Meltdown and Zombie Nation – when zombie movies eat themselves

If you’re looking for a different twist in your zombie films, these two definitely do a 180 in the middle…onto a collision course with a totally different kind of movie!

MELTDOWN (2016)

Meltdown is the perfect title for a movie that gave me high hopes for a z-grade gore comedy.

There’s this dude. It’s his birthday. His bitchy, trashy girlfriend is basically like, “Tough shit, I look fuckable and I’m going out with my friends—and plan to get banged by this hot guy from work who’s picking me up right now and has his hands all over me, right in front of you.” She doesn’t actually say that, but she might as well, because that’s exactly what happens.

Poor birthday dude. Next thing you know, there are nasty, gnarly, savage zombies everywhere. The film is not scary or suspenseful, and the soundtrack is more background muzak than a score that enhances the action. However, with gore galore, it quickly turns into a cheap-assed splatter flick with awesome zombies and wicked gross mutilation of both humans and zombies. Plus, birthday dude is particularly campy and funny with his deadpan delivery.

Is that a dick on your face
or just a trick to get me to sit on it?

Then, all of a sudden…we flash ahead two years! Meltdown has a meltdown, and takes a The Walking Dead approach, as various nomadic groups with psycho leaders (including a crazy preacher) battle it out in the woods. While there’s very little in the way of zombies, the latest state of undead transformation is pretty damn freaky—so it totally should have been the focus.

Instead, we’re left with more of a low budget grindhouse exploitation shoot ‘em up that doesn’t so much conclude as insist there’s going to be a sequel.

ZOMBIE NATION (2005)

The reason I ignored all the reviews trashing this film when I streamed it is because every fucking horror movie gets trashed by every reviewer these days. So…I watched it.

This is a piece of trash.

Okay, the other reason I watched it is because it’s directed by Ulli Lommel, who did the 1980 flick The Boogey Man, which I just blogged about here. I wanted to see how much his horror directing had improved in the new millennium. You’d swear Zombie Nation was an earlier effort….

A cop regularly kidnaps women, takes them to a furniture warehouse, checks their teeth, gives them an injection, and then kills them. Meanwhile, to confuse matter, we keep seeing scenes of people being tied to beds and abused by an evil chick in a wheelchair.

There are also hot cops everywhere, a police fight club, and a bunch of women doing voodoo.

FINALLY, the women he’s killed crawl from their graves—and magically look like they were nowhere near dirt, but actually stepped out of a 1980s punk club.

Anyway, these talking “zombies” suddenly bring total campy comedy to a movie that had none before. They hitch rides to get home, eating man tongue and man dick on the way.

Personally, I prefer mine between buns…

When learn that everyone they know will reject them because of what they’ve become, they head out to get revenge on the bastard who killed them—to the beat of a cheesy dance song with “doo, doo, doot doot, doo” lyrics. WTF?

The absolute highlight of this film—beyond the sexy cops—is some random chick that walks into the killer’s warehouse and blows a bitch fit when he won’t sell her a couch. She fucking rules.