Attack of the Vegan Zombies

Director - Jim Townsend
Starring - Christine Egan, H. Lynn Smith (John Adams), and Jim Townsend
Release Date - 2010
Genre - Horror/Comedy
Tagline - "Zero trans fat has never been so deadly!"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     I love a good horror comedy.  Hell, I live for em.  Any and every horror comedy released I have to see it.  I really enjoy a horror comedy that is so far out there that the premise alone makes you laugh just from reading the back of the DVD case.  Films like Killer Condom, Killer Nerd, WolfCop, and The Taint are the kind of films that really pull me in and have their way with my mind.  Several months back I was killing time at work on Facebook and came across several indie horror films and one that really stuck out to me was the 2010 film Attack of the Vegan Zombies.  This was one I had to see so I reached out to the film's page.  They stated that they would be sending a review copy my way.  A month or so went by and I reached back out to them about the copy.  They apologized and said they would send it out soon.  I eventually got it and now you sit here wasting your time with my rambling.  

     The film follows a young married couple trying to grow enough grapes to make a living on her father's land she inherited.  Her mother lives with her so she turns to her help.  Her mother is a witch and the two team up to use magic in order to make the grapes grow and use a small vile of her husband's blood for the potion.  Sadly, he was drinking wine the night she got his blood and this throws a kink in their potion.  Now the vines have a mind of their own and attack the living turning them into wine addicted zombies who want nothing more than to eat the grapes and if none are available, drink the blood of the living who have recently drank the wine.  Now they have to fight off the alcoholic zombies while a group of college kids are visiting to help them harvest their grapes.  

     I love an outlandish horror flick.  It seems these films usually take place in the zombie sub-genre with films like Dead & Breakfast, Buckwild, Dead Alive, I Survived the Zombie Holocaust, Wyrmwood, and so many more.  Attack of the Vegan Zombies is a film that has a story that deserves to be listed among those above but fails to fully exploit that story.  The acting in this one is great believe it or not which has been a trend lately among my reviews.  I have became accustomed to reviewing films with horrible acting but the last few I was lucky enough to watch was actually very well done.  AotVZ is no exception.  The cast is great and they all work very well together.  We get some very entertaining nerds that ride the stereotypes and deliver some laughs.  We also get two sluts that were fun to watch but they were clearly older than the age they were portraying.  The remainder of the cast does a solid job as well just fell a little short on the entertainment that the two nerds deliver.  The story for this one is fantastic but is a stretch when you think about the concept of zombies.  Zombies are the dead coming back to life.  Cinema has split zombies into two categories, those zombies that are controlled mostly through voodoo and zombies that eat the flesh of the living.  The zombies in this film do neither.  The zombies actually drink the blood of the living because it contains the wine they are craving making them vegan vampires if anything.  There is a slight bit of humor in that but the story would have been funnier if they were vampires.  Finally, the film has a few on screen kills but they are nothing noteworthy or memorable.  The practical effects in this one are minimal and the kills are captured with clever cuts and off screen gags.  This is upsetting considering the kills are the best part of any zombie film.  Overall, Attack of the Vegan Zombies is a fun horror comedy that shows that zombie films don't have to follow the same path The Walking Dead did to be entertaining.  The film is a little rough around the edges but that is what gives it it's charm.  This film is well worth the watch so check it out.