RELEASE DATE: 1987
RATED: Unrated
REVIEWED BY: The DarkSider - 12/7/07
After Death. You figure I would have stayed away from any more lackluster sequels to Mr. Fulci�s
epic film. All I have to say is I�m rather big into cinematic torture.
Our film begins with a completely annoying view of a soldier�s shoes. Perhaps getting used to seeing these shoes is something the viewer should adapt to because they fill the screen for the next 10 minutes. The soldier fellow gets off a truck and hikes towards a house loaded with birds. Yes indeed this guy has more birds than a rock cliff and they all live on his porch. I�m assuming he likes cleaning poop�a lot.
Anyhow, soldier boy finds his girl in bed with another guy. Rather perturbed at this, he proceeds on killing off his girl, the guy, a few people who come to visit, the world, etc. However, for no apparent reason, the birds don�t take a liking to him doing all this killing and one pecks his eyes out. I guess birds got sick of his feet in the opening as much as I did.
Immediately after the carnage we are transported to an 80s college campus where the white socks are high and the pants are pastel colors. We are introduced to a fellow named Steve who is throwing together a hunt for his missing pecker. Pecker of wood of course. Joining him is his idiotic photographer friend named Paul, and a fellow named Rob who has a fetish for naughty stick figure action. (I won�t bother going into the stick figure sex thing.) Also joining them is an array of people who are to become fodder sooner or later.
Meanwhile in the land of convenient-ville, a college reporter named Anne is hot on the trail of the ivory billed pecker�s disappearance. That would be the same woodpecker Steve is researching. NO WAY, right? But guess what, Steve and Anne used to be involved. NO WAY again right? I should also stop here and mention that the above paragraph describes around 10 to 15 annoying minutes of the film. To make it worse, they have a detestable score playing in the background. I can�t really put into words how awful it is but I imagine something similar would play in an instructional video on natural childbirth.
Anyhow, all the crazy kids plus two chicks named Mary and Jen (apparently just there for the ride) get on a bus driven by a half assed ranger of some sort named Brian. Their first stop, Dr. Fred Brown who was one of the last people on earth to see the pecker. He is also the shoe fellow who stabbed his way through the opening and had his eyes pecked out. Amazingly enough, he is played by Robert Vaughn who is a long time journeyman of television and movies. Also a pretty good actor in my opinion as well. How they talked him into this one is kind of hard to take in. Perhaps in his post Superman 3 days he thought this was a step up.
Steve and Anne knock on Brown�s front door and pretty much follow the B-movie rule that its ok to enter a strange house. They go through Brown�s stuff like they own it and are eventually accosted by the blind angry home owner. They state their purpose and Brown tells them he can give them directions to the location he last saw the pecker. He bids them adieux and the group heads out once again.
The group walk around in the next scene set to a repulsive harmonica score. They take pictures, frolic about in the woods, kill time in the movie in a big way. They eventually end up finding a body stashed in a an abandoned truck which panics them. They run off to find an abandoned house which little they know used to be Brown�s. They commence looking through the house�every room�for over 15 minutes�.nope I�m not lying�almost literally 15 minutes.
Steve out of nowhere starts having visions. The abandoned house is once again filled with birds but joining them is random sliced up members of his group. He runs through the house encountering many of these visions and stumbles back on the group in reality who are all just hunky dory. When the group asks him whats up he replies with an answer about the house being odd. I don�t know, I mean if I out of nowhere saw a bunch of odd visions I�d probably fess up. Then again, maybe not. Perhaps Steve was on an acid flashback or something. Who knows?
Brian and Rob get an old generator running in the basement. Everybody goes beddy bye and for no apparent reason, Jen gets up in the middle of the night. Mary witnesses her from a distance in the abaonned aviary starting to panic. Why, well Jen happens to see a zombie approaching her. Mary watches Jen panic and basically does nothing. Jen however runs into a pantry and gets her face smashed into splinters.
I should add that throughout all this, the film keeps checking up on Brown who is pretty much doing a whole lot of nothing.
Mary finally decides to be a helper and tells people about Jen. They all go wander around the aviary and don�t find much of anything. Steve, following standard rules of B-Movie idiocy, tells everyone to split up to search for Jen. Brian goes past the generator and notes it�s leaking. When he gets outside of the basement, a flame out of nowhere catches his whole body on fire. First off, I have no idea where a random flame would come from and secondly, why would stepping in a small puddle of gas from a leaking generator make a guy become completely engulfed in flames? Those are just some of the idiotic problems facing this film.
So I guess I should stop now to explain something. The zombies, or lack thereof in this film debauchery, consist of at the most three. I�m not exactly sure why a bunch of young fit people can�t pick up a brick or perhaps grab a plank of wood and swing away. Anyhow, the group decide sheltering in place in the house of doom is a better idea than vanquishing the minor zombie threat. The generator dies and Rob/Paul go down to start it again. However, things go wrong when Rob gets an item around his neck caught in the generator. Paul kind of watches his buddy die without really helping much.
Paul runs upstairs to meet up with Steve and Anne. The group tussles with a zombie for a bit and Steve actually finds a shotgun which proves useless. The remaining three run up into the attic to await their pending doom�bunch of frickin� morons. Anyhow Paul gets taken out in the attic right before sunrise. However, the sun somehow scares the zombies away. I�m not sure why, its not like they�re vampires or anything.
Steve and Anne head downstairs and are greeted by a bunch of birds outside. Who should show up but Brown tapping his way through the house. He informs them they are out of danger and not to worry. Why, after losing most of their buddies, shouldn�t they be concerned? Well according to Brown, it is him �they� want. Why�well �they� feed on fear and something something something. I won�t bother you with the explanation. Its just�just�f*cking lame ok. It doesn�t explain how or why the zombies and birds are connected, why people were ripped apart in the film and most of all, why I spent almost two hours of my life wasting away in front of a screen watching this film. Just know, Steve and Anne get out safely and Brown assumingly is eaten up by the birds.
This film truly blowed. Zombie 4 After Death at least made a bit of sense here and there. This one was simply all over the place with a plot line that has no connecting factors. First it�s a jealous guy slashing people up, then its birds pecking out eyes, then its zombies ripping people apart, then its birds again, its all so stupid. Its almost the movie was cut up from four random films and spliced together.
Perhaps the only thing preventing me from giving this film the lowest of low ratings are the kills. The fodder is bumped off with an array of slaughters that made me laugh. Other than that, this film has hardly any redeeming qualities.
