A Real Turkey: Undead or Alive

It's the most zombified time of the year!  I won't get into any Romero-style political satire here.  Instead, I'll use this as a flimsy pretense to review my Thanksgiving film, which itself has a flimsy pretense for being such.  Since I won't touch the most obvious Thanksgiving horror film out there- just because it really wants people like me to- I'm stuck thinking outside the box.  You guys should come out here sometimes- the breeze is lovely.  I've made it a habit of reviewing films that relate to Indians on Thanksgiving, since, well, why not?  Mind you, the track record has not been that great, be it Pocahauntus or Scalps.  Could this year be the one to turn it around?  Not freaking likely, but let's find out!  The film is all about a bunch of zombies running around and decent comedians trying to find stuff to do.  Amidst all of that, one of the most amazing black holes of comedy: Chris Kattan.  Yeah, I hate him.  Will he bring the movie down like an anchor?  Probably, but let's find out together...

In the opening scene, we are TOLD about how Geronimo was cornered by the U.S. military and put a curse on the white man, before killing himself.  We aren't SHOWN that, however, proving what kind of budget we are working with.

They also toss in a stupid joke about how much narration they're tossing out in text.  Are you laughing?

The plot involves Geronimo's curse spreading via one man being infected by...wait, what infected him?  Oh yeah- THEY NEVER SAY!

Anyhow, Kattan and TV Star James Denton are cowboys who end up on the wrong side of the law...

The Sheriff- UCB member Matt Besser- gets bitten by his Deputy, who was bitten by the man from the beginning.  In the film's only interesting idea, he forms...

...a zombie posse!  It's cool, but they do nothing with it.  They also don't explain how these zombies can still talk and fire guns.

It all comes down to a showdown at a Fort, which is pretty damn empty.  When your film has the cast size of a Homemade zombie film, you may want to rethink things.

I won't SPOIL the whole course of events, but it all ends with our heroes riding off into the sunset together...with a zombie following them.  Sorry, Hot Indian Lady.  The End.

The brains...are long gone.  The plot of this movie could have been great.  It's not.  If they had really played with the idea of an Indian curse creating zombies, I might have liked this.  As it is, it's a bad buddy film...but with zombies.  The problem: these are barely zombies at all.  They look like zombies and bite people, but also talk, use weapons and still act like themselves.  What is the point of that?  Oh, you cast a bunch of comedians and didn't want them to stop making jokes.  Here's a thought: don't make them zombies!  As a bonus, the film breaks all of the rules of zombie films, even the 'shoot them in the head' trope from Night of the Living Dead.  Here's another thing: this movie has a lot of gore.  Not more than you would usually expect from a zombie film, but a lot more than you would expect from a comedy version of one.  Way to read the audience!  It all makes sense when you realize that Director Glasgow Phillips has only done one movie- this one- and his only other work of note is on South Park...as a Staff Writer.  That sounds about right.  The less said about this movie, the better.

Next up, I end Werewolf Week with a film that I gave up on a year ago.  Can Tim Thomerson save this boring mess?  Stay tuned...