2004
runtime of 85 minutes
This movie was clearly filmed on a shoe string budget, second hand shoe string. This kind of constraint resonates throughout a film - in the cinematography, film quality, sound, and most of all in the quality of thespian one has access to when they are unable to provide adequate remuneration. The zombies were the lowest common denominator of cinematic convention, wide eyed extras who’ve been painted white and had dark circles drawn around their eyes, enthusiastically stumbling around like special ed kids. I was impressed with the ambitiously large cast, but this movie could not be considered “good” by any criteria I could think of. And yet, I liked it in spite of myself. The zombie comedy is a small, esoteric sub-genre, and despite the fact that few films in this group are anything someone could be proud of, I am always glad to see a new submission to the cannon.
Hide and Creep
Spoiler
The movie starts with a movie store clerk contemplating the merits of various zombie movies, when a remarkably lame zombie shuffles in. He kills it, by using swinging a VCR by the plug like a chain mace. He tries to report this but the receptionist at the police office says she’s the only one there and hangs up on him, so he drops the corpse off at the police station with a post-it note on its forehead. The nonchalance with which he delivers the corpse is beautiful. If you're not enjoying the movie yet, give up. The receptionist calls the deputy that is supposed to be on duty and discovers he’s out of town, so she calls her ex-cop boyfriend and asks him to come take care of it.
Meanwhile four guys from the gun club are hanging out in their cabin. They discover their generator has stopped working and the chap who wanders out into the woods to investigate suffers the predictable fate of any horror movie character who goes into the woods alone. The three remaining members of the gun club go into the woods looking for their missing comrade, and are ambushed by zombies. They split up and run away, reconvening at the cabin and grabbing their weapons. Sidekick guy, and gun club leader don’t seem to notice that dorky guy has been bitten, even though he hides this with all the exagerated subtlety of his poor acting skills. Back at the police station there is a loud thump on the roof and a guy with a stupid haircut walks in claiming to be a government agent so as to commandeer the receptionist's car.
Elsewhere, an annoying woman pesters a priest, and after she leaves he is bitten by a zombie. Later the priest eats the annoying woman and is horrified by his lapse in judgment. When he goes back to the church he discovers folks are waiting for him to give a sermon. He tells the congregation how much they suck, and then they are stormed by zombies. The priest gives a good fight but they are all eventually overcome.
The ex-cop runs into the video store clerk and asks him for a ride. The two of them go to the police station and the receptionist sends them after the government agent. The two of them, some naked man, and the spook all meet in a graveyard. They all head back to the police station and the spook is eaten shortly after they arrive. Everybody except the video store clerk leaves to aquire another vehicle. The group then heads off to find the receptionist's nieces, who have been holed up in a fortified house. Their father arrives, and turns out to be the leader and sole survivor of the gun club. They all pile into a car and the youngest of the two girls turns into a zombie and as the car swerves off the road the screen fades out. Meanwhile the video clerk is getting ready to leave the police station to seek out safer ground, but he sees that a good show is coming on TV and decides to stay a little longer. Credits roll
