Filed under: Kill Them and Eat Them, Reviews, Screenings | Tags: baltimore sun
from The Baltimore Sun, Wednesday October 15, 2003:
“[...] the opening night of the [MicroCineFest] festival closes with Kill Them and Eat Them, Conall Pendergast’s merry little ode to a world of decaying zombie-types and the world of genetic mutation. With deadpan black humour and cheesy special effects – limbs tend to fall of at the slightest provocation – Pendergast has come up with a film that subverts just about everything traditional cinephiles hold dear.
What we have here is the story of science gone spasmodic, as the demented Dr. Gore (his real name is Williams, but Gore is certainly more appropriate) carries out his experiment. Once gainfully employed by an all-powerful company known as The Company, he bailed when his experiment started raising eyebrows, and is now out to gain his mad-scientist degree on his own. Aided by an assistant even madder than he is, Gore is busy transforming homeless people into decaying “skeletoids” who will do whatever he tells them (including grocery shopping).
Gore, however, has the misfortune of falling a little bit for his latest helpless victim, the lovely Kellin, and tries to reverse the process, slowly turning her into a walking mass of decay. Meanwhile, some folks from The Company are closing in.
The acting is calculatedly amateurish (the entire cast seems to have been fed a steady stream of grade-Z horror films) and the dialogue clunkier than a 1960 Dodge. But the film’s also got plenty of wit; when the evil assistant explains his nefarious plans, he hits one of the best reasons for using cannibalistic zombies to do one’s dirty work: “They’ll conveniently eat the evidence of any wrongdoing.”
Gross, sure. But the whole thing’s a hoot, and watching it with a crowd predisposed to liking this sort of thing – and that’s really what MicroCineFest is all about – is an experience not to be missed.”
- Chris Kaltenbach
