This kicks off a three part review of Shriek Show’s Zombie Pack 2, which includes Flesh Eater: Revenge of the Living Dead, Burial Ground and Zombie Holocaust.

First up is Flesh Eater: Revenge of the Living Dead aka Zombie Nosh (1989), written-directed-produced and starring Bill Hinzman, who is best known for being the cemetery zombie in the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead. At first, I figured this would just be a way for Hinzman to cash in on his NOTLD popularity and make a few bucks, by playing essentially the same character as that of the cemetery zombie. But, I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised here. While this is by no means a good film, I had a fucking blast watching it.

Flesh Eater starts out with credits that slowly merge into some animation of Hinzman’s zombie character “Flesh Eater” sneering, and then the film title splats onto the screen in a bloody mess. It was a nice little touch that already had me smiling. A little. Then it cuts to ten “young adults” going on a hay-ride into some woods that surround a handful of farms, getting ready to party the night away, which seems to involve the horror film standards of drinking and screwing (it must not have been more than ten minutes before the first shot of nudity was shown). Then you see another guy with a tractor trying to pull out a tree stump (FORESHADOWING) as the hay-ride drives past. After the tractor driver drops the “young adults” off at their fire-pit party circle, your attention is returned to the aforementioned other tractor guy who is now pulling the stump out of the ground. After the stump comes out, he walks over to pick up some sticks and notices something on the ground. As he wipes away the dirt, you see a flat stone with a pentagram on it. “Stupid kids must be on my property again!” he says and moves the stone. He wipes away some more dirt and underneath the stone is a casket, with another stone on top. Keep in mind this casket was maybe six inches underground. The stone reads “THIS EVIL WHICH WILL TAKE FLESH AND BLOOD FROM THEE AND TURN ALL YE INTO EVIL“. Of course, he throws this stone to the side also and opens the casket. Inside of it is a man, or to be exact, the Flesh Eater, who awakens and kills the tractor guy. From here, chaos ensues.

While this movie does have some horrible acting, bad dialog and at one point you even see the wire being used to throw a guy into the air, it is full of some really good gore and is a lot of fun (I could see where watching this movie with a group of people could be awesome). There are also great little weird moments in this film. One of my favorite ones is the scene where Flesh Eater punches his fist into a womans stomach and pulls out her heart. FROM HER STOMACH! There are a few slow scenes, but for the most part, the film has a good pace and the zombie plague spreads quickly and has a mass amount of victims. This film has everything you could want (for the most part) from an 80′s zombie flick, including a zombie in a chicken costume.

A few notes on this DVD edition of the film: Includes Back Into the Woods (a featurette on the making of Flesh Eater), a photo gallery with the soundtrack, the original film trailer (including a few other older horror trailers) and an awesome (pure gold!) pizza commercial starring Bill Hinzman.

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