Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town (USA, 1991)
(Trailer) What self-respecting fan of bad films could possibly ignore the Circe-call of a title like Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town? Remember, though, for all the desirability of Circe's song, in the end she did turn those who responded to it into pigs. Needless to say, this film won't change you into a pig for watching it, but it could cause you to die of boredom; more than anything else, however, the film simply makes other lousy zombie comedies such as Corpses (2004/trailer) come across like cinematic masterpieces. Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town tries hard to be so-bad-its-good, but like so many films that try to do so, it only manages to be bad enough to really be bad.
Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town features a female motorcycle gang called the Cycle Sluts that rumble into the desert hick-town of Zariah in search of wicks to dip—or, as they call it, "meat"—and are met with the predictable hostility. The town suffers from a high mortality rate for, unknown to the residents, the local mortician (Dan Calfa, who also played a mortician in the far more superior zombie comedy The Return of the Living Dead (1985/trailer)) is killing and turning the locals into zombies which he then puts to work in a nearby deserted and radioactive mine (a concept—minus the radioactivity—taken from the immeasurably superior Hammer flick Plague of the Zombies (1996/trailer)). 
Why exactly he is doing this and what he is does with the radioactive substance is never fully explained, but then, such oversights abound in this flick—in one scene, for example, two Cycle Sluts seemingly die in an explosion, but are then back up and running (un-singed) in the next scene. Some Sluts get laid, some die, one does a Joan Jett imitation in a sleazy café and then they get driven out of town by the angry townsfolk, only to return to save a bus load full of blind orphans and the rest of the town from the gang of zombies that, having escaped from the mine, are now in search of dinner. Somewhere along the way Billy Bob Thornton makes one of his first movie appearances as the husband left-behind by one of the Cycle Sluts, but he doesn't really have enough to do to be able to give any indication of the career he would soon have.
A Troma release, Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town is less an actual Troma production than an independent no-budgeter picked-up by Kaufmann & Co. and, as such, lacks the only two redeeming aspects normally found in the typically adolescent Troma exploitation film: Tits and blood. Which is not to say the film doesn't have a good line of dialog or two, or that some of the ideas aren't mildly entertaining, but as a whole the film is disjointed, badly acted, narratively uncreative and excruciatingly painful to watch for a film with only a 86-minute running time. T'is hardly surprising that Dan Hoskins, the credited director and author of this cinematic abortion, has seemingly never followed-up this anemic fetus with another cinematic mistake. If ever there was a trailer that truly misrepresents the film it's advertising, then the trailer to this flick does just that, for it really makes the flick look like it could be fun.
Things have really gone downhill since the days of other killer-slut films like Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965/trailer) or The Female Bunch (1969/trailer). And seriously, folks: a film featuring "chopper chicks" without a single breast-shot?
(Trailer) What self-respecting fan of bad films could possibly ignore the Circe-call of a title like Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town? Remember, though, for all the desirability of Circe's song, in the end she did turn those who responded to it into pigs. Needless to say, this film won't change you into a pig for watching it, but it could cause you to die of boredom; more than anything else, however, the film simply makes other lousy zombie comedies such as Corpses (2004/trailer) come across like cinematic masterpieces. Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town tries hard to be so-bad-its-good, but like so many films that try to do so, it only manages to be bad enough to really be bad.
Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town features a female motorcycle gang called the Cycle Sluts that rumble into the desert hick-town of Zariah in search of wicks to dip—or, as they call it, "meat"—and are met with the predictable hostility. The town suffers from a high mortality rate for, unknown to the residents, the local mortician (Dan Calfa, who also played a mortician in the far more superior zombie comedy The Return of the Living Dead (1985/trailer)) is killing and turning the locals into zombies which he then puts to work in a nearby deserted and radioactive mine (a concept—minus the radioactivity—taken from the immeasurably superior Hammer flick Plague of the Zombies (1996/trailer)). 
Why exactly he is doing this and what he is does with the radioactive substance is never fully explained, but then, such oversights abound in this flick—in one scene, for example, two Cycle Sluts seemingly die in an explosion, but are then back up and running (un-singed) in the next scene. Some Sluts get laid, some die, one does a Joan Jett imitation in a sleazy café and then they get driven out of town by the angry townsfolk, only to return to save a bus load full of blind orphans and the rest of the town from the gang of zombies that, having escaped from the mine, are now in search of dinner. Somewhere along the way Billy Bob Thornton makes one of his first movie appearances as the husband left-behind by one of the Cycle Sluts, but he doesn't really have enough to do to be able to give any indication of the career he would soon have.
A Troma release, Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town is less an actual Troma production than an independent no-budgeter picked-up by Kaufmann & Co. and, as such, lacks the only two redeeming aspects normally found in the typically adolescent Troma exploitation film: Tits and blood. Which is not to say the film doesn't have a good line of dialog or two, or that some of the ideas aren't mildly entertaining, but as a whole the film is disjointed, badly acted, narratively uncreative and excruciatingly painful to watch for a film with only a 86-minute running time. T'is hardly surprising that Dan Hoskins, the credited director and author of this cinematic abortion, has seemingly never followed-up this anemic fetus with another cinematic mistake. If ever there was a trailer that truly misrepresents the film it's advertising, then the trailer to this flick does just that, for it really makes the flick look like it could be fun. 
Things have really gone downhill since the days of other killer-slut films like Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965/trailer) or The Female Bunch (1969/trailer). And seriously, folks: a film featuring "chopper chicks" without a single breast-shot? 
No comments:
Post a Comment