FLESH FREAKS

Produced by Ronny Varno and Conall Pendergast
Written, Edited, and Directed by Conall Pendergast
Director of Photography - G. Gillard Golen

Barry - Ronny Varno
Jane - Eshe Mercer-James
Stan - Etan Muskat
Lea - Erica Goldblatt

Belize is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, rich with history of the ancient Maya people. To this day, there are still thousands of miles of rain forest waiting to be excavated so as to piece together a more detailed story regarding the demise of that once proud civilization. Currently, Professors and grad students from all over the world come to Belize in hopes of finding the truth about the disappearance of the Maya Empire.

Scenic landscapes great travelers. Rainforests explode with exotic wildlife not yet discovered by man. Ruins with centuries old artwork tell mythologies of people long since forgotten in time. Behind every unturned rock or leaf is an adventure in the waiting. Belize is a magical county where visitors take away with them a peacefulness they wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.

How do I know all this? There's a 20-minute travelogue about a quarter way through the movie.

The sequence starts roughly 15 minutes into the film. Barry has just returned from an expedition down south. Local news reported that the rest of his archeological team was killed by terrorists. As the lone survivor, it's surprising that Barry returns without any sort of fanfare, but no one else seems to care. After much prodding by his roommate Stan, Barry tells what really happened in South America.

"Belize is one of the most beautiful places…."

The movie's brimming with so much exciting potential that it's almost good. Unfortunately, the movie falls victim to its own padding. Scenes like the "travelogue" amble for far too long, eventually shooting the pacing in its cinematic foot. Backstory that could have been told in 2 minutes instead pours salt on your wounds for 20 minutes.

Bookending the filmmaker's vacation is an engaging ooze-fest of a zombie movie filled with some of the most lifelike special effects ever to churn my stomach. Mummies look like mummies. Rotting corpses look like rotting corpses. And zombies look like the parasite-infested, decomposing rot-cicles that they are.

That's right, it isn't "cosmic radiation" or anything as remotely farfetched that bring the dead back to life, it's a parasite. In my own personal quest to make a zombie chunckblower, this is the route I would have taken. The corpses still decay, but these nasty little parasites replace the neurons, thus stimulating and controlling all motorfunctions. Remember the dead frog experiment in biology class, the one where the battery made the frog's leg twitch? It's the same principle.

The action that holds the movie together is briskly paced and energetic (another reason the Belize segment agonizingly stands out). Once the South American zombies make their presence known, the movie roars to life with a sense of absolute anarchy. Life and death isn't dependent upon cast status, but mere desire to stay alive and raise a bit a hell. Oh, and kick a little zombie ass.

I don't know about you, but all I really want from a zombie film is a little great zombie ass-kicking. Flesh Freaks delivers. Too bad it couldn't be 15 minutes shorter.

Sub Rosa