31 Nights of Terror #18 - Redneck Zombies (1989)

Redneck Zombies (1989)
Director: Pericles Lewnes
Starring: Lisa de Haven, WE Benson, William Decker, James Housely
Format: DVD (Troma)

- This is the 20th anniversary DVD.
- A quite funny Kaufman's Kultural Korner bit before the movie starts, with Lloyd Kaufman (one of the most fun men in movies) and director Lewnes.
- Troma movies without a drum of nuclear waste are like porn without nudity.
- Great country music credits song.
- Most of the acting so far is of the usual hammy Troma kind, but Bucky Santini is genuinely funny as fat good ol' boy Ferd.
- Lewnes is also good fun as a gay bearded redneck named Billy Bob who wants to be called Elly May.
- Jed always getting his sons Junior and Jethro mixed up is a fun bit.
- For a bunch of dirty rednecks the Clemsons sure do have a clean and tidy pickup truck.
- Nice homage/riff on the hitchhiker scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
- Two rednecks watching porn on TV. "I like knockers". "I like knockers too". *knock on the door*. "Someone's knocking." "Yeah, I like knockers too". Top notch comedy right there!
- Man, that scene was trippy as all hell.
- Moonshine in the baby's bottle. That's just wrong.
- The makers of this must have had some fun doing the gore effects. They're pretty damn good for a low budget indy flick.
- Somehow I don't think Andy is as interested in the girls as he makes out.
- It's not hard to see why Lisa de Haven gets top billing. She's actually got some acting chops. Terrible pants though.
- The autopsy scene is hilarious.
- Love the scene with Bob pretending to a zombie but giving himself away. In fact, Bob starts out as one of the lamest characters (mainly due to the acting) but gets funnier as the movie goes on.
- Great ending!

Overall thoughts: As I've admitted before, I'm not much of a fan of Troma movies. And one of the reasons for that is I usually don't find the comedy in their stuff to be very funny. So I had low expectations going into Redneck Zombies, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and how funny I found it. Make no mistake, the humour is as low brow as you would expect from a redneck movie, so if you're looking for clever jokes, look elsewhere. But if the concept of nuclear waste getting into a moonshine still and turning hillbillies into zombies makes you chuckle, you might want to check Redneck Zombies out.