Bio Zombie (1998)

Crappy film

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

In the 1998 Hong Kong zombie/comedy "Biozombie," we meet a pair of very amusing ne'er-do-wells, Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) and his younger sidekick, Crazy Bee (Sam Lee). When not engaged at their regular occupation as clerks at a bootlegged VCD store in the New Trend Plaza Mall, the two boastful cowards can usually be found either smoking pot or gambling and whoring in nearby Macao. As in another Asian horror film that I recently saw, 1960's "Jigoku," their lives are suddenly altered when their car accidentally strikes a crazed pedestrian. But rather than pulling a hit and run, as in "Jigoku," Woody and Bee here make the mistake of helping the dying pedestrian, not knowing that the soft drink that they pour down his throat actually consists of an Iraqi biochemical weapon that can transform anyone into the lurching, flesh-hungry undead! Soon enough, the zombie scourge has increased exponentially, and our hapless heroes, along with some hotties from the mall's beauty parlor AND an obnoxious cell phone dealer and his gorgeous wife, are playing hide-and-seek with the gut munchers in the locked and deserted shopping emporium....Anyway, "Biozombie" succeeds wildly at both its missions. It is both very funny and a fairly gripping zombie experience. The film is extremely fast paced--the zombies here are a pretty hyperkinetic bunch--and director Wilson Yip does a terrific job at wringing shocks and yucks on his obviously limited budget. Though his zombie makeup and FX are nowhere near the level that fans of Tom Savini may be accustomed to, they are certainly good and effective enough. It's loads of fun watching our two stoner heroes morph from empty braggadocio to full-fledged, superefficient zombie slayers, and most of the film's laffs come as a result of the hilarious expressions on these dudes' faces; they seem to be mugging ALL the time. The relationship between the two is a touching one, especially toward the film's end, as Bee's idolization of his older mentor becomes more apparent. The film gives the gorehounds out there any number of pleasing set pieces, too, including a frenzied fight in a security office, a zombie free-for-all in a sushi bar, a nerve-racking attempt to procure some handcuff keys out of an imminent zombie's mouth, the use of a power drill (!) on a zombie's head, and that final melee in an underground garage. The picture is nothing demanding or terribly earth shaking, but it sure is fun, right to its surprisingly downbeat ending. This fine-looking DVD from Media Blasters, by the way, offers the option of excellently translated English subtitles or what has been called "Engrish" subtitles, which are hilariously mistranslated in the worst pidgin English style. That latter option is certainly not recommended for use during an initial viewing, largely incomprehensible as these subtitles are, but is highly entertaining later on. However the film is viewed, though, this cult item should readily be acknowledged as a significant addition to the zombie/comedy subgenre.

What a horrible film. It absolutely stinks. After watching this film I felt really depressed because of the time I spent watching it and waiting for it to get better. It seems to me the Chinese can't direct ZOMBIE horror films. The acting is even fake. The actors are real fakes themselves. It seems these guys were picked for the film off the streets like stray dogs looking for a bone.Plot: (WHO CARES ANYWAY??? THE FILM IS LAME!!!) This movie takes place in a mall where two young men and other people work. They do not seem to get along very well due to a lack of customers. One night the two young men give an apparently dying businessman a soft drink, which is in actuality an experimental Iraqi biological weapon that turns him into a flesh-eating zombie. Returning to the mall, the man escapes and begins infecting the population, forcing a small group of misfits to band together in order to survive.This film mainly tries to show itself off as a comedy-horror film but falls flat on its face. Obviously the director wanted to cash in on George Romero's success with Dawn Of The Dead. Incidentally if you're not Chinese and happen to own a copy of this film, I suggest sending it to your worst enemy, burning it or posting it back to China.

~Spoiler~ Biozombie has been on my list of movies to watch for quite some time. As the film began, I didn't think it was going to live up to its reputation. It starts out as a screwball comedy and I got a little worried that it was going to suck (okay, a lot worried). It really takes way too long to get to the zombie action and I didn't find myself amused at the antics of the two heroes. But stick with it. About an hour in the film really picks up and drops some of the comedy. There are moments in this thing that are so sad and depressing they rival some of Romero's work. And that is a huge statement coming from me. I believe the comedy was thrown in to lighten our mood so the director could sucker punch us with the dark finale. It reminded me of Man Bites Dog in this way, only not as deep. But it did affect me and I loved that ending. It was worth it to sit through an hour of goofiness for that awesome and utterly depressing finish. Biozombie is not a film I would buy, but I recommend watching it (maybe as a double feature with Wild Zero).

This comic remake of "Dawn of the Dead" has all the right elements in place to be a venerable genre classic, dragged down a notch only by a weak ending. Favorable comparisons to "Shaun of the Dead" aren't out of the question, just remember that this came first.The hokey plot involves two slacker mall employees who get caught up in a hit and run. Unknown to them, the person they hit is actually a government type carrying a liquid that turns people into zombies. Of course the liquid get ingested and zombies start running amok. The unlikely heroes are forced to put a halt on their plans to get laid and make a quick buck so that they can escape the now zombie infested mall.The movie is obviously meant to be comedy, given the long lead-in to the zombie outbreak and the constant spattering of jokes, but there is some serious horror movie stuff in here as well. Severed limbs, decapitations, grisly bites and assorted other gory bits remind you this is still a zombie movie, no matter how joke filled it is. On that note, the humor almost always works and the two main characters have a great (though a tad over cynical) repartee going on.Everything moves along rather well until the movie enters the home stretch. A sudden and unpleasant tone shift brings the fun to a grinding halt and makes watching the film to it's conclusion much more a chore than it should be.Weak final bit aside, "Bio Zombie" is a gory, funny good time that hits most all the right notes for genre fans.8/10