I completely forgot I bought this DVD combo set for $4.99 on Halloween. The DVD features four zombie films: original Night of The Living Dead, White Zombie, Legion of The Dead, and Dead Men Walking. I’ve already seen the first two titles numerous times, so I had to pick between the latter two films. Obviously, I went with Dead Men Walking.
In Dead Men Walking, a man is taken to a maximum security prison after he shoots and kills three people. He claims he is infected with biotoxins produced by the government. These claims cause an investigation by a CDC agent while the man is being processed. It turns out, the three people who were shot and killed…were zombies! And the man is infected and about to be housed in a jail full of already blood-thirsty inmates.
My gripes with this film all stem from production quality. The film has this annoying red filter that’s applied throughout the whole film. While you can still see the colors perfectly, everything has a faint red layer over it. Next, depending where the scenes take place, the volume levels go up and down. The worst volume problems occur during the scenes in the food court. The acoustics are just not good. Thirdly, two characters in the film have a shot-gun. I don’t know if anyone ever explained guns to the film makers…but, shot-guns do not have an unlimited source of ammo. And if you fire while moving the gun in a 45 degree angle towards the ceiling then you’re probably not going to hit your target.
Besides those production issues, the rest of the movie is pretty good. Lots and lots and lots of gore! I really enjoyed the initial transformation from the first guy into the first zombie; definitely gave me the, “Oh shit!” feeling. I liked that the characters you really didn’t like died early on so you were just left with people you were rooting for. The script was good for a low-budget zombie movie. And there was a scene reminiscent to a part in the Resident Evil game for Nintendo 64. Will I ever watch Dead Men Walking again? Probably not, but it was definitely worth watching once.
Apparently SyFy Channel has aired Dead Men Walking once or twice before. Maybe you’ll catch it on late at night one day. Dead Men Walking is directed by Peter Mervis, written by Mike Watt, and stars Bay Burner, Griff Furst, Chriss Anglin, Bobby James, and Brandon Stacy. It’s distributed by The Asylum.
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