Customer Reviews

Retardead

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This sequel to "Monsturd" fails to live up to the quality of the original on all levels. While I enjoyed "Monsturd" as an amusing low budget spoof of just about every monster movie ever made, this film takes on the zombie genre and is difficult to endure.

The film starts very promisingly with a series of previews and concession advertisements that effectively parody those seen at the drive-in. The imagery effectively harkened back to "Monsturd": "If you're feeling adventurous, why not try a Cleveland Steamer Barbeque Beef-Flavored Oddity? Mmmmm...hot, brown, and steamy!" For these previews and tempting food advertisements, I give the film two stars; a rating too high for the actual film itself.

I love B-movies, bad movies, alternative cinema, etc., but some movies are just too bad to be good: this is one of those. I have no issues with low budget filmmaking (indeed, the brilliant "Schizopolis" was made by Steven Soderbergh for less than $250,000), and welcome innovation. Unfortunately here the parody was quite heavy-handed, the jokes were all suitable for a seventh grade boy's locker room, the acting was wretched, the script substituted pointless cursing for wit, and the film was far too long.

I was modestly interested in the overt ties to "Monsturd" in the opening where discussions of "The Poo Man" were interspersed with relatively amusing newspaper headlines like "Hero Sheriff Saves Town From Fecal Humanoid". Unfortunately the level of humor and sophistication both took a nose dive quickly thereafter to reveal that the town had a new menace. I did think trying to parallel the writings of the Zodiac killer was a bold move with potential ("This is the Weenie Wagger speaking...") until forced to confront this peeping Tom menace for the first half of the film. I don't even want to tell you how they tracked him down; this results in the worst police interrogation ever. This all (somehow) leads to an utterly pointless scene of a cop having an LSD trip, in which a gorilla plays the banjo for Hitler. That was the best scene of the film, despite it having absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. (That's probably why it was the best scene, in retrospect.)

While the police are chasing the Weenie Wagger all over town, the evil father of the Poo Man returns undercover with half his face melted off and wearing an eye patch to apply for a job working in a school for the mentally challenged. Coincidentally, the cops finally find out that the Weenie Wagger is the janitor at the special ed school, and he wants to cut a deal with them as he knows that the kids are being turned into vampire zombies. The CDC tells the police that this is caused by a horrible virus created by the evil scientist, but too late: someone has let the zombies loose on the town.

The vast majority of the rest of the film concerns itself with buckets of bogus gore (heavy on the intestines), while the police devise a plan and the Weenie Wagger becomes a hero before being eaten. The crazed scientist comes up with a revolutionary plan: shoot them in the head with a bullet...really...no, I am seriously not kidding. Since the police had already thought of that, they moved on to using corpse parts as chum and having one officer dress in the meat suit to be bait. This works surprisingly well, and there is an extremely long shootout at the police station. Of course the evil scientist meets his doom, in this case thanks to a bevy of sexy dancing zombie girls, and the whole movie ends with a hilarious joke and much embarrassed laughter from the survivors.

This movie had potential, but was far too focused on the gore and teenage humor rather than on the satire, and was a much weaker effort than "Monsturd". The film was very haphazardly made and there were huge continuity issues which were partly addressed by having a young girl intermittently narrate the action from her bedroom, a wholly annoying and unnecessary device. While I remain enthusiastic about "Monsturd", and would like to see this team make more films of that quality, I can't find anything to recommend this film except the previews.

Even with my wealth of experience suffering through many of the worst films ever made, I came pretty close to walking away from Retardead during the first half hour. I bit the bullet and watched the whole lousy thing, but that that doesn't mean you have to. I'm just going to come right out and say it, PC police be damned: Retardead is a freaking retarded movie. Were it not for the antics and sarcasm of two incompetent deputies, this low-budget trash would have been all but unwatchable. Even a gorehound like me gets tired of watching the same old low-budget, body-ripping, zombie cannibal shots of fake intestines being slurped up by the walking dead time after time after time. And that whole thing of throwing tons of fake blood on the faces of the living -- yeah, that gets old, too, after about the twentieth time.

So, apparently, Retardead is the sequel to a film called Monsturd, which featured a mad scientist unleashing a "poopman" monster on the folks of Butte County. Since that movie sounds even dumber than this one, don't look for a Monsturd review from me any time soon. Anyway, Dr. Stein is back, more eager than ever to unleash his mad scientist skills on the dumb and the innocent. The cops, sidetracked by the crimes of a serial sex pervert, don't even know the crazy doctor survived the first movie. Stein soon lands a job at the local mental health clinic, which gives him the perfect place to continue developing his intelligence serum. Alack and alas, he just can't eliminate those nasty side effects, and before you can say "It's alive! It's aliiiive!" Butte County is suffering from a mass epidemic of zombie freaks.

Retardead is a zombie comedy; more precisely, it's a really dumb zombie movie. The zombie makeup isn't all that bad, but the filmmakers' attempts to gross the audience out with tons of blood and gore become tiresome, especially since the special effects aren't convincingly realistic. This film may well hold the record for the most splashes of blood to characters' faces. As for the comedy, it falls flat much of the time because a lot of it just isn't funny and these aren't the greatest actors in the world. Only the two deputies made me laugh consistently. They're a great comedic duo - one is continually losing his cool, while the other is a master of sarcasm. Those two alone almost make the movie worth watching -- almost.

<strong>Retardead</strong> (Rick Popko and Dan West, 2008)

As politically incorrect as it may be, one of my favorite zombedies of recent years is Phillips and Simmons' 2006 crapfest <em>Special Dead</em>. I know I'm going to hell for laughing as hard as I did at that movie, but in the end, despite its surface shtick, there's actually a germ of true affection for the movie's mentally challenged characters. I know you didn't see <em>Special Dead</em>. Almost no one has. So my comparing it to this turkey will mean absolutely nothing to you. Just trust me as I ramble on to finish out this paragraph. In any case, I was kind of hoping that <em>Retardead</em>, Popko and West's sequel to their classic* <em>Monsturd</em>, would have that same affection. For that matter, I'd hoped given the title that the mentally-challenged natures of the characters would, in a way similar to <em>Special Dead</em> be integral to the plot. I mean, you look at a title like <em>Retardead</em>, you can understand my thinking, right?

More fool me. This is exactly the sort of mean-spirited tripe that gives political incorrectness a bad name; the mentally challenged characters are there for the sole purpose of the audience to ridicule. (And it's definitely for the audience; the characters in the film don't do so at all.) And I know this is probably something really stupid to get mad about, but... they're not even convincingly acted as mentally challenged. They're just bad actors acting badly. They seem about as mentally challenged as the characters in <em>Zombies Ate My Neighbours: The Movie</em> or <em>Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter</em>. Since you didn't see those either, no character in either of those movies (that I can recall) was supposed to be mentally challenged. Yes, the acting when it came to that sort of thing in <em>Special Dead</em> was way over the top, but at least it was obvious that the actors understood the difference between playing a mentally-challenged character and playing a person with complete faculties.

I'd probably even be willing to put up with that given some aspect of this movie, anything, that would have made it watchable. (Aside from the Living Dead Girls dance number, which was hot. But I digress.) But... no. Script, direction, sets, lighting, soundtrack, all worthless. Emily Hagins, who was twelve years old when she directed <em>Pathogen</em>, has more understanding of what makes a good zombie movie than do Popko and West.

Absolutely worthless. The only reason the rating isn't lower is that, god help me, I watched three or four movies over the past month I actually hated more than this dreck. * ½

*note: in case you missed it, that was sarcasm.

The best part of the movie are the short features of fake previews in the beginning of the movie. When the actors, writers, directors, producers are all the same person, one never takes the movie seriously.

Dr. Stern experiments on a special education class. He makes them smart and then dead. The movie lacks the cleverness of the shorts in the beginning. Zombies do eat a baby in this one...taste just like veal. The movie is mostly hype and not worth a peak.

F-bomb, sex talk.

Retardead is a zombie-comedy, and I must say that it is the most entertaining zombie film that I've seen since Zombieland. Sure, it's stupid, uneven, and pretty much has no zombies for the first half of the movie. But the second half of the movie is nearly great, with a ton of gore, lots of zombies, and dumb comedy that's also funny. And I'm baffled by the people who gave this a one star rating. I guess they went into a movie called "Retardead" expecting it to be high-caliber or something.

Dan West and Rick Popko followup the immensely entertaining MONSTURD with the second half of their demented Grindhouse double-feature! RETARDEAD begins after a brief intermission featuring two ridiculously over-the-top trailers for FRANKENSTEIN AND THE BLOODY BEAST OF GHASTLY TERROR and DRACULA VS JACK THE RIPPER. The feature picks up immediately where MONSTURD left off, with the conniving Dr. Stern narrowly escaping his own demise from the city sewers. Stern takes on a new position at the school for the gifted in town, and administers an experimental serum to its special needs children that gives them a heightened intelligence. Unfortunately for Butte County, the drug also has an unforeseen side-effect that turns his test subjects into the retardead! Like Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt before them, Dan and Rick use crude and idiotic humor in a brilliantly dark and twisted way that is always sure to offend. Popko saves all of the best lines for himself while hamming it up as the town's dimwitted deputy. When it does come time for the horror, RETARDEAD spares nothing in the gore department! The bloody special effects are top-rate for a low-budget feature, with plenty of flesh-ripping and gut-munching goodness to please the fans. RETARDED is the kind of B-movie gold that Horror fans search tirelessly for, but expect the same tasteless humor that the title implies.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

Saw this before and I laughed my behind off. Its badddd but then it was meant to be. A fun video that makes fun of zombie movies and is one. Must have for my collection.

got this DVD sent to Hong Kong. I like zombie movies for those made with good special effects, this one... I dont' even want to rate it.
Some of the lines are funny as English Jokes, as a Non-native speaker I can get some of them... but I think zombie movies are not to be just full of dirty jokes without a good job in gore scenes at all...
waste of my money while I had to pay US$21 for this one.

MONSTURD flushed, now the town must contend with some "special" zombies.

This sequel is stupid-awesome!

The evil Dr. Stern escaped a messy death from the most brutal bowel movement to ever leave skid marks in the road. Now he continues his horrible research, using the mentally-challenged as his guinea pigs.

Think DAWN OF THE DEAD meets GOOD WILL HUNTING, with a super lowbrow humor and an even lower budget. Due to the effects of the hyper-intelligent serum, these slow people get smart and then get zombified?! Uhhh, all righty then...it might not make a lick of sense, but it's one heck of a fun time. Let the blood bath begin...

GREATEST. GORIEST. ENDING. EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4.5 STARS (Let's hope for a trilogy!)

i love zombie movies,i have a large collection of zombie movies,but i have to say this was one of the worst zombie movies i've ever seen,the acting was very poor,the story line made no sense,the special effects were really bad,who ever made this movie should go back to film school fast,better luck on your next movie.