Retardead (2008)

• Written, produced and directed by Rick Popko and Dan West
• Starring
  • Paul Weiner
  • Beth West
  • Dan Burr
  • Dan West
  • Rick Popko

Dan West and Rick Popko, the men who brought us my favorite killer poopie monster movie Monsturd (2003), have now given us a followup. Actually, it’s a for-real sequel, with most of the cast and characters returning from the first movie. The poopman is notably absent, but instead they give us special ed students who are turned into zombies. That should be transgressive enough in concept to satisfy the fans of the first movie, and disgust those who turned us their noses at the first movie just as much.

Though tentatively presumed dead, the body of the nefarious Dr. Stern (Dan Burr) was never recovered at the end of the last movie. He is in fact very much alive, though scarred with latex and gelatine down the side of his face. Escaping from the sewers where the poopman met his end, Dr. Stern first establishes a very Darkman-like secret lair in an abandoned industrial building (who knew mad science labs required so many drill presses?), then establishes a new identity as “Dr. Feldman” and goes searching for a job at the Special Education Center.

Beakers?  Of colored liquids?  But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on here!

I know that if I had a mentally handicapped child or sibling, I’d find this movie hella offensive, which means that as part of a caring and egalitarian society I should find it offensive anyway. I shouldn’t laugh at the half-dozen students we meet at the center who wear bicycle helmets inside and stick crayons up their noses and smear white glue and crumbled cookies in their hair. In fact, I’m not even going to admit that I did laugh, okay? Let’s just assume that I showed the appropriate genteel outrage. Whether I did or not, Dr. “Feldman” soon shows up as an instructor, stifles his disdain for his charges, and promptly enters into a round of experiments upon them.

What kind of experiments, you ask? Why, a continuation of some of the research he had been working on before the unfortunate poopie monster incident derailed his career: working with a serum called Algernon-9 (ha!) which had caused great increases in intelligence in test subjects at DuTech Labs. Unfortunately, it also caused cerebral swelling, violent outbursts, cannibalism, and living death. Once those side effects are conquered, though, it’ll be a dandy treatment.While Dr. Stern is slowly and quietly conducting his experiments, we get to spend some time with the local gendarmerie of Butte County (actually, the City of Butte County — don’t think about it too hard). Sheriff Duncan (Paul Weiner) is still overworked and frustrated, and his two deputies Dan and Rick (producers-writers-directors Dan West and Rick Popko) are still crass, violent, infantile, and only occasionally competent. During the time it takes for Dr. Stern’s experiments to infringe upon their field of vision, the Sheriff’s Department deals with the aftermath of an LSD ring at the elementary school (mostly as an excuse for Deputy Rick to have a bad trip when he accidentally licks the wrong stamps) and the ongoing threat of a compulsive masturbating exhibitionist dubbed “the Weenie Wagger.” Yes, there’s something to offend almost everybody here!

These open casting calls are murder.

Eventually, Dr. Stern’s experiment gives the same results that occurred in previous iterations. First his subjects’ intelligence increases dramatically, allowing them to discuss biophysics and play piano concertos and read War and Peace. But then the guinea pigs start to exhibit the same side effects previously seen, and he has to chain the students in the basement as they turn gray-skinned and their communication turns to guttural snarls. FBI Agent Hannigan (Beth West) from Monsturd, still on the case of Dr. Stern, knows via contacts at the CDC that Algernon-9 may have mutated into a virus (now THAT’S a neat trick), and is on the lookout for the vanished Dr. Stern to reappear. So she’s ready to leap into action with the Sheriff’s Department when the zombified students are accidentally let loose by a well-meaning teacher and start to spread their contagion in the time-honored fashion, i.e., gut-munching.

Thanks to a National Guard quarantine around Butte County (or, yeah, the City of Butte County), it’s a bazillion zombies versus Agent Hannigan, our heroic Sheriff and his two deputies, and… the Weenie Wagger (Bill Borrelli), who was apprehended just before the zombie outbreak and becomes another armed defender. Thanks to said Wagger, who just so happens to be a janitor at the special ed center, they also catch Dr. Stern and force his help. Unfortunately, like so many of those danged scientists, he’s not really much help when his own project gets foreseeably out of hand; he’s only synthesized a single dose of an untested antidote, and his contribution to anti-zombie tactics, of which he’s inordinately proud, is the efficacy of the venerable headshot.

“Hey , why don’t they invent donut-flavored beer?”

As befits a second attempt by extremely independent filmmakers, Retardead is a technical leap beyond Monsturd. It probably helps that the feature doesn’t have to take place in as many dark tunnels. And the willingness of what seems like the entire populace of San Francisco (where it was produced) to slap on the greasepaint and participate in the zombie epidemic is commendable; such civic spirit! The gore effects are plentiful and inventive, and yes, there is vomiting. (You’d think that deputies Dan and Rick would be of a little sterner stuff, having survived close contact with a man-sized poopie monster, but…) Acting ranges from acceptable (and is excusable for its comedic broadness) to quite good, really. Certainly better than one has any reason to expect from a no-budget production put together by a couple of self-taught filmmakers whose reason for going into filmmaking in the first place was watching the killer snowman movie Jack Frost and declaring in disgust, “I could make a better movie with a turd!”

In hindsight, teaching them about anatomy was a bad idea…

Where this movie suffers is in being divorced from that (or any) all-empowering inspiration. Monsturd wasn’t just about a poop monster; it was designed entirely to make poop jokes at every opportunity. Retardead is ostensibly about special ed zombies, but it takes huge detours, such as with the Weenie Wagger, which don’t really seem to be of a piece with that central conceit. And once the Algernon-9 wreaks havoc on the original test subjects, they lose completely the intelligence that the serum endowed, and the whole zombie horde is populated by very run-of-the-mill zombies; the whole idea of extra intelligence (or even substandard intelligence) goes by the wayside. That’s a lamentable loss because, well, think of this: How amusing would it be if the zombie virus created living dead geniuses — capable of planning ambushes, operating complex technology, and generally outsmarting the living? Especially when our protagonists have been established as morons. It could have been the 21st-century equivalent of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948); instead, it loses its uniqueness and becomes in too many ways a pale shadow of Shaun of the Dead (2004).

While we’re on the subject of humor, I have to establish myself as an out-of-touch curmudgeon here. Many of West’s and Popko’s scenes (which are half the movie) scenes are semi-ad-libbed and only loosely related to the main story, and I’m okay with that. But it seems that part of their ad-libbing style is to rely almost wholly on the F-word — not just dropping the F-bomb, but carpet-bombing every scene. I just don’t find the word inherently funny. It’s far too common these days to earn a laugh simply for shock value, and it becomes monotonous as a dull clanging when it predictably comes two to three times per sentence. Profanity is like salt; it should garnish, not overpower all other flavors. I’m not being a prude (honest, even though I’m not spelling the entire word out); I just contend that more isn’t always better.

Being co-producer means you can reserve all the glamorous parts for yourself.

So. Unqualified recommendation? No. Great zombie comedy? No. Fun in a lowest-common-denominator way if you like off-color non-PC humor and gore and general stupidity? Oh, absolutely. And if you’re a longtime reader of this site (and more specifically, if you’ve read all the way to the end of this review), that’s probably just fine with you.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: I stopped counting at 30
• breasts: 0 (not counting the fake one made out of foam rubber)
• explosions: 1
• dream sequences: 0 (drug trips, yes; dream sequences, no)
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• homages to Tom Savini’s machete gag in Dawn of the Dead: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0