Raiders of the Damned
To be fair, I was expecting much worse from this low budget zombie flick starring Richard Grieco. Raiders of the Damned is a film that takes the concept of a zombie and turns it on its head, with some interesting and some negative consequences. The film is about a post-apocalyptic world, which just looks like a bunch of trees and a cemetery. After World War III, the world is divided into two groups, a horde of zombies that still have use of their brains and a group of scientists and soldiers holed up in a bunker in a mountain. During a raid on the zombie group a helicopter is brought down by a zombie catapult. The guy on the helicopter is an important doctor that must be rescued from the clutches of the zombie soldiers. The eccentric scientist in the mountain sends out his best group of soldiers, the only one’s he has left, in an attempt to rescue the good doctor. Flex, Razor, and Trigger set out under the less than capable command of a ponytail sporting dude named Dewey to retrieve the doctor and put an end to the zombie menace once and for all. The plot is kind of like Escape from New York meets House of the Dead, which turns out to be just as good as you’d think it would.
The film is directed by first time director Milko Davis… which I suspect is a fake name. Davis actually does a surprising job of turning what could be a truly abysmal movie into a mildly diverting zombie flick. He certainly has some interesting shots, when none of it is being ruined by poorly choreographed sword fights or CGI helicopters. Davis has an eye for some striking imagery, but his inability to create quality action scenes brings the movie down a peg. Davis does do a professional job of moving the plot along and I never found myself bored, except for the final battle of the movie which is pretty sad.
The characters in the film are ridiculously two-dimensional, but at least they try to cover this up with an interesting, if slightly confusing conflict between Dewey and the head zombie. The eccentric scientist played by Richard Grieco, is a combination of Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean and a coked out version of Robert Downey Jr. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the scientist was supposed to look like he was on drugs; that’s just how Richard Grieco looks these days. I’m pretty sure most of his lines were ad libbed, especially the ones where he looks at his watch and hurries the soldiers along… so Grieco can finish the scene and get back to his trailer for his next fix.
The zombies in the film are by far the most interesting part of the film. I particularly enjoyed the zombie named Treadwell who walked around with a confederate flag bandana waiting to remove people’s eyes with his trusty spoon. The zombie commander is also pretty interesting as he has a taste for the box of living women. They never show any of the zombie commander’s romantic trysts with a living girl, which is a little disappointing for the necrophiliacs out there. Even though the main zombies are interesting personality-wise, the background zombies look completely ridiculous as some are clearly wearing zombie masks and some simply have a red wound on their face and some gray makeup.
The special effects in the film are abysmal. Not only is there a complete lack of quality practical effects, but the film doesn’t even try to compensate for the missing gore factor with some semblance of CGI. There is one scene involving the Treadwell zombie and his spoon that is pretty interesting, but the rest of the film is rather forgettable. The film has too much CGI of unimportant elements. Skies don’t need to be touched up with CGI, and if you have to create the bottom of an elevator using computer generated imagery, then you probably shouldn’t have started making a film in the first place.
Despite all of the films flaws, there’s something wonderfully entertaining about the film. I would never recommend watching it, but it is rather fun in a “look how bad this is” way. As far as zombie flicks go, this film falls somewhere between House of the Damned and The Night of the Living Dead remake. Raiders of the Damned has a pretty good formula for entertainment and I wish that someone would take the film’s story, give it a couple tweaks, and a bigger budget and then we’d have a quality film.
Final Synopsis: If you’ve got a high tolerance for cheap zombie flicks and you want to see Richard Grieco go through DT’s on screen, then you might consider giving this film a rent. Of course, most of you will want to skip this as it’s a bad movie.
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