Starring - Tina Krause (Bloodletting, Camp Blood 666), Pamela Sutch (Paranormal Captivity, Day of the Ax), and Laura Giglio (Deep Undead, Cannibal Sacrifice)
Release Date - 1995
Genre - Horror/Sci-Fi
Tagline - "In the year 2008 women control the zombie force..."
Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)
Rating (out of 5):
W.A.V.E. Productions is iconic among indie horror fans especially those that lived through the 90s and early 00s. However, I was fairly unfamiliar with them until I watched the documentary Mail Order Murder: The Story of W.A.V.E. Productions. Since then Saturn's Core and a handful of other boutique labels has released some of their films on blu. One such company, Camp Motion Pictures, recently released the Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island Collection on blu which included the 1995 film Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island along with it's sequel Female Mercenaries 2: The Mad Doctor of Zombie Island. This release also included a couple shorts. I was very interested in this release so I reached out to my friends at MVD and they were kind enough to send a review copy my way. I had never seen any of these films so I started with title flick. Thanks MVD for hooking me up with this!
The film follows an evil female doctor who has been experimenting with brain transplants. She is working with the older male leaders of the world and is going to transplant their brains into younger bodies. However, she is manipulating them and is including a brain control device so she will have total control of them. She has also created a drug that turns the other men into cannibalistic mutants. The only thing standing in her way is two women who refuse to let her control what is left of the world.
I don't expect to find a film that will immediately leave a lasting impression on me when I toss in a W.A.V.E. flick, however, I do expect some cheesy and sleazy fun. Female Mercenaries looked like it could deliver both of those but it missed the mark. It was sloppy, chaotic, and the story was stretched so thin that it was damn near impossible to finish. I hate being so negative about a film but there is very little, if any, positive aspects to this flick. The acting in this one is extremely lazy and just as chaotic as the rest of the film. The cast awkwardly delivers their dialogue and they have no real commitment to their roles. Each scene is rushed and it looks like the entire film was edited together using the first or only takes. All the character lack personalities and it's difficult to tell most of the women apart due to their acting. If it wasn't for their imdb pages I would have thought that they all lacked on screen experience. The story for this one is something we have seen before but with a more female oriented approach. Direct to video action movies, especially during the mid-90s, featured similar stories where the world is in shambles and an evil man is hell bent on taking over what is left of civilization by any means necessary. That has been switched here to an evil woman but the story is still pretty much the same. This basic premise is stretched to over 2 hours of run time which is almost 2 hours too long. It could have been a little more enjoyable if it was trimmed down a lot and the story actually followed itself instead of focusing on scenes full of women in peril. The sleazy aspect is wasted on poorly filmed scenes of women yelling but lacking any emotional attachment to their dialogue. Finally, the film has a few instances of great practical effects while others lacked practical effects and just sprayed blood everywhere. I really enjoyed the brain scene but that is the extent of it. Overall, Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island is not as fun as I had hoped it would be. I'm sure it would be a blast to watch in a room full of drunk horror fans but it's a difficult one to finish by yourself and sober. Skip it.
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