Corpse Eaters

This movie has everything that makes a bad movie worth watching - sloppy editing, little to no continuity, insane dialog, bad (you might even say non-existent) acting, pointless story lines, shots that go on FAR too long...and it's perfect for MST3K-style riffing, not to mention the "Corpse Eaters Drinking Game": Scribble on forms...take a shot - Sign your name...take a shot - Catch a bad Foley edit...take many, many shots.

The only reason I didn't rate it higher than 8 is because there's not enough gratuitous nudity and because despite its insane badness, it's only an hour long - hell, a movie like this should have been at least 20-30 minutes longer!

George A. Romero and William Castle both were natural geniuses and pioneers in the very secluded domain of low-budget shock and cult cinema! Romero single-handedly reformed the zombie genre in 1968 with "Night of the Living Dead", and William Castle had the unique talent of stuffing his cheap B-movies with slick gimmicks that made them extra entertaining and unforgettable. Thanks to them, and a handful of other great and visionary directors, the horror genre today is so wonderful.

Involuntarily and indirectly, however, Romero and Castle were also responsible for an incredibly large amount of insufferably bad movies. How is that? Well, because of their success, many other yet painfully untalented directors also assumed they could make money in the film industry for as long as they put zombies and funny gimmicks in their movies. Lawrence Zazelenchuk, for instance, was a Canadian drive-in theater owner who assumed that he was also able to produce a zombie cult-classic with barely $36.000. The result is "Corpse Eaters"; a nearly unendurably awful amateur flick without a plot, but with horrendous acting, slow pacing, pitiable make-up effects, terrible voiceovers, and hideous camera work & editing.

The story - or lack thereof - features a funeral home director who drives around a cemetery, and two couples that make the stupid decision of breaking into a vault and holding a séance. Their shenanigans don't work at first, but when they then turn a random crucifix upside down, corpses suddenly emerge from their graves and go after them. Whenever the rotting corpses are about to tear apart a victim, there's a buzzer sound and an image of an old man in a movie theater covering his eyes, and that is supposed to be the gimmick. If William Castle ever watched "Corpse Eaters" - I doubt it, though - he surely would have been rolling his eyes. Even with a running time of barely 58 minutes, the film is full of pointless padding footage. In short, it simply doesn't deserve to exist.

Two couples are enjoying a weekend of boating at a nearby lake and then decide to do something a little different by visiting a graveyard that night. When they get there they notice a deserted mausoleum and once inside one of the men decides to experiment with a demonic chant. This causes corpses to come out of their graves and devour one of the women and infect one of the men. The infected man is taken to a hospital but during surgery is declared dead and then transported to a funeral home. Needless to say, he doesn't remain dead for very long. Now even though this synopsis is rather brief it almost depicts the entire movie for the simple reason that the film itself is quite brief as well (about 58 minutes). This fact is just one of the faults. Throw in bad lighting, lack of cohesion between scenes and some segments running on much too long and everything pretty much points to a less-than-average movie experience. The really sad thing is that this movie had some potential. Unfortunately, the resources just weren't adequate to pull it off. All things considered then I rate it as below average.

An interesting little canuxploitation flick made in Ontario obviously so someone could get a quick buck on the drive-in circuit. It's cheap and very amateurish in both directing and acting. It does however display some pretty graphic gore scenes, some nudity, and an interesting gimmick at the beginning were a warning comes up before the violent bits (similar to Boardinghouse). It apparently caused some controversy and as a result several minutes of gore were cut out, and are presumably lost. There's really no reason to intentionally seek this out, but, if you are a fan of this sorta thing give it a shot, it's short at only 57 minutes and as of this review is available on youtube.

Lawrence Zazelenchuk was an owner of drive-in on Route 69,just outside of Sudbury.With the budget of $36 000 he made "Corpse Eaters"-the first Canadian gore film about zombies emerging from a ghastly crypt filled with coffins and bones.He wanted to have a horror film of his own to play in his cinema."Corpse Eaters" is loaded with grisly over-the-top gore and violence.The graveyard and crypt are downright creepy and the zombies look very Fulciesque.The plot is cheesy and it often jumps all over the place beginning with the morgue attendants,then to our sex crazed and beer starved quartet,who unleash the living dead to the hospital and back to the morgue again.If you like zombie movies or Herschell Gordon Lewis gorefests give "Corpse Eaters" a chance.7 out of 10.