Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Flesheater


Flesheater (Zombie Nosh, Revenge of the living dead) Directed By Bill Hinzman, Starring Bill Hinzman (1988).

If you were Bill Hinzman, the man who played the first Romero zombie ever to appear on screen, would you simply retire as a Wal-Mart greeter for the rest of your days or would you reanimate that claim to fame for 1988, when the world was begging for a gore soaked, sex infused zombie movie helmed by the original somnambulist who cracked open Russ Streiner's skull, a fatal concussion heard round the world; you'd do the second one right? Well, I know William Wilson over at The Video Junkies blog and I are ecstatic that he decided to make this film! Prepare to get your ears blasted by overly amped beer snapping and tractor partying (the foley is extremely loud, once it pours in). At first I thought I might've found the version with drunken commentary, but my ears just needed adjusting to this amount of partaayyy-ing! My eyes were bleeding from seeing this amount of denim on these forest punkers out for a good time on a Halloween hayride. If John Russo (another NOTLD alum, soiled your appreciation for guys associated with Romero with the dreadful Midnight, let this movie restore your faith in zombie filmdom.
Did you dudes get your Denim at Bugleboys or Dungeree Dons?

The credit sequence mantra about "flesh and blood turning all evil" shows up on the tomb stone of writer director, actor Bill Hinzman. His crummy grave looks like something that was just fired up in the kiln at the local elementary school. Hinzman still looks great with his silver hair and bloody maw, after biting a chunk out of an unfortunate hillbilly, the victim immediately rises from the dead. The audio clips a lot and it seems like they recorded it MOS (Italian Neorealism influence)?
Kids in this town have nowhere to turn to for fun and have sex in barns and drink on tractors (wherever this movie takes place, I'm guessing Pittsburgh, remind me to never go there). Bill the zombie gets creative with his weapons and uses a pitchfork on one dude, then plunges his fist beneath an ugly girl's ribcage and pulls out her guts! Fuck Yeah!! He makes a "Ahhhh" sound like he just enjoyed a refreshing Shasta!

It's OK, your just having a Denim hangover, lets get you some B12 and orange slices!


The denim punks want to party some more and drink beer, so they look for firewood, are they homeless? Shouldn't someone suggest a house they can all drink at, with the heater on? The bearded hick (or victim from the opening scene) is out infecting other John Deere riding goons, so more zombies should be arriving. One of the party punks gets her neck chewed on by Bill and they take her to a hospital (wait no they don't, they all suggest "Farmhouse")!  Huh? People do funny things in FLESHEATER, is that a bad thing, No! It's incredibly entertaining, I wish people would do the wrong thing all the time it would make films vastly more entertaining!

If you were Robert Frost in this situation, which path would you choose?

All the kids, who want to board up a farmhouse for protection against the living dead are Caucasion, there are no Black kids, so I guess these punkers are fucked! We all know (from the original NOTLD and Return Of The Living Dead) that black people have the intrinsic knowledge to defeat hordes of dead people out to consume guts. 

Goddamn, how am I gonna chew through all that Denim?

Of course all the zombies immediately break through the windows and attack! One of my favorite dumb teens is Julie, she incessantly asks idiotic questions (when someone gets their head blasted, she goes "did he die?") and reacts like "Eeek, I'm acting like I'm scared"!

The 911 operator looks like she's hanging out in the office of Barbizon modeling school waiting for her headshots to be developed. A Mary Steenburgen look-a-like with a very hairy bush, takes a shower (so if you ever fantasized about the Clifford, Back to the future 3 actress, Flesheater's got ya covered)!
Oh yeah, that's where I left my keys!

Bill the zombie is not above eating suburban kids and breaking up families on Halloween night, which is pretty fucked up! I mean, people are already busy x-raying candy, they don't want to have to deal with actual zombies coming to the door!In reality, it's pretty funny that the little girl he snacks on is Hinzman's real daughter Heidi.

 Even though this film is pretty late to the living dead party, it does a good job of being really entertaining and original in it's own way. It's basically the first and last Nightsploitation, done by the only man who could do that kind of exploitation justice. I might even consider it the last pure zombie flick, before all the remakes and the stupid "Walking Dull".

The fact that an original person from the film that started it all gives it a lot of credibility, despite a couple of hiccups. One sheriff character gets so bitten up that he looks like a walking meatloaf and still moves. The film then reverts to its media roots as the news anchors start reporting the same kind of dialogue you've heard in the Romero original.

not attractive enough for Foxsnews

A whole new crop of teens at a costume party show up, there's a drunk dracula (or Druncula), a guy in a chicken outfit and some sexy witches. Having sex by a bale of hay must be a Pittsburgh thing, because it happens a second time! One dopey cheerleader (who doesn't even remember her boyfriends name) humps him on some straw in a barn. All the characters at the house party have weird fake drunk lisps. There's a really cool hand through the chest gag and one zombie bites Drac's nose off! Hunters start popping up, once the media alerts the police that the plague is in full swing (some of them wear Iron City Beer hats).

Something's up with this remake of The Shining 


 I like that Vincent Survinski, the posse gunman from the original NOTLD shows up again playing the same role (he also was the production manager on The Crazies). The ending is not political as it was in the original, but it's just as infuriating (that is if you liked the dopey couple from the beginning and wanted them to live)! According to IMDB, Hinzman appeared in his zombie make-up for Goodfellas Pizza commercials, he seemed to have a great sense of humor and sadly passed away in 2012.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, AN ALL AROUND BLAST OF A GUTBUSTER!

BUY HERE

Also don't forget to buy the Rotten Cotton shirt

Vince Vince (the Pittsburgh version of Weng Weng)

NO REFUNDS!


1 comment:

  1. Bill Hinzman...a cool local guy from the old 'hood...R.I.P. :/

    ReplyDelete

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