Title: The Dead Next Door (1988)

Director: J.R. Bookwalter

Cast: Pete Ferry, Bogdan Pecic, Michael Grossi, Robert Kokai

Review: When I was starting out as a horror fan, I tried to get myself up to date with as many horror films as I could. I wanted to become an expert so I quickly rented/bought as many horror films as I could get my monkey paws on. In my research across the net for films that I had not seen, one name constantly came up whenever zombie films were mentioned: The Dead Next Door. So boy was I ever happy when I head this film would finally make its way on to DVD! My curiosity for this hard to find zombie flick would finally be quenched!

As in many if not all zombie movies, the world is being inexplicably overrun by hoards of the undead. As a counter measure the government of the United States creates a "zombie squad". A group of heavily armed government funded soldiers who's mission is to go around destroying as many zombies as they can. But hold on. Not everyone in this world wants zombies to be destroyed. There's this religious cult who wants nothing more then to let the zombies roam free in the world. And if God wants to exterminate humans by sending the zombies to do the job for him...then so be it!

OK, first off. This movie is low budget. And I'm not talking House of the Dead low budget, where a director gets a few million dollars to make his zombie opus. I'm talking really low budget. The type of low budget were everybody works for free (even the actors!) and the extras are all your friends. I'm talking about those independent films where one ambitious fan boy (in this case director J.R. Bookwalter) will do anything to make his own horror film as a homage to all his horror heroes. Its very similar to other ultra low budget horror fare like The Deadly Spawn and Leif Jonkers Darkness. Films that were made solely because there's people out there who love horror films, want to have some fun and have tons and tons of imagination.

The fan boy element can be seen right from the get go, where the movie opens up with an actual zombie going into a video store...selecting Dawn of the Dead, The Evil Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Creepshow from the store shelf, going up to the video store clerk and eating him alive. Also most of the characters in the film are named after a famous horror director. Be ready for most of the characters calling each other Raimi, Carpenter, King, Jason, Vincent and so on. So its obvious that the makers of this film are horror buffs.

In spite of its meager budget the film managed be very interesting. There's a lot of cool little ideas thrown here and there that I had not seen on any other zombie flick. For example before Land of the Dead ever came up with their own little zombie killing squad, this movie had already thought it up. I loved the idea of that. I also loved the idea about a religious cult who think that zombies should be left alone since they were sent by God to destroy humanity and make them pay for their sins. And I had never seen zombies with restraints in their faces so they couldn't bite you! Cool ideas even though you have little money to make your movie.

I also liked the make up effects which were actually pretty cool. He is uncredited but director Sam Raimi secretly funded this movie pitching in with a little money...and its obvious that that little bit of money went to the zombie effects. There's some cool looking rotting corpses in here and I gotta give the movie kudos for that.

On the downside the film looks like if it was lit with a flashlight. And I'm not exaggerating, sometimes actors are on the scene and they don't even show up because its so dark! The quality of the lighting was what really messed up this film. If only it had been well lit, it wouldn't feel so amateurish. As it is, you can tell that these were just a bunch of kids learning how to make a movie. Which isn't bad because as a result the film has a certain energy and imagination that other films lack, but on a technological level the movie suffered.

The acting is pretty bad as well. I'm not going to go into just how bad some of the performances are cause it kind of gives the film a certain fun element of goofiness. I actually dug the bad dialog and the bad acting.

All in all, not a bad zombie film. There's a lot of gore and zombie action to keep any zombie fan happy. I mean every five seconds there's a zombie related incident that usually ends up with some one getting their throats ripped off in a very Tom Savini kind of way. You know, lots of tendons and muscles. So anyhows, even though this film is so very low budget, the love and energy and imagination put into it shows. And it translates into an enjoyable and fun (yet cheap) zombie film.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Zombies are everywhere. So who are you going to call? The Zombie Squad! These lucky paramilitary units track down and kill zombies so we can live safely. Unfortunately, the biggest hazard of the job isn't death -- it's undeath.

The creation of the film is just as interesting as the film itself. For example, producer and casting director Jolie Jackunas came on board early because she and Bookwalter had a mutual friend in Sam Raimi. Exactly how Bookwalter knew Raimi remains unclear, as Bookwalter is from Ohio and had no prior film experience. Jackunas had been involved with "Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except" (1985),a Raimi-Spiegel-Campbell adventure, so that makes sense. (Also in this Raimi mix, though lesser-known, was Josh Becker, the director on "Thou Shalt" who was also connected to "Xena" and other projects.)

The movie was produced and shot over nearly four years, in Akron, Ohio. Although unsure of the exact figure, in an interview director J. R. Bookwalter estimated that the film cost $125,000 to produce. The low budget is evident, particularly because the cameras used were Super-8. But honestly, Bookwalter did more with $125,000 than others have done with 100 times as much.

Perhaps this film is an acquired taste. Gregg Dumont at Killer Reviews is not a fan, saying that only a tiny percentage of people will enjoy it. Maybe he is right. Maybe not. If it helps, you can view it as a Sam Raimi peripheral project. Raimi produced it, Scott Spiegel appears in it and Bruce Campbell does voiceovers for two of the characters. So while this is the child of J. R. Bookwalter, Raimi and friends had their fingers all over this one.

The plot is nothing we have not seen before and the acting merely average. However, the characters are great and really funny (particularly the doctor with the hat that says "Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken"). Some people might get turned off by the voiceovers, but sometimes that is necessary (and they have since been fixed on the Blu-ray). This is independent film-making at its finest.

If you like "Return of the Living Dead", you will probably like this movie. It is not a very serious take on zombies, but they are completely serious with the makeup and special effects -- some of the best you will ever see in a low-budget film. The creatures, the blood and everything are amazing. In one scene, they behead a zombie -- not only is the headless corpse awesome, but then they top that by showing the head chew on and swallow a finger, having it slide out through the neck! You do not find effects of this quality even on the best horror films.

Do not listen to Gregg Dumont -- give this one a chance. Not all zombie films can be big-budget George A. Romero blockbusters (although this film does pay homage to them in the opening scene). Some have to be low budget, and some have to be funny, and some have to take zombies less seriously. This is that film, and if you like things like "Cemetery Man", you might really enjoy the mood of this one.

As far as the Blu-ray goes, the 2K scan seems somewhat silly because the original film was not a format that can be cleaned up all that well. (Again, it is the Super-8 home video format.) Still blurry even with the touch-ups, it has that grainy quality that made watching horror on VHS fun. The original voices are back, rather than the dubs from Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi. This is a bit odd for those used to the dub, but it is a definite improvement to the film's purity.

There is an all-new audio commentary with three of the producers. They are very careful to only say "Master Cylinder" rather than the financier's real name. There is a second new commentary with makeup artist David Lange. A new tour of Akron. A new interview with Scott Spiegel. And many, many other features. All told, it would be hard to count how many hours of bonus material is on this 2-disc set from Tempe Entertainment.

A low-budget zombie epic set in Akron, Ohio, The Dead Next Door is seriously hampered by uniformly dreadful turns from its entire cast, and writer/director J.R. Bookwalter's total inability to perform either role with any degree of competence or originality. Bookwalter, however, clearly isn't bothered by the fact that his players lack even the most basic of acting skills, that much of his material is obviously cribbed from George Romero's Day of the Dead (including a bargain basement version of classic zombie 'Bub'),or that he patently possesses zero talent as a scribe or behind the camera: he just soldiers on regardless, hoping that an excess of splattery gore will compensate for his pitiful performers, the uninspired plot, and derivative visuals.

To be fair, the cheap and cheerful effects do go a long way towards making this film just about bearable, and I guess Bookwalter should be commended for getting such an ambitious project off the ground in the first place—after all, convincing so many Akron locals to don crap make-up and chew on offal for such a patently putrid project is an impressive feat in itself—but that still doesn't make up for the fact that this is zombie trash of the most pedestrian kind.

A generous 4 out of 10 for the gore, minus one point for the characters being named after horror movie luminaries—Bookwalter couldn't even manage to be original there (this idea having been well and truly done to death in Night of the Creeps three years earlier).