Flesh
Freaks 
Flicker
Kill Them and Eat Them (trailer)
Writer & Director: Conall Pendergast
http://www.macondo.org/freaks/
Flesh Freaks,
as all stories that end up in bloodshed and madness do, begins in Belize.
Conall Pendergast, a young Canadian film-maker, finds himself on one of
those vague life enriching student projects, and exploits it for all
it’s worth. After the day of phony archeology is over, he’s out there
with his digital video camera, shooting monkeys in trees, and the trees
themselves, and a few giant bugs while he’s at it. He’s brewing up a
plan you see, for a zero-budget zombie flick, and this is where it all
starts. It’s no Cannibal Holocaust or anything, I mean he gets home in
one piece, footage intact, but his leading man Barry, he’s not so lucky.
Barry (Ronny Varno) - we’re talking about the movie now, not the movie maker- arrives back to campus from his bungle in the jungle amidst rumor and innuendo about some bizarre murder spree, a bad scene that he was in the middle of. As the only survivor, you’d figure he’d have a lot to talk about, I mean there’s money to be made here, but he’s keeping quiet. Which can only mean one thing- he’s been possessed by space worms. I’ve got hand it to Conall, merging these two batches of footage is no easy task, and the outlandish plot means he was probably writing the movie backwards, filling in gaping logic- holes as fast as they formed, and if it weren’t for the friendly mutt trundling down the otherwise foreboding mountain back in Belize, he would have pulled it off completely. I’ve got to applaud Conall, though, he’s a true renegade film maker- in his bio, he talks about using Robert Rodriguez’ seminal no budget movie making tome ‘Rebel Without a Crew’ as inspiration, but in true guerilla fashion, he cut costs by reading it in the bookstore. In Flesh Freaks, he takes advantages of every freebie possible, and concentrates most of his non-existent budget on what matters most in flicks like this- gore.
Barry starts flipping out, chasing his friends around with a machete and talking in a stoned monotone. His eternally optimistic best buddy Stan (Etan Muskat- doesn’t anybody have normal names up north?) and grumpy gal pal Jane finally figure out that his hijinks aren’t just jet lag, and the mayhem begins. Entirely related in a roundabout sort of way, the tenants of the University morgue all spring back to life and start roaming the tunnels of the school’s basement, gumming up the works further. Splatter ensues.
If I’ve got any
complaints about Flesh Freaks, it’s that Eshe Mercer- James’ portrayal
of zombie killin’ heroine Jane is dubious as best. I’ve shown
more visible shock and horror the last time Stacey informed me we were out
of milk. I can only assume that Conall, being all of 19 at the time, was
trying to bang her- you know, the ‘Hey baby, I’ll put you in my
movie’ routine. She dispatches the onslaught of shuffling dead as though
she’s playing a gooey version of whack-a-mole, and it’s boring her to
tears. The zombies are more animated than she is, but they’re the stars
of the big show anyway, and the last 20 minutes or so of Flesh Freaks is
taken up by their re-deaths. They’ve got the eyeless Blind Dead look,
mixed with the befuddled, hungry for stink rotters pioneered by George
Romero. Most of them are lurching around in white shirts and black ties,
like some sorry ska band got what they deserved, but it’s actually a
trick of the trade, as all the dead-for-the-camera actors are wearing
zombie head hats, making them taller, weirder, and funnier. Personally, I
think they all go down a little too easy, but I’d probably drop pretty
fuckin’ quick as well, if you jammed a cinch pipe through my eye socket.
Jane’s the last one alive- in this sub-basement, anyway - and it’s up to her to save the utility closets and steam pipes, if not the world, from the encroaching space monster invasion. Lucky for her and the rest of us, the solution is stunningly simple. Think Neon Maniacs, a film Flesh Freaks closely resembles, only different. At any rate, she rousts the aliens from their corpse hosts, and they turn out to be crawly creepers, close cousins to those beetle-pedes Ricardo Montalban was shoving into people’s ears in that Star Trek movie. Far as I can tell, Conall created them out of gloves with pincers for fingers, and you just know something like that isn’t going to be long for this world.
Evil vanquished, Jane stumbles out of that dark inferno of unspeakable creatures and bloody death, and into a brave new world. But not before running into some giggling professor, a dead ringer for Paul Bartel. What’s his story? Is it really over?
Yeah, motherfucker, it’s over.
With the benefit of a few years to hone his craft and budgets that are slightly more than pocket change, Pendergast now considers Flesh Freaks part of his ‘student-era’ oeuvre, and it’s true, but for a virgin effort, it’s a wildly inventive slice of well executed, darkly comic splatter.
Flicker is a clever five-minute black and white short that chronicles the untimely demise of an over-indulgent super 8 zombie movie maker that insists on subjecting his girlfriend to his cinematic obsessions, with disastrous results. Spooky and funny, it’s like a condensed Twilight Zone episode, and I hope Conall uses it to show some of these pretentious art-house punks how it’s done on the underground festival circuit.
Kill Them and Eat Them finishes up post-production this spring, and the trailer looks fantastic. Zombies and bumbling cops and hot chicks and red herring weirdos, it looks like a hyperactive Raimi-esque blast of splatter slapstick (splatstick?) in the fine tradition of Street Trash and Blood Diner. I’m looking forward to it. A resurgence of indie-horror created by kitchen sink visionaries has been a long time coming, and I don’t see any reason why Conall here couldn’t lead the pack.
-Sleazegrinder