Project Terrible: Zombie Nation (2004)

OH-kay! Now this is what Project Terrible is all about, folks! Zombie Nation, my movie challenge from Cinema Gonzo, was without a doubt the worst movie in the history of bad movies. I can't even wrap my head around how shitty this was. This would normally infuriate me but instead it makes me strangely excited because I can finally rant about a movie's shortcomings - and this movie has PLENTY of them - and not feel bad about it at all. Because this movie deserves every bad review it gets.

Believe it or not, there is a basic plot to the movie although the bulk of the movie's "excitement" does not occur until almost an hour into this dung pile. Basically, a disturbed police officer has murdered several women and buried their bodies in the desert. Voodoo priestesses bring them back to life as zombies so the girls can get revenge on their killer.

To be truthful, this isn't a bad idea for a movie - on paper. Bringing back the dead and giving them a mission of sorts to kill the person or persons who killed them could make for a fun horror flick. Alas, I don't think the people who made this movie had any idea what the hell they were doing. Everything about Zombie Nation sucks. Really hard. We all love some of those "so bad it's good" movies, but this is ridiculously awful. This is so bad it's... really fucking bad. In the words of Butthead, "this sucks more than anything that has sucked before." Have I properly conveyed how shitty this movie is yet? Let's go over the specs just to make absolutely sure.

The ridiculousness starts off almost right from the beginning. We have a throwaway scene of a girl at home with her lover and then leaving and driving away. This is when the crazy cop shows up with his partner when he pulls her over for no reason. She gets mouthy, he gets unusually angry, and he basically assaults her while getting her out of the car and handcuffing her. His partner doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with this. When crazy cop takes the woman to a random building instead of the police station and pulls her up the stairs alone, the partner doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with this. When the crazy cop returns to the car without the woman, instead dragging a large body-sized duffel bag into the trunk, the partner really shows his true stupidity by believing that the crazy cop "let her go." Oh. My. Goodness.

Interspersed with scenes of the crazy cop we get these ungodly awful flashbacks to something that makes no sense. There's a kid walking down a row of people in beds with his wheelchair-bound mother who constantly gives him crap for his dirty hands. And there's a guy savagely beating a fat bald guy with a stick on the ass. Obviously his mother is some kind of doctor or whatever but this is NEVER explained properly just what the hell kind of research or experiments she's doing on crazy people. It only serves to give a vague reason of why this cop turns out to be a crazy killer.

Probably the funniest part about the movie is the set design of the police station. It seems to be in a warehouse with "Police Precinct 707" painted unceremoniously on a wall by the door. When the guy who I'm guessing is supposed to be the chief or captain orders somebody out of his "office," it's hilarious because his office is nothing more than a desk separated from everybody else by two walls on either side. The walls of the whole place are only about 6 feet high so you see all the exposed pipes and whatnot of the warehouse. It's pathetic.

When we finally get to the zombie part of the movie promised in the title, it takes about AN HOUR to get there. The girls buried in the ground dig themselves out and I was like Yay! Zombies! But these are the worst kind of zombies I've ever seen. They talk normally, walk normally and basically look normal. Actually the makeup used on these chicks to identify them as zombies is nothing more than black eye-liner smudged around their eyes. Really?! I did that for a Halloween costume when I was eight.

So what happens in the hour before the zombies show up? Nothing. Just a lot of horribly acted scenes of crazy cop's partner finally conveying his concerns about how the guy was obviously MURDERING women, and the precinct not taking him the least bit seriously. I may have zoned out on some of these parts but I don't think you can blame me.

The only gore in the movie when the zombie chicks pull off and eat a guy's penis and when they're munching on the crazy cop's intestines. It's really nothing to get excited about and was so disappointing because there wasn't even anything funny about these parts. It was just kind of sad how lame all this crap was.

At the end, after the zombie chicks have killed crazy cop and dumped his body in the water, they go back to the voodoo chicks and tell them that they ate him. This is when the voodoo chicks get all surprised and are like, "Oh, didn't we tell you not to eat people? That turns them into zombies too!" The movie ends with crazy cop emerging from the water all zombi-fied. Oh, but before that it is revealed that the zombie chicks have now become the new police officers at the 707. Thank you jebus, the torture is over.

I wouldn't even really recommend this as a "so bad it's good" movie. The only mild joy you'll get out of this movie is laughing at its numerous and achingly bad flaws. There's a lot of other bad stuff that I left out, but if you're wildly curious, and really brave, watch the movie yourself because one could write a whole book about the shit in Zombie Nation.