Ah, zombies and hillbillies! Can you think of a better recipe for fantastically awful B-movie entertainment? "The Alien Dead" is a true winner! It's a truly horrendous 70's no-budgeter with a seemingly improvised script, more inexperienced redneck actors than you can wave a stick at and painfully inept dialogs that nearly make your ears hurt. This debut feature of legendary bad film maker Fred Olen Ray (if you don't count the half-long "Brain Leeches" and "Demented Death Farm Massacre" for which he just shot some additional footage) is set in a little Louisianan swamp town where some really strange occurrences are taking place. Following the crash-landing of a meteor, all the alligators suddenly vanished mysteriously and a local drunk fisherman keeps claiming his wife got dragged into the water by "something". Then, swiftly, "The Alien Dead" turns into a zombies-on-the-rampage flick! Can you actually believe that the zombies ran out of alligators to eat, so they switched to villagers instead?!? First there's one zombie attacking a lone girl. Then there's a bunch of zombies devouring a stereotypical elderly couple (she chases her husband with a frying pan, for crying out loud) and finally there's a whole army of zombies chasing two sole survivors. Oh, and did you know that zombies use pitchforks? They do!
There are some fantastic supportive characters in this piece of junk, like a deputy with a fetish of waving his whacking bat around and a sheriff in desperate need of some anger management. He also refuses to investigate the swamp because there are too many mosquitoes. Excuse me? You're really working in the wrong district if you're afraid of mosquitoes, pal! There are numerous little examples to illustrate the average IQ of the local swamp rednecks. The more incidents we have with zombies attacking people in the lake, for example, the more dim-witted town members aimlessly decide to spend their free time there. There's a blond girl who goes to the absolute most remote spot in the Bayou all by herself to have a skinny dip. And because everybody loves boobs, this exact same ritual is repeated twice in a span of nearly twenty minutes (albeit with a brunette the second time). The zombie attacks are filmed in slow-motion to increase the dramatic effect, I suppose, and they actually look more like a bunch of retarded rednecks fondling a victim on the ground. Characters that were previously devoured by zombies re- appear later in the film and cheerfully get killed again! The make up effects are gory but hilariously fake, with cups full of blood spurting out of people's mouths and chests. But what I found the most hilarious little detail to spot was how all the male swamp zombies immediately grab for the female victims' breasts! It's obvious that these yokel extras wanted to make some additional personal benefit! There's one really good sequences in the film as well (I'm not kidding really), namely when the investigators go and visit the psychiatric clinic to interrogate the first person to claim there was something not quite kosher with the swamp. That scene even has suspense and a surprise twist. And, no, I'm really not kidding! At the end of "The Alien Dead" absolutely nothing is solved. The town still is – and probably always will – be infested with zombies! But who cares, right? Let's go to the bar and listen to some banjo music
Never mind the miserable rating I've given this movie. It's a must-see!
There are some fantastic supportive characters in this piece of junk, like a deputy with a fetish of waving his whacking bat around and a sheriff in desperate need of some anger management. He also refuses to investigate the swamp because there are too many mosquitoes. Excuse me? You're really working in the wrong district if you're afraid of mosquitoes, pal! There are numerous little examples to illustrate the average IQ of the local swamp rednecks. The more incidents we have with zombies attacking people in the lake, for example, the more dim-witted town members aimlessly decide to spend their free time there. There's a blond girl who goes to the absolute most remote spot in the Bayou all by herself to have a skinny dip. And because everybody loves boobs, this exact same ritual is repeated twice in a span of nearly twenty minutes (albeit with a brunette the second time). The zombie attacks are filmed in slow-motion to increase the dramatic effect, I suppose, and they actually look more like a bunch of retarded rednecks fondling a victim on the ground. Characters that were previously devoured by zombies re- appear later in the film and cheerfully get killed again! The make up effects are gory but hilariously fake, with cups full of blood spurting out of people's mouths and chests. But what I found the most hilarious little detail to spot was how all the male swamp zombies immediately grab for the female victims' breasts! It's obvious that these yokel extras wanted to make some additional personal benefit! There's one really good sequences in the film as well (I'm not kidding really), namely when the investigators go and visit the psychiatric clinic to interrogate the first person to claim there was something not quite kosher with the swamp. That scene even has suspense and a surprise twist. And, no, I'm really not kidding! At the end of "The Alien Dead" absolutely nothing is solved. The town still is – and probably always will – be infested with zombies! But who cares, right? Let's go to the bar and listen to some banjo music
Never mind the miserable rating I've given this movie. It's a must-see!