Day 12: I Was A Teenage Zombie

Ever wonder what would happen if you took a pretty raunchy teen sex comedy and mixed it with a zombie film? I Was A Teenage Zombie was created to answer all your questions. The results are sort of a mixed bag. Despite being sort of funny, this film falls just short.

A teenage jock and his unusual group of friends are in the market for some marijuana. A shady drug dealer rips them off and refuses to give them any sort of refund. After confronting  the dealer, the teenagers accidentally take his life! In an effort to hide their crime, they toss him into a lake that they later find is infested with radiation. The radiation brings the drug dealer back to life and he begins seeking revenge, killing the teens one by one. Their only hope is to revive their recently deceased friend in the lake and hope that he can stop the zombified version of Cheech Marin.

Despite being a comedy first and foremost, this film has surprisingly brutal murder scenes. Sure they're cheesy, but you don't really expect someone to get their face ripped off in a teen comedy. I was expecting more typical high school situations taking place with a zombie involved. But instead they go for a more straight forward gore-fest. The kills all have a Toxic Avenger feel to them. They're gruesome, but the acting involved is awkward and cheese filled. They even make a reference to Lloyd Kaufman in a radio broadcast. The influence is definitely there.

The script is where this movie really fails though. Even though this is largely a teen comedy there aren't any really good jokes. All the humor is derived from the splattery gore scenes and the intentionally awful line delivery. This formula works well for movies like Toxic Avenger because something is always happening and the bad acting only enhances the humor of the situations. However, I Was A Teenage Zombie is filled with long dialogue scenes that are sometimes tough to hear. When there isn't anything happening the bad line delivery only hurts the conversation scenes and gets boring.

I Was A Teenage Zombie isn't an absolute chore to sit through. There are enough high quality kills here to keep you around till the finale. It's just the scenes in between these kills that will have you looking for something else to pass the time. Watch it once for the full effect, but then fast forward to the highlights on subsequent watches.

Body Count: 9

Side Note: The soundtrack is pretty good. One 80's alt rock track plays early in the movie and had me headbanging for a bit. No vocals ever come in, but I wonder if I can track down the full song somewhere.