"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 5/15/02: "Biohazardous"
By JOE BOB BRIGGS
Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
Do you know how many zombie movies there were between the
years 1930 and 1967? Approximately ten.
Do you know how many there have been since then?
Approximately one THOUSAND.
What is it with the zombies? In 1967, when George Romero
made "Night of the Living Dead," zombies were still sufficiently
rare for him to be able to invent a few ground-breaking character
traits: the herky-jerky walk, the undead stare, the bullet-to-
the-brain effect. By 1982, the year of Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead,"
zombies were still uncommon enough that Raimi could add his own
innovation--the first zombies that could only be killed by TOTAL
DISMEMBERMENT.
But after that zombies started popping up on video faster
than bodies at a Georgia crematorium. Maybe it was the growth and
popularity of Fangoria, the magazine that teaches everyone how to
do special-effects gore makeup. Maybe it was Marilyn Manson. (Or
Gwar.) Maybe it was the fact that a lot of teenagers in the
eighties thought their parents WERE zombies. Even Wes Craven got
into the zombie business, making "The Serpent and the Rainbow,"
the most INTELLECTUAL of all zombie flicks.
Whatever the reason, 20 years after "Evil Dead" we've got
zombies swarming through the B-movie world like mutilated
collectible action figures. Sometimes zombies turn up in films
that aren't even ABOUT zombies. I think it's safe to say that
zombies have become part of the fabric of American life, like
telemarketers. Every nasty convenience store clerk, idiot boss or
hateful girlfriend is just a zombie waiting to happen.
Take "Biohazardous," which is a pretty much by-the-numbers
micro-budget effort by Michael J. Hein, the leading filmmaker in
Hillsdale, New Jersey. There's a top secret genetic-engineering
plant on the edge of town using reanimated dead people to create
unkillable soldiers for the U.S. military. (Yes, we've had that
one before.) Dope-smoking, beer-guzzling teenagers are raising
hell on the factory grounds. (Been there, done that.) A local
priest is hiring thugs to penetrate the facility on behalf of
anti-military protesters. (A little bit of a twist.) And doofus
cops are doing a little trigger-happy investigation of their own.
(There's no such thing as a SMART cop in a zombie movie.)
Bring them all together on one fateful night at "Gentech," a
company founded by a Nazi in the thirties but then seized by the
Allies during World War II, and you have a pretty conventional
excuse for slathering blood on several dozen extras and telling
them to moan, stare and walk funny while chomping on supporting
actors and getting mown down by various types of semi-automatic
weaponry.
Sprague Grayden plays the "Final Girl" who gets sucked into
the zombie nightmare by her immature boyfriend and his slacker
buddies, with Katheryn Winnick as her airhead-blonde sidekick and
Gary Ray as her chainsaw-wielding father, who works as a Gentech
security guard. It's all an excuse for massive quantities of
grue, doled out mostly in the form of gooey exposed-limb-eating.
Call it Zombie Lite, New Jersey-style.
And those drive-in totals are:
Thirty-eight dead bodies. Sixty-three undead bodies. One
super-zombie. No breasts. Neck-ripping. Finger-eating. Arm-
munching. Electrocution. Explosions. Gassing. Throat-ripping.
Gunshot wounds to the head. Chainsaw through the gizzards. Group
blonde consumption. Police-officer intestine-sucking. Mailbox-
bashing. Exploding head. Highway emergency-kit flare Fu.
Gratuitous New Testament scripture quotation. Gratuitous Indian-
owned convenience store. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for
Gary Ray, as the lecturing daddy who moonlights as a zombie-
research security guard; Sprague Grayden, the rebellious daughter
who says they HAVE to party at the zombie facility because
"Nothing ever happens around here!"; Will Dunham, as the creepola
Catholic priest out to get those "Rapers of the body, mind and
soul!"; Michelle Santopietro as the hysterical research
assistant; Tomas A. Cahill as the evil manipulative zombie-maker
Mr. Stine; and Michael J. Hein, the writer/director, for doing
things the drive-in way.
Two stars. Joe Bob says check it out.
Website for "Biohazardous": http://Biohazardous.cjb.net