Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written and directed by Lowell Mason
• Starring
  • Duane Jones
  • Judith O’Dea
  • Karl Hardman
  • Marilyn Eastman
  • Keith Wayne

Actually, according to the title card (literally — it’s a woman holding a piece of bristleboard with Magic-Markered text up for the camera), the full title is Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh-Eating, Hellbound, Crawling, Zombified, Living-Dead Part II in Shocking 2-D.

And you might as well stop right there, because the title’s probably the funniest part of the whole exercise.

“Hey, they can only screw with my lines for five minutes, then I’m dead! Yippee!”

You’ve heard the schtick before. Woody Allen did it in 1966 with Kokusai Himitsu Keisatsu, re-editing and redubbing it into a comedy called What’s Up, Tiger Lily?. A troupe of Californian comedians including Jay Leno did the same thing in 1983 with The Hideous Sun Demon, ending up with a movie known either as Revenge of the Sun Demon or What’s Up, Hideous Sun Demon?. This time out, Lowell Mason applied the same schtick to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

Now, note a couple of dissimilarities between the former two and the latter. For one thing, both Kokusai Himitsu Keisatsu and The Hideous Sun Demon were fairly obscure movies; one could bet that the audience for the spoofs had never seen the original. (Of course, things have changed since; I doubt there are many people who see Revenge of the Sun Demon these days without having seen the original. But who knew, in 1983, how the video revolution would transform the viewing habits of movie geeks?) By contrast, you’ve just gotta assume that every single viewer of Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh-Eating, Hellbound, Crawling, Zombified, Living-Dead Part II in Shocking 2-D has seen the original Night of the Living Dead any number of times — and admires it as being a thoroughly stunning piece of cinema.

There’s another big difference. Woody Allen is known as a comedian. He’s made a career of being funny, at least sporadically. Jay Leno? Big-time funnyman too.

Heard the name of Lowell Mason bandied around in the big comedy arenas lately?

Me, neither.

The script’s main gagwriter.

Now, I can see a bunch of drunk friends thinking that recording a humorous vocal and SFX track to Night of the Living Dead would be a good idea. It would be doable, too; with the well-known copyright difficulties Romero has had with his opus, Mason and friends would be pretty much bulletproof no matter how they modified the movie.

But for a movie with as great a cult following as Night of the Living Dead, a movie which has won the hearts of both underground genre fans and academic critics, a half-assed spoof attempt will earn that half an ass a severe kicking. And Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh-Eating, Hellbound, Crawling, Zombified, Living-Dead Part II in Shocking 2-D can only be considered “half-assed” if you’re rounding upward. (There’s a joke to be made in there involving “cheekiness,” but I’ll let you work on that one yourself.)

So. John and Barbara travel to the cemetery to place some flowers on a friend’s grave. And John has gas. Ha! And talks about the pleasures of a good crap. Ha ha! And Barbara is voiced by a male in falsetto. Ha ha ha!

What, you’re not laughing yet? These are the jokes, folks.

“You shoulda seen the copyright notice George was originally gonna put on the prints — it was THIS BIG!”

The cemetery zombie isn’t a reanimated corpse so much as a blue-collar worker driven into a trancelike state by his mind-numbing gas station job — although, in his muttering, he reveals that he’s gay, and the best part of his job is sticking the long hard nozzle into that tight little hole. Fag jokes! Ha ha ha!

Barbara runs to the farmhouse, making little muttering noises, because there’s not really a lot of dialogue through here to rewrite. There’s a running gag about a duck somewhere in the house, which is why Barbara’s always looking around so suddenly.

Then Ben arrives. Wait for it — what zany character trait will he have? Why, he’s black, of course! Which means he calls Barbara a “stupid white bitch” and talks in rhyming jive all the time! Plus, he came to the house looking for a bathroom, ’cause he’s got to drop a log! Wow, black jokes and more poop jokes at the same time! Ha!

“Don’t make me twirl my baton at you!” (It’s gratifying to know that, no matter how lame my captions are, they’re still better than the movie.)

You’ve probably run across the term “komedy” before. It bears the same relationship to genuine comedy that “krab” (as in the “krab salad” at the supermarket deli) bears to genuine crab. But this is a movie that makes komedy look like comedy.

Harry and Tom eventually show up — Tom with a surfer accent — and they argue for about ten minutes about who’s going to go get the pizza, or if it should be Mexican, or maybe Chinese. And…

Dear heavens, are you still paying attention? Aren’t you bored to tears? I know I was. There are few thrills in the world less thrilling than wondering whether the next swath of time-filling dialogue is going to be another of Ben’s raps, more argument about where to get take-out, or maybe another fun-filled poop reference. Maybe someone will say “motherf***er” again — after all, it’s been a whole forty seconds since the last time. Or maybe Ben will have another conversation with Tommy, the Talking Shotgun. All interspersed with a musical score heavy on the calliope music. Ha ha ha ha…

You may be thinking, “How could Lowell Mason and his partners in crime have been unaware of the unfunniness of their endeavor?” Here’s my theory: They knew. Maybe not right at the start — they were still drunk, after all, and thus it seemed like a good idea — but at some point, they came to understand just how bad their attempts at humor were. So they did the only thing they could to try and punch it up:

They added parts that were even less funny.

“She’s probably luckier this way. After all, she’s got no lines.”

Interspersed throughout the movie (about every five minutes or so) are unrelated clips, bits of (mostly) original footage shot for this very purpose. Bits of random historical knowledge about George Bernard Shaw and Calvin Coolidge. A locally-produced music video. And bits that try for the “so unfunny it’s funny” gag: a man eating a donut. Slowly. Another man waits at a train station for a train that never comes. All of which serves to remind us that at least the main portion of the movie contains the visuals of a good movie, if not the dialogue.

You may have heard of this title before. You may have even been tempted to track down a copy. You don’t have to now, because I did it for you. Whatever comedic potential there is in this movie is entirely in your optimistic imaginings. Give me four friends who’ve seen the movie before, set them in front of Night of the Living Dead with the sound turned off, and I guarantee that whatever they improvise on the first try will be head and shoulders above Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh-Eating, Hellbound, Crawling, Zombified, Living-Dead Part II in Shocking 2-D.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 9
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0