Peggy just might be the last innocent girl left in a post-apocalyptic world. Nine years earlier, Peggy watched as a rain of toxic chemicals maimed, scarred and/or killed her friends at her seventh birthday party. It is a memory which haunts her still, along with the deaths of her father and older sister Anna. Sheltered by her overprotective mother, the pretty sixteen year old Peggy works in the family diner in a town which has all but dried up and blown away. When a group of dangerous punks wanders into the diner one day, Peggy is immediately attracted to the leader, Jak, a tough but nice guy. It is love at first sight, but Peggy's hate- filled mother kicks the foursome out. It's too late though. Jak has already arranged to meet Peggy at midnight, and Peggy slips away with Jak and his friends to the forbidden and dangerous town of Muskeet, where the diseased and the dying go to party. Peggy is taken to the Doom Room, a scummy nightclub run by a sleazy Emcee (Robert Englund) who literally deals in blood. The toxic rainfall of 9 years earlier left many of its victims in a state of undeath, but when injected with fresh blood, the zombies are briefly reanimated. Hauled out onto the grimy stage of the Doom Room, the zombies are poked with cattle prods, twitching and contorting for the amusement of the customers. This is the Dance of the Dead, and Peggy will learn more about it in one night than she ever wanted to know.
I was really impressed with this third entry in the Masters of Horror series. This is Tobe Hooper's first foray into the zombie genre and it's a unique take. These aren't flesh-eating ghouls out for blood, just pathetic cadavers who have become entertainment in a world without cable reality TV shows.
The camera work is dizzying, the music is hard, cold and nihilistic and the performances are great, particularly by Englund whose Emcee is a thousand times scummier, sleazier and nastier than Freddy Krueger could ever hope to be. Jonathan Tucker as Jak is an extremely likable character, despite the fact that he's a thief and a drug addict - he's also chivalrous and heroic, an odd combination that Tucker miraculously makes work. Jessica Lowndes as the innocent Peggy is perfect, going from scared kid to world weary woman within an hour.
Suitably disgusting and abysmally bleak, Dance of the Dead is fun to watch and difficult to look away from, kind of like a particularly bloody car accident. I would (and will) watch this one over and over again.
I was really impressed with this third entry in the Masters of Horror series. This is Tobe Hooper's first foray into the zombie genre and it's a unique take. These aren't flesh-eating ghouls out for blood, just pathetic cadavers who have become entertainment in a world without cable reality TV shows.
The camera work is dizzying, the music is hard, cold and nihilistic and the performances are great, particularly by Englund whose Emcee is a thousand times scummier, sleazier and nastier than Freddy Krueger could ever hope to be. Jonathan Tucker as Jak is an extremely likable character, despite the fact that he's a thief and a drug addict - he's also chivalrous and heroic, an odd combination that Tucker miraculously makes work. Jessica Lowndes as the innocent Peggy is perfect, going from scared kid to world weary woman within an hour.
Suitably disgusting and abysmally bleak, Dance of the Dead is fun to watch and difficult to look away from, kind of like a particularly bloody car accident. I would (and will) watch this one over and over again.