A military plane carrying a top secret chemical crashes and unleashes a toxin (the "extreme pestilence" of the title) into the woods. Soon after, people are infected and zombies are running amok killing and eating anybody in their path. A doctor and his colleague set out to uncover what's going on and put a stop to it. Though I wish I could provide a more in-depth plot synopsis, that IS the whole plot. There's no real story, no dialogue worth listening to, no character development, no narrative push leading anywhere, nada. This film was made for one reason and one reason only: to showcase as much splatter as possible. It - along with the same director's first feature VIOLENT SH*T - developed a minor reputation among extreme gore fans in the early days of home video. Nowadays, well, they just don't hold up all that well, especially considering we've had tons of professionally made movies since with ample and much more convincing-looking gore. The novelty of something like this is now pretty much gone.
Instead of playing out like an actual film, this is more a series of blood-drenched vignettes of zombies killing people and people killing zombies repeated ad nauseum. A zombie comes barreling out of the woods carrying a chainsaw and cuts a guy in two before he rips out his guts. A fat woman is attacked in a sauna and has her tit cut off and eaten. When her friend goes to check up on her, she has her back sliced open and all her organs cut out. A woman in a wheelchair holding a baby gets decapitated and then a zombie grabs her newborn, tears off its head and then rips it in two. Zombies are chopped to pieces with machetes and axes and chainsaws. Heads are knocked or shot clean off, stabbed and hacked in half both ways. Fingers are bitten and chopped off. Eyeballs are poked out with fingers. LOTS of guts are pulled out of stomachs. And during nearly every single scene an almost comical amount of exaggerated blood (which is usually runny and almost pink in color) sprays out all over the place. The zombie makeups aren't good at all and the other fx, bloody as they may be, usually look cheap and unconvincing.
Because this has all the gore in the world and yet still manages to be incredibly boring and monotonous, it does provide a valuable lesson to future horror directors about the importance of paying attention to everything else that's going on in your film. Look at something like George Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD. Even if you took away all the gore, it would STILL be worth watching for many other reasons, unlike this film, which isn't even worth watching FOR the gore because you can only watch so many limbs whacked off and chests torn open before it becomes tiresome. And that's precisely why "Day" has a large cult following and is highly regarded and respected after all these years and this film is only watched by a small number of die-hard horror buffs like myself who'll watch pretty much anything.
It goes without saying that the camcorder photography is pretty blah and washed-out looking and the acting is awful but the latter is made even worse thanks to a horrid English dub job done by a couple of guys who are clearly making a big joke of the whole thing and more or less mocking the entire movie as it goes along. Ironically, this comic spin turned out to be a wise decision because it at least provides a few dumb laughs to help get your through. I couldn't imagine how difficult it would be to sit through this whole thing had it played out seriously.
Instead of playing out like an actual film, this is more a series of blood-drenched vignettes of zombies killing people and people killing zombies repeated ad nauseum. A zombie comes barreling out of the woods carrying a chainsaw and cuts a guy in two before he rips out his guts. A fat woman is attacked in a sauna and has her tit cut off and eaten. When her friend goes to check up on her, she has her back sliced open and all her organs cut out. A woman in a wheelchair holding a baby gets decapitated and then a zombie grabs her newborn, tears off its head and then rips it in two. Zombies are chopped to pieces with machetes and axes and chainsaws. Heads are knocked or shot clean off, stabbed and hacked in half both ways. Fingers are bitten and chopped off. Eyeballs are poked out with fingers. LOTS of guts are pulled out of stomachs. And during nearly every single scene an almost comical amount of exaggerated blood (which is usually runny and almost pink in color) sprays out all over the place. The zombie makeups aren't good at all and the other fx, bloody as they may be, usually look cheap and unconvincing.
Because this has all the gore in the world and yet still manages to be incredibly boring and monotonous, it does provide a valuable lesson to future horror directors about the importance of paying attention to everything else that's going on in your film. Look at something like George Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD. Even if you took away all the gore, it would STILL be worth watching for many other reasons, unlike this film, which isn't even worth watching FOR the gore because you can only watch so many limbs whacked off and chests torn open before it becomes tiresome. And that's precisely why "Day" has a large cult following and is highly regarded and respected after all these years and this film is only watched by a small number of die-hard horror buffs like myself who'll watch pretty much anything.
It goes without saying that the camcorder photography is pretty blah and washed-out looking and the acting is awful but the latter is made even worse thanks to a horrid English dub job done by a couple of guys who are clearly making a big joke of the whole thing and more or less mocking the entire movie as it goes along. Ironically, this comic spin turned out to be a wise decision because it at least provides a few dumb laughs to help get your through. I couldn't imagine how difficult it would be to sit through this whole thing had it played out seriously.