Death of the Dead (2010)

Wanda (Christina Rose) is the town nerd shunned by her peers and mocked to no end her only friend is an aging karate trainer and pervert with an obsession with sex toys. When a bus from a rival karate school out of the blue runs over a couple scientists dumping a toxic chemical down the sewer, the entire class is turned into in to zombie ninjas, Wanda and her instructor must save the town with the help of a magic karate belt in the 2010 horror/comedy “Death of the Dead”.

“Death of the Dead” is a strange parody of horror, exploitation, and old school martial arts films rolled up into one laugh inducing package of sleaze and cheese. Picture this, “Sidekicks”, the Tromaville library of films, a random box of zombie flicks, and a couple of poorly dubbed 70s martial arts movies are involved in a dirty, sweaty, Skinamax soundtrack fuck fest of an orgy and produced a child, that child would be named “Death of the Dead”.

I really had a good time with this one; while it is ultra cheesy it’s all done on purpose and is a very solidly written parody touching on many different cinema clichés that even today haunt their genres. This movie has something for everyone comedy, gore, and over the top action inspired fight scenes that will keep you laughing until the credits roll.

The martial arts aspects turned out to be the show stealer and are some of the funniest segments of the film, one of the most memorable scenes being the “jive” talk between the two rival martial arts sensei’s a scene that is featured in almost every 90s era martial movies that I can think of and yes I have seen a insane amount of them do to my love of bad cinema. The training scenes were also so spot on to that era of film that I couldn’t control my laugher during much of it. By the horror aspect comes into play you have almost forgotten that this is in fact a horror comedy and have tricked yourself into think it’s nothing more than a martial arts parody flick thanks to it being so accurate when it comes to picking up key clichés of the action genre. Once the zombie’s come into play you start to get a trickledown of b movie grade gore, starting very light and almost unnoticeable and gradually amping up to more over the top Tromaville inspired blood and guts that is made to look ultra fake and stomach churning to gore light weights.

Movies that are meant to be bad are very hard to review, because normally all these things are a critic’s worse nightmare and lower scores of films faster than the titanic sinking, but with over the top parodies that are nothing but back to back clichés it becomes difficult to talk about the film itself without sounding negative even though you had a great time watching it. Over all I really like this movie and if you find yourself a fan of Tromaville style flicks, sleaze, or perhaps just bad movies in general you will laugh your ass off watching “Death of the Dead” I recommend this film be watched with a group of friends possibly under the influence of mind alternating substances and with a open mind going in from the start that this is not a Oscar worthy big budget moving film it is a down and dirty parody that pokes fun at all the things that make bad movies bad.
On behalf of The Liberal Dead I give “Death of the Dead” 6 out of 10.

(6/10)