FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BOY NEXT DOOR" (2015)

Jennifer Lopez isn’t a bad actress, but she is so miscast so miserably as a high school English teacher in “The Boy Next Door” (* OUT OF ****) that not even a seasoned Hollywood helmer like Rob Cohen can salvage this substandard stalker saga.  Although he has directed hits like “The Fast and the Furious” and “xXx” as well as above-average epics like “Daylight,” “Stealth,” and “Alex Cross,” Cohen appears appallingly out of his element with this formulaic fiasco.  Not only does the tawdry “The Boy Next Door” miscast Lopez, but also it makes Ryan Guzman, John Corbett, and Hill Harper look just as inapt.  Whatever Lopez and the other twelve producers on this picture admired about rookie writer Barbara Curry’s screenplay must have been either altered or didn’t survive the final cut.  Although she received an MFA in scriptwriting from UCLA, Curry should have kept her old day job.  She spent ten years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles where she toiled in the Major Violent Crimes Unit and handled federal cases involving murder-for-hire, prison murder, racketeering, arson, kidnapping, and bank robbery.  Reportedly, Curry taught criminal procedure at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, and pushed for trial advocacy at the U.S Justice Department in Washington, D.C.  In time perhaps, Curry might brush up on her storytelling skills and become a  better writer.  “The Boy Next Door” is neither suspenseful nor surprising, unless you’ve never seen a single stalker movie.  Quite often, our sexy heroine, her oblivious colleagues, and her unsuspecting kin do some really stupid moves that make this movie appear more like a comedy than a drama.  The best thing about this predictable pabulum is that it clocks in at a minimal 91 minutes.  Meanwhile, “The Boy Next Door” has sold enough tickets to qualify as a “hit.”  Produced for a paltry $ 4 million, this mediocre crime melodrama has coined more than $20 million at the box office box, an amount sufficient to pay off its budget as well as its advertising.

Lopez plays English teacher Claire Peterson who teaches classic literature, specifically “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad,” at a California state public high school.  Our heroine looks far too incendiary for her own good.  Mind you, I’m not saying high school English teachers cannot look stunning, but Lopez strains credibility with some of her wardrobe.  As the action unfolds, Claire has separated from her philandering husband, Garrett Peterson (John Corbett of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), who careens around in muscle cars and had an affair with his secretary.  Since you never get a glimpse of the other gal, you have to wonder how she compared with Claire.  Presumably, Garrett was probably taking advantage of his lowly employee because she was younger than Claire.  Meantime, Claire’s teenage son, Kevin (Ian Nelson of “The Hunger Games”), suffers from asthma and allergies when bullies aren’t badgering him.  The senior citizen next door to Claire (Jack Wallace of “Boogie Nights”) has just taken in his handsome, but orphaned, 19-year nephew, Noah Sandborn (an improbable 27-year old Ryan Guzman of “Step Up Revolution”), whose own dad died in a mysterious car crash.  Hint, hint! Claire encounters this charming Abercrombie & Fitch pin-up boy while she is wrestling with a cranky garage door.  One weekend, while Garrett and Kevin are away on a fishing trip, Claire accompanies her best friend and colleague, High School Vice Principal Vicky Lansing (Kristin Chenoweth of “Strange Magic”), on a blind date from Hell.  The well-meaning Vicky has set Claire up with a gruff anti-intellectual guy.  After she walks out on this loser, our distressed heroine finds herself face to face with charismatic Noah.  During a vulnerable moment, Claire abandons her morals as easily as Noah disposes of her lingerie.  Lopez displays little more than her shapely thighs while Guzman keeps her breasts discreetly covered with his groping paws.  The morning after when he awakens her with orange juice and coffee, Noah cannot imagine why Claire would be racked with recriminations.  Complicating matters even more, Noah is a transfer student who has enrolled in classes at the same high school where Claire teaches.  Lusting after her, Noah decides to pursue Claire, but she rebuffs his advances.  Eventually, Noah turns psychotic.  Initially, he hacks into Claire’s e-mail account and obtains permission from Principal Edward Warren (Hill Harper of CBS-TV’s “CSI: New York”) to enroll in her class with her apparent approval.  Similarly, Noah befriends Kevin, teaches him how to box, and tries to turn him against Garrett who wants desperately to patch up his marriage with Claire.  In a burst of rage, Noah pulverizes one of Kevin’s bullies, and Vicky expels Noah.  Meantime, Vicky uncovers some disturbing information about Noah, and she finds herself on the wrong end of his rage.  Ultimately, Noah horrifies Claire with news that he made a video of their sex act and threatens to expose her!  At this point, you’re liable to laugh your head hysterically off rather than gnaw your fingernails in dread.

Comparatively, “The Boy Next Door” reminded me of “Fatal Attraction,” “Single White Female,” “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” “Swimfan,” and “Basic Instinct.”  In a “Cosmopolitan” magazine interview, Curry said she drew inspiration from a real-life incident involving a high school teacher who had seduced one of her underage students.  Sadly, the relationship between Claire and Noah, especially their voyeur episodes, is so outrageous that you cannot take the drama seriously.  Cohen claims he wanted to craft the ultimate erotic thriller along the lines of those previously mentioned movies, but he embroiders clichés.  Some of the action scenes, particularly a runaway car episode, provide only a momentary relief from the Harlequin-like soap opera shenanigans.  Cohen generates a modicum of suspense in the tradition of “Rear Window” when Claire searches Noah’s man cave for the sex video.  Most of the time, however, you’ll felt insulted by the idiotic antics of these clueless cretins.  “The Boy Next Door” isn’t a third as exciting as last year’s “No Good Deed.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''MEGA PIRANHA'' (2010)

“Mega Piranha” (*** out of ****) is another one of those hilarious knock-off epics from Asylum Studios. Of course, these legendary cheese-meisters were exploiting French director Alexandre Aja's big studio 3-D remake of Joe Dante's “Piranha,” but writer & director Eric Forsberg has taken the concept far beyond the outrageous. Mind you, nothing about this outlandish opus is either remotely plausible or frightening. Indeed, not only Asylum has delivered a derivative creature feature with enough cinematic sophistication to make the grade as a horror parody, but it has also managed to provide moments of comic brilliance that surpass the films that it mocks. The setting, the subject matter, and the genre are also reminiscent of the "Anaconda" franchise and its hokey sequels. Okay, the computer-generated piranha look pretty goofy, but these piranha are supposed to look spurious. Only the most gullible will suffer traumatic after-effects when they bathe alone in a tub. In another one of those hideous scientific experiments gone awry, scientists have created a strain of piranha that mutate into an indestructible predators that double in size and threaten world safety. Forsberg's genius, however, is the way that his actors and he maintain a straight face throughout with moments of over-the-top hilarity that stand out all the more because those moments are so incredibly illogical. These moments are comparable to a Marx Brothers farce because they are so broadly anarchic. Specifically, these moments are reminiscent of Groucho's grease paint mustache that always infuriated literal-headed studio heads because they didn't grasp the comic incongruity of an obviously ersatz mustache when they felt that real one could have been grown.

“Mega Piranha” opens like the classic movie “Jaws” with a gal who goes skinny dipping with her boyfriend. No sooner do they hit the muddy Orinoco River than ravenous piranha hit them. Along come a U.S. diplomat, Ambassador Arnold Regis (Eric Forsberg of “Alien Abduction"), and a Venezuela politician on a boat with a couple of big-breasted, bikini-clad babes. While they were discussing politics, the toothsome fish attack, gnaw holes in the hull and make a feast out of them. Just to emphasis how little that he takes himself seriously, Forsberg himself is an early victim of the piranha. U.S. Secretary Grady (Barry Williams of “The Brady Bunch”) alerts buff Special Forces operative Jason Fitch (Paul Logan of “Cannibal Taboo”) by web cam. According to Grady, Venezuelan Junta Commander Colonel Antonio Diaz (David Labiosa of “The Entity”) believes that terrorists blew up the politicians. Furthermore, the CIA fear the incident may spark an anti-American military coup. This is Forsberg mimicking other films and establishing a somber tone, like this is a serious horror opus. “I need you to check out that river bottom and tell me what really happened before we have another Afghanistan on our hands.” Fitch catches a commercial flight to Venezuela. Before Fitch arrives, UCLA genetics researcher, Dr. Sarah Monroe (plump pop vocalist Tiffany), wildlife biologist Eli Gordon (Jesse Daly of “Another Gay Movie”), and microbiologist Brian Huggins (Jude Gerard Prest of “Teen Vamp") conduct their own investigation and uncover the ugly truth. Piranha are growing at an exponential rate, and they are scheduled to triple their size in 36 hours. Indeed, disaster looms for everybody. Unlike a Troma studios parody, "Mega Piranha" lives up to its hype. These piranha get really gigantic.

When our highly-decorated hero lands in Venezuela, a desperate Monroe accosts Fitch at the airport and warns him that Diaz is close-minded and paranoid. Fitch discovers this fact for himself later. Meantime, she explains that she had been conducting hydro-biological experiments. Basically, this means that Monroe and her colleagues have been escalating the size of the local food supply by genetically re-designing species of marine life to make them more robust. She was involved specifically with piranha. What? Why create bigger, meaner piranha? This is another of those brilliant moments deliver with a straight face. Who in their right mind would breed bigger, badder piranha!? Predictably, those carnivorous piranha escaped captivity and began breeding. Monroe hands him a fragment of the boat hull. Fitch can find no trace of explosives in the sample. Diaz takes Fitch for a chopper ride over area where the boat sank, but he refuses to let him investigate. Moreover, Diaz confines Fitch to the base. A stealthy Fitch slips off the base and gets a local to take him up river. Donning scuba gear, Fitch plunges into the river and swims up to the Arawak Indian Dam in an Orinoco Inlet where he encounters the pugnacious piranha. At first, he slashes at them with his knife. In a shrewd bit of foreshadowing, writer & director Eric Forsberg sets up the ending as the omnivorous piranha converge on the wounded fish and maul it. Fitch wades ashore. A single piranha pursues him with a vengeance. The fish lunges at him, and he stabs it repeatedly until it dies. Fitch slams the dead flesh-eater on Diaz’s desk and the colonel cannot believe his eyes.

The scientists inspect Fitch’s specimen and learn it possesses two hearts, triple-thick skin and is an hermaphrodite! Meaning, it can replicate by itself. Since the piranha are holed up behind a natural dam, Higgins recommends they drain the estuary before the fish grow large enough to escape. Instead, the villainous Diaz launches a helicopter assault. They blast the bejesus out of the river, but the fish survive. Of course, Diaz doesn’t realize the error of his ways. All he knows is the secretive scientists are responsible so he arrests them. He tortures poor Dr. Huggins. Meanwhile, the resilient piranha really begin to grow. Fitch helps Monroe and her associates escape. However, the piranha are heading up river by leaps and bounds. The scientists believe the fish cannot enter the ocean because piranha are fresh-water inhabitants and salt water will kill them. Imagine their surprise when the piranha ignore this genetic trait. Grady arranges for a destroyer to blast the fish. Predictably, the piranha survive the bombardment, gobble the ship, and enter the ocean. Now, the piranha are heading for Miami and Grady dispatches a submarine to torpedo them.

Scenes of piranha leaping out of the sea and smashing into buildings like suicide bombers with explosive crashes will make you laugh until your ribs hurt. The scene where Fitch is on his back, cycling his legs in the air so that his boots strike piranha as they pounce on him makes this alone worth watching. Make no mistake, these fish make formidable fiends, and Colonel Diaz amounts to a melodramatic villain. Nevertheless, the treacherous Diaz gets his just deserts. Another way of putting it is he becomes a just dessert for the fish. Before this 93-minute schlock concludes with its happy ending, these gluttonous fish gnaw up a U.S. Navy destroyer, an Ohio Class submarine--the U.S.S. Florida, and a helicopter hovering over the ocean! This in itself is reminiscent of director Enzo G. Castellari's "Jaws" rip-off "The Last Shark" (1981), aka "Great White," with Vic Morrow. Shots of these piranha sailing over the heads of our heroes is another reason to chuckle. If you’re going to take an idea to the absolute maximum, you must trash every modicum of credibility, and the Asylum people have done with grand gusto. Every character constitutes a hopeless stereotype, but Forsberg never lets the action loiter. He relies on swift editing and the equivalent of jump cutting. The imagery of a school of piranha bounding down river like championship jumping horses is side-splitting. Former "Brady Bunch" trouper, Barry Williams anchors the action with his pragmatic performance. Unlike sci-fi mutant movies of the 1950s that justified themselves as cautionary tales about science run amok, “Meg Piranha” harbors no such pretensions. This film is fun for fun’s sake. The computer-generated imagery won't receive any Oscars, but it is adequate enough for this drivel. Viewers who demand credibility should probably forego this half-baked fish yarn. “Mega Piranha” qualifies as so bad that it’s good!

FILM REVIEW OF "MACGRUBER" (2010)

This "Saturday Night Live" inspired spoof of the legendary Richard Dean Anderson ABC-TV adventure series "MacGyver" (1985-92) has its moments. Trouble is those moments are few. Freshman writer & director Jorma Taccone with “Saturday Night Live” scenarists Will Forte and John Solomon display a conspicuous lack of wit. The moronic humor in “MacGruber” (* out of ****) yields lowest common denominator chuckles seasoned with an R-rated surfeit of F-bombs. For example, the only reason the dastardly Dieter Von Cunth has such an anatomical name is so the good guys can use it as often as possible without appearing profane. The gratuitous abuse of the villain’s surname quickly wears this joke out in no time. Again, the humor is largely tasteless, infantile, and ad nauseam repetitive. Although he is a highly decorated Green Beret, Navy SEAL, and Army Ranger, our hero amounts to a completely clueless '80s-style action hero. MacGruber turns into MacGoober whenever the shenanigans hit the fan. He uses a buddy as a shield from three men armed with machine guns because he is so pusillanimous. Rarely do MacGruber’s spontaneous improvisational acts pay off. Remember, the real MacGyver shunned guns and converted ordinary household items into weapons. Nevertheless, MacGruber lacks the charisma of either Steve Martin's Inspector Clouseau or Steve Carrell's Maxwell Smart. MacGruber is so colossally arrogant you feel no sympathy for him when he is reduced to soliciting oral sex. MacGruber qualifies as a MacIdiot. Basically, “MacGruber” ridicules the conventional of formulaic, high-octane testosterone-laced male actioneers. Unfortunately, it lacks both the outlandish budget and insane hilarity of “Tropic Thunder.” Unless you’ve seen the “SNL” skits about the eponymous champion, you may find his adventures rather bland.

“MacGruber” opens in Siberia after the villain’s henchmen have knocked-off a Russian convoy transporting the X-5 nuclear warhead. Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer of “Tombstone”) smuggles the X-5 into the United States, but he still needs the pass codes to fire the missile. In Rio Bamba, Ecuador, Colonel Jim Faith (Powers Boothe of “Extreme Prejudice”) and Lieutenant Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe of “Chaos”) track down MacGruber to a remote monastery where the retired special ops legend exiled himself since his wife’s death. Like John Rambo’s mentor Colonel Samuel Trautman, Colonel Faith taught MacGruber (Will Forte with an 80’s mullet) everything he knows. Well, everything but executing a back flip. MacGruber has misled everybody into thinking that he has been deceased for a decade. He has withdrawn from the human race. He considers himself a man of peace. Colonel Faith explains that Dieter has stolen a dangerous nuclear warhead and has it aimed at Washington, D.C. Predictably, MacGruber refuses to recover the warhead so Faith appeals to his sense of vengeance. It seems Dieter blew MacGruber’s bride Casey Janine Fitzpatrick (“Saturday Night Live” cohort Maya Rudolph of “Idiocracy”) to smithereens at their wedding. Later, we learn that MacGruber seduced Casey from Dieter and told her to abort Dieter’s unborn child. Ostensibly, this is the reason that Dieter kills Casey. When a gung-ho Lieutenant Dixon Piper pleads to accompany him, MacGruber turns him down and tells him off. Our hero assembles his own team of brawny heroes. Clearly, these muscle-heads constitute MacGruber’s ‘dream team.’ MacGruber slaps together homemade C-4 explosives and stores them in the delivery van with his trigger-happy ‘dream team.’ As our protagonist bids farewell to both Colonel Faith and Lieutenant Piper, the C-4 explosives demolish the delivery van and obliterate MacGruber’s ‘dream team.’ MacGruber runs around hysterically begging anybody to call 911. When Colonel Faith relieves MacGruber of the mission, our rugged hero begs to be reinstated, he even offers to perform oral sex on Lieutenant Piper. Piper rebuffs the blow job from MacGruber but agrees to join his team. Faith stipulates that the team must have three members. MacGruber recruits former aide-de-camp Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig of “Whip It”), and Vicki winds putting her neck as well as other anatomical parts on the line.

Like the typical larger-than-life, high-octane actioneer, “MacGruber” flaunts its share of blood and gore. MacGruber takes a slug in the thigh, and Vicki probes around with a pair of pliers before she removes the bullet. Initially, she wanted to have nothing to do with MacGruber’s mission. Vicki harbors horrible memories of MacGruber’s wedding to Casey. When Dieter blew up Casey, Casey showered her best friend Vicki with blood. When MacGruber found her, Vicki had embarked upon a career as a musician. She realizes that she cannot resist being around MacGruber and joins MacGruber. Consequently, MacGruber demonstrates his lack of courage when he dresses Vicki to look like him so she can distract the opposition. One scene has MacGruber dispatching Vicki to a dinner where Dieter’s people hang out. MacGruber relays orders via an ear-piece to Vicki about how to impersonate him from his inconspicuous van parked some twenty blocks away. Pugnacious Dieter minion Hoss Bender (Andy Mackenzie of “Shoot’em Up”) discovers them and starts blasting bullet holes in their van. MacGruber starts screaming in fear. Meanwhile, back at the dinner, Vicki hears the screams, grovels on the floor, and scream, too, as the patrons watch her without comprehension. Only later does she realize what a fool she has been and tries to make an unobtrusive exit. Ironically, this is the only time that MacGruber doesn’t screw everything up. Wedging a mop against the accelerator, MacGruber kills Hoss by ramming the villain with the van.

MacGruber and his team track down the bad guys to a warehouse rendezvous where Dieter’s man, Constantine (Timothy V. Murphy of “Green Street Hooligans 2”), has gone to buy to the pass codes. Again, MacGruber dispatches poor Vicki who masquerades as the bearded Hoss Bender. Another minor league shoot’em up erupts, but Constantine manages to escape with the pass codes and MacGruber loses again! Colonel Faith decides to take MacGruber off the case and MacGruber begs to be reinstates, hoping that the promise that he will give Faith a blow job will change everything. Faith turns him down. Eventually, MacGruber realizes the Dieter plans to use the X-5 to nuke both the White House and Congress during the President’s State of the Union speech.

Taccone stages several minor action sequences without flair. Guys blast away at other guys, but the violence breaks no new ground compared to the recent “Rambo” sequel. “Indecent Proposal” lenser Brandon Trost makes these low-budget antics look better than it has any right. Aside from one scene with an older woman posing nude to Dieter to paint, nudity is confined largely to our hero’s hairy belly and bare buttocks. If “MacGruber” had been made in the 1980s, the only nudity would be beautiful female nudity. Once during the action, Forte parades around with a piece of celery protruding from his bare buttocks as a way to distract the opposition. Later, Lieutenant Piper follows MacGruber’s example. After he has sex with Vicki, MacGruber visits his late wife’s grave and has sex with her as a way to relieve his guilty conscience. A cemetery groundskeeper watches in disbelief as the totally naked MacGruber has sex with an apparition. Of course, the groundskeeper cannot see Casey, but MacGruber believes that she is there. Taccone saves the best scene for last. Our MacGoofy protagonist finally triumphs over evildoer Val Kilmer. Not only does MacGruber transform him into a sieve with his machine gun, but he also blasts Dieter with a grenade launcher. Were that not enough still, MacGruber urinates on Dieter’s corpse. Later, he tries to defecate on Dieter’s remains in a body bag. Too bad the previous 80 minutes were not as insane and hare-brained. It is some consolation that the soundtrack teems with classic Top-40 hits from the 1980.

FILM REVIEW OF ''UNDEAD OR ALIVE'' (2007)

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” meet “Return of the Living Dead” in former “South Park” scribe Glasgow Phillips’ directorial debut “Undead or Alive,” (**1/2 out of ****), a creepy, tongue-in-cheek, zombie western starring former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Chris Kattan and “Desperate Housewives” hunk James Denton. Everybody looks like they had a good time making this frontier farce about a couple of hard-luck cowboys on the lam from a posse of zombies. Mind you, “Undead or Alive” never takes itself seriously and prefers to spoof its elements rather than scare the daylights out of us. Writer & director Phillips tosses a few surprises into this supernatural saga while the camaraderie between Luke (Chris Kattan) and Elmer (James Denton) is sufficiently strong enough to make us laugh at their tribulations right up to the twisted finale. Indeed, Chris Kattan and James Denton reminded me of Bob Hope and Bing Cosby in one of their road comedies. “From Dusk Till Dawn” make-up effects wizard Robert Kurtzman makes his usual sterling contribution that boosts “Undead or Alive” into the ‘must watch’ category. The flour-faced ghouls are shown gnawing on enough brains and getting shot enough times to make it worth watching at least once. “Slumber Party Massacre 2” lenser Thomas L Callaway endows “Undead or Alive” with a larger-than-life look. Some of his splendid widescreen compositions that make this “Blazing Zombies” horse opera appear almost artistic. Clocking in at a trim 91 minutes, Phillips doesn’t wear out his welcome and provides suitable closure. Although it doesn’t rank as the greatest zombie western ever made, “Undead or Alive” qualifies as entertaining enough to sit through a couple of times, with sturdy production values and an amusing dialogue.

“Undead or Alive” establishes its premise immediately in a prologue about the legendary Apache chieftain Geronimo (Lew Alexander) who concocted something called ‘the white man’s curse’ that turns ordinary, everyday Anglo-Saxon Americans into flesh feasting fiends. The action unfolds at a hard scrabble farm where a farmer Ben (Brian Posehn of “Eulogy”) somehow comes down with Geronimo’s curse. He pulls an Ozzie Osborne and bites the head off a chicken before he tears into his wife and your daughter. The story shifts then to the frontier town where an Army deserter on the run, Elmer Winslow (James Denton), climbs off the tailgate of a wagon that he hitched a ride on to cut the dust from his throat in the local saloon. He observes there is not being a piano player and settles behind the ivories to plink out a tune. A sexy saloon girl (Patricia Greer) who loves to display her cleavage decides to accompany Elmer. Luke Budd (Chris Kattan) picks that moment to saunter into the saloon with some form of desert plant for his so-called ‘princess,’ only to find the slut cuddling up with Elmer. Later, Luke explains that she had told him that she’d marry him. Luke and Elmer tangle briefly, wind up on the floor, and find themselves staring into the business end of a shotgun with the town sheriff Claypool (Matt Besser of “Drillbit Taylor”) standing over them. Claypool hauls them off to the calaboose, takes their boots, and confiscates Elmer’s $500. They encounter the skin eating zombie farmer locked up in a nearby cell. Eventually, Elmer picks the cell door and they get the drop on Claypool, recover their loot, and hightail it out of town. Predictably, when they skedaddle out of town, Luke rides off in the wrong direction. Generally, Luke is a goofy galoot in a singing cowboy outfit. Elmer describes him later on “as a brokenhearted cowboy that doesn’t know his ass from a bag of sweet potatoes.” That line of Phillips’ dialogue has an Elmore Leonard flavor.

Sheriff Claypool regains consciousness and unties his pot-bellied deputy Cletus, but by then Ben has taken a chomp out of Cletus, so Cletus takes a chomp out of Claypool. The sheriff hangs Ben and assembles a four-man posse to ride with Cletus and him on the trail of our heroes. Before long Claypool and Cletus realize that they love the delicious smell of their posse and chomp on them, turning them into zombies. While Claypool and his posse scour the sagebrush for our heroes, Phillips shifts the story back to the town. The citizens cut Ben down, but discover to their horror that he is still alive and starved for human flesh. Ben embarks on a human buffet and turns everybody into a zombie. Meanwhile, our heroes fall victim to an Apache maiden, Susan (Navi Rawat of CBS-TV’s “Numbers”), who is Geronimo’s niece and speaks fluent English. She explains that she was educated at a New York boarding school. She disarms and strips them of everything except their Stetsons and boots. Later, after they sweet talk her, she gives them their clothes and guns back and they try to ambush Claypool’s posse only to realize that the lawmen have mutated into bona fide zombies and cannot be killed by bullets or arrows. Not even the surefire George Romeo shoot-them-in-the-head strategy works. Evidently, the only positive way to kill the zombies is to literally chop their heads off. These zombies resemble those in "Return of the Living Dead" and Romeo's "Land of the Dead" because they retain some semblance of motor function and can think to a limited extent. Luke, Elmer, and Susan outrun the posse only to be captured by Elmer’s old U.S. Army buddies who arrest them and escort them back to their fort near the Grand Canyon. When they ride into the fort, our heroes and their army escort get the surprise of their lives.

Glasgow Phillips has written a fairly entertaining zombie western. Classically speaking, it could be compared to a Budd Boetticher based on its story arc. Our heroes escape from jail, a posse chases them, and each side confronts the other at a mountain-top army stockade. Whether he knows it or not, Phillips has pulled elements from classic westerns into his oater. Cletus warns our heroes after they have been jailed that the sheriff plans to tie them to the hitch rack and horse whip them for their rambunctiousness. This is a clear homage to “One-Eyed Jacks,” the classic western where Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) whips the hero (Marlon Brando) for everybody to see. The western town and the western outfits all look authentic, except for Kattan’s B-movie cowboy gear. The special effects get pretty nasty toward the end in the army fort and the ending isn’t exactly a happy one. The DVD comes with an insightful commentary track with many of the stars and the director. “Undead or Alive” is better than most critics say.