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'''''Shatter Dead''''' is a 1994 [[zombie film]] |
'''''Shatter Dead''''' is a 1994 independent [[zombie film]] directed by [[Scooter McCrae]]. Its plot concerns a dystopian world where the dead no longer stay dead, but remain cognizant of the world around them; amidst this world, a woman named Susan attempts to return home to her boyfriend.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080305194611/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/257624/Shatter-Dead/overview New York Times]</ref> |
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==Plot== |
==Plot== |
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In the first scene, a female Angel of Death is seen having sex with a mortal woman, seemingly impregnating her. This causes humans to stop dying, and those who were already dead return to life as disenfranchised vagabonds. |
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The film opens with a scene of a woman having sex with an apparently female angel. No explanation is given in the film. The back of the DVD cover says the Angel of Death impregnates a mortal woman, causing the dead to come alive. The next shot is of seventeen months later as Susan works her way through a mostly abandoned town on foot. She encounters some of the living dead, including one who gave up his arm to research. Though they seem somewhat bewildered and eager to please, she catches one zombie stealing gas from her car. She chases him and puts a bullet through his gas canister. It explodes dousing the zombie in flames. Susan returns to her car leaves town. Outside of town, her car runs out of gas. She then finds herself surrounded by zombies to force her from her car. A preacher claims her car for the service of the Lord and drives off after the zombies refill the gas tank. |
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17 months later, a woman named Susan is working her way through a mostly abandoned town on foot, after having bought food; she has armed herself heavily to fend off the undead. While walking through the downtown area, she encounters several undead people begging for money, begrudgingly giving some to a heavily disfigured man. Though the undead seem somewhat bewildered and eager to please, she catches one trying to siphon gasoline from her car; she chases him down and shoots his gas canister, setting him on fire. Susan then returns to her car and leaves town. When her car eventually runs out of gas on a country road, she suddenly finds herself surrounded by a religious cult of zombies led by a preacher, who claims her car "for the service of the Lord," refills the gas tank, and drives off in it. |
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After walking on foot for a while, another car pulls up. The driver offers her a ride. She holds him at gun point and holds a mirror under his nose. When he doesn't exhale warm moist air, she determines him to be a zombie. She takes the car from him (he doesn't put up a fight) and drives for a while, listening to an announcer discussing the current situation on the radio. He doesn't have much information. |
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After traveling on foot for a while and stealing another undead person's car, Susan arrives in a new town. She encounters some living people who direct her to a safe house to stay the night. While staying there, she encounters Mary, a dead woman pretending to be alive; they end up showering together, and Susan starts to trust Mary after she opens up about her own death, saying that she committed suicide to be young and beautiful forever. That night, the house is attacked by militant, religiously fanatical zombies who murder every living person in the house, including the pregnant landlady, who enters the bathroom and nurses her dead fetus in the shower afterwards. In the chaos, Susan accidentally shoots Mary in the head. |
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Susan flees the house and encounters the preacher who stole her car. She threatens him while he tries to convince her that death is better than life, opining that the "old generation" of humanity is coming to an end. Susan uses a pocket mirror to check him for signs of breathing; discovering he is alive, she shoots him in the head and takes her car back. Eventually, she returns home to Dan, her boyfriend, but discovers that he had previously killed himself by slashing his wrists in the bathtub. He pours her a glass of milk, but covertly slips poison into it before she drinks it; they then have sex by using Susan's pistol as a strap-on, as he is unable to achieve an erection himself due to being dead. Afterwards, Dan reveals the poisoning to her, reasoning that she will be young and beautiful forever once she dies. She threatens to shoot herself to sully her beauty and tries to vomit the poison out, but he prevents her from doing so. However, she manages to shoot him in the head and send him falling out the apartment window before dying. |
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At this point the house is attacked by militant zombies (excited by the Preacher who stole Susan's car). This group of Zombies believes these are the end times and God will return once humanity is all dead. They are intent on converting living humans into their way of, uh, metabolism. Waking up surprised, Susan accidentally shoots Mary in the head, destroying Mary's hope of being beautiful forever. The owner of the house, who looks like the woman from the intro but isn't, is shot in the back at close range with a shotgun. She was pregnant but her wound aborts the baby out the front. Susan watches as the newly dead mother begins to nurse the newly dead fetus. |
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The now-undead preacher happens across Dan, having broken many bones and suffered heavy disfiguration from the fall, and fashions wooden splints to allow him to walk again. Meanwhile, Susan wakes up and enters the bathroom, realizing she is now dead. She takes water from a dripping faucet and puts it into her lifeless eyes. Dan is then heard outside the apartment begging to be let in, as the film abruptly ends. |
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Susan escapes and encounters the preacher who stole her car. She threatens him while he tries to convince her that death is better than life. Susan gives him the mirror test and discovers that he is still alive. Another shot to the face from Susan and the preacher is now one of the undead. |
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Susan gets her car and her food back and arrives at the apartment of her boyfriend. He's also killed himself but is up and about. The bathtub is filled with his blood. Her boyfriend has lost his mind. He kept hearing the phone ringing and hearing the dead talking to him (including a cremated mother and a sister who never even knew how to use a phone.) |
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They can't have sex because he has no blood pressure (his blood is in the bathtub after all), so they have intercourse using her gun as a strap-on. He slips poison into her milk. He wants her to be dead and beautiful forever. She tries to induce vomiting, but he stops her. Before she dies, she manages to throw him out the window, breaking most of his bones (and destroying his hope of being young and beautiful forever). The last sequence of the film is a montage switching back and forth between the preacher making splints for her boyfriend and Susan putting tears in her eyes from the faucet so she can mourn her own death. |
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==Production== |
==Production== |
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Director McCrae and cinematographer Howe were inspired to make their own film after watching low-budget exploitation films and thinking that they could make a better one themselves. After experiencing difficulty in explaining his scripts, McCrae decided to shoot an example of the tone and style that he was attempting to convey; that project became ''Shatter Dead''. Shooting took a total ten days over a two-month period on weekends.<ref>{{cite book|title=Cheap Scares!: Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets|last=Lamberson|first=Gregory|publisher=[[McFarland & Company]]|year=2008|isbn=9780786452026|pages=163–174|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S-aljaPvZYEC&pg=PA163}}</ref> |
Director McCrae and cinematographer Howe were inspired to make their own film after watching low-budget exploitation films and thinking that they could make a better one themselves. After experiencing difficulty in explaining his scripts, McCrae decided to shoot an example of the tone and style that he was attempting to convey; that project became ''Shatter Dead''. Shooting took a total of ten days over a two-month period on weekends.<ref>{{cite book|title=Cheap Scares!: Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets|last=Lamberson|first=Gregory|publisher=[[McFarland & Company]]|year=2008|isbn=9780786452026|pages=163–174|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S-aljaPvZYEC&pg=PA163}}</ref> |
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==Critical reception== |
==Critical reception== |
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[[Joe Bob Briggs]] gave the film a positive review and called it "a Night of the Living Dead for the '90s".<ref>{{cite news|url= |
[[Joe Bob Briggs]] gave the film a positive review and called it "a Night of the Living Dead for the '90s".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.orlandosentinel.com/1995/12/22/plagues-zombies-shatter-dead-has-it-all/|title=Plagues, Zombies - 'Shatter Dead' Has It All|last=Briggs|first=Joe Bob|work=[[Orlando Sentinel]]|date=1995-12-22|access-date=2015-02-11}}</ref> [[Bloody Disgusting]] rated it 2/5 stars and wrote, "In all fairness, this is hardcore, uncompromising filmmaking. At the same time, Mr. McCrae should perhaps flesh out his ideas a bit more before putting them to film."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bloody-disgusting.com/reviews/108351/shatter-dead-2/|title=Shatter Dead|author=<!-- Staff -->|work=[[Bloody Disgusting]]|date=2004-10-22|accessdate=2015-02-11}}</ref> G. Noel Gross of ''[[DVD Talk]]'' called the film "an esoteric zombie odyssey that plods along like a Euro-horror epic punctuated by violent ejaculations of carnage."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/3859/shatter-dead-se/ | title=Shatter Dead | last=Gross| first=G. Noel | work=[[DVD Talk]] |date=2002-04-16 | accessdate=2011-05-14}}</ref> Writing in ''The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia'', academic [[Peter Dendle]] said, "Though the premise is fresh and there is a plentiful supply of good raw ideas, the movie is built around character interaction among amateur actors, leaving it scattered and directionless. It lacks sustained tension and resolution, and directs too much energy away from its fascinating conceptual possibilities in favor of trite exploitation concerns".<ref>{{cite book|title=The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia|last=Dendle|first=Peter|authorlink=Peter Dendle|publisher=[[McFarland & Company]]|year=2001|pages=158–159|isbn=978-0-7864-9288-6}}</ref> John Patterson, in an analysis of the film for [[Dread Central]], identifies queer themes in the film. In Patterson's analysis, the zombies represent a challenge to the social order, including [[heteronormative]] concepts of sex and gender, and Susan lashes out at them so violently because she fears this change.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.dreadcentral.com/editorials/423500/hallucinations-shatter-dead-shot-on-video-queer/|title='Hallucinations' and 'Shatter Dead': A Shot-On-Video Queer Double Feature [New Queer Extremity]|last=Patterson|first=John|work=[[Dread Central]]|date=2022-02-08|accessdate=2022-02-15}}</ref> |
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It won the best independent film award at the 1995 [[Fantafestival]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Essential Monster Movie Guide: A Century of Creature Features on Film, TV, and Video|last=Jones|first=Stephen|publisher=[[Billboard Books]]|year=2000|isbn=9780823079360|page=340}}</ref> |
It won the best independent film award at the 1995 [[Fantafestival]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Essential Monster Movie Guide: A Century of Creature Features on Film, TV, and Video|last=Jones|first=Stephen|publisher=[[Billboard Books]]|year=2000|isbn=9780823079360|page=340}}</ref> |
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[[Category:1994 films]] |
[[Category:1994 films]] |
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[[Category:1994 horror films]] |
[[Category:1994 horror films]] |
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[[Category:American films]] |
[[Category:1990s American films]] |
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[[Category: |
[[Category:1990s English-language films]] |
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[[Category:American independent films]] |
[[Category:American independent films]] |
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[[Category: |
[[Category:American splatter films]] |
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[[Category:Camcorder films]] |
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[[Category:Films about death]] |
[[Category:Films about death]] |
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| ⚫ | |||
[[Category:Films directed by Scooter McCrae]] |
[[Category:Films directed by Scooter McCrae]] |
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[[Category:English-language horror films]] |
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Latest revision as of 05:35, 24 September 2024
| Shatter Dead | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Scooter McCrae |
| Written by | Scooter McCrae |
| Produced by | Scooter McCrae |
| Starring |
|
| Cinematography | Matthew M. Howe |
| Music by |
|
| Distributed by | Tempe Video |
Release date |
|
Running time | 84 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Shatter Dead is a 1994 independent zombie film directed by Scooter McCrae. Its plot concerns a dystopian world where the dead no longer stay dead, but remain cognizant of the world around them; amidst this world, a woman named Susan attempts to return home to her boyfriend.[1]
Plot
[edit]In the first scene, a female Angel of Death is seen having sex with a mortal woman, seemingly impregnating her. This causes humans to stop dying, and those who were already dead return to life as disenfranchised vagabonds.
17 months later, a woman named Susan is working her way through a mostly abandoned town on foot, after having bought food; she has armed herself heavily to fend off the undead. While walking through the downtown area, she encounters several undead people begging for money, begrudgingly giving some to a heavily disfigured man. Though the undead seem somewhat bewildered and eager to please, she catches one trying to siphon gasoline from her car; she chases him down and shoots his gas canister, setting him on fire. Susan then returns to her car and leaves town. When her car eventually runs out of gas on a country road, she suddenly finds herself surrounded by a religious cult of zombies led by a preacher, who claims her car "for the service of the Lord," refills the gas tank, and drives off in it.
After traveling on foot for a while and stealing another undead person's car, Susan arrives in a new town. She encounters some living people who direct her to a safe house to stay the night. While staying there, she encounters Mary, a dead woman pretending to be alive; they end up showering together, and Susan starts to trust Mary after she opens up about her own death, saying that she committed suicide to be young and beautiful forever. That night, the house is attacked by militant, religiously fanatical zombies who murder every living person in the house, including the pregnant landlady, who enters the bathroom and nurses her dead fetus in the shower afterwards. In the chaos, Susan accidentally shoots Mary in the head.
Susan flees the house and encounters the preacher who stole her car. She threatens him while he tries to convince her that death is better than life, opining that the "old generation" of humanity is coming to an end. Susan uses a pocket mirror to check him for signs of breathing; discovering he is alive, she shoots him in the head and takes her car back. Eventually, she returns home to Dan, her boyfriend, but discovers that he had previously killed himself by slashing his wrists in the bathtub. He pours her a glass of milk, but covertly slips poison into it before she drinks it; they then have sex by using Susan's pistol as a strap-on, as he is unable to achieve an erection himself due to being dead. Afterwards, Dan reveals the poisoning to her, reasoning that she will be young and beautiful forever once she dies. She threatens to shoot herself to sully her beauty and tries to vomit the poison out, but he prevents her from doing so. However, she manages to shoot him in the head and send him falling out the apartment window before dying.
The now-undead preacher happens across Dan, having broken many bones and suffered heavy disfiguration from the fall, and fashions wooden splints to allow him to walk again. Meanwhile, Susan wakes up and enters the bathroom, realizing she is now dead. She takes water from a dripping faucet and puts it into her lifeless eyes. Dan is then heard outside the apartment begging to be let in, as the film abruptly ends.
Production
[edit]Director McCrae and cinematographer Howe were inspired to make their own film after watching low-budget exploitation films and thinking that they could make a better one themselves. After experiencing difficulty in explaining his scripts, McCrae decided to shoot an example of the tone and style that he was attempting to convey; that project became Shatter Dead. Shooting took a total of ten days over a two-month period on weekends.[2]
Critical reception
[edit]Joe Bob Briggs gave the film a positive review and called it "a Night of the Living Dead for the '90s".[3] Bloody Disgusting rated it 2/5 stars and wrote, "In all fairness, this is hardcore, uncompromising filmmaking. At the same time, Mr. McCrae should perhaps flesh out his ideas a bit more before putting them to film."[4] G. Noel Gross of DVD Talk called the film "an esoteric zombie odyssey that plods along like a Euro-horror epic punctuated by violent ejaculations of carnage."[5] Writing in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle said, "Though the premise is fresh and there is a plentiful supply of good raw ideas, the movie is built around character interaction among amateur actors, leaving it scattered and directionless. It lacks sustained tension and resolution, and directs too much energy away from its fascinating conceptual possibilities in favor of trite exploitation concerns".[6] John Patterson, in an analysis of the film for Dread Central, identifies queer themes in the film. In Patterson's analysis, the zombies represent a challenge to the social order, including heteronormative concepts of sex and gender, and Susan lashes out at them so violently because she fears this change.[7]
It won the best independent film award at the 1995 Fantafestival.[8]
References
[edit]- ^ New York Times
- ^ Lamberson, Gregory (2008). Cheap Scares!: Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets. McFarland & Company. pp. 163–174. ISBN 9780786452026.
- ^ Briggs, Joe Bob (1995-12-22). "Plagues, Zombies - 'Shatter Dead' Has It All". Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved 2015-02-11.
- ^ "Shatter Dead". Bloody Disgusting. 2004-10-22. Retrieved 2015-02-11.
- ^ Gross, G. Noel (2002-04-16). "Shatter Dead". DVD Talk. Retrieved 2011-05-14.
- ^ Dendle, Peter (2001). The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia. McFarland & Company. pp. 158–159. ISBN 978-0-7864-9288-6.
- ^ Patterson, John (2022-02-08). "'Hallucinations' and 'Shatter Dead': A Shot-On-Video Queer Double Feature [New Queer Extremity]". Dread Central. Retrieved 2022-02-15.
- ^ Jones, Stephen (2000). The Essential Monster Movie Guide: A Century of Creature Features on Film, TV, and Video. Billboard Books. p. 340. ISBN 9780823079360.
External links
[edit]- Shatter Dead at IMDb