The Alien Dead (2 Stars)

The film begins with Tom Corman, a local news reporter, visiting a Florida swamp to investigate why the alligators have disappeared. There are only two possible explanations, he says. Either they migrated to another swamp. or they were killed by poison and have sunk dead to the bottom of the swamp. He doesn't reckon with a third alternative: flesh eating zombies in the swamp have eaten them all.

The zombies are the result of a meteor that struck a houseboat. For a few months the people from the boat have been happy swimming underwater eating alligators. Now they've run out of food, so they venture onto land and attack people. Anyone they bite becomes a zombie as well, and they all return to the swamp. Aquatic zombies? Only Fred Olen Ray could think of something like that.

I have to admit that the film made me groan. It's an interesting story, but the acting is so bad. The only proficient actor is Buster Krabbe, who plays the sheriff. The rest are beginners. It looks like Fred didn't have enough to pay actors with his measly $12,000 budget, so he had to ask his friends and family to appear for free.

Fred himself also appears. He has a chance to chat up a pretty girl.

Or maybe not.

The problem is that the story itself is so short. It has to be padded with small irrelevant scenes, like Fred in the bar. I greatly respect Fred and I have many, many of his films on disc, so I felt ashamed to give the film a low rating. Then I read what Fred himself says about the movie. "Everything about this no-budget movie was awful". Okay, if that's Fred's opinion I can agree with him. It's common to say of low budget films that they're so bad that they're good, but "Alien Dead" is just bad. It's difficult for me to imagine anyone seriously liking it.

I enjoyed listening to the director's commentary track more than the film itself. This was Fred's first full length movie, and he shares his experiences as a novice film maker. Film material was expensive, so he had to make do with the cheapest, which led to slightly blurred images. He calls it a dreamlike quality, which is a generous way of describing it. Many of the scenes were filmed without sound, so the actors had to record the dialogue later.

Another problem is that the zombie masks were stolen after the filming began. Fred had to improvise.

This zombie looks better without a mask.

Fred might have been a beginner, but he knew that for a horror film to be successful it needed gratuitous nudity. He hired this young lady from a model agency. Not an actress, of course. He says there were also nude scenes with two other women, but the quality was too poor to include them in the film. That's a shame. Aren't there even still photos?

As I said above, this was Fred's first full length film. He'd previously made a short film, "Brain Leeches", which is included on the limited edition Blu-ray. I'll have to watch it soon.

Yes, "Alien Dead" is on Blu-ray. Some people must like the film, even if Fred doesn't. In the director's commentary Fred is interviewed by Steve Latschaw, who says that he's often watched the film. No comment.