Zombie Chronicles (2001)

Posted on Oct 30, 2002 under Horror |

Directed by Brad Sykes
Written by Garrett Clancy
Starring
- Garrett Clancy
- Emmy Smith
- Beverly Lynn
- Joe Haggerty
Produced by David S. Sterling

Let’s get all of the ugly little facts out of the way first, shall we?

It’s shot on video, and not exactly top-of-the-line digital.
Video can sometimes be saved by terrific cinematography. This is not.
The script’s got some sections of weak dialogue. Often this can be covered by terrific acting, or vice versa, but that acting stumbles at exactly the same spots as the script.
Sound levels are spotty; I think my wife got annoyed at how I had to crank the volume for some parts, followed by hastily turning it back down as characters shouted right at the mike. At least, I know I got annoyed.
The movie was edited by the Polonia Brothers. (Not that they did a bad job of it, but their association with any project is a likely cause for some divine smiting.)
If the movie’s billed as “A Trilogy of Zombie Horror” (and it is, right there on the back of the box), it’s cheating to have only two segments and count the wraparound story as Part Three.

“What? A bottle in my hand? How did this get here?”

There. The ugliest of truths have been told. Of course, being a zombie movie, even the good parts are ugly. And if you go into it knowing that it’s an example of buck-and-a-quarter filmmaking (an awareness, granted, that might not be present in the majority of potential Hollywood Video renters), it’s not too hard to wring some enjoyment from it.

The wraparound story is of one Tara Woodley (Emmy Smith), a journalist out to track down the ghost stories of a small hidden town called Stopesburrow — a town she’s having a devil of a time finding. (She’s supposedly driving through the hinterlands of an unnamed state, so I suppose we should just ignore the semi trucks clipping down the highway clearly visible out her driver’s side window.) And her trek is punctuated by short stopover naps, which are chock-full of zombies; never a good omen.

She then almost hits an elderly man in the road — and not just any old man: one Ebenezer Jackson (Joe Haggerty), who fulfills to the letter the profile of the erudite, literate homeless bum. As he positions himself as the chief repository of the supernatural tales of Stopesburrow, she gives him a ride village-ward — though because our budget doesn’t include actually shooting in a populated area, they stop at an amandoned corrugated building for him to unroll his yarns. (The same building featured in Tara’s zombie nightmares. OooooOOOooohhh…)

The latest accessories in guerilla chic.

The first story Ebenezer lays down is set in 1971. I’m sure glad he announced the year right up front, because there’s sure as hell no way I would have guessed that the story of two contemporary-dressed people and their late-model car breaking down was supposed to have happened thirty years ago. (All this bit lacked was a cellphone to be completely anachronistic.) The two in question are Ben Draper (Garrett Clancy, also the screenwriter) and his blonde hottie girlfriend Marsha (Beverly Lynne, former cheerleader who’s now a regular in Brain Damage Films); you’ll have to refer to someone more automotively inclined to know what their car is. Thanks to the fact that they’re twenty miles past the last sign of civilization (though, again, houses are clearly visible on the dsitant hills), Ben has no choice but to hike forward toward the now-closed army base at which he used to be a Sergeant before retiring. He leaves Marsha at the car (so as she won’t slow him down) with his gun, and trots off on a “short cut.”

Which all fine and good, except woman alone + backwoods + disabled vehicle = rapacious rednecks, which are exactly what come cruising along. Just in the nick of time, she realizes that her gun does her absolutely no good on the floor of the passenger side when it needs to be pointed at an inbred cranium and corrects that tactical error. Then, after having sent our libidinous locals off disappointingly unperforated, she sets out to follow Ben through unknown, unmarked territory in high heels. (At least she doesn’t keep commiting the same tactical errors.)

Ben, meanwhile, has made it to a decrepit depot or gas station or something vaguely garage-like. To his amazement, the abandoned facility is, well, abandoned (imagine!), and he’s unable to get even a drink of water. Stymied in his great plan, he heads back.

Diagnosis: Dead.

Halfway back to where he started, he encounters Marsha — tied to a tree, with dynamite around her neck and C4 wired between her knees (accomodatingly stenciled “C4″). And a disembodied voice from the trees starts giving “Sgt. Draper” harsh physical instructions: “Drop and give me fifty!” “One mile, double-time!” “Jumping jacks!” “Dig a regulation foxhole in under 15 minutes!” If it weren’t for the last, I’d have suspected that Mr. Murphy, my grade school Phys. Ed. teacher, was behind it all.

But all these activities, more than just pushing Ben to the edge of endurance, also echo another event in Ben’s life, one told in flashbacks: that while he was a sergeant, there was a young recruit to whom he took in instinctive dislike — and while torturing him with physical tasks, he accidently exercised the fellow to death, and covered it up by burying him in a foxhole dug on this very wooded path!

Could it be the wrongfully-deceased recruit come back and now taking his revenge? Well, yes and no. I don’t want to spoil it, except to say that Marsha has a more active role than you might suppose, and that we do get to see a zombie — which is to be expected, considering the title. And as zombies go, it’s pretty danged good-looking, especially at a budget range that usually relies on daubed greasepaint and the occasional bit of ripped liquid latex. No, this makeup (by Joe Castro) shows a definite affinity for the dirt-encrusted dead of such Euro-horror outings as Zombie and Burial Ground.

The first story done, Ebenezer launches into another, this one thankfully not date-stamped:

**“Who’s causing the dead to rise? Could it be — SATAN??“**

Three friends are off on a hiking and camping trip (in a swath of forest that’s looking all-too-familiar by now), and just to make it interesting, it’s co-ed! Frankly, I’m not sure why sensitive Jason (Mike Coen) decided to pal along with childhood chum Buzz (John Kyle Grady) and his squeeze Melinda (Janet Tracey), as the latter two have practically perfected the art of dry-humping while hiking. Their shortcut path takes them through an old graveyard, where notorious outlaw Wild Jim and his wife Crazy Helen are buried. Jason, having read far too many horror comics in the fifth grade, knows the entire story behind the notorious couple, and is thus spooked when a young teenaged girl runs off down the path — since Jim and Helen’s daughter has supposedly watched over their grave for a century. He’s also a little off-put when Buzz decides to take a leak on the gravesite. (”I wanna be really really sure I get a supernatural ass-whupping on this outing, so…”)

Naturally, the dead end up rising. And naturally Jason is out gathering firewood while the other two are back at the tent, doing what comes naturally (question: How many women will strip down to have sex, but leave their bra on?), so naturally everyone’s split up, and instead of being able to hoof it back to civilization ahead of the shambling undead, they end up running back and forth through the woods, running into each other (literally) in random combinations.

Once again, the zombie makeup is the highlight, Wild Jim being a dessicated skeleton in a duster, a few different look than in the previous segment. (Crazy Helen doesn’t come across as well, probably because it’s so much harder to convey innate femininity in a decomposed cadaver.)

Looks like Wild Jim caught a little too much sun this summer. And a little too much buzzard.

Back to the framing story, in which Tara is increasingly fed up with Ebenezer’s stories, pointing out the logical inconsistency that, there being no real surivors in either case (sorry if that’s a spoiler), there’d be no way for Ebenezer’s version to be the verifiably “true” story. While I agree with her reasoning, I’m puzzled by her belligerence. She was, after all, looking for “ghost stories,” which to me says that she’s expecting to find folklore. Her insistence on a verifiable story seems to mean that she’s searching more for paranormal phenomena, which (a) isn’t really what she implied earlier, and (b) ought not be sought with a single tape recorder as your only equipment.

Since the framing story is credited as one of the “Trilogy,” I’ll respect the same spoiler rules — though I don’t suppose it’ll surprise you to learn that Ebenezer’s more than a little living-impaired himself, will it?

What really endeared me to his little flick, aside from the appealing zombie and gore makeups, was simply that screenwriter Clancy avoided the problem which afflicts too many of the anthology movies I see: to wit, each of the mini-stories still have a discernable beginning, middle, and end. For that alone, despite all of the technical and artistic shortcomings, I cannot condemn this movie.