THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

The dead walk the Earth! At first, the so-called living corpses appeared sporadically and were thought to be no more than promotional stunts for recent Zombie movies but when they started congregating in larger numbers, even village-spanning hordes, the ungodly truth finally dawned: the recently killed are actually coming back to life, hunting the living and feasting upon their flesh. In an effort to stop these roving monstrosities taking over the world, the government has created several "Zombie Squads" - armed police-like agents tasked with the protection of the last remnants of society. Squad 205 is sent to Ohio where a doctor is said to be working on a cure for the undead affliction. However, contact with the good doctor has been lost and, upon arrival, 205 find him killed… but not by Zombies. Soon, the culprits become clear: a religious cult hell-bent on preserving the Zombies whom, they believe, are sent to do God's will; eradicate mankind from the face of the planet.

MY VERDICT:

This movie, made in 1989, is on the low end of middling. There's nothing mind-numbingly awful in there yet there is also nothing amazing, screaming for you to watch it. On the whole, there is a very low-budget feel to everything: it's not much over an hour long, the acting is mediocre at best, some of the Zombies look so weird it is hard to imagine that they were once living humans and large parts of the film are without music, making the actors voices boom out in a lifeless, monotone fashion. The non-weird looking Zombies are of decent quality however - proper slow-moving walkers who are often shown eating human flesh or ripping open living bodies, Dawn of the Dead style. They do tend to make extremely odd high-pitch noises in addition to regular Zombie moans - almost like the "yeah" of excited young children - which makes them seem overly comical. The two remaining plus points are the nods to George Romero's masterful Of the Dead series (there is even a loveable, caged Zombie clearly inspired by "Bub") and a breed of half-Zombie, half-Human that appear toward the end of the film, talking in low, evil, growling voices and controlling the more mindless undead with ease.