Friday, June 21, 2013

Raiders of the Living Dead (1986)

A mess of a movie involving a reporter looking for a story who discovers science gone wrong and zombies, and a teenager who invents a laser weapon and kills a hamster.

Reporter Randall limps down the road after being chased away from a story. After seeing him hit by a truck he tried to flag down, Shelly stops her car.  At first it looks like Shelly is trying to steal his wallet, but she helps him to his feet, brings him home, cleans him up and feeds him.

Then Randall rents a room at a rooming house while carrying a shotgun wrapped in brown paper, which you'd think would make the landlady think twice, but she doesn't seem to notice it.  He has no other luggage so it's really obvious.

Argh!  Closet zombie!  How'd it get up to the top floor of the boarding house without being seen?  Oh man, damn those tricky closets.  Randall runs away, but doesn't warn his land lady that there's a zombie in the house.  Not cool, Randall, not cool.

Meanwhile teenage Johnathan destroys his grandpa's laser disc player, while using it to build a laser weapon.  In the process, he kills a hamster and intrigues his friend Michelle. The surprising thing is that it actually works.

Eventually Randall and Johnathan team up to fight the reanimated corpses using arrows and the laser.  The laser blasts were made by scratching the film, which is pretty cool, but primitive, special effects. Johnathan is played by Scott Schwartz, who played Flick and got his tongue stuck to a metal flag pole in A Christmas Story.


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