Zombie '90: Extreme Pestilence

A chemical spill is turning people into zombies. It's up to two doctor's to survive the epidemic. It's an Andreas Schnaas film so you know what the par for the course will be. Bad acting, horribly awful special effects, and no budget to speak of. The dubbing is ridiculous with a capital R and the saddest thing is that I feel compelled to write one word about this piece of excrement, much less the ten lines mandatory because of the guidelines placed on me by IMDb. My original review of merely one word: Crap wouldn't fly so I have to revise it and go more in to how bad it is. But I don't know if I can, so.. wait I think I may have enough words, or lines rather to make this review pass. Which is cool, I guess. So in summation: This movie sucks balls, don't watch it.

My Grade: F

Man, I've never seen a movie so unbelievably and extremely disgusting since who knows when. This has to rank as the ALL-TIME MOST DISGUSTING FILM EVER MADE IN MOVIE HISTORY, as well as the funniest. The gore, the killing, the acting, and the atrocious dubbing into English is incredibly horrible. The dubbing is so cheap that you'll see a nerdy looking doctor with the voice of a 70's pimp. The movie is about a military airplane carrying untested toxic chemicals that crashes into the forest, starting a brand new disease ("The Extreme Pestilence"), turning people into hideous looking zombies who'll eat any body part, sex organ or not, and internal organ they can get their hands on. The tagline says it all, "Guts, gore, splatter and more." This extremely gruesome and gory horror film is so terrible and funny that it has the corniest scene in movie history! A woman who is being pushed on a wheelchair by some guy while she's carrying her baby is attacked by a zombie and the zombie tears up the baby into little pieces, which you can easily tell is a doll filled with silly putty. This is as bad as horror movies can get!!!

When I first watched Andreas Schnaas' splatter-fest Zombie '90 (well over two decades ago: where has the time gone?), I struggled my way through with the original German audio, not understanding a word. I can't say that I enjoyed it that much.

However, in the years since my first viewing, I've developed something of a fondness for ultra low budget German splatter, learning to appreciate the sight of assorted mulleted Germans in stone-washed denim smashing papier maché heads full of offal.

As with Schnaas' first gore-drenched film, Violent Sh*t, the picture quality is cruddy, the sound lousy, the acting crap, the direction dire, the editing amateurish, and the gore effects thoroughly unconvincing, but I can't help but admire the fact that the guys behind the film have ploughed on regardless of their technical limitations. Every spurting wound, severed head, and eviscerated gut is a labour of love by fellow gorehounds, gawd bless 'em!

Rather irritatingly, Zombie '90 has since been released with an English dub, which attempts to add some unnecessary humour to proceedings by using ridiculous voices and silly dialogue; it does nothing to improve matters, being desperately unfunny throughout. My advice: stick with the original German soundtrack if possible: it's less insulting to horror fans.

I came into viewing this film expecting at least something on par with BURIAL GROUND or NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES, but what I ended up seeing was even worse than REDNECK ZOMBIES. Like REDNECK ZOMBIES, this film was made on a poor-quality VHS camcorder and looks in. The actors act (and look) terrible as shooting on video is not the most forgiving medium. The movie is almost impossible to watch given that the creativity behind it is low and the attempts at humor usually fall flat. Everything is drenched in the ceaseless cheap gore, which looks more like Tomato juice than anything else. The horrendously awful dubbing is almost as bad as in COSMIC SPACE NINJA 2: ESCAPE FROM CHERNOBOURG (and in that movie it was intentional). They even have an obvious black man's voice for a very little white man character.

Sure it's so bad it's funny for about 5-7 minutes, but after that you will really wonder why you put down good money for this or bothered watching it. It's not a zombie epic so much as yet-another non-budget shot-on-vidio disaster that only got widely recognized because its director released a lot of his other similar films as 'death' videos to be put in the adult section of mom&pop video stores across America. Be warned, as they're not really any better than your usual student film or wedding video.

Hell, where do I start with this one?

Let's see, I thought that I had seen close to the worst overall horror movie of all time, as far as acting, dubbing, plot, etc., when I tortured myself by watching Children of the Living Dead. To put this movie in perspective, compared to this, COTLD should be up for an Oscar.

This movie was made with a camcorder, a low tech camcorder. This movie has the most horendous overdubbing in the history of film, on any level. (I will not go into the fact that they used a black mans voice over a Hitler's youth looking actor playing the main doctor and a blatant homosexual overdubbing the other doctor, etc., since everyone else has hit on that subject. This, although funny, cannot carry this movie for more than a minute or two.)

This movie was made by the same moron that made the Violent Sh*t series of films, which are not much better than this. I actually saw this movie included on the Zombie Doom: Violent Sh*t 3 DVD. Why I bought it, I do not know.

The "special" effects in this movie SUCK. Everytime someone is "killed" by a Zombie, they use the exact same prosthetic fake stomach wound with very fake guts coming out. The guns are cap guns with somebody making a "kapow" sound in the microphone. You see big cardboard machete's covered in aluminum foil. You see "zombies" acting like they are eating and squirting ketchup packs with their hands. You even see zombies attacking people with the "prop" machetes (sections cut out). Utter crappola. The genius even took a plastic baby doll and filled it with fake guts. I did better effects than this in grade school.

BE WARNED. This movie is so bad it is not even one of those movies worth watching for the laughs. Whoever sunk any money into this film, making it, renting it, or buying it is a f*cking idiot, myself included. Nuff said.