BONG OF THE DEAD

Hallucinogenic drugs featured in Horror movies have produced some disappointing results over the years. Whether it was the no budget sleaze of Troma’s "Pot Zombies" or the truly awful "Shrooms" these trippy terrors always seem to fall short of a mind blowing experience. Step up Thomas Newman who wrote, produced, directed, edited, composed the music for AND provided the visual effects for the smoke and gore romp BONG OF THE DEAD. So grab yourself a bag of Hippie Lettuce and tune out...

Meet Tommy and Edwin. Despite the world being infested by brain chomping zombies and being segregated into Freedom Towns and Zombie Zones, the pair still indulge in smoking copious amounts of marijuana. Yes the meteorite that hit Planet Earth has transformed the world for the worse (not to mention the extra paranoia!) but the self proclaimed "Team Weed" double act are still committed to cultivating the most potent weed on the planet. All sorts of fruity strains are dabbled with, but one day Edwin has a novel idea. Using dried out brains from one of the ‘undead’, he produces what Tommy lovingly "Fucked up Zombie fertilizer for growing fucking killer weed." Just a few drops of this green liquid cause the plants to instantly sprout piquant buds. The only problem is, they have run out. The boys are then faced with a predicament. Enter the Zombie zones and acquire more brains... or face a life without weed??? Needless to say they embark upon their perilous mission whereby they encounter Alex, a zombie looking to raise an army of the undead; Leah, a gorgeous female renegade whose family succumbed to the cannibal mutants; and mandatory ‘munchies’ jokes galore.

Oh dear oh dear. Ok, so the first portion of the movie, admittedly, featured a balanced blend of gore and giggles, but that only made it more frustrating when the movie soon lost its way. The bulk of the picture was way too heavily loaded with its creators idea of what passes for comedy it would seem. I must confess, at this point, to having the odd toke in the past, but I am hard pushed to recall, even in my early days of exhaling, bursting into impromptu dance routines in my underwear with a male buddy! Then there is the dialogue, which was as stale as murky bong water! (And NO - drinking bong water does NOT get you high regardless of what our two protagonists say!) Not helped by Tommy’s apparent homage to Shaggy out of the real time Scooby movies, anyone under the age of about 10 might find the constant "yikes" type exclamations in the script a bit tiresome before too long.

I initially thought Newman had done the impossible when he introduced a novel concept into the narrative early on. That was of course the boys going TO the Red Zombie filled zones to get something they needed as oppose to constantly fleeing the flesh eating fiends. It promised relentless scenes of comedic mayhem with the two stoners chopping their way through the legion of beasts, but unfortunately he opted to introduce Leah into the mix instead. This subplot only brought the pace of the movie to a halt and was an excuse for yet more hackneyed ‘weed’ jokes.

With such a dubious core of the film, one could only hope for a blood soaked climax in order to salvage something from the picture. I felt it did this to some extent at least. If you can get over the A-Team-esque ability to conjure up a fleet of impenetrable tanks with nothing more than a few garden tools and roll of BacoFoil, then there is plenty of blood drenched chaos in the final showdown. Put it this way; we learn that zombies are no match for strategically placed outfacing rotating lawnmower blades!!!

The gore itself is forgivably of the CGI variety and, in many ways, as limbs are severed and heads dutifully blown apart, it reminded me of TV’s "The Walking Dead’ in its execution. (Pun intended!)

The final head scratching moment for me occurred as the final credits eventually came. No sooner had my sigh of relief subsided that it cut to another bizarre scene when Alex is converted from Zombie to Cyborg courtesy of an unknown new character! Just warning you... there could be a sequel!

Although very low budget, the DVD does look quite polished and didn’t suffer from any adverse audio or visual issues.

Considering Newman’s ‘one man band’ fashioning of this project, I was quite surprised to find nothing in the way of extras on the disc. A commentary track, I feel, would have been more entertaining than the actual picture itself which I have witnessed more than once with these mindless efforts.

Maybe it was the title that made me yearn for this movie to be something special and in doing so my disappointment was doubled. But, when the DVD cover art alluded to Newman being the "new Romero", I couldn’t help in feeling a little ripped off.

Review by Marc Lissenburg