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THE DEAD NEXT DOOR
This no-budget eighties zombie epic isn’t much from a technical standpoint but has a real low-rent charm, and enough creative bloodletting to fill a dozen mainstream gorefests. It’s deeply flawed, in other words, but for true gorehounds impossible not to enjoy!
The Package
1988’s THE DEAD NEXT DOOR was the first, and in my opinion best, film by
Ohio’s J.R. Bookwalter. Later Bookwalter flicks like ROBOT NINJA, OZONE and
THE
SANDMAN, all made for his shitty movie outfit Tempe Video, have little to
recommend them, but THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, created when the filmmaker was just
eighteen, has an infectious innocence and enthusiasm the later films lack. It
was shot on Super-8mm and lensed in the filmmaker’s hometown of Akron, Ohio.
The full story of the making of this micro epic is
documented in Bookwalter’s self-published 1992 tome B-MOVIES IN THE 90’s AND
BEYOND, probably pretty hard to find now but required reading for all DEAD NEXT
DOOR fans (of which I know there are quite a few). It contains the full scoop
on what happened during an infamous sequence shot in Washington, D.C., when
Bookwalter and co., according to the book, had “no permits, no guards, and, in
hindsight, no common sense!” They filmed zombie extras climbing the gates of
the White House and were busted by the Secret Service, who eventually let them
go. (I wonder what would have happened had they tried that stunt today?)
The reported $100,000 budget, making it perhaps the
most expensive Super-8mm film ever made in 1988, came from the pockets of a
famous Detroit-based filmmaker who to this day won’t allow his name anywhere
near THE DEAD NEXT DOOR (a dictum that extends to the Anchor Bay DVD extras,
which in the making-of segment has the person’s moniker beeped out). I’ll honor
the executive producer’s wish to remain anonymous, even though I’ve never
understood his reasoning, but will say this: it’s not for nothing that a pivotal
character is named Raimi.
The Story
For no apparent reason the dead have begun to rise throughout Akron, Ohio.
The situation reaches crisis status extremely quickly: zombies pack a football
field, a fast food joint is ransacked, a radio station is infiltrated by the
living dead and reruns of THE JEFFERSONS and SANFORD AND SON are preempted.\
Cut to several years later, when the living dead have overrun the entire
US. A Zombie Squad is formed to hunt down and destroy the zombie hordes, led by
the gruff Raimi and his buddy Mercer. But one day Mercer is bit by a zombie,
which, as we all know, means he’ll become a zombie himself. There’s good news
on the horizon, though: an antidote is being developed that promises to reverse
the effects of the living dead virus. The bad news: the restorative elements
are in the hands of Reverend Jones, a psychotic cult leader who entraps zombies
in his basement for use in his weird religious practices. Raimi and his
surviving Zombie Squad colleagues decide to kidnap a zombie the Reverend Jones
has injected with the serum (it’s his “pet”), but this causes a mini-war, with
Jones and his living dead minions coming after Raimi and co., leading to an all
out zombie mash few will survive--and there’s still the question of whether the
serum even works...
The Direction
This film has such low-rent charm that I’m willing to overlook the
washed-out 8mm stock (only slightly crisper in the remastered DVD edition),
wildly derivative storyline (this is very much a fan-made “tribute” picture and
it shows), tacky synthesizer muzak (composed by the filmmaker himself, evidently
not much of a musician) and many, many technical problems (wobbly camerawork,
loose compositions, stilted acting, erratic pacing, etc.), as there’s so much
down-and-dirty fun to be had. The gore effects are for the most part
impressive, and accomplished with a brilliance that often crosses the line into
out-and-out genius--check out the zombie who bites off a man’s hands and then
gets decapitated, with the bitten-off fingers visibly twitching in the exposed
neck!
J.R. Bookwalter doesn’t let the fact that he’s saddled with a joke budget
deter him from making an epic. With scenes of the living dead flanking the
Lincoln Memorial and a mind-blowing aerial shot of what looks like hundreds of
zombies converging on a football field, this film has a scale that outdoes just
about any of George Romero’s films, even if it falls far short quality-wise.
Vital Statistics
THE DEAD NEXT DOOR
Tempe Entertainment/Amsco Studios
Director/Producer/Screenwriter/Editor: J.R. Bookwalter
Cinematography: Michael Tolochko, Jr.
Cast: Peter Ferry, Bogdan Pecic, Jolie Jackanus, Robert Kokai, Floyd Ewing, Jr.,
Roger Graham, Maria Markovic, Jon Killough, Scott Spiegel, Jeff Welch, Michael
Todd, J.R. Bookwalter, Jennifer Mullen, Joe Wedlake, Lester Clark, Michael
Tolochko, Barbara Gay, Bill Morrison, Kelly Helmick, Bruce Campbell