Kentucky Fried Zombies Movie Review

Kentucky Fried Zombies (2012)

Stars: Josh Grote, Maria Olsen and Jorge Montalvo

Written & Directed by: Patrick Horvath

Duration: 75 minutes

One thing this movie does not include in any point a fried zombie!

Also this was released in 2009 under the name Die-ner (get it?) Possibly due to the increase in popularity of zombie films it’s been noticed more and for no association with the old title to give it a new lease on life.

Now the DVD case says pulp fiction meets zombieland. Including these two brilliant films on this or even comparing them is a travesty.

That off my chest let my review start.

This movie is obviously cashing in on the now ever popular zombie genre. One that is quite a lucrative business at the moment as it seems anyone and their uncle will lap up a zombie flick. This automatically makes them a cash cow that anyone that wants to make a quick buck goes to milk. This on a rare occasion will spurt forth a reasonably good effort.  Some good little unheard of, who genuinely wants to tell us a good story.

Now this movie surprisingly starts off quite promising. The camera is focused in on Rose the waitress of an American Diner talking to a man off screen. Despite some sketchy dialogue this gets you interested in this character as she’s opening up to this man who she obviously is slightly interested in. We find out his name is Ken.

This unfortunately is the best bit of dialogue in the film.

I’m not sure if this is just the writing or the way Horvath has directed it (considering he done both). Having only one other film to draw on for this experience as a director which is Entrance all I’ll say is don’t go there with that one. The guys usually a frickin cameraman for Christ’s sake, and not even on any worthwhile films or programs. I think I could bang out something better in half hour on the toilet and I don’t mean writing.

So as I said this is a re-release and a renaming and so obviously a milking for extra money something that I hate personally.

The actors are all pretty much newbies with only a few shorts to a lot of their names and nothing major under their belts to date.

 

 

Now we learn that Ken is actually a serial killer and all the character building that’s just happened ends with him chasing her from the booth and stabbing her repeatedly.

The chef comes out and tries to run only to have the knife flung into his back. On the floor the killer now comes up gets a meat tenderizer and smashes his head in off screen (as a lot of deaths are in this) Now the DVD case also sports *AMAZING VISUALS* after killing these two he put them in the freezer where they look pretty dead.

Reasonably good looking dead make up there yes, aside from some really bad looking fake blood spots (yes spots from the stabbings and the smashing’s they received) on their clothes that’s the only thing that appears wrong.

Surely a meat tenderizer to the noggin would leave a little bit of a mark or being gutted would leave a few holes in your midriff?

I remember watching one older film children of the dead one of Tom Savinis poor additions to the zombie genre, that was done on a shoe string budget and even that had some pretty good make up effects.

Granted Savinis a make-up artist for a lot of the higher class zombie productions such as Romero’s works but still a bit more effort could have been put into a movie that’s supposed to boast amazing visuals

Kathy Rob enter at this point in the movie to some truly bad dialogue, I’ve seen better writing on toilet walls professing love for people. The dialogue doesn’t improve when they get into the diner either.

In fact the 3 way dialogue just smacks of filler content. What feels like to just flesh out the time.

Duke a cop is the next character we are introduced to who is naturally suspicious.

We are then introduced to our first zombie as the cook appears in the serving whole bumping into stuff in the kitchen.

He’s come back as a zombie, which doesn’t have any reason there’s no outbreak. That’s right I know we do have that in a lot of good zombie films its unexplained. In fact some of the best zombie films night of the living dead for instance doesn’t have any concrete reasons for the dead getting up and doing a thriller around the place.

Ken shocked goes in doesn’t realise why this has happened, Rose also comes out of the freezer, Ken quickly accepts this as the norm like you do every day of course. Oh a couple of people I killed have just come back to life as zombies!

Near this point so early on in the film it already felt like I was having teeth pulled with no numbing from the Dentists. In fact I think I’d prefer that.

 

Duke comes in as he’s obviously suspicious (and being a local and a cop actually has good reason to be) as Ken is trying to re-kill Rose the cook grabs Duke from behind and bites him.

 

Duke then spends the best part of the rest of the film slowly dying behind the counter.

 

The couple go and look after a little fracas after which they duct-tape the cook to the ground for no apparent reason. The zombies appear to be the invincible kind as we have met in a few other titles mainly the first three Return of the Living Dead films where not even head shots kill the zombies. As their half attempts to kill them by hammering nails into their head doesn’t work. Not even a better attempt at beheading one later.

Near the end of the film Ken runs out the back door.

In a scene I can truly give thumbs up to, homages Day of the Dead and the best effects sequence in which Ken is pulled into two parts very bad guts effects and all.

All in all this film is just plain bad and not worth the 75 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.

Give it a go if you a really hard-core zombie or trashy films fan but even then I’d say give it a miss

 

 yup 1 star and thats

 Just for the opening dialogue and the one line it’s my duct tape and rope bag.

Q: Why do you have a duct tape and rope bag?

A: To keep my duct tape and rope in of course.