the director.

So, I went in expecting the worst...and came away with an entertaining 80-something minutes. I liked it despite the flaws.

I would also like to say that I rented two films last night: This one...and The Da Vinci Code. I couldn't make it through the Da Vinci Code. This one had me entertained through the entire film. Kudos to the filmmakers. Keep pumping out these gore-fests. The fans are waiting. ;)

Having attended U.S.C and lived in So Cal all of my life, its not uncommon to run across student films. These run the gamut from real good to just putrid. Sad to say, this one is on the putrid end of the continuum. Cheap cheap cheap. Alkaselter in the mouth, for becoming a zombie, cheap.

Don't believe any of the comments that claim redeeming features.

The only reason this pile of dung wasn't in the 1.5-2.0 range is brief glances of breast that had to appeal to the teen age viewers.

Under no circumstances view it. Read the phone book, instead.

Sorry to add this, but I needed one more line.

When you see The Asylum label attached to a video, and before the credits roll, you are subjected to closeup shots of various college-age morons screaming and bleeding from the head and mouth, you know you are in for trouble. DMW reminds me of videos I used to rent from a Blockbuster that was next to a public housing project. Most of these so-called horror titles were amateur flicks shot on a shoestring budget and given the most lurid covers imaginable. Hell, the covers probably cost more than the flicks themselves. I learned my lesson after renting several such videos, the absolute worst being the infamous "Ax 'Em." I caught DMW on Chiller, which should be embarrassed to have ever shown it. Plot: A man who has killed four zombies and been infected in the process is sent to a maximum security prison, where he infects other prisoners and guards. The prison is locked down, and the rest of the story involves a handful of folks who have not been infected trying to find a way out. The movie, such as it is, is just plain awful. The zombie effects are ludicrous, and there isn't one real actor in the bunch. It also was blocked and shot by someone who has no idea how to stage a scene. Where I come from, we call this a fanboy film. Made by fanboys for fanboys. So all you fanboys out there, enjoy. Everyone else, please steer clear.