Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies

Director - Domink Hartl (Beautiful Girl, Turning Cold)
Starring - Laurie Calvert (Cinderella, The Quiet Ones), Gabriela Marcinkova (ABC's of Death 2.5, Doktor Martin), and Oscar Dyekjaer Giese (Northwest, Anti)
Release Date - 2016
Genre - Horror/Comedy
Tagline - "It's all downhill from here"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Sometime ago a few friends of mine that write reviews for different sites and blogs started sharing their reviews for the horror comedy Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies.  I can't deny my love for zombie flicks even though I am constantly bitching about their current state but the thought of a new zombie horror comedy really excited me.  I never read their reviews for the film because I don't want their thoughts on the film tainting mine.   I saw the title and immediately started searching for the film.  When I discovered that it was not yet available for purchase I reached out to the film's Facebook page where they sent me on the correct path to get a copy for review.  I want to thank you guys for allowing Horror Society and myself the opportunity to check out your film.

     The film follows two professional snowboarders and their manager as they prepare for a stunt to impress a fan but one of them screws up royally.  He wants to make a lasting impression on the fan and jumps from a helicopter before disrobing on his way down the mountain.  What he doesn't know is that the fan is actually a little girl.  His sponsors pull their backing and leave them on the mountain to stay.  The go to a local tavern where they are celebrating the end of the season but things take a dark turn.  A business man has tried to make an artificial snow machine to keep the ski season going year round but the chemicals he used accidentally turn those that come in contact with it into flesh eating monsters.  Now they must fight for their lives while they are stranded on a snow covered mountain with only their snow boards.
     Zombie comedies are popular among distribution companies.  These outrages take on the zombie sub-genre are quick to make a profit and sucker in unsuspecting viewers.  Over the years we have saw several amazing zombie comedies that have went on to become cult classics and favorites among horror fans.  Films like Dead Alive, Shaun of the Dead, Dead Snow, Dead and Breakfast, Freaks of Nature, and so on are some of the most popular horror films in the genre with hundreds more gaining in popularity.  Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies is a fun zombie comedy but is far from perfect.  The acting in this one is solid by the entire cast.  In fact, it is the kind of acting one would expect from a low brow comedy.  The characters are very flat and generic but the cast was able to work with what they had to deliver some fun performances.  The acting is not award winning but they do more than enough to make the humor pop when it needs to.  The story for this one is, more or less, something we have seen before but with a brand new origin story.  We have seen countless, and I mean countless, zombie comedies where the living become infected with a man-made chemical and turned into zombies but none have used artificial snow as the cause.  This worked very well with the Austrian/German mountain tavern and snowboarding.  It tired it all together in a nice, bloody bow but the story did have some plot holes.  My two biggest gripes was the lack of memorable characters and the continuity errors.  Most zombie comedies offer up characters that the viewers fall in love with and don't want to see die.  Sadly this film is unable to provide that.   Also, the film has some continuity errors.  The most noticeable is the way zombie die.  Almost all of the zombies die from head trauma, i.e. bashing their fucking brains in, but a few do not.  This takes the reliability away from the story.  Finally, this zombie comedy is gory as fuck.  We get a lot of imaginative kills that are centered around skiing and snowboarding while keeping it bloody and gory.  The effects are great as well which only adds to the overall gore.   Overall, Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies is a highly entertaining zombie comedy.  The film is flawed and nowhere near the same quality as Shaun of the Dead and Dead Snow but does have it's rightful place in horror history.  Check it out.