Feb 16 2009
B+ Movies: Gangs of the Dead
Some of my best movie experiences have come from being up at 3am, flipping channels and just happening to land on the first few minutes of a movie not deemed worthy of a prime time spot. Abandoning all hope of a reasonable amount of sleep, I surrender myself to serenidpity and curiosity and let myself sink into the mind of a b movie director. Often, this has resulted in me looking at my friends the next day, my eyes red and held open by force of will, explaning how they simply had to track down the story that was worth sacrificing rest.
On the other hand, some experiences don’t result in the same enthusasim. With that in mind, I’d like to talk about 2006’s Gangs of the Dead.
Gangs of the Dead (known as Last Rites before its DVD Release) falls somewhere between Dawn of the Dead and Resivoir Dogs in its storyline: Two groups of LA gang members show up at the same time to buy drugs from the same guy. This deal also happens to be a sting operation, with law enforcement listening in and preparing to make some arrests. Alas, nothing is to go as planned.
You see, the movie opens with a group of homeless people listening to a street preacher. Bible in hand, the street preacher talks about a metor shower the world is to witness that night (calling it God’s feces) and prays for a miricle to show his people that all the wrongs in the world are going to be set right. The miricle comes in the form of a preview of the metor shower which streaks through the sky, lands on the homeless people and turns them into infectious, cannibalistic zombies.
So when the word is given to make the bust, the cops are confronted with rotting hordes of the undead and have to join their would-be perpetrators in an effort not to get eaten. Tensions rise as racial barriers, gang barriers and plain old stupidity begin to lower the life expectancy of everyone involved. Along the way, we are introduced to the literally named Dick Weatherman (who is both a weatherman and a complete… well you get the idea) and a few of the gang bangers family. We also are invited to wonder (for the three seconds it takes us to figure it out) who narc is that brought the cops to the apocalypse in the first place.
Gangs of the Dead has the seeds of an interesting film, hinting that it might be able to tie in a message about the self destructive nature of gang life and bigotry. It also hints at being suspenseful. The sad fact is that it fails to do any of this.
The pacing of the movie drags after about the first twenty minutes. The characters are inexcusibly dumb, forgetting where people are and what resources they have such that their deaths seem inevitable. The script makes an attempt to get us interested in one or two of the characters only to, in the end, kill them all off and focus on the snitch (you’ll know) and one of the side characters who is introduced as a street tough teen but becomes more and more infantile as the story goes on.
The best I can say is that the movie could have made more mistakes than it did. There is humor mixed included that doesn’t turn it all into a farce. The initial set up of the film sets a creepy and tense tone, even if that’s latter killed by the movie dragging on. The gore is used to good effect, though it is concentrated in two or three scenes and at one point it’s obvious that the entrails one zombie is chewing on are ramen noodles. And I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge actors Noel G. (who played in Bruce Almighty) and Reggie Bannister (veteran of the Phantasm series) who did very respectable jobs.
But in the end, this movie took the seeds of brilliance in it’s concept and fertelized them with salt. You get the feel that more could have been done with this movie but that somewhere, someone either didn’t have the clarity of vision to see it through or that they ran out of money and just used everything they shot to make the film.
The invention of the DVR has removed the need to stay up and watch one of those chance cinematic gems I started talking about. And I’m glad, because if I’d actually stayed up to see this one to the end, I’d have wanted to sue the studio for my lost z’s. A set of poor choices dotted with occasional gems of good horror, Gangs of the Dead, aka Last Rites gets a very round D from B+ Movies.
