CONTAINS MYSTERY AND VERY MILD SPOILERS
Die Zombiejager is a low-budget Swedish zombie film in which a German troupe of highly eccentric zombie hunters are assigned to the zomb-ridden city of Gothenberg, where a cackling maniac in a skull mask is plotting an apocalypse of the living dead by means of infected milk, for no immediately obvious reason other than he's a nutter. Our heroes show up and do the deed via the simple technique of firing sub-machine guns at them.
To say it isn't very good is putting it mildly: it's far too cheap, acting is minimal, and the shaky camcorder look is wearing. But if all you're after from a zombie movie is blood and the occasional bit of flesh eating, and you don't mind it being subtitled in occasionally bad English, then it just about delivers. This is just Generic Zombie Flick #431; there's no originality on display, which is odd considering the end credits acknowledgement (for inspiration) to George Romero, Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, Wes Craven and so on. Even more curious is that the last two names on the list are Basil Poledouris and Jerry Goldsmith - veteran (and sadly departed) score composers, who as far as I can recall never scored a zombie film; and this musical dedication is made more puzzling by the fact that the bulk of Die Zombiejager takes place against a near constant background of thudding rock songs. It's like the makers of the Emmerdale Christmas special crediting David Lean with the inspiration.
The other mystery is that I can't seem to locate the film on the BBFC's website. I'm sure it's there somewhere but it doesn't show up on a search of the distributors, director or any of the cast. Strangely, there doesn't seem to be an 18 symbol on the disc itself, or the front artwork as viewed on Amazon or Play.
In summary, then, it's not really worth the time or the money although it's mildly interesting to see how other countries and cultures tackle a concept as universal, yet predominantly based around the UK, America and Italy, as the zombie. The Greek film Evil is actually more entertaining and has a memorable final scene, whereas the Malaysian film Zombies From Banana Village (no, I'm not making it up) is endearingly ramshackle and hard to dislike, though it apparently has a bit of social commentary going on which doesn't particularly translate to UK viewers. But Die Zombiejager, despite the occasional bit of blood and gore, is just too formulaic and bog-standard to do much of anything that hasn't been done before, often and generally better.
**
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1 comment:
Thanks for the review.
It was our first attempt to make a full feature without much budget. We really tried to make the centre core to look abandoned. During the city scenes we had to put up wirh a German tour bus, Eurosport reporters, drunk people and lots of trams. But it was fun and a hard work.
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