31 Days of Halloween, Day 2- Shatter Dead (1994)

Directed by: Scooter McCrae

Top 8 Cast: Stark Raven, Robert Wells, Daniel “Smalls” Johnson, Flaura Fauna, Marina Del Rey, Jeffrey Kushner, Marco North, Barbara “Candy” Coster

Plot: A lesbian angel impregnates an earth gal and now the dead won’t stay down. 10 months later and there’s a new caste system with the hot and rotten on the button rung. Susan’s just tryna get home to her boyfriend but she’s gotta deal with a Christian zombie cult and a whole lot more before the picture runs it’s due.

Response: These zombies won’t eat you but they may jack your car. They will play the piano on a moonlit night. In dirty kitchens they’ll draw dick pics in bargain notepads awaiting bullets. These zombies are just like us. We pass before those that have gone while they stand in montage like an R.E.M. video. This flick’s like an R.E.M. video. SOV horror. The corn syrup blood puts out the candle of the lord. Scripture on its mind. Theological, political zombie picture. Death as poverty virus. There’s a Mad Hadder-esque hopping zombie henchman. There’s some unsimulated fucking. When the bullets find us they further fuck-up our forever bodies. Is she carrying the Christ child after fellating the handgun? Is the zombie fetus shot out of the pregnant zombie the son of the angel? Collapse of all binaries. What does it mean to be dead? Somber, melodic, miserable, slow. When the angel cums, the spirit is trapped in the flesh, the soul can’t leave after the body is gone. Even ashes remain alive.

Analysis: In his New York Times Syndicate review at the time, King of the drive-ins, Joe Bob Briggs called it “a Night of the Living Dead for the 90’s” and he’s onto something. Perhaps no other zombie film-maker since Romero has imagined the existential, political, and philosophical implications of the undead as fully and with as much commitment, verve and talent as McCrae.

There’s a way of reading this movie as being an exploration of how the left and the right both react to apocalypse. The undead are a stand-in for the political left and the survivors (especially our heroine) represent the right.

Connor Habib (the phenomenal Syrian-Irish-American, Christian, Anthroposophist, former porn-star, mystic horror author) pointed out in a recent episode of his podcast Against Everyone* that zombies have always been the nightmare of the billionaire class. A shuffling, un-washed, angry, teeming horde. In this film, they’re introduced spanging. They also come across as fadish, vain, terrifyingly open to suicide, followers of Jesus (the one who hung out with whores and lepers and preached radical kindness), and far more able to adjust to change. A neat and nuanced set of traits!

Susan on the other hand is the epitome of reactionary. Totally human in every sense of the word. Interested in protection, survival, her own piece of the pie (in this case a hottie waiting back home). She represents that unabashed part of us that refuses to be silenced, lessened, put at bay. She is also wholly undiscerning of who and how many she has to destroy to get there. She literally sucks and fucks a gun.

It being a tragedy, things go poorly for both camps.

One of the powers of the film is that, for as absurd and wild as it gets, it remains sincere. It is bleak and bitter but with just enough care to not become cynical. You root for pretty much everyone, they’re all humanly-flawed and the tone of the film remains weird and fever-dreamy while never pitching into camp. Even when a rival cult of zombie maimers shows up to chew scenery in super-pimp drag what they do is so truly horrific that it’s not silly.

It’s a completely original picture, one that may turn-off a lot of viewers and has (perhaps tellingly) remained in obscurity for over thirty years. Connoisseurs of the fucked-up will likely blanche at its slow artfulness. The arty crowd will recoil at its aggressive exploitation elements. Both camps may be put-off that it’s a zombie film (a very tropey subgenre for a nearly trope-free work of art). Lot’s may be repelled by its Christian themes. Christians, willing to grace its extreme violence and other punk-rock transgressions, may be less forgiving of the unsimulated hardcore penetration. But this is not a porn. This is not religious propaganda. It’s not shock-for-shock’s sake (or not only that). It’s not so-bad-it’s-good. It’s a singular vision and the daring will be rewarded.

Background: It’s Scooter McCrae’s first feature (of four, he makes a new movie about every ten years). It won the “Best Independent” at the 1995 Fantafestival. When it was imported to the UK it narrowly missed being labeled a “Video Nasty” and was part of an indecency smear campaign. Shot on Betamax videotape in Middletown New York while Scooter was finishing up a film degree at SUNY Purchase. His new film, Black-Eyed Susan is about S&M AI sexbots and if it’s half as thinky, daring, humane, and outré as this film it’s probably a wild dark ride.

Scores:

Autumn Vibes: 2/5

Scares & Chills: 2/5

Cultural & Cinematic Importance: 5/5

Monster Action: 3/5

Second Opinions:

“You’ll find a lot of zombie flicks with more gore, and plenty with better acting, but you won’t find any better written than Scooter McCrae’s Shatter Dead.” - Jim Olenski in Videohound’s Guide to Cult Flicks and Trash Pics Second Edition (2002)

“The entire piece flows like a compelling dream, which while twisted, is so interesting that we are reluctant to awaken from it.” - Pamela De Graff at 366weirdmovies.com

“…an unconventional and transgressive mix of art house allegory, ferocious splatter, and Euro-sleaze inspired sexual debauchery…” -copy on the Vinegar Syndrome Saturn’s Core blu-ray

“more bummer arthouse films need to be made for twenty dollars.” - Letterboxed user, ModernLoreGamer

* I believe it was in his episode with Grant Morrison AEWCH #300