Zombie movies are truly a dime a dozen. But one must wonder, what would a zombie be like outside of present times. Luckily, modern cinema gives us the answers to all of the world's toughest questions. For example, what would happen if zombies had gotten loose in the wild, wild west?
Fortunately for us, we have the opportunity to watch cowboys battle zombies in Glasgow Philips recent film, Undead or Alive.
The Set Up
The movie starts by identifying itself for what it is, a zombedy. All clever phonology aside, the scope of the movie is amplified through an elongated intro that hardly takes itself seriously. Apparently after Geronimo was killed, he enacted a curse onto all white men, sending them into a state of living death. The film transitions to show Ben, whom is the first zombie, attacking and killing his family in a brutal fashion.
From here, we are introduced to our two protagonists, James Denton and Chris Kattan (yes, that is the same Kattan from Saturday Night Live). The pair make acquaintance after a bar fight lands them in the county jail. It is there that, after being robbed by the unjust sheriff (Matt Besser, Walk Hard, Drillbit Taylor), they decide to pair up, escape jail, and get their money back. After an easy escape, the duo finds the sheriff and they steal back their money. But, after heading back to the jail to round up a posse, the sheriff and his dimwitted deputy are bitten by Ben and turned into zombies. To make a long (and boring) story short, the sheriff turns his posse into zombies and they chase the duo (who run into Geronimo's Niece, Sue, played by Navi Rawat) through the desert, turning everyone they encounter into zombies. There are some pretty nasty death scenes, gritty dialogue, explosions, and a zombie sword fighting a cowboy.
The Next Step For Zombies
Like most zombie movies, Undead or Alive follows the zombie archetypes pretty strictly. However, the film does lend itself to a few, clever new techniques. Because the time frame of the film is outside the realm of most zombie movies, the characteristics of the zombies have clearly changed a little. The zombies have adapted their human characteristics and have the ability to communicate, think, adapt, and feel. It almost seems like the zombies are the culmination of the direction that George A. Romero took in his zombie chronicles.
But, like other infection films (28 Days Later, Resident Evil) the disease changes carriers through bite and blood. What is interesting, however, is how the film eludes to early cinematic zombie movies by using a curse as a reason for the epidemic. Much like White Zombie (and others), zombies were the result of a voodoo curse. Essentially, what this does is offer a connection between classic zombie cinema and modern zombie cinema. The bridge is further illustrated during the films climax, which shows the zombie gene being quenched through Geronimo's flesh, not a scientific cure (or any other government related subplot).
