The Burning Dead

In North California, the scientist Dr. Stevens (Kyle T. Heffner) and his assistant Eve Jones (Julia Lehman) are researching a volcano near eruption to evacuate the residents. Meanwhile, Mindy Roberts (Moniqua Plante), her daughter Nicole (Nicole Cummins) and her boyfriend Ryan (Kevin Norman) are visiting Mindy's estranged father Old Ben (Robert F. Lyons), who lives in an isolated cabin on the top of the mountain. Sheriff Denton (Thomas Downey) is rescuing persons that might have been left behind. Out of the blue, each person discovers that volcano zombies are attacking them on the mountain to eat their flesh. Who will survive?

"The Burning Dead" is a lame Z-movie, with awful story, terrible acting and poor CGI. The screenplay is a laughable mess, and does not make any sense. What can be said about a film where Danny Trejo has a minor participation to give his name to the credits? My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Mortos Vivos" ("Living Dead")

"The Burning Dead" (also known as "Volcano Zombies") is an extremely low budget film. And, the title pretty much says it all. So, I knew going into this film that I wouldn't be seeing Masterpiece Theatre or Jane Austin!! Yup...it has what you'd expect--a lot of cheesy special effects and makeup and some occasionally broad acting. And, it's clearly for folks who like horror and don't mind it of the bargain basement variety! Now I am not saying the film is 100% bad....just mostly bad.

When the film begins, an American-Indian played by the ubiquitous Danny Trejo is telling some kids a story--and then the actual plot to this film begins. I say 'ubiquitous' because Trejo was in 17 different productions last year and is slated, so far, to be in 21. In fact, while this tough-looking guy didn't begin acting until he was almost 40, he so far has nearly 300 credits!! So did it surprise me that this Mexican-American actor was playing a Cherokee? Nah...I think he'd appear in the lead of Cinderella if they offered it to him! He hammed it up a bit during his small portion in the film, though I always enjoy seeing him...even in schlocky films like this one. To paraphrase Liberace--you might laugh...but Trejo is probably laughing himself all the way to the bank!

Trejo's story is about zombies who are vaporized during the 1840s. And, oddly, when the same volcano becomes active again today, these zombies are reconstituted by the evil volcano spirits and they set about doing what zombies do best--slowly chasing after folks who seem to inexplicably fall down and get devoured. None of this is especially inspired--especially in light of the hundred bazillion zombie TV shows and movies over the last decade. Here is the real problem though--it was bad but not bad or cheesy enough to be a film for a bad film junkie who wants to laugh at the film. Additionally, had the film not taken itself so seriously and been more like some of Sam Raimi's or George Romero's zombie films, it might have worked. As it is, there just isn't enough to recommend it.

Despite all my reservations about the film, however, I am giving it a special award for 'The Most Ludicrous Nude Scene of the Past Decade'. As the volcano is belching smoke and getting ready to blow, an insane but very shapely lady appears near the crater with her camera and starts to take some candid topless photos of herself with the volcano as a backdrop!! Rarely have I ever seen a more contrived and asinine way to insert a bit of nudity into a movie!

First, before starting anything, the fact that I even talked myself into watching this is unbelievable. I've had no expectations for this SyFy recycled movie. I'm pretty sure you can tell why JUST by the title, cover, and entire idea. You have the plot of a couple of characters all meeting together from different locations after a volcano strike, of which unearths volcanic zombies. Yes. Volcanic zombies. First off, the idea, period is just stupid. It's an idea that just doesn't belong, and fails in any form of entertainment. It may succeed in pulling the "audiences'" attention toward the film, but only because it's ridiculous title, cover, etc. will confuse the heck out of some people. The characters in this film, are nowhere near special. They're all literally the highest of clichéd characters you've seen millions of times in this film. They're personalities are honestly hard to watch as they try to be heroic, and strong, but come out hilarious, and not in a good way. We as the audience could literally care less for what these atrocious characters are put through, whether they live or die. We didn't care. The characters even gone as far as becoming unbelievable annoying, and even angering from they're clichéd acts, dreadful dialog, and overall overused, recycled personalities. The whole volcanic eruption involved terrible, terrible CGI, as well as an even horrid idea of actually involving what seemed to be ghosts literally flying out of the volcano, into the ground, uprising the zombies. The zombies looked cheap, in all honesty. The action these zombies take, as well, doesn't make any sense. The film also has this utterly annoying "adventure" soundtrack that plagues repetitively, making this film more annoying than it already was..

In conclusion, what a mess of a film.. everything was truly bad.. overused characters, recycled SyFy plot, and overall story, terrible, terrible CGI, overall annoying cast, as well as acting. The list goes on.. this film seemed to be more of a joke rather than anything.. and the entire film was just one huge, atrocious mess. Please. Save your time, do not watch this film. I wouldn't recommend it as it succeeds in nothing, and literally fails instead.

This made me laugh more than anything else.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

Special effects were terrible as was the acting. Danny Trejo, I have no idea why he is in all these bad movies, but even so his ability as an actor is not what you would call award winning!.

Rene Pere, well this was the movie to make me steer away from anything else that he directs. I know of other directors who can create wonderful movies with great dialogues and story lines but this film? What a waste of time and money.

I, myself would be embarrassed to show this work to the public.

Apart from bad acting and bad effects, there were numerous errors within the movie which made you laugh. Did anyone review the movie for inconsistencies?

I suppose fans of B grade movies will enjoy this. Actually, maybe we create a Z Grade category for films which are worse than worse!

I wish I could say, I came up with that, but it's the actual German title this movie received. This might be the best thing about the movie, though to be fair, you should know this is low budget. Still we get better movies and better acting and better everything with similar budgets. Unless you're the biggest Danny Trejo fan, you might want to steer clear from this one.

Though even if you are, remember: It's not really his vehicle, he just has a small part in it. The story or the idea rather is pretty out there, which makes it almost likable. Unfortunately too many things go south/wrong, that cannot be helped or overseen.