“Zombeavers” (2014) – American Zombie Horror/ Comedy

Well, for our next foray into crazy horror films, we go from Halloween witches back to a perennial favorite here at the ol’ Litterbox… the zombie… with a look at the Region 2 UK release of “Zombeavers”. Ummmm?… Zombie beavers? Nope… your favorite Catgirl kids you not. 😉

Our synopsis goes like this here: “A group of college sorority girls having a “girls only” weekend together at a rural riverside cabin are menaced by a swarm of deadly zombie beavers created by an accidental spill of toxic waste. A weekend of sex and debauchery soon turns gruesome as the undead beavers close in on the girls and their party-crashing boyfriends. Isolated and unable to escape, the kids are soon fighting for their lives in a desperate attempt to fend off the hoard of crazed mutant beavers that attack them in and around their cabin.”

Yep. You’d be right in betting this one doesn’t set the bar tooooo high, plot wise. Sounds pretty much like a quick exploitative story with crude trashy humor, nudity, very little real coherent plot, and probably more bad “beaver” jokes than any film truly needs. So… not expecting greatness, let’s take a peek at the result and see if “Zombeavers” sinks or swims, shall we? At least I can tell my sweetie it’s an English language film…. 😉

After our last “Movie Nite” I’m thinking Carolyn might just have thought there couldn’t possibly be another crazy horror movie in my pile just waiting to be watched. You think she’d know better by now. 😉

This one’s been floating around for a while now. I expected a low-budget exploitative film like this to slip right to DVD without any chance of a theatrical release and in that I was right on the money. But I sorta was expecting a domestic Region 1 version to hit the stores first before it cropped up anywhere else. In that, I was soooo, soooo wrong. Nope. The first chance to catch this one was on a UK Region 2 release. Ummmm? If you are a suspicious person… like a certain movie watching Catgirl princess… then you just know that’s not a good sign. But hey… when has common sense ever slowed me down before when it comes to hunting down these admittedly “craptastic” bits of celluloid storytelling? Afterall…. I might get lucky and find one of those rare “so bad that it’s good” examples of goofy exploitative filmmaking that’ll end up being a fondly remembered cult hit for years to come.

Sigh…. I really wanted to have this one turn out that way. Honest I did. But sometimes a turd is just a turd….

Our story gets underway as two hapless brain-dead guys driving a truck full of toxic waste do that whole “Pulp Fiction” thing…. you know swapping those witty and gritty stories all done in amazingly wry and funny dialog as they head through the woods to wherever it is you drag toxic waste for disposal. Except that these two guys make Beavis and Butthead look like geniuses. Ohhhh… and the dialog is neither witty nor clever…. just crude and sophomoric. Naturally they whack a deer with the truck and toss a big honking can of glowing green juice into a nearby river so it can be delivered downstream to our unlucky beaver friends. Yep. We’ve all seen where this is going…

Next… three sexy sorority girls are driving out to the woods for a “girl’s only” weekend of female bonding designed to heal the broken heart of one of them who’s discovered her boyfriend has been cheating on her with some unknown other woman. Our main character, Mary (played by Rachel Melvin) is the one who put the whole trip together to show some support for poor Jenn (played by Lexi Atkins). Along for the ride is their supposed BFF and inseparable sorority sister Zoe (played by Cortney Palm). It isn’t long before both Carolyn and I saw the biggest flaw in the whole film…. These girls. They just aren’t friends. Not even close. Almost immediately you figure out Zoe is just a selfish crude horny bitch, resentful of having to come along at all and listen to Jenn whine about how much she loves the guy who’s been cheating on her… pissed off that having no guys means she has to go a whole weekend without sex… and constantly crying that she can’t get service for her phone. So what about Jenn? Well… she’s had her heart torn to bits by her jerk of a boyfriend, but seems to resent the fact she can’t text or phone him and is completely unthankful that Mary has gone to the trouble of giving her a weekend away to get her thoughts sorted. And Mary herself? She seems nice at first… if a bit controlling. You figure she’s going to be our one heroine that we’ll all want to like and see make it through the wacky horrors to come. You really want to think that. Goodness I really wanted to.

Problem is… once the boyfriends Sam, Tommy, and Buck (played by Hutch Dano, Jake Weary, and Peter Gilroy respectively)… show up, she’s as quick to hop into bed with hers as is Zoe leaving Jenn all alone with her jerk. That’s particularly annoying once you learn she’s the other woman sexing it up with Jenn’s boyfriend. Grrrrrr!!! So all these girls turn out to be nothing more than amoral backstabbing “frenemies” afterall. Mary’s main motivation? Not to really support Jenn… but to wean her off the guy she’s inexplicably hot for so she can cheat on her own boyfriend with him. And the guys…. sheesh! They are all just one dimensional sickeningly annoying fratboy stereotypes the like of which pissed me off back in college and which years and years later I still find repugnant. So…. that means I pretty much hate the entire cast. Doesn’t bode well for my movie experience….

We don’t get much better luck with our only other real character, local good ol’ boy trapper Smyth (played by Rex Linn). Rather than being that downhome “Crocodile Dundee” wilderness guy with all the woodland survival skills and beaver lore you think we’d need in a story like this, he’s just a mysogynistic redneck gun nut waiting to become beaver food. Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

Well…. that means if I’m gonna enjoy myself, my only hope is to root for the zombie beavers. They won’t let me down. And for the most part… they don’t. Our frisky undead semi-aquatic rodents are done with some fairly low tech  practicall effects…. (that means zombie beaver hand puppets for those of you unfamiliar with old-school “special effects”) and are augmented throughout by some well utilized CGI for when there’s any swimming to be done. Yes… yes… all very crude, but effective to tell the tale and nostalgically fun in a “Killer Shrews” sort of way.

Basically… in a perverse “Looney Tunes” take on “Night of the Living Dead”, the bulk of our story follows the whole “siege” plot, with our college kids holled up in the cabin and our zombie beavers trying their darnedest to chaw their way in. No surprises… Well… OK… maybe one surprise. Seems being bitten by a Zombie beaver means you also turn into a zombie. Not just any Zombie either…. a half human/ half zombie hybrid. How’s that for screwy?

Well. I’m not certain any of you out there will want to rush right out and watch this, but your Favorite Catgirl won’t spoil the ending for you just in case. But I’m telling you… if you had to pick something to watch on DVD, “Sharknado” would probably be a better “Movie Nite” choice. I’m just saying…..

I now know why this turkey had to turn up on a bare-bones budget DVD released anywhere but here in the good ol’ USA where it was made. I give “Zombeavers” a paltry 2 “Meows” out of 5. With it’s cast of unsympathetic unlikeable characters, it’s unremarkable plot, and unfunny attempts at lowbrow comedy, I just can’t recommend you rush out to find it. That’s really saying something coming from this bad movie watchin’ lady. I just know I really…. really…. owe my adorably sweet wifey big time for making her sit through this one…..

Oh my goodness, yes… there just has to be a Trailer, right? Well here you go, just in case you still need convincing that it’s a real movie.. take a peek. Trust me… it’s waaaaay better than the film itself. 🙂