Undead

Madman Entertainment

R4

When I started watching this film there was sense of déjà vu and, sure enough, I had seen it before. It was released in 2002 - 2003 and I watched it on rental but I haven’t seen it since. I enjoyed it a lot at the time so it was like the return of an old friend.

It could probably be best described as a “zombies meet rednecks” parody set in an Australian country town. It looks a little clichéd (well, it has a LOT of clichés) but after all, that’s the nature of a parody – take a cliché and then ridicule it. It also took a swipe at stereotype Australian characters, and there is a lovely scene where the hero is out fishing on the lake in his boat and is blasted by an alien meteorite. This is an obvious spoof of the opening scenes of another Australian film, The Man Who Sued God, but in that film the hero’s catch didn’t turn into zombie fish and try to eat him.

The story is simple. The hero has been briefly kidnapped by aliens but escaped. When he told his story he was laughed at so he went into seclusion, but he knows the aliens will be back so he has prepared. The aliens duly return and start turning people into zombies with their virus-infected meteorites. They seal off the town and it’s up to the residents to put aside their bickering and personal squabbles and unite to beat off the menace. They have to breach the wall around the town and let the outside world know what is coming.

There are some wonderful characters, from Marion (Mungo McKay), the quietly spoken Clint Eastwood-type hero who owns way too many guns, to the local beauty queen (Miss Catch of the Day) who is bitter that she lost out because she was a little bit pregnant in the last competition. The local police sergeant is unable to cope. “When I was a kid we respected our parents, we didn’t eat ‘em” and simply can’t accept that his town has been taken over by zombies. “Its all those fuckin’ crack marijuana fuckin’ hippie fuckin’ surfie fuckin’ dolebludgin’ pricks”. Beautifully expressed but not helpful.

For a small budget independent film Undead showed what could be done with the genre. Part of its secret is it is just a little over the top as a zombie film but has enough comic touches to stop the story bogging down in blood and intestines, something American independents sometimes forget. This is always a hard balance to strike but the producers achieved it well. Undead is loads of fun and it’s great to see it released again.

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