Like Croaked: Frog Monster From Hell, Curse of the Cannibal Confederates (originally known as Curse of the Screaming Dead) has the dubious distinction of being named as one of the five worst films in the entire Troma library by founder Lloyd Kaufman. And also like Croaked, Curse is a rough-looking, amateurish, regional horror film that is not a "good" film by any means, but one that I found charming nonetheless.
Here's the scoop. Six friends who don't really seem to like each other (three guys and their girlfriends) are heading out on a camping trip. They end up lost in the woods and come across an old church/graveyard - and as you can guess, there are Confederate soldiers buried there. One guy (whose main trait is that he steals things) finds an old journal laying about and takes it. This greatly angers the dead soldiers, as they rise from the grave and go after our heroes in typical early 80s gut muncher style.
Pretty simple, right? And "simple" is an apt term for this film. The characters are one-dimensional, the sets are pretty much just the woods (and a spotlight), and the story is essentially "these guys try not to get killed by zombies." But I can't help but find that sort of thing charming... it's just the right mix of heart, enthusiasm, and incompetence. Curse of the Cannibal Confederates is a bad film, and I suspect people who weren't raised on or aren't used to this sort of stuff will hate it. But for me, there's something refreshingly uncynical about it... these guys just went ahead and made a zombie movie. (I'm just finding out now that director Tony Malanowski worked with Don Dohler on The Alien Factor and Nightbeast (yes!), which may be why I liked the B-movie energy here.) So while the results aren't great, there's still some fun to be had with it.
The woodenness of the actors was probably my favorite thing about the film - its that sort of bad acting that is more entertaining than annoying. To be fair, it's not like the script gives them a lot to work with - it's actually pretty hilarious how they each have one specifically defining character trait Amongst others, you've got the guy who steals things, the whiny woman who is into "that woman's lib shit," and the blind woman who inexplicably loves stealing guy despite him being a total a-hole to her.
Horror-wise? Well, first off, it's kind of a difficult movie to even see at times. It looks like it was originally shot on (crappy) film stock, then transferred to VHS, and that was the source for the digital file on Amazon Prime. So while it probably didn't look all that good to begin with, the transfer situation isn't helping. But the big issue here is the nighttime action. These scenes appear to have actually been shot at night with nothing for lighting except a big spotlight, so it's a little hard to see what exactly is happening. But judging by what you *can* see it's probably not all that exciting anyways.
I mean, the zombies themselves look good for such an obviously cheap film. (Say what you will about their overall quality, but I've been more impressed with the effort put into the zombie make-up of these 80's no-budget zombie flicks than their modern-day no-budget counterparts.) But there isn't much gore to speak of. I think there's maybe one "we got innards from the local butcher" scene, but other than that these zombies are pretty tame and ineffective. I'm just not sure *what* they do - they seem way too easy to fight off. Even if a person is grabbed and gets descended upon by a handful of them, more often than not the person can punch their way out of it - it's pretty weak. Oh well. At least one guy has brought some exploding bullets along. So he shoots a few zombies in the head, and their heads (non-gorily) explode. So that's fun.
You'll notice I haven't talked much about the story or anything - there just isn't much to talk about. It's pretty dull in that department. And I don't want to talk up Curse of the Cannibal Confederates like it's some kind of hidden gem. But it entertained me, and that was enough. Besides, I have a hard time *not* liking a film that includes an advertisement for camping gear in the credits. (Ridgerunner Outfitters - it give you their phone number and everything!) I assume they said "let us use some tents and whatnot, and we'll give you a shout out in our movie." I just love that stuff.
I would "recommend" this film.
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