ZOMBIE DOOM

aka - VIOLENT SHIT III

Written and Directed by Andreas Schnaas
Edited by Steve T. Chance and A. J. Simpson
Director of Photography - Steve Aquilina

Karl the Butcher Jr. - Andreas Schnaas

After going through the credits on German gore-director Andreas Schnaas' ZOMBIE DOOM (aka VIOLENT SHIT III), I can't help but think that the names of the editors are puns. "Leave to chance." O.J. Simpson. This magnum opus of cinematic butchery feels thrown back together after spending a night of passionate rage with The Hell-born Running Back.

Try as I might, it's hard to come up with something positive to say regarding ZOMBIE DOOM other than that "it has some nice production value," or "truly a movie that lives up to its title." This movie is some violent shit, that's for certain; it's gore for gore's sake, which isn't necessarily bad, it's just all the better when there's a story to reinforce those Karo-dripping elements. Graphic depictions of ripped out colons and mass eviscerations do not a movie make, not even when put in the context of the classic short story, The Most Dangerous Game.

Three novice yachtsmen fall victim to harsh winds forcing them to land on an island populated by camouflage and tin-clad guerilla terrorists led by the loincloth-wearing Karl The Butcher, a Fabio-Hitler hybrid with a penchant for shotgunning the heads of his followers who he views as weaklings. To give his men a little sporting action, Karl allows the captured yachtsmen a headstart before his guerillas hunt them down.

Far be it from me to tell someone how to make their movie, but a piece of advice to Mr. Schnaas - you can't fire a double-barrel three times without reloading. I don't care what the Laws of Cinematic Physics might be concerning the Suspension of Disbelief, you just can't do it. Mel Brooks taught us that one.

While our heroes are on the lamb, the story starts to take a few twists and turns. It goes all ninja and zombies - which is a far cry more interesting than where we started. Karl and his gang mostly sit around camp chopping each other's limbs off; it's almost as if Schnaas sat around camp trying to come up with the most hideous ways to depict violence on screen. While the quadruple decapitation is amusing at best, the anal invasion by fishhook is flat out repulsive.

The cartoon-ish action of ZOMBIE DOOM didn't bother me so much as the documentary-like style in which it was revealed. Watching the campground events unfold, I was reminded of news footage from terrorist training camps. Flashes kept coming to me from that video of the Missionary in the Phillippines who after almost a year of captivity had his head lobed off by his captures while his wife looked on in horror. Having made the movie years prior to the event, it's safe to assume Schnaas wasn't gunning for any sort of connection to that tragedy; it's just horrible how life can sometimes imitate art.

The saving grace to this disc is the inclusion of the original VIOLENT SHIT, here forth known as ZOMBIE ‘90: EXTREME PESTILENCE in the U.S.. Like ZOMBIE DOOM, this too is English dubbed only. While I found the English dub on Shock-O-Rama's other new release PREMUTOS: LORD OF THE DEAD passable, the dubs on DOOM and ‘90 are from acceptable. For the first half of DOOM I actually thought the same Brooklyn-born actor was playing all three leads. It wasn't until I heard the differentiating vocal inflections in the Asian accents that I realized this was not the work of a single man in his basement. Closing credits reveal the dub was supervised by J.R. Bookwalter's Fat Cat Post-production facility. I hope this was the learning tool for what eventually was applied to PREMUTOS, and not the other way around. I would hate to think J.R. took a step backwards.

The rest of the disc is comprised of a trailer vault for other Shock-O-Rama titles, and nothing else. Then again, two Bucket-o-Gore flicks for the price of one isn't a bad deal. Those babies take up a good bit of space on a disc and leave little room for much else. Although, I bet Shock-O-Rama could have squeezed in subtitles. I know they could have...

Shock-O-Rama