Customer Reviews

I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I.

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I had the only possible reason anyone would want to watch this film: I was in it. I even saw myself on TV, back in the '90s. But I didn't make the DVD cut. 33 minutes "excised"??? Those were the best 2 seconds of my life, and now all I have left is one brief still in the "making of".

Bring back those missing 33 minutes (or at least my 2 seconds), and I'll give this otherwise tepid film 5 stars!

After a long run as a regular "cult classic" on USA Network's Night Flight, "I was a Zombie for the FBI" has finally re-emerged on DVD. Updated sound mix and visual effects along with chapter headings create a new experience for fans of this tongue-in-cheek tribute to the monster and G-men serials of the 50s. This is a great midnight movie for college parties or b-movie fans.

Having watched this film many times on late night TV back in the 1980s and having even made a videotape of one of the broadcasts (which I still have), I was thrilled to be able to order it on DVD. I love this film!! Filmed in B&W, it was made in the 80s to mimic sci-fi movies of the 50s. If you pay attention to the film, there are lots of funny, tongue in cheek dialogue and items (background signs, etc.). I love the "jack-a-lope" trophy mounted on the CEO's office wall. In one scene, a security guard is arguing with someone on the phone, saying that if they think they can do a better job than he's doing to come on down and try it -- when the FBI agent enters the room, the guard quickly ends the phone conversation with, "Honey, I gotta go now ..." Interestingly, most of the movie crew were MSU film students who did a remarkable job on an extremely limited budget. This movie is among my favorite "campy" films, right up there with Reefer Madness, Sex Madness, Lust in the Dust, etc. And even with some of the DVD's "upgrades" and "changes" to the original film, I was not disappointed. If you love camp, you'll love this film.

This was actually a product of the Memphis State film/drama department. Larry Raspberry was a very popular TN pop singer of the 60's - 80's, often appearing at The EXIT/IN in Nashville and generating several regional hit albums with his band - THE HIGHSTEPPERS. He was married to a former Miss TN at the time - Linda. He is a Church music director in Beverly Hills now - but still tours.

You know what? This movie is pretty different. I'm well acquainted with both cult movies and the b-movies made out of love for them, but this one truly gets into the spirit of the movies it's homaging while maintaining its own unique approach to the form. I'm not ashamed to say I like this movie very much, no matter its faults.

Two parts "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and one part Anthony Mann, "I was a Zombie for the FBI" plays basically as you would expect: with its tongue firmly in cheek and with every frame a love poem to a filmic conceit. Two brothers play cat and mouse with FBI agents as they try to steal the formula to a popular Cola that has industry spreading across the country. An alien (or more?) appears and starts taking over people in the Cola factory, further complicating things with their classic, pre-Romero zombie-like dazes. The main FBI agent has a reporter girlfriend thrown into the melieu... zaniness and awesomeness ensue.

The DVD edition of this movie is a weird mix of original footage and additional special effects. Because of the sped-up nature of the editing for the DVD release, the movie is given slightly less room to really breathe, making a lot of its beats fall flat. Nonetheless, I actually disagree with a lot of the other reviewers and say that I rather like the added visual effects. It adds a level of Boris Karloff into the already delicious mix, and I don't think it's overdone at all.

Anyway, as cult-homage films go, it could be worse. It's best quality is the closeness of sensibilities to its original source.

--PolarisDiB

this is the only parody that could pass for a real 50's thriller. the bad reviews of the dvd are a bit harsh on the new dvd version. it is a hoot, and the extras are very cool.

I loved the original version from the 80s and I still have my tape from summer 1986, when this film aired on USA Nightflight (boy, do I miss that show). This new version lacks all the charm of the original and the new digital effects are completely inappropriate in a film that is supposed to be an homage to the 50s. Track down the tape from the eighties. Break this DVD in half and mail it to the director.

When I was in college, I was a big fan of this movie, which was a staple of 80's late night tv. Even though I'd read all of the horrible reviews of the dvd,I planned on buying it anyway. I figured, what's a little tweaking? It was good enough for George Lucas. Folks,this is not the same movie - not even close. It's been turned into this lame "serial" with burned in video credits, a very nice orchestral score replaced by electronic nonsense that wobbles between bad techno and wannabe electronica, and added computer effects that not only adds cheese, but putrifies it. What was once an affectionate, and knowing nod to a beloved genre is now the equivalent of an old man buying a Ludacris cd - a lame attemmpt to be hip.
I bought this dvd used, and I still feel ripped off. I won't even sit it on the shelf with my other dvds. Easily the worst dvd I've ever purchased. I can't get rid of this soon enough. Do yourself a favor, and track down the original tape, and burn your own dvd.
Did I mention that this is a bad dvd?

I am probably like most everyone else who will buy the DVD version of this movie. We all saw it broadcast several times on USA Network's Night Flight program back in the mid-eighties. It was a wonderful low-budget homage to 50's style monster movies with a bunch of no name actors who I haven't seen since. The only person of note was Larry Raspberry who played the second lead. He was from what I can gather something of a sensation in the music industry for a short time in the mid-sixties. I have a taped copy of the movie that I have had for more than twenty years now and still pull it out periodically.

I started out by watching the extra features that spoke about the making of the film, the stop action procedures used in the film and so forth. I was pretty excited about watching a crisp new DVD copy of this wonderful memory of mine.

Unfortunately, whom ever decided to get this released on DVD decided it needed a complete makeover. The most obvious and most annoying part of the makeover is the inclusion of a complete new soundtrack that not only adds more sound effects but also a brain pounding musical score that will drive you nuts. In the audio setup you have the choice between a version 2.0 or 5.1 soundtrack. I thought the 2.0 might be the original but no such luck. In the small documentary a sound engineer was commenting that he knows he did a good job on sound and music when the audience doesn't know he's there. He failed miserably this time.

I was seeing a whole lot of extra stock footage that I didn't remember from the eighties version. At first I thought maybe this may have just been trimmed out to reduce the film to a better time format for TV. That is until we got to the airplane crash scene. When the two agents pulled up a piece of the damaged aircraft, what should have been the dismembered hand was a new shot of a full corpse either burnt or eaten to the bone. It was obvious this is a recently shot piece and added in. There were also added cloud and fog effects that were not in the original. And I thought the view of the UFO was more of a ball of light effect instead of an obvious flying saucer. Then there were added scene cards detailing each chapter of the film.

I was very dis-satisfied with how this DVD turned out. So much so that I have decided to keep my twenty year old recorded copy of this film. I think this company should re-release the original film on DVD and send me a free copy for having wasted my money on this one. I still love this film, but not the DVD version.

I Was a Zombie for the F. B. I. (Marius Penczner, 1982)

I get the feeling that music video director Penczner here set out to make a deliberately cheesy movie. If so, he missed the mark, while I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. Has the requisite badness in spades, it never really maages to achieve the cheese factor that would make it a bona fide cult hit. This is kind of unfortunate, as there was great potential for cheesiness to be had here. I mean, consider: aliens invade Earth and decide to enslave the human race through developing a secret formula for soda pop. They are discovered by a pair of criminal brothers whose plane is brought down by the aliens, and the criminals have to walk a fine line between their investigation of alien activity and fleeing from the F.B.I., who are also, of course, investigating the alien activity. It sounds like something out of a Ed Wood movie. And, had it been a little more gloriously awful, it might well have been. The problem is, it never gets there; it just remains at the level of mediocre throughout. Not really worth going out of your way to find. **