Zombie Doom
Directed by Andreas Schnaas
ei Independent Cinema/Shriek Show
scribbled by LM Campbell
Whether Schnaas is a brilliant absurdist or an oblivious hack is moot. His objective is to entertain; and at that he is successful. Zombie Doom is my favourite film by the German splatschtick artisan. Three men abandon their sinking boat and climb into a meagre-sized life raft. Upon landing on shore they are surrounded and attacked by a group of machete-wielding masked men. After being taken captive, we find them in the groups survivalist camp tied to poles. A masked guard arrives and wakes them by throwing piss in their faces; after receiving his golden shower one man exclaims, “I have a bad feeling about this!” (It almost seems a waste killing such a great mind.)
Then the splatter begins. Heads are lopped off, bodies are torn asunder and in one particularly grisly sequence an incompetent sentry is anally eviscerated for allowing the pee-soaked prisoners to escape. Next our scholarly prisoner announces that: “the world of full of puke and shit and now a horde of tin-masked assholes are puk(ing) in our face(s) filled with shit.” Regardless of whether it is poor translation or aloof script-writing Zombie Doom is a bizarre melange of blood-splattered bodies and ponderous dialogue. The escaped men are hunted. Along the way many scenes of blood geysers and ruptured flesh ground into pulp are witnessed as they saw and cleave their way to freedom. And then the zombies arrive. Flummoxed? You should be, but I haven’t even had the opportunity to broach the subject of the black ninjas (later called the black demons?!?).
As with all of his storylines, Zombie Doom is nebulous and eclectic; truly viscera filmmaking as opposed to visceral filmmaking. Events occur at random and without reason or purpose. Will the men survive their ordeal at the hands of the merciless militant organization? Or will the zombies get them? With Schnaas behind the camera things don’t always make a lot of sense, so you just never know…
