LAST RITES OF THE DEAD

Produced by Brandi Garfi, Frank Garfi, and Andrew Dantonio
Directed, Written, and Edited by Marc Fratto

Angela - Gina Ramsden
Josh - Joshua Nelson
The Commandant - Christa McNamee
Solstice - Mary Jo Verruto
Richie - Scott Green


Added Jan. 2007

For the last 7 years it's been tradition for me to award a prize in January to the single best example of "underground cinema" that I screened in the previous year. Some of those titles have gone on to find moderate success while others have faded into oblivion. Previous winners ranged from personal dramas to satirical comedies, while others ventured into horror and science fiction. The one common element every film shared is that they were much more then what they appeared on the surface.

This years award goes to a sub-genre that I thought I was played out years ago and very publicly wished would go away - a zombie film. How many Romero knock-offs does one need to see in his life? None, the originals speak volumns and do the job just fine. I'm glad the gang at Insane-O-Rama productions agree with me as their film, LAST RIGHTS OF THE DEAD, is nothing like Uncle George's in approach or depiction. The only similarity is the filmmaker's eye for social commentary.

Anyone who reads the original review will see that I was all gushing fanboy after my initial viewing. A second viewing to solidify my selection and I realized there were elements I missed. I won't bore you by rambling further and going into everything new - my original review says it all.


The opening shots in Marc Fratto's LAST RITES OF THE DEAD are reminiscent of those from George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD, which at this point are to be expected from any zombie film worth its salt. Quick cuts of interview footage flash on the screen, and raw sound bites establish set up. There's an unnerving chord underscoring the scene adding just the right amount of unease. From there the DAWN comparison end. Once the credits roll, and we meet Angela and Josh, the movie becomes its own being.

Everything we need to know about Josh and Angela we learn in two shots. She's cowering in her bathtub. He's pounding on the bathroom door, holding a gun, trying to get in. It's a scene we see too many times on the nightly news, and if it makes the news we already know the outcome. Domestic violence is as common a plague in real life as the zombie plague is in the movies. Fratto knows this all to well, his day job finds him working at a news station in New York.

Fratto's last movie, the vampire movie for people who don't like vampire movies, STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN AT SUNDOWN, is an excellent example of microcinema. But that movie didn't prepare me for what happens next in LAST RITES. Fratto upped his ante as a director and coaxed performances so emotionally raw and powerful from his actors, Gina Ramsden and Joshua Nelson, that when the inevitable act of violence arrives it acts as a release of such Mt. St. Helen's ferocity that I actually jumped off my couch. Impressed by this gripping tension, I immediately e-mailed Fratto to let him know the good news. Of course, this was only 4 1/2 minutes in. I could have been jumping the gun, but something deep inside let me know that I was in for something special.

The problem with most no-budget zombie flicks is that they suck. There's really no other way to describe it. 99% are Romero knock-offs that amount to nothing more than the director's friends lumbering around their backyard eating rolled-up newspaper that stand in for intestines. That's why I enjoy the likes of Scooter McCree's SHATTER DEAD, and Andrew Parkinson's DEAD CREATURES as much as I do. They're about as far from Romero as it can get, and LAST RITES uses SHATTER DEAD's lamenting zombie spin to explore a world never even hinted at in Romero's most profound work. Romero likes to use zombies as metaphors for mindless society but he never touches upon what it's like to be dead.

Upon her death, Angela learns quickly. Racial prejudices, mocked in many scenes, are the plague of the undead. In one uncomfortable scene, a black waiter is ridiculed and mocked not for the color of his skin, but by his mortality. It's apparent in his expression that not even in death can he escape the prejudices that surrounded him in life. Signs are hung in windows that 50 years ago would have said "No Coloreds," now proclaim "No Zombies." And similar to drive-by queer bashing, zombie t-ball is now all the rage amongst two-bit urban street thugs. There's nothing to unify the minorities like a new race ripe for its fair share of hatred.

To deal with death, Angela finds herself in one of those support groups you see advertised all over New York. She could just as easily be sitting in a circle discussing the trauma of her abusive boyfriend, or drug addiction, or AIDS (ironically enough, both are notions that Fratto touches upon in his multi-layered script). On one level he satirizes the need for such groups, especially when the participants try to re-enact moments of their living lives, but Fratto also understands why people would attend them in the first place. There's comfort in acceptance.

Acceptance is the key to Fratto's semi-satirical zombie world, where current catch phrases such as "choose life," take on new, and equally important, spins. At one point Angela sees a product advertised called "Look Alive," which is meant to hide a zombie's pale, varicose complexion (shilled in a cameo by that Fat Man of Blonde Bombshells, Suzi Lorraine). Unemployed, Angela discovers the hard way that anti-discrimination laws, generally found in any human resources department, don't apply to the undead. Race, religion, sex, or handicap are all grounds for affirmative action, but not death.

While Angela deals with her plight, her ex, Josh, is taking up with a skinhead-like militant organization who want nothing more than the Aryan-esque eradication of the walking dead. No longer is interracial love looked down upon, necrophilia is what invites the Louisville Sluggers to meet knee caps and crush skulls. The group is led by The Commandant, a woman (looks like affirmative action worked for someone) hellbent on destruction. Christa McNamee plays the Commandant. She's part bully and part fruitcake, but all menace. She's the sort of gal who would kill her own men for being cowards, which she does.

The zombies are all about crying and self-pity; they have their own hate groups forming. Through her help group, Angela meets Louis, who in turn introduces Angela to Solstice and her dead flower children. Masquerading as a zombie love-in, the group is a Manson-like commune where the undead find euphoria through biochemistry. Their goal is to turn mankind into McCattle and eat to their heart's content. They're also not above cannibalism.

The only overtly formulaic element in the story is the notion that these two groups will clash. In Fratto style, they clash hard. Shoot outs, fist fights, and crucifixions are not uncommon. What hits home are the beheadings, perhaps something else that Fratto picked up from his news job. Both groups are simple terror organizations, and it's easy to see the comparison to the Al-Queda beheadings.

Despite all that's going on, Fratto never loses sight that this is Angela's story. Like every victim of abuse, her self-worth is nil. In order for her to regain her identity she needs to overcome her fear of Josh. Their confrontation is both empowering and emasculating, just as it should be. Josh is a pathetic thug, a bully, a psycho, and a stalker. Angela needs to find her inner strength to overcome the brute, and her story doesn't find closure until she's either completely dead, he is, or both. The irony is that she doesn't learn to value her life until she's already dead.

Through Angela, Fratto centers the emotional core though which all action flows. Whether directly involved in the scenes or not, through Angela's arc, Fratto provides a context for the violence in such a way that the often-brutal atrocities are a result of the story instead of the cause. That's why I jumped so early into the movie, and also a few times later. Without a solid emotional core, the violence has little impact on the audience outside of a fetish-like gratification. While the climax is an orgy of exploding heads and spraying blood, it's still an end result of character and the story they create.

Numerous times on the B-Independent forums, Fratto has said that his goal as a writer is to put "something fucked up in every scene," and it's apparent. Knowing his attitude toward scriptwriting, I was somewhat distracted looking for those ever-present elements but quickly gave up as there were far too many. Whether it's a supporting character with half his face missing, or equating flesh eating to drug addiction, Fratto loads his script with ideas that range from insight to completely insane. Not one for spoilers, I fear I might have given too much away as it is, but there's so much going on in LAST RITES that viewers will watch repeatedly just to catch everything.

Also, going against genre type, Fratto makes with a serious lack of skin. While he's obviously a fan of cleavage and panty shots, Fratto eschews outright nudity. Viewers might be upset by the lack thereof, but they really need to get over it. Instead, they need to accept the fact that LAST RITES OF THE DEAD is horror at its most violent, tense, and socially profound. LAST RITES is the last word on zombie cinema.

The self-distributed dvd screener contained no features to review.

Insane-O-Rama