Film Appreciation - They're Dead & They're Dangerous

Cody Hamman reveals a hope for the future while discussing one of his favorites, Bill Hinzman's 1988 zombie film FleshEater, for this entry in Film Appreciation.

During the filming of Night of the Living Dead (1968), director George Romero recruited investor and crew member Bill Hinzman to play the film's most featured ghoul because he was tall, skinny, owned an old suit, and was around to get in front of the camera whenever needed. Hinzman's ghoul ended up being the first one seen in the movie, zombie #1 the Cemetery Ghoul, the strange man who the character Johnny spots approaching from a distance, inspiring him to tease his unnerved sister with the famous line, "They're coming to get you, Barbra." Johnny is joking, but things turn serious when the Hinzman ghoul does attack and kicks off the night of horror.

By the mid-'80s, Night of the Living Dead had already achieved classic status, but Hinzman didn't realize just how popular his character was until he went to a horror convention - not as a guest, he was just stopping by to visit his friend/Night co-writer John Russo. While Hinzman walked through the crowd, he was surprised to find that he was recognized by excited fans. When he left the convention that day, Hinzman's newfound fanbase had inspired him to make something of his own.

Hinzman decided to make a zombie movie with nods to Night '68 and in which he plays the lead ghoul, but the story and character are tweaked enough to differentiate them from the earlier film. Hinzman already owned 16mm film equipment from his career making educational and industrial films, so he raised a $60,000 budget and got his movie together, taking the title from a Night '68 working title, Night of the Flesh Eaters.

Like Night of the Living Dead, FleshEater begins with a vehicle driving down a winding path, but this time it's a tractor pulling a hay wagon, a farmer taking a group of college kids on a ride out into the woods, where they intend to camp for the night. Halloween night.

Along the way, the hayride passes another farmer using his tractor to pull a large stump out of the ground. When the stump has been unearthed, the farmer discovers something very strange nearby - a very shallowly buried coffin, locked shut with a chain that has rusted and broken, with an engraved stone and a wax seal on top of it. On the stone is a pentagram, on the seal a warning: "This evil which will take flesh and blood from thee and turn all ye unto evil." Blaming all of this on college kids messing around on his property, the farmer opens the coffin... to find Hinzman's FleshEater within. In seconds, FleshEater has risen and ripped the farmer's throat open with his teeth. A Hinzman ghoul has again kicked off a night of horror.

The camping kids have barely gotten their night of drinking and smoking started, they haven't even figured out whether or not they'll play frisbee later, when the party is busted up by FleshEater and his already growing legion of zombies.

Romero's zombies often come off as pathetic and can be sympathized with. "We're them and they're us." That's not the case with Hinzman's zombies. As the seal on FleshEater's coffin warned, these zombies are pure evil; snarling, malicious creatures that tear into victims with hate in their eyes. They make quick work of the college kids. The leader type, the couple who can't keep their hands off each other, the annoying prankster, they all fall prey to the living dead. The kids board themselves up in an old tool shed, this doesn't even keep the zombies out for ten minutes.

Only one couple survives to run off into the dark night, trying to find help and warn people about the zombie threat, but they're thwarted by FleshEater and his cohorts at every turn.

As the zombie plague spreads through the countryside, the film plays out in a series of zombie attack setpieces. An unlucky cop checks in on a bad situation, the zombies invade a horse ranch, college kids having a costume party in a barn get their good times crashed by real monsters. Supervising Producer Andrew Sands appears in the costume party sequence as the hilariously drunk host.

In another sequence, FleshEater ruins the night of a family preparing to go trick-or-treating. Hinzman's own wife and daughter play the mother and daughter in this scene. When little Heidi in her angel costume opens the door expecting to find other trick-or-treaters waiting on the front step, she instead finds FleshEater and becomes the zombie's treat herself. Blood splatters onto the Krunch bar she drops on the ground. A black and white version of this scene was included as a bonus feature on the home video releases of the 30th anniversary edition of Night of the Living Dead ten years later.

It all culminates in a sequence that pays homage to the posse scenes in Night of the Living Dead, during which a familiar face even shows up, the one and only Vincent Survinski.

I first heard about FleshEater in November or December 1989, when I read mention of it in one of the first two issues of Fangoria that I ever owned. Going by the covers, my guess would be that it was in the December issue, in the "Shocking report! MPAA vs. splatter - Video battle rages!" article, as the mention was about the fact that the movie had been released on video unrated, under the title Revenge of the Living Zombies.

Revenge of the Living Zombies is what I knew this movie as for years. I had been wanting to see it since the end of '89 and when I found a copy of the VHS in a local video store in 1994 or so, I rented it immediately. I clearly remember sitting down for my first viewing of this film, watching it while eating a plate of spaghetti. The film was released as Zombie Nosh in some other countries. Shriek Show released the film on DVD in 2003 under its original title of FleshEater, with the on screen title actually being FleshEater: Revenge of the Living Dead.

I've always enjoyed FleshEater over the years, but during a viewing of the film one day last year - on October 29th, 2010 to be exact - it clicked with me in a bigger way than ever before. Instantly I became obsessed with the movie. It's comfort viewing for me, a movie that I feel like watching often, and can be the only bit of entertainment that I watch for days at a time. And entertainment it is. I find FleshEater to be one of the most purely entertaining films that I've ever seen.

I love every aspect of this film. The tone and style, the Halloween setting with the beautiful autumn in Pennsylvania locations, the score by Erica Portnoy, the songs by HEDGG and Paul McCollough, the unnerving edge added by the evil of the zombies, the great gore effects by Gerald Gergely.

I'm so into this film that I desperately want to work on something set in its world. As I watched FleshEater over and over after that October 2010 viewing, a thought came to mind that hasn't been shaken over the last year: There needs to be a sequel and I need to be involved in some way. I started thinking of how I could pitch this idea to Bill Hinzman. I was worried that he wouldn't be receptive to the idea of doing a sequel at all, let alone allowing me to be involved. But earlier this year, I listened to a podcast interview with Hinzman in which he said himself that he'd love to do FleshEater 2.

So I don't need to convince Hinzman that a sequel should be made, but I do need to get in contact with him to convince him to allow me to be involved. I haven't been able to do that yet, so I'm just putting it out into the world now. FleshEater 2 must happen by any means necessary and I'm ready to go to work on it in any capacity that Mister Hinzman sees fit. I'll go out on a limb and declare myself the #1 fan of FleshEater, so if I got the chance to work on the sequel I think my love and enthusiasm for the project would be a great asset and for me it would be a dream come true. Let's make it happen!

FleshEater will return!