User Reviews

There is a lot of brainless, motionless corpses in this film. I'm not talking about the zombies, here. I'm talking about the people who made this film. If you ever want to see a movie that fails in everything, this is that film. The people in the film didn't even wanted their names on it. Directed by Pericles Lewnes and written by Fester Smellman and Zoofeet. It has Alan Smithee's written all over the credits. The film makers could have at less, pick realism fake names than corny puns. This movie sets public perception of the Deep South back a few decades, but it was film in Maryland. Yes, Maryland has a lot of rednecks indeed. The movie starts out with an insane asylum with a survivor which kinda ruins the film. I guess, we know who lives, so why bother watching this movie. After dealing with that character, we get a flashback of a soldier delivery toxic waste to an army camp. Rather than paying attention to the road, he was talking to his dog while smoking a joint. Don't ask why his dog was allow to be in army jeep, no less, an army jeep with toxic waste! Who smokes a joint, delivering toxic waste? He offers his joint to the dog which cases him to crash and lose the barrel. While searching, he gets scare off by a fat local redneck. The fat one then finds the barrel and shows it to his fellow hicks trying it's a new still and begin brewing. The hooch comes out green and awful, but of course they drink it anyway. One of them, Ellie May, a gay hillbilly leaves to make the delivery run to town turning them into the living dead. A Homosexual redneck. Yes, nothing is safer to come out than the Deep South. Pa and sons drink the hooch and turn into redneck zombies. Meanwhile, some novice campers enter the woods to set up a camp. It's not long before the zombies find the campers and of course, the bloodbath begins. As many people have pointed out, the movie is pretty much intentionally bad with as much blatant weirdness as the filmmakers could stuff into it such in the case like the Tobacco Man that acts like an Ice Cream Man, but looks like Scarecrow from Batman Begins or Redneck Elephant Man Jason Voorhees. He's probably the best character in the film. It's just an example of Troma's anti-tobacco policies. The tobacco man was a big user of tobacco, and he's talking about himself when he talks about the big-city doctor cutting off half your face. Bitter about his own situation, the Tobacco Man is trying to make addicts out of everyone, so they can feel the pain he does. Or so I think, I could be wrong. Still, I have no clue what does he have to do with zombies. Honestly there is a lot of scenes that go nowhere. There's a delivery scene to the freelance butcher that makes no sense. A scene with a hitchhiker who shaves himself and try to shave the driver and take photos while driving. A scene with a drooling redneck and a duck taped girl sitting in the living room watching baby chickens on the TV. As much as the Hillbillies are badly written. The campers are just as annoying. There's the obsessive compulsive camper who changes his shirt all the time with different written words shirts all the time. Then another one pre-vet school camper Bob who freaks out and does an autopsy on one of their dead friends while hallucinating on acid. The sound and visual effects in this scene hurts my ears and eyes to the point, it might be bleeding. Bob is just an annoying comic relief character. He's like the real life Jar Jar Binks. The acting is atrocious. It is shot on video in incredibly poor quality. The makeup effects are incredibly primitive to the point that one of the zombies look like a blue smurf. Why is the blue smurf zombie even talking? Zombies don't talk. The editing is badly done as certain scenes have actors talking mid through their lines and suddenly it's cut to a new scene. Couldn't they have wait for the actor to finish his dialogue first! The writing is some of the worst, most obvious and most stupidly stereotypical I have ever run across. I don't understand why there is only sub-title in one side. Even the narrator text can't spell. I don't understand what tone this movie was going for, I mean it seems to be going for a parody in a few moments but it has an utterly bleak ending. Then again maybe I shouldn't question such trash, since the filmmakers obviously didn't think anything highly of it. Pass on this one, don't even rent unless you want to laugh at how bad it is, and even that might not work.

I had first seen this film in the early 90's. I love b grade films and love to critique them as I watch. It was recommended by a clerk in the video store, it was the $0.25 rental (the worst film in the store as rated by the customers) I loved it. It looked as if it was filmed on a cheap VHS camcorder. The budget on this one must have been extremely low (it had to be under $5,000). The title is all wrong though. I think that a more fitting title would be Hillbilly zombies as there is a difference between rednecks and hillbillies. The gratuitous breast shot with the whipped cream and cherries was spectacular. If you like bad films you'll love this one.

Lisa Dubois: "Wilbur, did you treat this weed?" Wilbur: "Only with respect, baby".

Where do I begin? I expected a little better from Lloyd Kaufman/ Troma Team.. But then again expect what? Once again I came out disappointed. I had heard so much "hoopla" over this so-called cult classic that when I saw a 20th anniversary DVD that also included a CD with the original soundtrack, I bought it. The CD music is much better that the film itself. Adrian Bond took composing the score for this film seriously. Nice.

Also included in this anniversary DVD are new and current interviews with cast and crew of the film. This was more shocking to me than the movie itself! Ha-ha. Some of the cast members did not age well at all. Especially Lisa M. DeHaven(Lisa Dubois). I thought she looked hot back then. But it was shocking to see how much weight she gained! I could not believe it was her! Ironically Bucky Santini (Fred Mertz) who was the "big boy"in the film, is now slim and unrecognizable! Another member who gain a lot of weight also was Tyrone Taylor(Tyrone the Soldier). It was nice to see though how Alex Lewnes (Baby Fester) turned out 20 years later! Alex Lewnes was only two years old when he played Baby Fester.

Pericles Lewnes (the director and who played Billy Bob 'Elly May)gave himself a concussion when he dropped the barrel of toxic waste on the first take. He also spent ten hours on the table in zombie make-up on the day his scene as a zombie was filmed. Moreover, said make-up took three or four hours to apply. It was so cold on several days of shooting that the fake blood Lisa M. DeHaven was covered with froze on her.

The filmmakers sent this movie to many different distributors in order to get it released, all of whom turned it down. It was eventually picked up for release by Troma, which was the very first company it was submitted to. The budget for this movie was so low that the filmmakers could only afford one breakaway candy glass bottle. This film was shot in 32 days on weekends over the course of a year.The make-up for the zombie extras was done in a deliberately cheesy manner.

"Redneck Zombies" bears all the marks of the classic "so bad it's good" low budget B movie. Those film fans who enjoy chilling with beers and buddies will likely find this effort from producer / director Pericles Lewnes and executive producer Edward Bishop to be well worth their time. Now, admittedly, it's pretty slow to start, and as often as it's funny, it's just tiresome. But it's worth sticking with because things really get interesting for the final third. Lewnes and company deliver what has to be the trippiest autopsy scene ever committed to celluloid before finally giving us plenty of action near the end. The gore is hilariously tacky and, yes, folks, there's a lot of it. The acting is aggressively lousy, with Anthony Burlington- Smith rating as the biggest offender as craven coward Bob. Lewnes takes every opportunity he gets to take his movie in surreal directions, and there's enough W.T.F. moments to make this a memorable bit of mayhem.

A wayward barrel of toxic waste is appropriated by a backwoods, backwards family and the contents find their way into the broods' batch of moonshine. After imbibing this putrid potion, the guys turn into...well, you can figure it out. At the mercy of the rampaging flesh eaters are an insipid bunch of back packers led by the moronic Wilbur (James H. Housely).

You gotta love a cast and crew that give themselves such colourful names as "Zoofeet" (this is the pseudonym for Lewnes himself, who plays femme redneck Billy Bob / Elly May) and "P. Floyd Piranha". And that's one of the endearing elements here, as it always is in movies of this kind, as this spirited bunch of "actors" and filmmakers have fun with their very silly material. You just can't beat independent horror cinema for this kind of go-for-it enthusiasm. Lisa M. DeHaven is a very feisty Final Girl who keeps putting up a fight. There are healthy nods to "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", especially the amusing hitchhiker sequence. And as a bonus the music, including some priceless ditties such as "Squirrels from Hell", is pretty catchy.

All in all, this is agreeable schlock.

Seven out of 10.

A former co-worker of mine told me about this film a few weeks ago, and I bought the film just to see how interesting this film could be. The basic gist of the film is that a drum of nuclear waste falls off the back of US Army Jeep in the rural parts of Maryland. Some rednecks get the drum thinking that it is Moonshine (because they do not know how to read, or they are just stupid) and give it to people and become flesh eating zombies.

The film itself is not meant to be a Oscar winner, but it falls under the "it's so bad it's good" group. The special effects are very cheap, but it still fun to watch. I could write a book on how corny and cheesy the lines in this movie are, but I am not going to do that. The lines in this film are really bad, but it's so funny at some of the stuff that is said in this film. The gore in this film is is at times over the top. There seems to be more gore in this film, then Dawn of the Dead.

The acting is over the top at times. Mainly Bob, the pre-vet student is starts tripping while doing an autopsy on one of the zombies. Drinking Dude, how could I forget him. He always drinks, at out of no where pulls out bottles of liquor and drinks it.

If you like Troma films, then watch this. If you like gore b flicks, then watch this. In my opinion this is one of the best b movies of the 80's.

SPOILER ALERT!(though i don't think this will matter, as i doubt many will actually see this movie)Words cant describe how awful this movie is. i saw this movie in a rental store, and it got thrown into the pile. Everything you can do wrong in a movie, this film(and i use that term loosely) does with striking regularity. The worst was the shot of the army guy chasing the toxic barrel repeating about 4 times. ANd the creepiest thing i've ever see in any film was the "tobacco man". Warning, you'll never be able to regain the hour and a half that this movie destroys. Stay very far away! I think this movie is actually so bad, The MST3k guys wouldn't even watch this.