Raiders of the Living Dead

Investigative reporter Morgan Randall (Robert Deveau) discovers that crazy Dr. Kapek (Leonard Corman) is bringing the dead back to life; when his friend Shelly (Donna Asali) is abducted by Kapek's reanimated corpses, Morgan launches a rescue attempt with the help of elderly physician Dr. Carstairs (Robert Allen), a useless armed guard, and an irritating kid (porn-star-to-be Scott Schwartz) who has constructed a pair of ray-guns from an old laser-disc player.

I'm pretty tolerant when it comes to Z-grade movies, having seen more than my fair share of absolute stinkers over the years, but I still had to watch Raiders of the Living Dead over the course of several evenings thanks to its incredible ability to rapidly send me off to sleep. Atrocious acting, boring direction, disjointed editing, an over-reliance on The 3 Stooges, and particularly dreadful laser effects all go to make this a truly painful viewing experience that is only spared the absolute lowest rating from me thanks to one shotgun blast to a zombie head (it's not great but it's definitely the highlight of this tosh) and the film's hilariously bad '80s theme song.

As an avid Zombie movie fan, I bought this with hi-hopes of fun, gore and shambling ghouls. I got a shambling movie, no gore, and no fun (with the exception of the kid-hero frying his hamster with a laser gun (made from a cunningly converted laser disc player). That alone saved the movie from a score of 1. On the whole it looks like school kids on a budget of their accumulated paper-round savings put the movie together.

Even as a self confessed zombie fan I could only watch it once. In need of a second opinion I handed it on to another zombie fan. He watched it once too; then threw it in the bin for me.

Raiders Of The Living Dead is rather infamous and widely considered to be one of the worst zombie movies ever made. I can confidently say, I agree.

It's right there with The Zombinator (2012) and Hsien Of The Dead (2012) It wants so badly to be a Return Of The Living Dead movie but fails every stage of the way.

The plot is bare bones and is pretty terrible, the movie is full of incredible amounts of filler scenes, the soundtrack is laughable and there are barely even any zombies anyway.

Raiders Of The Living Dead would certainly fall into my bottom 100 movies ever made, it has not one single redeeming feature and was a chore to endure.

The Good:

Nope

The Bad:

CGI is awful

Loads of blatant filler scenes

Questionable soundtrack

Too few zombies for a zombie movie

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The 3 Stooges scene was more entertaining than anything the movie creators did

"Raiders of the Living Dead" is a low-budget zombie rip-off that is inexplicably and consistently interesting; if nothing else, it has imagination and innovation on its side. A reporter and his partner scope out an ominous locale in the dead of night and stumble upon zombies. A child genius works on his doctor grandfather's laserdisc player and winds up creating a laser. And a zombified Scott Schwartz (the kid from "A Christmas Story"?) hijacks a truck for no reason and tries to blow up a nuclear power plant, only to be claimed by the zombie menace. While slow in spots, and sporting more of a 1980s look than a Sears catalog, "Raiders" exists in some weird limbo between "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things," "Burial Ground," "Return of the Living Dead II," and even "Zeder" (the climax takes place in an abandoned prison). Is it a masterpiece of cinema? Certainly not, and perhaps my generous "5" rating is due to the fact that I watched the atrocious "Reefer Madness" earlier today. Still, it is a diverting item with OK makeup effects, a cheeky attitude, and a toe-tapping, synth-heavy theme song.

Well, maybe I wouldn't go as far as the above, but this movie is really good! As a fan of "bad" movies, I thought this movie was incredibly stupid, but it was great! Samuel M. Sherman is one of my favorite producer/directors. Right up there with Roger Corman and Stanley Kubrick! He plays the film well, using the little money that he had to produce an entertaining zombie horror. I am a fan of George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead", and this movie is not in any was a knock off of it! That is an acheivment in itself, as everyone knows that most films with the words "Living Dead" in the title owe a lot to Mr. Romero. So, if your a fan of "my kind of movies", "King Kong Lives" (1986), Plan 9 From Outer Space (1958) and Samuel Sherman's production of "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" (1972), then this film is AN ESSENTIAL WATCH! 8.5/10