Undead or Alive: A Zombedy (2007)

Powerful

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This commits the main fault of any comedy, in that it fails to be funny. The Zombie and Cowboy action is ok, and the special effects acceptable (its obviously low budget) - but its only vaguely amusing in places. That may be a matter of taste, but you have been warned.

Undead or Alive is set in the Old Wild West & starts as US army deserter Elmer Winslow (James Denton) rides into a small town, after getting into a fight with a Cowboy named Luke Rudd (Chris Kattan) the two are thrown in jail by a corrupt Sheriff who also steal all their money. Elmer manages to pick the jail door lock & escapes with Luke who then both rob the Sheriff in order to get their money back & a bit of compensation. Meanwhile a local man named Ben (Brian Posehn) has been turned into a brain eating zombie & starts spreading the virus turning the rest of the town into brain eating zombies, now infected the zombie Sheriff, his Deputy & a posse of men head after Elmer & Luke spreading the zombie plague wherever they go...Also known as Undead or Alive: A Zomedy this awful comedy horror Western was written & directed by Glasgow Phillips & is a stark reminder to me that I really should stop watching low budget straight to video horror, or at least choose my films a little better. Right, the problems with Undead or Alive are numerous but as a horror comedy it falls way short on both counts & as a Western it does nothing other than to set it's story in the Old Wild West. I found Undead or Alive spectacularly funny, the opening scene where various pieces of text explain some background & one reads 'for those who don't like reading it's nearly over' or something like that is just plain insulting & is a film that feels absolutely desperate for laughs before it's even started. Then a sequence in which a zombie wanders around & steps into a bucket & on a rake which bizarrely only comes up to his knee is some incredibly unfunny zombie slapstick routine. As I see comments here on the IMDb describing Undead or Alive as funny I would honestly like someone to name one funny sequence in this laugh free film, just one. The one-liners are awful, the slapstick three Stooges routines are awful, the visual gags are awful & I just can't think of one even slightly amusing moment in this misfire of a horror comedy. The character's are awful, a sheepish idiotic Cowboy who keeps a picture of his Horse in a locket & a army deserter, an evil Sheriff & his dumb comedy relief Deputy & a town of faceless idiots who get about two minutes of screen time. The only bright spark is Sue the native Indian girl who has at least some personality & is quite attractive to look at but the pluses stop there. The pacing & plotting are terrible & it's as predictable as they come.Considering that Robert Kurtzman was the special make-up effect producer, just look at some of his other credits, the make-up here is surprisingly tatty. The zombies look awful & despite what you may read the gore is limited to a few blood splatters & some irritating machine gun edited flesh biting where you can barely see anything anyway because it's edited so quickly. Undead or Alive is just a spectacular misfire on all fronts from the lame humour & jokes to the shoddy make-up & badly edited gory bits. I really am trying to understand why Undead or Alive has any positive comments for it on the IMDb but I just can't, I really can't. Like a lot of modern films there's a bit of CGI here at the end when a fort blows up & it looks terrible, this is the sort of computer effect you expect in a computer game.Apparently filmed in Santa Fe in New Mexico the films looks quite nice shot on location the production values are alright as far as the sets & costumes go but if I wanted that sort of thing I'd watch a proper Western, wouldn't I? Like much of everything else the acting sucks, the two leads in particular are annoying.Undead or Alive is a horror comedy that fails to deliver on either front in a big way, totally unfunny & with surprisingly poor make-up effects I just don't see what this has going for it. Every joke & gag is bottom of the barrel stuff & the horror is reduced to silly slapstick that just looks terrible.

Two men on the lam. One an Army deserter (James Denton - "Desperate Housewives") and the other a dumb as dirt wanna be cowboy (Chris Kattan - Santa's Slay). They are being chased by the posse which is slowly becoming zombified.They join with Geronimo's niece (Navi Rawat - Feast, "Numb3rs") as they fight off the posse.There is a lot of zombie gore, and some nasty decapitations, but it comes in a comedy, so you really don't focus on it.It's kinda hard not to focus on Geronimo's niece as she runs around in a sleeveless top that is really low cut! Nice skintastic moment from Elizabeth Slagsvol after she becomes a zombie and gets the preacher (Leslie Jordan - "Will & Grace", Sordid Lives)

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" meet "Return of the Living Dead" in former "South Park" scribe Glasgow Phillips' directorial debut "Undead or Alive," (**1/2 out of ****), a creepy, tongue-in-cheek, zombie western. Everybody looks like they had a good time making this frontier farce about a couple of hard-luck cowboys on the lam from a posse of zombies. Mind you, "Undead or Alive" never takes itself seriously and prefers to spoof its elements rather than scare the daylights out of us. Writer & director Phillips tosses a few surprises into this supernatural saga while the camaraderie between Luke ("SNL" alumnus Chris Kattan) and Elmer (James Denton of "Desperate Housewives") is strong enough to make us laugh at their tribulations right up to the twisted finale. Indeed, Chris Kattan and James Denton reminded me of Bob Hope and Bing Cosby in one of their road comedies. "From Dusk Till Dawn" make-up effects wizard Robert Kurtzman makes his usual sterling contribution that boosts "Undead or Alive" into the 'must watch' category. The flour-faced ghouls are shown gnawing on enough brains and getting shot enough times to make it worth watching at least once. "Slumber Party Massacre 2" lenser Thomas L Callaway endows "Undead or Alive" with a larger-than-life look. Some of his splendid widescreen compositions that make this "Blazing Zombies" horse opera appear almost artistic. Clocking in at a trim 91 minutes, Phillips doesn't wear out his welcome and provides suitable closure. Although it doesn't rank as the greatest zombie western ever made, "Undead or Alive" qualifies as entertaining enough to sit through a couple of times, with sturdy production values and an amusing dialogue. "Undead or Alive" establishes its premise immediately in a prologue about the legendary Apache chieftain Geronimo (Lew Alexander) who concocted something called 'the white man's curse' that turns ordinary, everyday Anglo-Saxon Americans into flesh feasting fiends. The action unfolds at a hard scrabble farm where a farmer Ben (Brian Posehn of "Eulogy") somehow comes down with Geronimo's curse. He pulls an Ozzie Osborne and bites the head off a chicken before he tears into his wife and your daughter. The story shifts then to the frontier town where an Army deserter on the run, Elmer Winslow (James Denton), climbs off the tailgate of a wagon that he hitched a ride on to cut the dust from his throat in the local saloon. He observes there is not being a piano player and settles behind the ivories to plink out a tune. A sexy saloon girl (Patricia Greer) who loves to display her cleavage decides to accompany him. Luke Budd (Chris Kattan) picks that moment to saunter into the saloon with some form of desert plant for his so-called 'princess,' only to find the slut cuddling up with Elmer. Later, Luke explains that she had told him that she'd marry him. Luke and Elmer tangle briefly, wind up on the floor, and find themselves staring into the business end of a shotgun with the town sheriff Claypool (Matt Besser of "Drillbit Taylor") standing over them. Claypool hauls them off to the calaboose, takes their boots, and confiscates Elmer's $500. They encounter the skin eating zombie farmer locked up in a nearby cell. Eventually, Elmer picks the cell door and they get the drop on Claypool, recover their loot, and hightail it out of town. Predictably, when they skedaddle out of town, Luke rides off in the wrong direction. Generally, Luke is a goofy galoot in a singing cowboy outfit. Elmer describes him later on "as a brokenhearted cowboy that doesn't know his ass from a bag of sweet potatoes." That line of Phillips' dialogue has an Elmore Leonard flavor.Sheriff Claypool regains consciousness and unties his pot-bellied deputy Cletus, but by then Ben has taken a chomp out of Cletus, so Cletus takes a chomp out of Claypool. The sheriff hangs Ben and assembles a four-man posse to ride with Cletus and him on the trail of our heroes. Before long Claypool and Cletus realize that they love the delicious smell of their posse and chomp on them, turning them into zombies. While Claypool and his posse scour the sagebrush for our heroes, Phillips shifts the story back to the town. The citizens cut Ben down, but discover to their horror that he is still alive and starved for human flesh. Ben embarks on a human buffet and turns everybody into a zombie. Meanwhile, our heroes fall victim to an Apache maiden, Susan (Navi Rawat of CBS-TV's "Numbers"), who is Geronimo's niece and speaks fluent English. She explains that she was educated at a New York boarding school. She disarms and strips them of everything except their Stetsons and boots. Later, after they sweet talk her, she gives them their clothes and guns back and they try to ambush Claypool's posse only to realize that the lawman was bona fide zombies and cannot be killed. Not even the surefire George Romeo shoot-them-in-the-head strategy works. Evidently, the only positive way to kill the zombies is to literally chop their heads off. Luke, Elmer, and Susan outrun the posse only to be captured by Elmer's old U.S. Army buddies who arrest them and escort them back to their fort near the Grand Canyon. When they ride into the fort, our heroes and their army escort get the surprise of their lives.Glasgow Phillips has written a fairly entertaining zombie western. Whether he knows it or not, he has pulled elements from classic westerns into his oater. Cletus warns our heroes after they have been jailed that the sheriff plans to tie them to the hitch rack and horse whip them for their rambunctiousness. This is a clear homage to "One-Eyed Jacks," the classic western where Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) whips the hero (Marlon Brando) for everybody to see. The special effects get pretty nasty toward the end in the army fort and the ending isn't exactly a happy one.