Current mood: sick
Well I finally got round to it. The Zombie Blood Feast movie marathon!
It was this series of movies which led to the writing of Baxter Investigates... Dead Men Walking. An episode which saw government experiments go awry. Ultimately unleashing a plague of zombies unto the streets of Los Endos. Which is basically the plot of the movies too. Except the setting isn't Los Endos. The Execs had noted the popularity of the first two movies and had commissioned a Halloween Special which went out later than usual due to its zombie content.
First into the VCR is the film which began the saga, Zombie Blood Feast. (This and the first sequel were made prior to my casting as Lt. Don Baxter. The remaining sequels were made after the show finished.)
In this movie I play a Lab Technician named Cotten who is involved in experiments in creating organic automaton using the freshly dead. Its a big secret Government Initiative which ends up going hay-wire. However it turns out the real cause of the reanimation is due to a disaster of natural origins.
I am the only character to survive from the first film and then turn up in the sequels as the authority on the Flesh Eating Freaks! (that was an alternate title by the way)
Zombie Blood Feast II: Dead Before Bedtime went into production almost as soon as we had wrapped on the first movie. The investors believed that they could stretch the remaining budget from the first movie to create a second, which is exactly what they did. We had wrapped early too so all the actors and crew, etc were still under contract for three more days work. Some people say the hurried filming of ZBF II is a little too evident at times, and the flash-back sequences to the first film were a little too frequent and lengthy. But I still think it holds together well.
The basic plot had the survivors heading out of the zombie invested city into the mountains. Along the way we recount how we came to end up all together (hence the flash-backs). However, we are unaware that an Uber-Zombie has hitched a ride with us!
Basically holiday-makers, locals, etc all get attacked and eaten by the Uber-Zombie and the film ends up with it pushing our RV over a cliff.
The end shot of this zombie, clenched fists raised above its head in triumph silhouetted against the burning embers of the setting sun, is one of the greatest I have ever seen in a movie. Then when it spontaneously combusts, then explodes, and its teeth fly out toward the screen in the film's only 3D sequence... It's just gotta be one of the best shots of all time.
After the success of Baxter Investigates... and our own homage to the Zombie Blood Feast movies, some enterprising bright spark decided it was time to make a new set of movies in the series, Zombie Blood Feast III: The Return of the Teeth and Zombie Blood Feast IV: The Nibblers, which were actually filmed back to back.
We had all supposedly perished when the RV was crushed under the ensuing landslide but they concocted a clever way that my character had survived. I had decided to step out of the RV and go to the John just as the Uber-Zombie pushed the vehicle over the cliff. We shot some bits of me witnessing all the action (again clever use of pre-existing material)
So in ZBF III all that has survived of the Uber-Zombie are its teeth. Well not just its teeth, its whole jaws. Teeth on their own really couldn't pose a threat could they. Unless they were fashioned into some sort of projectiles or something... Anyway!
So the teeth go around biting people and turning them into zombies. And its these zombies which become known as The Nibblers in the final film, because they are born of the nibbling teeth. Obviously!
They may not have had the charm of the original couple of movies but they definitely had something. More blood and guts for starters! Unfortunately they didn't do too well financially or critically and no more movies were planned.
I have fond memories of making all these horror films though, and I'll never forget the scene in Zombie Blood Feast where two little girl zombies pull a guys intestines out, then start skipping rope with them.
Classic!
Currently listening : Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty.
Release date: By 25 October, 1990
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