I Was a Teenage Zombie

I am saying that in a schlock sense, though. I have to say I like this movie a lot. It's a horror-comedy with an in-joke reference to Lloyd Kaufman, and is a good, goofy, nasty movie. It has more intentional laughs than unintentional, I think. Take the jerk cop for example, wearing a badge that looks like it was made by a little kid with paper and scissors for Halloween. They had to know what they were doing there! The low-budget gore FX are pretty cool, and one scene in particular (where the guy's face is ripped off) actually shocked me when I first saw it. The various artists soundtrack is great (and harder than hell to find). As far as the "plot" goes, we have some misfitly losers (my kinda people!) who go out to buy some pot for a spring dance celebration. What they end up with is some toxin-sprayed weed that makes them feel under the weather. (One drug cartel henchman says, "I wouldn't give that sh*t to my mother-in-law.") Nobody becomes a zombie from this, though. Still, what we do end up with is a very cranky (no pun intended) zombie drug pusher killing off hapless victims left and right. The only person who can stop him is another zombie (which I thought was a cool idea). Everything here is so matter-of-fact, like somebody took a slacker movie like "River's Edge" and mixed it with "The Toxic Avenger". I love this, a classic cheezball splatter-comedy that's just fun.

Well, I've seen TONS of bad reviews for this movie... for no apparent reason. Did people expect a serious movie? On the old VHS copy of this tape I have, it even says on the back of the box "this is a movie for people who like some laughs with their gore." And it certainly delivers the laughs and is just an overall good time. It's not REALLY a horror movie, persé, but it's definitely worth checking out and is pretty easy to find at old mom-and-pop shops across the country.

The minute this movie starts with a long shot of a lake and the hilariously bad rockabilly/swingin' song "I Was a Teenage Zombie" (by the Fleshtones -- I am so lucky to have this song on MP3), you know you're in for a treat. The characters are absolutely priceless: We have a guy that looks like Lars Ulrich (who gets his tongue ripped off, I believe). Then, the main character, who looks like Doogie Howser and is basically a huge geek. Then, there is a Mexican pimp selling some bad weed, and he is just amazing. In one scene, he rips a guy's hilarious and shocking Playdough face off and says, "Yeah, I'm the weedman! I got some WEED!" I was rolling on the floor laughing.

A good b-movie's weight can be measured in how many scenes you will want to show to your friends, and this film certainly delivers. Whether it's the hilarious rape scene (the Mexican zombie pimp is raping a girl and drooling and then breaks her legs in half or something), the decapitated head basketball scene, or the hilarious Troma reference (LLOYD KAUFMAN JUST FELL INTO A CONTAINER OF TOXIC WASTE!). However, the most amazing part of the movie has to be in the first half-hour of the film: One of the characters changes into a baseball uniform JUST to hit another character in the head with a baseball bat and then changes back in the next shot. It's all very humorous.

I'm guessing the people who gave this a bad rating were expecting a Fulci classic or something. All in all, it's definitely a good time, up there with Monster High and Rock N Roll Nightmare as the most amazingly underrated and wonderful B-Movies of all time. See it.

This movie smells worse than a rotting corpse. The film maker wasn't interested in little things like continuity, synchronized dialogue, or comprehensible shot angles. I'm undecided on whether to put this in the "it's so bad it's good" category because it may just be too horrible. Watch it and decide for yourselves.

"I Was a Teenage Zombie" follows a group of teenagers who kill a drug dealer at their high school and dump his corpse in a toxic river that turns him into a zombie. Chaos ensues in true eighties teen film fashion.

One of the weirder offerings of the late 1980s, "I Was a Teenage Zombie" is borderline-"so bad it's good," but it has several things going for it that make it at least semi-interesting. I have seen some compare the film to those of John Waters, and the comparison is most definitely warranted. The film has the kitschy, gritty edge of Waters' early work, with a dash of John Hughes, resting in the framework of a solid horror movie.

The film certainly stands out among the crop of late-eighties horror films, when the slasher was in its death knell between 1987 and the post-"Scream" landscape. It is aesthetically on par with the greatest of eighties teen cult films, and boasts some economical yet serviceable special effects. It's quite clearly low-budget, but rather charming in all its ridiculousness. The acting is by and large quite poor as well, punctuated with bad delivery and bad dialogue. The film has the distinguishing feature of boasting a wildly memorable soundtrack, including a title track by The Fleshtones and other songs from the Violent Femmes and the late and great Alex Chilton. Are you interested yet?

Overall, it's easy to see why "I Was a Teenage Zombie" has become a minor cult hit, though at the same time, it's surprising that the cult hasn't grown over the years. The film's niche audience sees in it precisely what it was striving for, and expects no more and no less of it. It's an absurd film, humorous and utterly inane, but ceaselessly amusing. Fans of low-budget cheese will have a ball with this one. 7/10.

"I Was a Teenage Zombie" is a classic low, low budget indie film. It has bad sound and cheesy film quality, but the characters are as good as any high school horror/comedy film I've ever seen, and the acting is better than some.

The screenplay could have been tighter. It dragged in places. They probably could have cut 15 or 20 minutes out of it without losing any of the fun. But it contains enough laugh-out-loud gags and gag-out-loud gore to make it well worth your while. It's a must-see for indie film buffs.

I happened on a audio cassette of the soundtrack long before I actually saw the movie.

It is the best movie soundtrack I've ever heard, bar none.

Anybody know where I can get a CD of it?