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A group of high school kids buy some bad weed from a drug dealer named Mussolini. When they demand their money back, events escalate, resulting in the death of Mussolini. The kids decide to throw Mussolini’s body in a river, which happens to be contaminated with radiation from the nearby nuclear power plant. Mussolini comes back from the dead as a zombie and seeks revenge. Eventually the surviving kids get the idea to throw one of their recently murdered friends into the toxic river, hoping that they can fight zombie Mussolini with a zombie of their own… This movie sounds a lot darker than it actually is. If they did a remake of this movie, stressing the darker plot elements, they might actually have something good...
After the first couple of minutes, most will realize that I was a Teenage Zombie is a low budget movie. And like a lot of low budget horror movies, it isn’t afraid to have some fun with itself. There are actually moments when I found myself chuckling a little as I watched. The scene where they steal Dan’s corpse is pretty amusing, but keep in mind that this movie is no where near the comedy quality of Shaun of the Dead.
The gore is fake looking at times, but for a low budget movie it’s still pretty good. The scene when Lieberman has his face ripped off by zombie Mussolini is particularly gruesome. Also worth noting is that I love being able to type “zombie Mussolini,” and for it to actually be relevant to what I’m writing about.
I really wanted to like this movie because of its low budget feel, but it fell into all the same traps that other low budget horror movies do. First off, the makeup on the zombies is pathetic. It’s basically green face paint, and when Mussolini emerges from the water most of the makeup had been washed off, creating an unimpressive visual. Secondly, the characterization is terrible. The major love interest, Cindy Faithful, comes off as a moody slut who goes down on a guy on the first date. I can understand why Dan still had feelings for her after he came back from the dead as he probably wanted to know what would happen on the second date. At least the poor characterization is matched by the weak acting. I often wonder if the reason low budget films seem to always feature such flat characters is due to the limited skills of most actors that appear in such movies, but that’s still no excuse. Another problem, which a lot of low budget films suffer from, is that this movie is littered with boring moments. Silly gags and gore will only carry a movie so far. When a filmmaker can’t depend on his actors to carry a few scenes, you get movies like this. I found my attention to the movie non-existent an hour into it, and by the time the final showdown took place between the two zombies, I was just happy knowing the end of the movie was near.
I guess this movie could be seen as an allegory about the dangers of adolescent drug use. The whole mess in this movie would have been avoided if the kids just didn’t want to smoke up. Even after zombie Mussolini has started taking his revenge, we see the kids at a party drinking beer. I guess the new anti-drug slogan could be this: Just say no, or a zombie is going to rip you face off and eat your tongue kids! I don’t know how effective this slogan may be, but I think it couldn’t hurt.
I was a Teenage Zombie is a horror movie that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Hardcore zombie fans might want to see it just so they can say they watched it, but trust me, you’re not missing out on anything special. They could start showing this movie in schools though, using it as an anti-drug movie. I was a Teenage Zombie is easily as boring as anything I’ve ever watched in school.
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