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Square-jawed
G-Men battle an extraterrestrial conspiracy to turn humanity
into an army of mindless, cola-slurping zombies!
Produced for
the minuscule sum of $27,000 in 1982, I
Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. made a blip on the cult movie
radar three years later with a Halloween broadcast on the USA
Network's Night Flight cable show. The film was never
shown anywhere else, nor did it ever get a legitimate VHS release
that I'm aware of. This DVD edition from Rykodisc marks its
official home video debut. It's not really the same film, however:
a new music score has been added, the crude (or nonexistent)
special effects digitally enhanced and some 33 minutes of footage
excised. For the most part these drastic changes result in a
much better movie. One of them, however, ultimately proves detrimental.
The project
was initially conceived as an Airplane!-style
spoof of hard-boiled noir/detective flicks and '50s sci-fi monster
movies, but during pre-production it was determined that most
of the jokes simply weren't funny. Thus a sophomoric comedy
was rewritten to become a tongue-in-cheek homage to the G-Man/alien
invader genres. Special agents Rex Armstrong (James Rasberry)
and Ace Evans (James' cousin Larry Raspberry, from the side
of the family that retained the 'P') are called in to investigate
a plane crash in which two notorious gangsters — the Brazzo
brothers — are thought to have perished. While transporting
the Brazzos to prison the plane went down shortly after contact
with a mysterious UFO. The Brazzos aren't dead, though. The
criminal siblings, Bart (John Gillick) and Bert (Laurence Hall),
soon turn up at the corporate headquarters of HealthCola, Inc.
as the instigators of a hostage situation. What at first seems
like a simple extortion scheme actually has a very different
motive... Now working for aliens from another galaxy (in human
guise), the Brazzo boys are creating a diversion so that their
unearthly masters can swipe the secret formula to the company's
most popular brand of soft drink, Uni-Cola. The plan goes bust
when Rex and Ace swing into action; the Brazzos are recaptured
and the aliens fail to get the desired formula, slipping out
of the building undetected as their lackeys are hauled off to
jail. But the Bureau isn't happy with our fearless Feds. The
sole copy of the formula is now missing, having somehow disappeared
during all the commotion. (Bart has cleverly hidden it.) The
president of HealthCola wants Rex and Ace suspended from duty.
Instead their
boss puts them on a seemingly unrelated case. A doctor in the
town of Pleasantville has reported strange activity there. Citizens
are vanishing. Those who haven't are behaving strangely, like
automatons. Rex and Ace are to get to the bottom of it. Coincidentally
(or is it?), Pleasantville is near the site of the Brazzos'
plane crash and the home of a HealthCola bottling plant. Meanwhile,
Rex's girlfriend, plucky reporter Penny Carson
(Christina Welford), is captured by the aliens as she investigates
the Pleasantville plant, and the Brazzo brothers are sprung
from jail...
Enjoyment of
I Was a Zombie for the F.B.I. will
depend heavily on one's fondness for 1950s genre flicks —
that and a forgiving attitude towards micro-budget independent
productions. Actually, it's better put-together than it has
any right to be considering it was made for peanuts by a mostly
unpaid, volunteer crew of Memphis State college students. The
cinematography does a good job of invoking the look of B&W
noir. Although the storyline is quite goofy —
the aliens' plot to enslave Mankind via spiked soda pop is thwarted
because, without the original formula, it just doesn't taste
right —
the cast plays it completely straight. Not surprisingly the
acting varies from amateurish to competent but I've seen much,
much worse in films with substantially bigger budgets (in which
the actors were actually paid). The Ras(p)berrys work well together,
with James certainly looking the part of the tough, laconic
G-Man (he was cast because the director thought he resembled
Doc Savage); cousin Larry, lead singer of the hit-making '60s
pop group The Gentrys and a presence on the Memphis music scene
to this day, is appealing as his wisecracking partner. In the
role of the main human villain, the supposedly hard-bitten criminal
Bert Brazzo, John Gillick (who co-wrote the screenplay) tries
hard to belie his less-than-threatening appearance but instead
comes off like Seinfeld's Jason Alexander channeling
Joe Pesci, only without the swearing. (This is a family-friendly
film.) The standout performer, however, has to be the "ZBeast"
—
a man-eating creature the aliens keep in the bottling plant's
basement to dispose of meddlesome intruders. Animated by means
of a crude stop-motion process, ZBeast might resemble something
out of a Gumby short rather than a scary monster but
he's an affectionate tribute to the work of effects maestro
Ray Harryhausen nonetheless.
Originally
running 107 minutes, the pacing of I Was
a Zombie has been significantly improved by the removal
of over a half-hour of footage. As director Marius Penczner
candidly admits in the disc's audio commentary (see below),
the longer version —
which I recall watching at least twice, perhaps more, on Night
Flight almost 20 years ago —
was slowed to a glacial crawl by a number of scenes which added
nothing whatsoever to the story. They really made the film a
chore to sit through. In contrast this new "Director's Cut"
whips along briskly, with inter-title chapter cards periodically
inserted to help cut to the chase while simultaneously lending
it the air of an old-time adventure serial. (The film's new
length is actually in line with your standard genre B-movie
of the '50s.) The digital tweaking of certain special effects
is also an improvement. The aliens' flying saucer is briefly
glimpsed, where before it was simply a bright light; the "Zomball"
is now more than just a glowing white orb; establishing shots
of buildings (such as the bottling plant) that didn't exist
in the original version have been added. None of these 'fixes'
are intrusive, giving the film a polished look it previously
lacked. Purists should note that the ZBeast stop-motion sequences
have been left untouched.
Unfortunately
they got carried away with the new score, which was created
especially for this DVD. It's modern electronic stuff (as opposed
to going the expected retro route), sounding like something
you'd hear in a made-for-TV flick on The Sci-Fi Channel. The
music itself isn't terrible or anything; it actually helps punch
up the visuals in a few spots. The problem is that it virtually
never bloody stops! There are some key scenes —
the agents' interview with the town doctor being the prime example
—
in which the omnipresent score is annoyingly distracting. More
is not always better, fellas. And sometimes silence is golden.
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