Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad for what it is, and it is what it is, October 7, 2007
The title says it all. Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane is exactly what it says: a glorified D-horror movie that should have basically been called Zombies on a Plane. Surprisingly though, Flight of the Living Dead isn't all that bad, and in spots it's actually kind of enjoyable to boot. There isn't a whole lot in terms of plot to be found here (like I said, the title says it all and tells you everything you really need to know), but there's enough bloody fun to be had here. The blood and gore effects are decent enough for a low budget, direct to DVD horror flick, and there's some familiar faces to be found here including Pet Semetery's Dale Midkiff and The Mummy's Kevin J. O'Connor. It's campy and kind of goofy, and if you're reading this, chances are you already know what you're getting with Flight of the Living Dead. As an afterthought, maybe New Line should have released this theatrically instead of Snakes on a Plane.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Coffee, Tea...Or Zombie?, November 13, 2007
FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: OUTBREAK ON A PLANE is a direct-to-DVD release that exists independently of George Romaro and John Russo's zombie franchises that started out sharing the same grave. So to speak. Their NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is an iconic zombie film that started the whole trend of the horror subgenre and created international fans.
Scott Thomas has done a lot of episodic television and low-budget films, and he has the right sensitivity - if you can be sensitive about zombies - to this kind of film. In addition to directing the movie, Thomas also helped write it with Sidney Iwanter and Mark Onspaugh.
There are no stars in this feature, but there are some guys who've been around the block. David Chisum plays Special Agent Truman Burroughs, one of the good guys. You might know him from the television soap, ONE LIFE TO LIVE.
Richard Tyson plays US Air Marshal Paul Judd. Tyson has been a major player at times in big movies, such as the villain in Schwarzenegger's KINDERGARTEN COP.
Neither one of our heroes is really outstanding. But they don't have to be. It's zombies on an airplane!
I showed the DVD to my 10-year-old, who hasn't become a zombie fan yet, though he did watch DAWN OF THE DEAD (the remake) with me recently. Then he spent the night in bed with me and his mom. Zombies have to be acclimated to slowly, I think.
But his first comment was, "On a plane, huh? They're not going to get away, are they? There's nowhere to run."
And that, my friends, was probably the pitch line used by the movie developers. Honestly, it was enough to get me to the screen and start watching zombies crawling through the big Concord jet. You really won't believe how many zombies can be put on one of those big jets!
The plot is simple. All zombie movie plots are simple. After a cast of characters are introduced - most of them not so likeable because they're interested in sex or drugs or just being mean to each other, and a few of them that are decent people that we'll root for and lose most of - something sets the zombies into action.
In FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: OUTBREAK ON A PLANE, we have mad scientists fleeing the US government after being found out. The scientists, headed by Dr. Leo Bennett (Erick Avari), have discovered a way to genetically alter humans so that after they die they "come back to life." The research was initially there to be a bio-weapon that was going to be used on soldiers. If soldiers were killed, they could re-animate and fight on. After they turned out to be mindless brutes capable of spreading contagion, it was decided that the military could infect prisoners and let them return to the enemy armies to spread the "disease."
Unfortunately, one of the scientists' wives was exposed to the biological contaminant. She's been placed in suspended animation and kept on ice till they can cure her. However, the flight hits a freak storm and the containment unit is compromised. She's released, killed by the guard posted in the cargo area, then reanimates as a flesh-eating zombie.
That's the plot. After that, the special effects crews have a blast and the body count skyrockets.
Zombie fans will probably have a blast playing ancillary games while watching the movie. Stuff like, picking the first to die. Picking those who will survive. Counting bullets to see whose gun should be empty. Thinking up excuses why - after it's Swiss cheesed by bullets - the plane doesn't decompress until a CRITICAL moment in the movie when the plot needs that to happen.
Cheesy as the movie is, it doesn't stint on gore or action. People die in gruesome ways. Sex is hinted at. Bodies reanimate when the heroes have their backs to them and no matter how loudly you yell at the television, they're not going to hear you.
I was surprised, even though the acting was lackadaisical and there wasn't even any real one-liners that stuck in my memory, how keyed up I got over the movie. I knew my emotions were being toyed with. But I didn't care. I put aside my movie critic hat and plunged into the childish delight of a zombie lover.
By the end of the movie, there were so many zombies crawling around the plane it looked like an anthill. I wasn't anxious about it even though there were a few surprises (I would have blown the "who's gonna die next" competition, and I would have even lost a few on the "who's gonna live" list).
Although FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: OUTBREAK ON A PLANE isn't going to win any drama awards, and not even any in horror, it's a fun watch for zombie fans. At an hour and a half, it's just the right length to send out for a pizza, take a few shots at the plot and characters, and adlib some insane lines that should have been in the movie. Horror fans who love a touch of comedy and don't mind some deliberate willing-suspension-of-disbelief should have a grand time with this one.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Crazy nonsense but fun., November 12, 2007
Well it would be easy to expect this to be a prime turkey but it turned out to be more fun that I was expecting. Central plot...well the title says it all. Now it all depends on the skill of the director in what turned out here, as rampaging zombies on the confines of a passenger aircraft sounds like horror movie gold on paper, and it would take a serious dope to mess up what is essentially a very simple idea for a fun horror film. And for the most part things flow along pretty well...but you will have to swallow some of the biggest doses of unreality ever seen in a horror movie. Worst of all is the cliche ridden array of passengers we have here. Squabbling teen couples, a policeman and his prisoner charge, cuffed together, scientists who try to hush up the deadly zombie outbreak because it was their fault that it was on board, four or five sexy stewardesses with mini skirts and stilettoes, celebrity golf pro and pouty wife, even the obligatory nun ( I kid you not). Although there are no whiney kids on board, thank god.
Anyway, as I said the film plays with it's core material very well, and for a while the outbreak of zombie mayhem is quite high octane excitement, as slobbering ghouls run up and down the aisles, biting screaming passengers and generally flinging bodies all over the place. Inevitably, it proves impossible to maintain such a level of excitement for very long, I mean it's just the one normal sized plane (not some impossibly large movie location type plane that stretches on forever I'm pleased to report) so things have to go somewhere pretty swiftly. There's only so long you can avoid a mob of zombies on a plane in midflight! Some of the best parts of the outbreak involves the zombies taking over the luggage hold, and they break through the ceiling to the passenger cabin above, and start pulling unlucky victims to their deaths through a large hole in the floor! This lower cargo area, with it's sickly yellow lighting and cramped space, could have(in the hands of a more skilled director) been transformed into a real vison of hell as the zombies fill it with writhing victims and severed body parts, but as things stand, its only shown in a few throwaway shots of dead bodies or people being gnawed to death. I'd like to have seen this territory battle developed further in the film, but it wasn't expanded on much.
Anyway, the effects aren't bad although there's way too much CGI, and when this is over-relied on, it shows. One very early shot has a female zombie being shot, and in an effect that redefines the term "lame", the impact effects of the bullets hitting her are CGI'd onto her blouse, which looks dreadful. Luckily things don't remain this bad, but don't expect any spectacular gore efects. Apart from blood being constantly sprayed about, there are very few gore set pieces, and the zombie make-up consists only of yellow contact lenses and a rather pink veiny face, so the infected hordes are more like the crazies from "28 Days Later" than traditional zombies. A few good scenes stand out, like and early attack through the wall of a toilet cubicle which is when the main infection really starts to spread, and a cool zombie death involving an umbrella (shades of Peter Jackson's "Braindead" leap to mind here). But a lot of this fun sinks under the weight of so many mind-boggling plot impossibilities...guns are all over the place and zombies are shot with wild abandon, with no rupturing of a single window or external wall. Also, people STILL seem to use the old standby of NEVER shooting a zombie in the face...it must be because gunshot wounds to the body are much cheaper to shoot as special effects. Not good enough! Plus, in a scene that had my friends and I gasping in disbelief, one of the more heroic characters knocks up a makeshift BOMB (how???) and throws it (ignited) into the luggage hold. "It should act as a distraction" he explains. Yeah, in the same way that the entire plane ripping in two might do! But lo and behold, a few zombies are blown to bits but not a single panel on the walls of the plane gets damaged. There are plenty more things like this going on, and someone actually has the cheek to use the immortal line: "Does anybody know how to fly a plane?" With a straight face!
Well if you can put up with all the crazy nonsense of the plot, the film is actually quite a fun rollercoaster ride. The acting's not bad, although no-one has anything approaching a developed personailty, and the plane makes for a good, claustrophobic setting even if it is suspicously under-filled, and has those only-in-the-movies man-sized ventilation shafts that you can crawl through and pop out in all sorts of places. So forgive all that, and you could have a good laugh watching this.
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