★★
“Life’s a bitch and then you see this movie.”
The Cycle Sluts motorcycle gang roar into town, to the consternation and distaste of locals, who drive them off. This decision is regretted soon afterwards, when they come under siege from the walking dead, raised to work in the local mine – a plot stolen from Hammer’s Plague of the Zombies – by the local mortician (Calfa) and his midget assistant. Luckily, the girls are still near, and can assist the townsfolk, including Billy Bob Thornton, who plays a redneck hick, proving it’s possible to be stereotyped before getting famous.
There are two kinds of Troma films: those with fab titles that are fun to watch (Rabid Grannies), and those with fab titles that are unendurably tedious, e.g. Surf Nazis Must Die. Despite a few nice moments, this one leans toward the latter. As a biker movie, it’s pretty tame, though some effort is put into given them background for the characters, and Catherine Carlen is undeniably fun to watch as Sluts leader Roxy. As a zombie pic, it’s nothing special either, there’s no real sense of threat and only the odd effective moment of gore. It works best as a dark spoof, such as when they lure the ghouls into church, using a group of blind orphans singing O Holy Night as bait. The midget (Ed Gale) gets most of the best lines: “If God had wanted me to do normal stuff, He would have made me look like normal people.”
The horror comedy is a tricky genre to pull off properly, and this doesn’t manage it, being neither horrific nor funny enough. File beside Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters and Femme Fontaine: Killer Babe For The CIA in the Troma catalog.
Dir: Dan Hoskins
Star: Catherine Carlen, Jamie Rose, Lycia Naff, Don Calfa