Customer Reviews

Dead Men Walking

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Too harsh! Almost all the reviews I've read on this flick have been bad- not true! It is low-budget, yes. It is gorey and made with little-known actors, yes. BUT it is what it is, and I've seen alot worse. I stumbled on this at the local Blockbuster and watched it Halloween night. I thought it was entertaining, and no I'm not a punky teenager, I'm a 43 year old woman who enjoys the heck outa a good zombie film.

In the first two minutes we get four zombies dispatched via shotgun including one great headshot. The sole survivor is charged with the four murders and is sent to a maximum security prison where the infection spreads throughout the prison population. Sounds like all the ingredients for an all out zombie slaughterfest...right? Sadly, this movie loses all its momentum just as the opening credits stop rolling.

Once we get to the prison the action is bogged down with an innane storyline and a poorly executed attempt at character developement. As the infection spreads, we get shots of guards shooting, interspersed with shots of zombie advancement, interspersed with shots of guards shooting, interspersed with shots of zombie advanement...and so it goes until the end of the movie. Are the guards even hitting anything???

The final shot is the only other worthwhile scene in this movie. I won't say what happens, but once you've wasted an hour and a half of your life to get here, it seems like a pretty poor trade.

The opening sequence proves that these people had the ability to create decent special effects on a B-movie budget. However, it is also painfully obvious that this budget ran out too early in production to create a satisfying end product. There are several necessary scenes missing entirely, leaving only black screen to let the viewer know that something should be there but isn't.

This isn't the worst zombie movie out there (see Zombie Night), but it is also quite far from good. If the producers had wasted less effort and money on the plot and characters (that never really work anyway), then they might have succeeded in the action which is what most people are watching this for in the first place.

This movie wasn't too bad. Stiff acting, but most B or make that most horror fils have that. The ore fx were good. It had the classic ripping out of the gguts several times. The only effects that sucked were the gun effects. This kind of surprised me, but with the budget they probably didn't have the money for blanks. Definatly worth renting or maybe even picking up if you run across it used and cheap.

I am a huge horror fan, have been for many, many years, and I have seen alot of gory films, and this one is a definite top 5. I'm telling you we got limbs, guts. gore, blood, heads, shotgun blasts, you name it, it's all here. Don't get me wrong, just because a movie is graphic and gross does not automatically mean 4 stars, I look for alot more in my horror movies. The movie I compare all zombie movies to is 28 Days Later, thats a 4.5 star movie and for good reason, this one isn't even close, but does have its moments.

Plot? I'll try, it seems our newest prisoner has some sort of virus and of course spreads this to a few inmates and then basically all hell breaks loose. Then we get the usual last few survivors trying to find a way out of the prison before they become the next main course.

The acting is terrible here, but it's not that big of a deal, because you have never heard of any of them, plus that's not even why someone would rent this. You don't rent a NR (not rated) zombie movie looking for deep, intelligent acting. It was obviously a shoe-string budget, but they really did the best they could with what they had to work with. The gore is the real star, and I have a funny feeling the make-up crew got paid more then the actors did, because there is blood and guts and gore in every scene.

If you have a weak stomach or don't like gory movies by all means stay away from this, cuz' they pile it on. They even show the zombies ripping open stomachs and pulling EVERYTHING out, and this happens numerous times. Like I said this is no 28 Days Later, it's not even Dawn of the Dead, but it's ok, and gore hounds are going to have a field day.

acting.....1.5 stars, Pretty bad, but who cares
directing......3 stars, Solid considering the budget
special effects....3.5, Mostly for incredible make-up
horror rating......2 stars, More violent then scary
quality......2.5 stars, See directing

Ever since the success of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, it seems every budding independent film company is releasing every independent Zombie and Zombi-like film they can get into distribution.

So far 95% of what we have seen these past 2 years has been pretty bad.
So perhaps DEAD MEN WALKING does not really deserve 4 stars.... (maybe 2-3) , but BY COMPARISON to the 115 other independent Zombie releases over the past 24 months, this one gets it's 4-star rating.

With a slight plot twist on the usual Zombie theme, this film does a great job at BUILDING the tension and capturing that feeling that things are getting more and more out of control with each passing minute !

It is this important feature of Zombie films that makes them great and so many movies have lacked these past 2 years.

Sure the ending was no surprise... 20 minutes into the film you KNEW how it would end... BUT the growing chaos and escalation of chaos and gore is what this film captured properly.

I'm not a fan of the "choppy" editing used by young directors these days, but the film is still good for a late night rental.

This movie was made to be a straight horror there isnt no humor which is nice to see, but this movie is far from frightening, but like I said a good effort. The thing that interfers is the bad acting, which is what I would or anyone would expect from a very low budget movie with a bunch of NO-name actors and actresses.

The Plot- A virus goes from one person to another in a jail cell and turns hords of jail birds into ravenous zombies. The virus is transfered by bite or if blood gets in your eyes or mouth.

These are your "28 days later" type zombies in that sense I mean quick moving/running. the plot is very similar to "Zombie Death House" if not almost exact except " Zombie Death House" was one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

There is alot of blood some over dramatic but not bad a nice amount of GORE as well not a high quality type but a good job done for im assuming a movie that had a very low budget. I think Gore hounds would be satisfied.

What the real question is , is this movie worth $25, and IMO no, but for die hard fans of low budget films this would be great for any collection but overall no way in hell is this movie worth more than $13, once agian IMo. I feel if people spend that money that will be highly dissapointed. Just know its a very low budget flick with alot of bad acting and not great makeup effects but a good effort in a movie made i think with alot of heart, alos this movie is edited and directed quit well, and the endiing is unsuspected and definitley cool.

RENT FIRST B4 YOU BUY.I RENTED IT FROM BLOCK BUSTER.

I also would compare this quality wise to a movie like the " Wickeds" or " Rise of the Undead" ( Had to edit it I put Undead there by accident, Sorry ) but a lesser quality than " Stink of Flesh" and "Dead Meat".But better than " Corpese are forever", " Feeding the Masses" All these movies have very low budgets and when i say lesser I mean the acting is not as good the plot not as good, basically not a good B-Flick but not bad,just average.

When i originally bought the green DVD edition of this film I loved it--the zombie effects, action and gore were top notch, with the usual scenario that works best for zombie movies...a group of people confined to a place filled with zombies. My only problem with the original DVD in the green case was that the audio track was not synched with the film. In other words, when someone spoke, thre was a lag between the speaking and the moving of the characters' lips. Rather annoying. So when i found out there had been a reissue of the film, I immediately ordered it...but I should have read the amazon specs more closely. When i received my film with the black artwork, I was happy to see the voices and lips now lined up perfectly. HOWEVER, they reduced the film to a FULL SCREEN aspect ratio!!! a 2008 release of a movie that has already been released in widescreen comes out in FULL SCREEN??? What a slap in the face. And to add insult to unjury, what happened to the quality of the picture itself??? The black case edition of the film looks like its source was a VHS tape!!! HORRIBLE. This movie deserved so much better a release than either of the the two releases it got. Now I have one version with a clear picture and anamorphic widescreen but screwed up audio track, and another one with a correctly synched audio but a muddy picture and a full screen presentation.

DEAD MEN WALKING is a good movie if you're into zombie movies and you actually understand b-movies and that you can do things without a great budget, it just won't be as slick and streamlined as if you had.

Like acting. Without money you're not going to get such great acting, which made a couple of scenes in this movie almost unbearable, but if you just let it and the occassionally wacky dialogue slide, you have a great movie.

The movie has good buildup as a sick man comes into a prison and the warden, doctor, and a disease control agent try to determine what's wrong with him. Then BAM! all of a sudden nearly everyone is infected and the rest have to survive through the orgy of zombie madness.

The gore is really good and there's some pretty sick scenes in here. Plenty of the standard zombies pulling out stringy intestines shots.

The ending was predictable if you've seen any zombie movie ever pretty much, but whatever. It works.

Dead Men Walking (Peter Mervis, 2005)

Man, Dead Men Walking could've been a barnburner of a movie. As it is, it's easily the best zombie film I saw this week (yes, I saw three of them). It could have been so much more, but what's here is an unexpected treat. Mervis takes a conceit that's gotten popular in the past decade-- using a prison to defend oneself from a zombie invasion-- and turns it on its head for some wicked fun.

Plot: Travis Lee (Brandon Stacy), a guy who's been arrested for killing a number of his friends (four is mentioned in the movie, but the flashbacks seem to show a lot more), is transferred to a maximum security prison to be held while awaiting trial. He's obviously sick, and he's babbling about secret government agencies, biotoxins, and the walking dead, so the authorities want him where they can keep an eye on him. Enter Beckett (Bay Bruner), a CDC agent who's been assigned to take a look at him. By the time she gets there, though, he's already become a zombie and infected a number of others. The CDC, through Beckett, quarantine the place, and the fun begins.

Writer Mike Watt (not the Minutemen bassist, as far as I can tell) had a ball with this script, and it shows. It's chock full of great one-liners and rapid-fire dialogue, but isn't afraid to slow down now and again. Mervis wasn't afraid to pile on the gore, either, and the combination gives this more a Return of the Living Dead feel than anything else (and it's easily as good as most of Return's sequels). The zombie makeup effects are relatively low-budget, but lighting helps keep things on a reasonable level. And, yeah, you can see the ending coming as soon as the setup for it begins, but that's part of the charm. The Serpenteens soundtrack is awesome. I mean, it's hard to go wrong with this. And one other thing I should note: it's about bloody time, no pun intended, that both a screenwriter and a director didn't shy away from the fact that zombies, being nothing but mindless husks of appetite, don't discriminate in their victims. Kids get chomped too, you know. Those scenes alone would drive me to defend this movie to the death.

Okay, yeah, it has flaws. A lot of flaws. Most of them can probably be ascribed to the low budget (estimated at IMDB as half a mil). Yeah, a lot of these actors could have used a few more lessons. But so what? This is low-budget horror, people! If you're expecting great acting, go watch Japanese horror films. This is one of those flicks that you're either going to hate or you're going to love, and the emotions it raises in you will be predicated on the exact same things. Me, I loved it. It's no deathless classic of film, but it's a barrel of fun. ** ½

DEAD MEN WALKING
First off, great play on the title...It works guys, Rock on !I recognize some names involved- Scott Carson(Who we interviewed last time),Mike Watt who wrote it and Eric Spudic who did zombie cameo. Two stand out performances are Chriss Anglin(See interview elsewhere),as a anal-retentive guard & Griff Furst (Interviewed too) plays the hero, sort of.This film has a nice look, very gritty and real environment.Let's try the SMELLS LIKE theory..."It's Assault On Precinct 13 + RIO BRAVO with a Night Of The Living Dead chaser".