‘The Dead and the Damned’ Trilogy
(AKA “IT'S BOTH THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE AND WHAT WE FELT WE WERE AFTER IT WAS DONE.”)
By CptBlackVest
***Editor Note: Hey, Giallo here! CptBlackVest wanted me to let you know that this was written before the #Alive/Alone review, so the writing style may be a bit different. Just a heads up!***
So, Giallo Julian and I have an irregular sort of movie night, where we watch films that interest us. We're very much horror marks, and while we disagree on many subgenres of horror, we both love zombie movies. As such, it's almost tradition that when we hang out, we hop onto random streaming services to find zombie movies when our initial plans are done.
And, as many fans of the zombie genre likely know... there are a lot of stinkers in said genre. Some are formulaic and do not bring anything to the table at all, some have laughably bad scripts and special effects, some forget what brings the fans to that genre. The bad films usually vary between 'average,' 'entertainingly bad,' or just bad.
The Dead and the Damned is... a demoralizing thing, and I do not say that lightly. I don't review things often and haven't done it in print since my high school newspaper days, but I try to not be that caustic of a reviewer. I mean yeah, I try to mock things worth mocking for humor, but I do try to look for the good in a bad movie, and I'm not just talking about the 'So Bad It Is Good' style of film. Sometimes there's good effects or a bit of interesting writing, sometimes I feel like I'm damning the movie by faint praise because the soundtrack is cute.
(As an example: the Day of the Dead 2008 remake is objectively bad in my opinion, save that Mena Suvari is cute so I enjoy her in a film, and the escape from the hospital is genuinely pretty cool. It's pretty frantic and great. Otherwise that movie can and should languish in the ninety-nine cent bin at your local Wal-Mart.)
After watching all three movies in the TDATD series... I struggle to even damn it with faint praise. I'm warning you now, these are not good, and after watching all three and processing it... the best I have for a compliment is one of the songs during a fight scene is passable. You know, in a 'mid-2000s Playstation 2 Shovelware game soundtrack' sense.
Another warning is that there are SPOILERS AHEAD. Normally when I review, I do the spoiler-free stuff at the front, then because to fully sort of review it and give my thoughts I give a solid spoiler-ish summary to point out what was good and bad. Fun times, right?
In this case, I do the latter because these are not films you should watch, even in a bile fascination sense. Julian and I tend to at least have fun making fun of terrible zombie movies (looking at you, Anger of the Dead). By the end of the first movie, we were both baffled and rooting for the zombies. By the end of the second, I could tell he was looking for an excuse to cut the night short, while I was eyeballing the exit and wondering how much gin I would need to drink to black out the memories of the night.
We pressed on, but by the end of the third, I suspect the only reason we stuck around that long was spite. We had to complete it, so you did not have to. Seriously, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. This isn't going to be an unintentional comedy piece or a fun drinking movie. You are going to hate yourself for seeking this out.
SO: All three movies have certain running themes. For starters, they're mostly predictable. If you've seen any movie in the zombie genre, you can predict how almost everything goes. I say mostly, because the first has two twists out of nowhere, one that's still somewhat 'expected' and the other that derails both the movie and the protagonist. Hell, if you watch all three in order, the derailing twist in the first film might further ruin the sequels, because you're expecting something equally as horrific.
Secondly, the movies are not good about their female characters. The female leads are incompetent and frequently victimized, and the others might as well not be in the movie. I'm not joking: each female lead is either nearly raped or there's the threat of it. It never happens, thankfully, but it usually gets very close to an uncomfortable degree. They also usually spend about oh, a quarter of their screen time topless, usually because of the aforementioned unpleasantness.
And I do mean some real incompetence. Any time they're trying to hide from the zombies, they suddenly find every can, glass chunk, or easily knocked-over loud object with their feet. They make horrifically questionable decisions, especially in the second and third movies where it's established the zombie apocalypse has been going on for at least a year. And while they might have limited success with the zombies, they never really save themselves from human antagonists.
As for the non-leads being unimportant... well, straight up they usually disappear from the film or are killed when their minimal significance is over with. As an example: the third movie features eight women captured by an excessively racist militia. One is a 'lead' and, well, see the previous two paragraphs. Two of the others are minorities and are dead before the location shifts. The last five are captured by the militia, and even with storming their HQ at the end, it's like the movie and all of the characters in it forgot about them.
Thirdly, the movies seems allergic to the concept of giving characters names within the film. In the first film, precisely two of the characters are named at all in the film by speaking (Rhiannon and Jebediah), with the other names being in the credits or a bounty poster. In the second, they say their names once in passing, and only for the important three. In the third... I think the main character and one of the antagonists is named? I'm sure they did name them in that one, but I'll be damned (hah) if they actually used them again.
And fourthly... these movies are weirdly racist? Like the villains are all racists, and anyone who isn't white is on the side of good, but it's... weird. The minority characters are usually somewhat stereotypical, even if it might just be me reading into it. Meanwhile the racists... well, there's very few condemnations and there's a lot of focus on the racism. It's already sort of like 'cheap heat' to signal a character is villainous by having them be racist. Like, it works and it can be good but it can be a bit overused without other villainous writing. But it's very easy to pile it on way too thick, making it feel very uncomfortable to watch.
I would include more, but I'll admit I'd be at it all day with a lot of nitpicks, including the more common ones ("Wait did this guy just fire twelve shots from a revolver without even a cutaway to justify a reload?"). I suppose the only one worth mentioning is that after the first movie, all the zombies are very same-y. It's largely because they're using maybe three zombie-masks in a movie without varying or perhaps even using additional make-up, and almost all the zombies are in white shirts, but it's jarring. Julian and I seriously thought that in the second movie, a single zombie was menacing the cast for half of it.
Regardless. Time for the bare-bones plot summaries, followed by some truly WILD SHIT with the first and third movies.
In the first movie, we follow Mortimer the bounty hunter in the 19th-century, who as mentioned is basically only named in the credits far as we could tell. It's quickly established he has some baseline competence in winning a shootout with three people, but he's also stupidly lazy, because instead of taking in a bounty alive (to the office that is IN THE TOWN HE IS IN), he shoots him. You'd think it'd be easier to haul him in alive, but what do I know? We find out he's wanting money badly for some nebulous (for now) reason, and refuses to spend it on alcohol or prostitutes, so he must be a good guy, right? Ha ha ha?
Mortimer gets a bounty for Brother Wolf, a Native American wanted for $1000, alive only, because he raped and murdered a white woman. Morty travels to the prospecting town that Brother Wolf was last seen in, which is six buildings and maybe twenty people. A local tells him to not bother, because not only have other bounty hunters (including 'a German') beat him there, but none have returned. Well... save the local finding the head of one of the bounty hunters, put on a stake to seemingly warn them off.
Morty wants to go anyway, but a pimp accosts him and tries to sell him a wife (with the classy admission that, if nobody wants to buy the three girls he has, he's going to sell them to a brothel). Morty buys Rhiannon, but tells her he doesn't want her like that after they leave town. He's willing to let her go...
...after he uses her as bait to get Brother Wolf. As such, Morty stakes Rhiannon to the ground, then hides and waits to ambush Brother Wolf. As established, Mortimer's kind of a moron and lazy, and as such distracts himself with stupid gun tricks as well as a nap, all while Brother Wolf sneaks up on him.
MEANWHILE: Jebediah, a local prospector, is peeping on a bathing girl when he's called by his partner. His partner has found a meteor that's glowing green on the inside, and they both assume there's riches there. They bring it back to the town and crack that sucker open with a pick-axe, only to find out that it's some strange zombie spores. Cue almost the entire town, minus the other two sex-slaves, getting turned into zombies. Those two get rendered topless and also quickly killed, because the Director (who is also the script-writer, cinematographer, editor, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting) is a classy man who respects women.
Morty wakes up on Rhiannon screaming, because Brother Wolf is approaching with a tomahawk. Brother Wolf then promptly frees Rhiannon from the bindings. Morty goes to try and capture Brother Wolf, only to find out Wolf has stolen the bullets from his gun. Wolf didn't kill him, but only because he wants to scalp him after defeating him in an honorable fight. Morty is not honorable, and while he gets a couple of good hits in, it's obvious Wolf is going to win. So Morty pulls a derringer from his boot, something not even remotely hinted at, and captures him.
Morty and Wolf head back into town, with Rhiannon following despite Morty telling her to blow. This might be because Rhiannon has no horse or supplies, doesn't know where she is, and is in something resembling Wild West underwear. One of the bounty hunters, The German, shows up to try and kill Morty to capture Wolf. Morty and Wolf barely avoid getting shot, with Morty handcuffing Wolf to tree roots, but luckily a zombie comes and tackles the German to his demise.
Rhiannon, seeing all this and seeing another zombie approaching Wolf, rushes over to free him since he freed her. Morty kills the zombie and recaptures Wolf, but Wolf notes something is wrong with the zombie and thinks it's bad spirit magic or demons. He suspects the blood is dangerous and while Morty tells him to shut up, Morty does note the blood smells foul, so he leads them to a river to bathe.
Cue another gratuitous breast shot, where predictably Rhiannon is attacked by another zombie. Wolf points out the obvious, that this is bad news, and a reluctant team-up ensues, while Rhiannon is nebulously injured. We don't see what happens, it could be a bite or a fall, and we don't see the injury. Either way, Rhiannon acts like she got bit by something dangerous and passes out, forcing them to carry her into town.
The town is predictably abandoned, though they find signs of something amiss... including boarded up windows to a building with a SALOON DOOR. You know, the open swinging ones that don't even touch the floor? Sorry, poor barricading in these movies always pissed me off. They go to the saloon to rest for the night before leaving, as well as let Rhiannon recover. The two talk a bit about Morty's money-grubbing, and we find out the truth about both of them.
Wolf's truth is both somewhat predictable for a more modern take on the Western genre and again a bit stereotyped. Wolf and the woman he's accused of doing bad things to were actually in love and seeing each other for over a year on the side. The woman stole some of her father's gold so they could leave and elope, her father noticed and followed her, she hid the money where only she and Wolf knew about it, then her father showed up. He shot the woman before noticing Wolf, set up the bounty to find the money, and now Wolf is all 'I care not for the white man's money,' so presumably he's going to leave it in a hole to piss off the father.
Enter Morty's side of the truth, and hold on to your butts because I'm about to shift gears without the clutch here! See, Morty's saving up money for a girl. Aw! See, she's the prettiest little thing, real innocent... because she's young. Uncomfortably young. I should note this is the Wild West, where 14 is 'full grown adult' in most places, so uh. UH! Not only that, but Morty couldn't help himself, so despite her disinterest... he 'took her.' She got pregnant, and are you as UNCOMFORTABLE AS I AM? BECAUSE IMAGINE BEING THERE WHEN THIS GETS DROPPED!
No seriously. Up until this point, this was a by-the-numbers bad zombie movie that Giallo Julian and I were enjoying roasting! Like, we would've forgotten about this movie after a week! Then 'oh I'm just a good guy, I only raped a minor by the standards of the Wild West' gets dropped and we actually had to pause the movie to unpack what the Hell that was about!
Er, back to the 'plot.' Morty's trying to save up money to help out the girl's family, so her single mother will approve of the shady bounty hunter marrying a twelve year old. I'd like to point out that there are no signs, before and after this point, that we should despise Mortimer beyond him being a bit of a jerk in that 'I am trying to be Clint Eastwood' sort of aloof way. Brother Wolf is glaring at him, but Brother Wolf's default expression is 'glare' and he started the scene with it, so I'm not sure if I should count a mildly intensified glare as reproach.
ANYWAY:A zombie bursts in to kill the true villain of the piece, but unfortunately Wolf decides to save Morty anyway. The two board up the rest of the saloon and remain outside, to keep Rhiannon safe while they hunt down the zombies. Neither have actually, y'know, checked the saloon though, so they fail to notice the blinded zombie sneaking out from a trap door. Rhiannon is eventually roused by the zombie eating a cat, and a 'stealthy chase' ensues. As mentioned, every female lead has the stealth skill of someone wearing squeaky clown shoes, so it's more funny than tense. Rhiannon eventually kills the zombie with a machete she finds, before escaping the building.
Morty finds her before she can get into too much trouble, yelling at her for leaving 'safety' while she calls him out for not checking the place. Which, fair point Rhiannon. Zombies start to spread through town, and Brother Wolf is killed by... I know I'm taking you on a roller-coaster here, but a zombie literally tackles him, 'motorboats' his chest, and somehow takes a single bite through his sternum that rips his heart clean out.
Morty goes on a roaring rampage of revenge, and despite earlier mentions of not having much ammo, proceeds to repeatedly score accurate headshots with a black-powder Wild West Revolver, as well as firing a bare minimum of eight shots before reloading every time. Eventually, the local server mods note his blatant cheating and spawn a zombie out of nowhere, who promptly tackles him and tears out his throat. Rhiannon also has a brief fight with Morty's derringer, which Morty gave her to defend herself, so of course she goes and finds a zombie who somehow made a fresh kill on some random guy and blows both shots into his face.
Morty, dying, passes Rhiannon his cash to give to his 'love interest.' Rhiannon is starting to get surrounded while trying to load the nearly empty revolver, and then puts the gun to her head. Enter twist two, BECAUSE THE GERMAN OUT OF NOWHERE! The German shows up, clearly bitten in the hand, and picks up Morty's level of cheaty-accuracy. The duo fight their way out of town with barely a word said between them, run up to a cliff, then find apparently half the population of Northern California zombified behind them. They turn to fight, roll credits, screw you if you wanted an ending.
Thankfully this is the longest of the uh, spoiler descriptions, mainly because I had to get across that our 'hero' is such an awful person, and that nothing at all in the movie really paints him as that. He's got some mild guilt about it, but he's still trying to marry a middle schooler. And no, there's no comeuppance or karma for that, he's painted as an unscrupulous hero throughout the movie even after the reveal. Nor is there any reason for it that I can see!
Seriously, why did you make her a minor, director/script-writer/boom mic operator?
Whatever, we're done with the first one. The second movie, SUDDEN SWERVE, is modern day, or at least seemingly so. We follow Colonel Sawyer, who is in futuristic armor. Seriously, it looks like someone's Airsoft cosplay of the Halo: ODST armor. Sawyer cremates a body after taking the wedding ring off it, and we find out the bodies are of his wife and daughter.
A flashback shows what happened: his wife was bitten, his five year old daughter is scared, and the first of many copy-and-paste zombies is trying to break into the greenhouse they're hiding in. She comes up with a bad plan to get her daughter out ('I'll run this way and you run that way, never mind that I'm bitten and going to die and you're five, and thus I should shield you in the run or use myself as bait!'), then promptly fails to execute even that bad plan. Namely, she opens the door, the daughter runs, the zombie pursues, and she stands there shouting at the zombie instead of doing anything else for almost half a minute. Eventually, she throws a rock at it, but that doesn't faze the zombie, and it seems more like the zombie realizes she isn't running than anything else on why the zombie eventually goes after the wife instead of the daughter.
ELSEWHERE: Stephanie (I think; her name is said all of once, well after she's introduced) is wandering the zombie apocalypse. She's acting a bit odd and is surveying an abandoned mall. A local man, unnamed, spots her and tries to get her attention. He eventually is forced to go up to her, startling her, and tells her that going into the mall is a stupid idea because it's full of zombies.
We then promptly find out why she didn't notice him: Stephanie pulls out a sign on a necklace corde identifying her as a deaf woman who can read lips. The man explains it to her again, then points out he has food. She's distrusting, but him mentioning his wife and sister are where the food is gets her to at least follow him. He promptly gives up the game by mentioning it is his Mom cooking the soup, she notices and tries to call him out with a mini dry-erase board she has, and he pulls a gun on her because did I mention the female leads have some bad luck? Yeah.
He drags her back to his trailer and tries to coerce her into sex. She distracts him and pulls a knife, the out-of-shape and aroused/distracted local somehow manages to block a stab to the throat, and he decides to tie her up in a shed to do his dark deeds. He fortunately both didn't pay attention to the local area and didn't shut the door, so SURPRISE ZOMBIE OUT OF NOWHERE, and Stephanie escapes while the man is gorily devoured. Stephanie gets distracted by spotting a rifle, finds out it is empty after picking it up and getting attacked, and is forced to flee up an abandoned crane to escape the zombies she didn't notice because of her disability.
Back to the other guy! Sawyer is travelling across country with his cremated family. He's stopped twice by police guarding the area, who mention it's too dangerous to continue on. We find out that Sawyer's military, the military got outfitted with power armor and STILL LOST, and that the cops are low or out of ammo and food. Eventually, the cop at the second stop lets him through after being bribed with some beef jerky, and asks Sawyer to kill his undead mother if Sawyer sees her. Sawyer promises to do so... and it is never brought up again nor is the woman seen.
(I should point out in the second and third movies, the timeline is a bit wonky. At best guess, it's been at least a year since the outbreak happened. Yet the police are still active and seem to give a damn about maintaining a quarantine, which is odd to me. It's like the writer couldn't decide if he wanted it shortly after the outbreak, or a year in.)
Sawyer drives into the area and notices Stephanie on the crane. He goes to save her with his sledgehammer and weird modified Uzi, but finds out she's deaf (and she has no idea what's going on, because he's in a full helmet). She goes with him, Sawyer loses his hammer and his ride, and they eventually stumble across the train of a man named Wilson.
Wilson invites them in after some initial issues. We find out Wilson is a former life insurance salesman turned born-again Christian, who's trying to uplift the spirits of anyone he encounters. He points out the zombies slow down as they age, going from runners to very slow shamblers, a detail that neither this movie nor the third will meaningfully care about. Stephanie seems okay with this but is distrusting of both men (for good reason given the earlier events), while Sawyer doesn't care. Wilson has a plan to ride things out at a dam, which he believes is a safe place, and after a bit, Sawyer offers to give them a ride, but won't come himself.
Sawyer mentions wanting to go retrieve his sledgehammer (and presumably his car, as he returns with a working ride later). Wilson goes with him, leaving the unarmed deaf woman alone. Stephanie decides to skedaddle, as she doesn't trust men (and also leaves her sole means of easy communication, the dry-erase board, behind to leave the message). Meanwhile Sawyer and Wilson promptly go have a camp-out and make a fire, where we find out that Sawyer is taking his family to the ocean to spread the ashes, then he's going to kill himself. Wilson is unable to meaningfully talk him out of it.
Stephanie proceeds to go do the dumbest idea in one of these movies that I've seen of anyone who is both aware of the zombies and over the age of ten. I mean there's some dumb ideas in zombie movies, even after the reveal. Like the big one before this for me would be the two soldiers rappelling down from a safe guard tower into a mob of zombies around it in Land of the Dead. So it says something that this tops willingly jumping into a zombie mosh pit for no reason.
Namely, despite being deaf and it being dark, she goes back to the mall, chains up the door she came through, and then, without patrolling the mall or finding a weapon, goes to try on clothes. Another topless scene while she tries on a flimsy white dress. Stupid, but not the dumbest stuff... but then she decides to get DUMBER!
Seriously, it's been at least a few months and Stephanie has survived on her own, so presumably she knows how to survive on some level in this! Put yourself in that mindset and also the mindset that you're deaf... and try to imagine yourself going and setting up bedding in the middle of the mall floor, and then SLEEPING THERE! In a dark mall you were warned was full of zombies! When you're DEAF! A zombie that had been wandering the scene eventually notices her despite her 'expert hiding' and tears her dress nearly off, topless scene, she runs and gets stymied by the chained door she set up, and she's eventually saved by Sawyer.
The trio head off to the coast and Sawyer trades his Uzi-knockoff for Wilson's revolver. He then tests the revolver by firing into the air, before leaving them with the car so he can go execute his plan. He has a vision of his wife beckoning him to join her in death, but Wilson's words have had their effect, so he doesn't shoot himself. Hearing what the subtitles claim is 'shouts and growls' but to the average listener sounds like 'seagulls,' Sawyer investigates and finds his friends. They're looking at an abandoned firetruck surrounded by zombies, with two adult women and quite a few little kids on top.
You get no points for guessing what happens next. Sawyer gets his machine gun back and Aimbots the zombies with one-handed shooting from about a quarter mile away. They rescue everyone and GASP SHOCK his daughter's there and fine, she wasn't eaten off camera! Happy reunion... but not too happy, as we find out the group is from the dam that Wilson wanted to go to. It's functional and was safe, but it was swarmed by zombies.
They hold a meeting to decide what to do, and we get this movie's idea of a twist and its weird racist moment. The semi-important woman of the new group (who does not get named to my knowledge in the film and I'm not bothering to look this up on IMDB) tells Wilson she doesn't trust Sawyer and doesn't want to bring him. Wilson asks why, and we find out that both power and the TV signals were stopped a year ago here. The woman was luckier, in an area near Wyoming that still had power, and was able to get the last government broadcast and save it to her phone. She shows him (and inadvertently Sawyer, who is listening nearby).
The Acting President is telling people hope is lost, this is the last broadcast, and everything's gone to pot. He then casually drops (and mentions he's not worried about any retaliation, since his family is dead at this point) that it's all rich people's fault. The CEO Class realized that resources were stretched thin, Climate Change was going to rock everyone, too much population, and instead of trying to deal with it in a useful or healthy way, they unleashed zombies. Lol, lmao even.
(We find out, also, the tenuous link between the first movie and the others. They heard about Gold Prospectors dying oddly in the 1850s or whatever, found the residue of the alien virus, and spent a while refining it for this. I'm guessing the German and Rhiannon managed to take out the zombies I guess?)
Either way, the billionaire class went really racist, like more so than usual. Summing it up, they were all 'we want the useful and civilized people to survive, so after failing with STDs and border wars, we decided to zombify Africa and kill them all off, making us look good in the process! U-S-A! U-S-A!' Once again, neither Wilson nor the woman seem to especially object to this. Like, they don't seem to care about the zombies being used for ethnic cleansing and pseudo-eugenics. Wilson's comments in general here are confusing, while the woman is more objecting to Sawyer's presence, since he was in the military and she assumes that means he knows every little secret. Sawyer makes his presence known, tells her that's stupid and he didn't know, then tells her that to prove his worth, he's going to kill all the zombies in the dam.
And he does so, incidentally revealing that 'swarming' to the woman means maybe fifteen zombies. I mean fair, they were all unarmed basically and I don't trust anyone in these films who isn't the protagonist to kill zombies even one-on-one successfully, but still. Dropping the last of the zombies, Sawyer gets on the radio and tells them it's clear, roll credits.
The last movie is the simplest of all, especially because I missed every name in that movie, possibly because we were very drunk. So at an undisclosed time beyond 'it's still the apocalypse,' Lead Woman A is moving through the woods and occasionally calling for attention with a Bullhorn. This, predictably, means a zombie eventually blindsides her, and she's nearly killed until saved by The Sergeant, who rips the top of the zombie's head off since he, too, is in power armor.
I honestly lost count of how many times people are blindsided by zombies in these films. Honest to God, almost anyone killed by zombies in these movies is killed because they have no peripheral vision or ability to hear the undead, despite the undead being clumsy and growling near constantly. I know a lot of zombie movies pull this... but this series abuses this 'trope' of a zombie just being there without the cast noticing.
Anyway. Sergeant asks Lead Woman A what she's doing there. LWA tells him she's looking for 'the bunker,' which angers and confuses the Sergeant. We find out that one of the last broadcasts (presumably before the Acting President of the last movie, who was the Secretary of State or something, dropped the racism truth) told people that the Vice President was heading for 'The Secret Bunker Under Mount Who Gives A Shit?' We find out the Sergeant has been alone since that time, because an outbreak happened in the bunker and he was trapped outside while on patrol. All of his fellow surviving soldiers either died or deserted. We find out LWA is looking for the military, because there's a new threat out there.
Enter Lead Woman B, who I should mention is the first visible minority (African American) in these films since Brother Wolf. LWB and her unnamed friend are in a reasonably safe and secure area, trying to contact people with a radio that's powered by a gas generator. No luck there, and we find out they're out of food and water, and nearly died getting more gas. LWB's friend is reluctant to leave, but LWB eventually coaxes her, and they take their gas and find a car. LWB refuels it and then goes to fend off a zombie, while the Friend fails to notice a growling zombie heading her way and promptly bites it. LWB mourns her for a half second before hopping in the car and driving off.
The car eventually breaks down and LWB walks off, quickly finding some sort of log-wall fort, where seven other women are staying. They're surprised while repairing the wall by LWB... in large part because they left the gate open and unguarded. But LWB quickly convinces them to let her join. Before they can shut the gate, they hear and then see several approaching military vehicles.
Enter the Racist Militia. They're in surplus military gear, save someone in similar armor to the Sergeant. Their Leader, Old Racist, hops off and tries to calm the women, before descending into a long and deeply uncomfortable bit of racism. Seriously, it's bad on like eight different levels while barely using actual slurs. As an example, he's looking over the women, spots the Hispanic one, and goes "I don't want no salsa in my bloodline, hurr hurr hurr!" It'd be bad as a one off bit, but he goes off on stuff like this for a few minutes!
Either way, Old Racist takes everyone white and leaves two of his men to kill LWB and the other two minorities.
And of course the expected, at this point for these movies, occurs. Both Racists decide to do an assault with these women, one of the women tries to nope out before getting shot, and the Racists split them up. LWB tries to do the same knife trick Stephanie pulled in the last movie, and in much the same way fails to do so. Also like last time, ZOMBIE OUTTA NOWHERE TO SAVE THE DAY. Both racists and the other woman die, while LWB is forced to climb some rocks to escape from a few zombies.
Lead Woman A convinces Sergeant to help her stop the racists, who she barely escaped from. However, she's concerned that he might just join them, at least until Sergeant removes his helmet and reveals he's Asian. Surprise, I guess?
They talk. We find out Sergeant is a music-head (as he repeatedly asked LWA if she had any way of listening to music on her, like an MP3 player or something), and that he was unaware the world ended around him and was thus reluctant to leave his post? I presume he means something about the last bastion of government dying in the bunker for that, but who knows at this point. But he kept a vehicle maintained to leave. Finally, we find out Sergeant only has a single round left.
Notice I included nothing about LWA, no information about her or anything. Far as I can remember, there's basically no characterization to almost all the women beyond a name, if they even get that. At this point, if you don't realize 99% of the women in these films fail the 'Sexy Lamp' test of writing female characters, you should've paid more attention in class.
Either way, that duo arrive at where LWA escaped from. Sergeant promptly leaves LWA there in the vehicle while he sneaks in to kill the racists, as well as acquire weapons and information. LWA lingers in the car with an open window and is ambushed by one of maybe two people at this 'base,' who promptly ties her to a tree before going to get his friend.
Before the inevitable can even start to happen, Sergeant promptly ambushes both men and kills them, then proceeds to loot the base. Meanwhile LWA finds out that the Racist can't tie a knot to save his life (seriously, the ropes are just falling off), just in time to escape a zombie that takes his sweet time to approach. She barely avoids getting devoured in a way that's both idiotic and mildly competent: she doesn't understand that she's still tied to the tree and keeps getting her rope snagged on stuff like a stupid dog might with its leash, but then manages to get a rock and brain the zombie instead of just running around the tree like a moron.
(I am going to rag on LWA a lot, as while she's easily the most competent lady in any of these movies, she's also the one making a lot of noise and bad decisions. None as bad as Stephanie, mind. But then again it's hard to top 'Oh yes, I would like to sleep in the middle of the floor in a zombie mall's department store.')
Sergeant and LWA link back up and drive off to the next spot LWA knows about, only to spot LWB on the rock still. Before they can think about rescuing her, Rival Power Armor Soldier shows up on his own in a truck and mows down the zombies with excessive machine gun fire, because clearly the Bad Guys are allowed to have unlimited ammo. He captures LWB for very nebulous reasons given that Old Racist ordered anyone darker than a napkin dead, and so Sergeant and LWA follow him.
The Racists have taken over what I think is a lumber-yard, but it honestly looks enough like one of the main sets from the previous film that Julian and I thought it was the same location. It's the 'generic crappy warehouse area #3, Rural Variant' if you're familiar. They're planning on starting their 'utopian society' there, which is an amazing feat considering they consist of maybe half a dozen racists and five very reluctant women, with no real infrastructure or — why is my nose bleeding?
Rival Soldier brings in LWB and Old Racist pitches a fit, as he wants her dead. Rival is reluctant even though he agrees with Old Racist, because he doesn't like the idea of killing a defenseless woman. But it takes very little coercion from Old Racist before Rival Soldier's will snaps like a dull twig, and he's convinced to do him a murder.
Before Rival can stab LWB, though, SERGEANT OUTTA NOWHERE. Him and LWA arrived and he, once again, left LWA on her own, though he did give her a shotgun this time. Sergeant proceeds to gun his way through the base, while LWA gets chased by zombies into some sort of cavernous, maze-like junk room that is also full of zombies. She promptly runs herself out of ammo (though killing five zombies with five shells at least), and has to evade the last two zombies despite her unfortunate proclivity of knocking over literally everything in her path. Eventually she gets a baseball bat and kills them, so go her, I guess.
Old Racist, meanwhile, decides to focus on killing LWB because he's an asshole. While we don't see it, it's pretty heavily implied he spent the next few minutes holding a gun to her head while ranting, instead of doing something about the guy killing his dudes. Meanwhile Rival and Sergeant are sort of fighting, I say sort of because Rival is kind of wandering around while Sergeant effortlessly guns down every other Racist. Eventually Rival shoots Sergeant in the back and it pierces his armor, but instead of confirming the kill, Rival goes back to Old Racist.
We then find out that either Rival was lying about believing in this, decided he no longer believed, or far more likely realized he wasn't getting anything out of the arrangement anymore considering it was now down to him and the Old Racist. Rival shoots Old Racist in the shoulder, frees LWB, then handcuffs Old Racist and leaves him to die. He takes off his helmet and he looks kind of like a Hemsworth Stunt Double... and then he promptly leaves the movie, never to be seen again.
LWB, meanwhile, is fleeing. LWA sees her and smiles, but is distracted by the zombies she now has to bat to death. She tries to flee, but zombies outside nearly kill her, at least until Sergeant blows the last of his ammo dropping them. Sergeant, meanwhile, is not doing so great, and spends the rest of his screen time horizontal.
So it's approaching the end. LWB has... I'm going to call it an idiot moment, because I get proving you're better than the racists think and all that. But seriously, screw the Old Racist in particular, and even trying to be the bigger/better person, there's a time and place. She goes back and risks vicious death to free Old Racist, then much like Rival, she promptly flees the movie. Old Racist, now free, gets his revolver and shoots the closest zombies. We don't see him go down and that's his last scene, so HE LIKELY SURVIVED THE MOVIE GIVEN HOW THIS SERIES ROLLS!
Two characters left. LWA radios Sergeant to tell him that it is a mission success, as the random woman who neither of them have met has fled, and everyone else has died, fled, or nobody cares. Sergeant takes off his helmet and he's bleeding from the mouth, clearly dying. LWA, missing his gurgling coughs, points out there's a piano and she can play him a tune. He orders her to play him some music over the radio and she plays a very bad audio sample of what I think is 'The Moonlight Sonata.' Sergeant dies from his wounds while LWA grins like an idiot, unaware that Sergeant's dead and that this place is still swarming with zombies. Credits roll.
So I spoiled all three movies, and gave some pretty concise thoughts on why I think they're not great. Still, let's end with an overall sort of review. Like, let's do it proper instead of me snarking my way through the hangover after watching these pieces.
The The Dead and the Damned series has rather poorly written plots ranging from formulaic to moronic. Details are brought up that go nowhere or occasionally confuse themselves. The characters barely have names, much less real characterization. Every female character is a victim who fails the 'Sexy Lamp' test.
(Just to save you a trip to your search engine of choice: the 'Sexy Lamp' test is one for writing female characters to see if you're bad about it due to sexism or what have you. When writing an important female character, if you could replace them with a sexy novelty lamp and change almost nothing about the story, you screwed up. If the woman/women only exist to basically be eye candy or prizes to be rescued, then you didn't write a character, you wrote a trophy.)
And there's never anything resembling a conclusion. These movies don't end so much as they stop. I'd say they stop the plot dead... but as mentioned, the plot was already six feet under.
Action wise, no fight scene in this is good save maybe the first one in the first film, the gun fight with three goons. Even then, it's not great, you've seen better almost certainly. They can't even afford bullet holes in the first two movies, so it's almost all weird and obvious CGI holes. The gunplay is almost always ridiculously accurate, even for movie gunfights. Anything melee-wise ranges from goofy to useless to overpowered as Hell. The zombies are only ever threats because everyone around has no peripheral vision and often seems to forget they're even in a zombie movie. Hell, they're not really scary acting.
And special effects... yeah. The first movie has some mild charm there (hey, a mild compliment) because they were bad, but kind of in a nostalgic way. Like, think old 'Sci Fi Channel Original Picture' levels of quality. The zombies all had bad make-up and the bullet-holes were all CGI, but it's kind of fun in that way. Later on, the zombies are all made with one of three zombie masks, and maybe some white modelling clay and fake blood. Almost every effect is terrible CGI, and what few bits of decent special effects were still only passable at best. Like, there's some decent gore here and there, but it's rare to the point of being jarring.
There's no big name or even decent-named actors, which is fine, I guess. But quite frankly, nobody in these movies is putting in a performance worth writing home about. It's probably not helped by the dialogue, which is overly wordy and elaborate (which coming from me is rich), so none of it feels natural or interesting. As an example both of us noticed: during the start of the attempted sexual assault in the third movie, both Racists pretty much verbally dance around what they're planning, which only serves to make it take time and be more uncomfortable.
And outside of one song in the second movie vaguely sounding like something from a bad mid-2000s video game, none of the music was memorable in the slightest. Speaking of sound design, Julian and I aren't sure, but we think most, if not all, the cast of the third movie was dubbed in post badly, due to slightly noticeable lip movement discrepancies, as well as almost everyone having the same overall tone throughout the movie. Old Racist has this firm deluded voice when speaking to his men, insulting the women, and when he's shot by the Rival, for instance, and Sergeant speaks with this low growl of a voice that reminded us both of David Hayter as Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid the entire movie.
Overall... there's nothing I can recommend here at all. This was a profoundly uncomfortable series of movies that made me feel dirty in the first and third movie, and the second one was just forgettable beyond Stephanie's ill-conceived sleeping arrangements. Watching these is a profound mistake. I honestly can't think of an audience for these movies, as I doubt alcohol and people riffing the film could improve it. This might not be the worst film or film series I've ever seen, but this is easily the worst horror series I've ever seen.
