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 here are certain films in which logic is some
sort of abstract notion, something to be considered but never truly taken
seriously. "Enter...Zombie King" is, beyond any shadow of a doubt,
one of these films. It's a giddy, weird effort that foregoes any attempts at
reasonable thought in favor of giving the audience a wild and fun romp with
those lovable living dead. Zombie and wrestling fans will rejoice and sink
their rotten teeth into this bizarre cross-pollination of a film, if for no
other reason except it's something they won't see every day -- thank God.
"Enter...Zombie King"
opens with the world in a perfect state of harmony -- except for that little
problem about a zombie plague, that is. It's here that an enterprising
renegade wrestler (is there any other kind?) named Tiki plans to stage a
steel cage zombie match, using the zombies he's captured and locked in the
back of his U-Haul as unwitting combatants. This is troublesome news to the
superhero Ulysses, who recruits his wrestling buddies Mercedes and Blue
Saint to put a stop to Tiki's capitalist endeavor.
But the heroes discover that they've got more serious
problems on their hands besides a renegade wrestler trying to earn a buck.
It seems a rash of zombie killings (or is that killings by zombies?) are
pointing right at Ulysses' archenemy, dubbed the Zombie King. The evildoer
has a nefarious plan up his sleeve, namely to release pure zombie blood
into the local water reservoir in a crazed bid to transform the populace
into zombies. It's all in service of Zombie King's plan for global
domination, and only Ulysses and Tiki, along with some stragglers, can
stop him.
The most surprising thing about "Enter...Zombie
King" is just how eccentric and entertaining it is. Scribes Bill
Marks and Sean Robb give the film an extremely loose and illogical plot
structure, which is perfect since there's absolutely no way "Zombie
King" could ever be taken seriously as a movie. The best route was to
go silly all the way, which is what they did. The dialogue is outlandish
and over the top, and are so filled with clichés that they must have been
written with high camp in mind. Of note is Ulysses' propensity to engage
in solemn Philip Marlowe/Rick Deckard-type monologues that references
Aristotle and Plato.
The script also has a sense of humor that borders on
being raunchy, with condom jokes, gratuitous female nudity and implied
lesbianism thrown in for good measure. There are also a number of clever
in-jokes for the savvy genre fans, including nods to Zombie Granddaddy
George Romero's "Night
of the Living Dead", Sam Raimi's "Evil
Dead", the werewolf franchise "The Howling", and even
Ridley Scott's gloomy and seminal sci-fi work "Blade Runner".
Under the direction of Stacey Case,
"Enter...Zombie King" has a nice aesthetic look that, frankly,
is more than the movie deserves. Most of the night scenes have an almost
European cinematic feel to them, and are very starkly filmed so that
everything comes through in clear definition. Also impressive are scenes
set inside the Zombie King's lair, which are slightly (and purposely)
unfocused, with overly vibrant colors to indicate the avant-garde nature
of the proceedings. The movie's outdoor sequences are also scenic and
picturesque, and you'd almost want to move there and raise a family if not
for the matter of those zombies. And as everyone knows, zombies and white
picket fences don't go together.
"Enter...Zombie King" also has a ton of
gore, with large helpings of blood and dismembered body parts that any
discerning genre fan can appreciate. The whole movie is so gleeful in its
outrageousness, and the gore is so obviously fake that you can't really be
shocked by any of it. The fact that Case manages to make such a
good-looking film for around $220,000, the movie's budget, is a minor
miracle. "Enter...Zombie King" proves that films don't need a
bloated budget to be entertaining.
The only problem with "Zombie King" is that
the majority of the cast wears Mexican wrestling masks for practically the
entire film. This is the case rather the characters are supposed to be
wrestlers, ex-wrestlers, or just Joe Blow civilian on the street. It's a
quirky novelty -- at first -- but after a while you can't help but wonder
if the filmmakers recruited the cast from the Witness Protection Program,
and were contractually obligated to hide their faces for fear of mob
reprisals. The masks also hamper the acting, since they make it impossible
to see facial expressions.
Overall, "Enter...Zombie King" is a truly
enjoyable and mindless guilty pleasure. It won't make you smarter or raise
the quality of your life, but you'll have a lunatic good time while it's
playing. Better yet, it's a quick view, so you won't have to devote too
much of your valuable free time to watching it. And who knows, maybe some
masked wrestlers will show up to lend the zombie fighters of Romero's
upcoming "Land of the Dead" a hand. Then again, maybe they
shouldn't.
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