It’s one lowbrow flick from the end of the 90s and some newer indies from the 2000s. Let’s see how this movie marathon worked out for me.
HOT WAX ZOMBIES ON WHEELS (1999)
When this low budget indie first began, I had high hopes because it felt like it was going to be a raunchy little throwback to the direct-to-video days of the 80s. Even the rockin’ theme song fit the bill.
The plot is also perfect 80s throwback trash. In a small town, a leather biker woman opens a waxing salon…with wax that turns people into horny zombies.
You’d never know they are zombies though. There’s no zombie makeup whatsoever. If there isn’t going to be any zombie action, you need to make sure you lay it on thick with the gratuitous sex and camp, and this film just doesn’t quite deliver enough of either.
There are some flirtations with gay humor and gay sexual situations, but not even that is enough to make this film worthy of b-movie goodness.
STRAIN 100 (2020)
All I can do these days is watch zombie movies hoping for some good living dead action, because the plots have all been done to death and are all the same.
This indie is clearly COVID inspired, beginning with a montage of virus and vaccine controversy, CDC talk, and news clips.
Then we jump right into the outbreak scenario. Kids are camping in the woods, one turns zombie, everyone gets attacked, and our main girl escapes. She is one of the highlights here…actress Jemma Dallender definitely kills it as a final girl.
She ends up on a journey with a small group of survivors, and that’s when all the plot elements become cliché. Survivors trapped in a diner. A jerky alpha male. An attempt to escape. Someone keeping it secret that they’ve been bit. The group hoping to get to the CDC for help, but ending up at a farm being terrorized by zombies instead. We’ve seen it all before.
However, aside from CGI blood splatters, the zombie action is fun. The zombies look great, the nighttime scenes are effective, and the gut munching totally delivers with practical effects. There are no scares to be had, and the plot in between the zombie scenes is derivative, but I have to give the makers credit for capturing a classic zombie movie vibe.
5G ZOMBIES (2020)
I’m going to guess this movie was created during COVID lockdown considering it’s comprised of snippets of individuals conversing with their cameras rather than interacting with other people. And yes, COVID is referenced briefly.
It’s 100 agonizing minutes of people talking and coughing as the virus takes hold.
We are bombarded by short vignettes of people describing what they’re going through…and discussing conspiracy theories about the government using phones to turn everyone into zombies. Remember when Stephen King wrote a whole book with this plot?
There’s no makeup on the rare zombies we see, just people bleeding from…an inch below their eyes. Definitely a no budget feature.
STORM OF THE DEAD (2006)
I thought this was a full-fledged zombie flick based on the title, but instead it’s a low budget voodoo flick with no horror excitement at all.
After a Florida militia group shoots a looter in the swamps, his grandmother uses voodoo to turn herself into a young chick with big tits.
Instead of getting revenge on the militia, it seems like she just passes herself around and lets them squeeze her boobs.
She does shoot one guy near the end. Also, there is one zombie in the final frame of this film—which seemed to think it was going to get a sequel.
