"I Was a Teenage Zombie"

Stink Yard Article #B5

Reviewed by:

Giggles

Kill Count: 7

Rating:

(2 outta 5)

Let's for a moment believe that we're retarded. Even if you're mildly slow, or maybe severely slow (maybe you're still on the word "Let's"), I still want you to bare with me and pretend now.

. . . Getting dizzy?

Okay. Now pick yourself off the ground, change your underpants, wipe the slobber from your chin. You've just experienced the metaphysical version of I Was a Teenage Zombie.

Guess we have to talk about the film version now. Emm-hm. Thought so. You're always keeping me on track. Thanks.

We start the film with a girl being molested by some grabby Jay Mohr-looking fellow. This is a high school class but, of course, all the kids are the age of college juniors. The children of the eighties were held back often, it would seem.

The main character makes Rocky Balboa look like a scholar and his best friend resembles the guy who always gets his underwear pulled over his head in lockerooms. Basically our two main characters are shiftless layouts that ditch school to go score weed. And it's not just the (pardon me) garden-variety kind either. It ends up being so bad that the guy in the striped shirt starts to puke. Chronic-bubonic everyone!

This pimpish dude sells them the weed. The movie never makes clear exactly what the weed was laced with, or if it wasn't weed at all. The movie doesn't give a shit and neither do we. We're twenty minutes into the fuckin' thing and haven't seen one flesh-eater yet.

The group of THC starving lads seek out some hippie to score pot, but it seems that he has every drug ever conceived by the human race except for "marijahoobie."

The hippie guy has to be the worst throwaway character in the history of cinema. Don't get me wrong. Most of the characters in this movie are worth trash canning, but this guy should have been an extra or something, maybe a body double for someone falling off a building into a pool of broken glass. Anything except this role. I hate my brain for even remembering his performance.

Some shady happens are going on with the boys' weed-salesman, from what we gathered. Neither myself, nor my good movie watching pal, Shortstick, had a clue what this scene had to do with the lame story in-progress, but we just let it slide. Plus we weren't paying much attention because we were wondering why Reggie Jackson would ever take such a role.

And why David Schwimmer fucked a rat and had himself some kind of weird rodent-offspring he never told anyone about.

From there the questions didn't cease to arise either. Were there really still GREASERS in the eighties? That's an astounding historical piece o' trivia that caught me completely unawares.

Lloyd Bridges recalls when he was younger and there wasn't much weed in town to go around.

"Ah the dry seasons," he mused, licking his lips. "Some would go mad at first, while others would just stare blankly out the windows, moving their thumbs over invisible lighters, which were held in front of invisible bongs. Sad, very sad. And it only got tougher. It was really difficult when we smelled burning incense or saw any color that happened to be part of the tie-dye rainbow. Those were the dark times, boys."

---

Moving on with the real story behind this movie... The boys have confronted the weed dealer, Mouslini, to ask for their money back. He won't refund them and things get physical.

Here's a memorable quote (a real one this time. I promise):

"I'm gonna shishkabob Mouslini's asshole when we find him!"

Bet you never thought you'd read that sentence, huh?

The main character, however, has some sort of psychotic episode where he dreams of clubbing Mouslini, the dealer, while wearing a baseball uniform (actually, we're supposed to believe the guy's just daydreaming about hitting a homerun, but I don't buy it. The guy's nuckin futs).

They think they've killed Mouslini, but he comes back and yadda-three-times--- it's I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, only with thrice the stupidity.

I hope to look this good when a baseball bat goes careening off my shattered eye-socket.

God that girl's skinny. She's about a voluptuous as a tumble weed.

Anyway. Anyway. Any WAY! The rest of the story is run down like this: the weed dealer becomes a zombie and starts killing everyone. The main character also becomes a zombie, but he's the gentle, goofy kind, I guess. That's it in a shell and It's by far the scariest after school special I've ever seen.

Tongue sandwiches are only suitable for some palates.

Mouslini goes on a rampage where he murders teenagers, sometimes eating them, sometimes raping them (sadly, the movie, ha-ha, still thinks it's a comedy). There's one scene that struck me as humorous though. Mouslini bites off this guy's tongue and then, becoming almost stoic with conviction, pops the maimed tongue into his mouth like a gummy shark or something. Gulp! YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Don't take that shit from him, Hunter S!
"Tell me about the fucking golf-shoes man!"

This dude's makeup shifts from Beast-blue to Smurf-blue to Violet, back to Smurf, mostly Smurf, to Nightcrawler and then returns to Smurf again. They must have fired and hired seven or eight makeup-artists for this movie, but strangely all of them inherently knew that zombies must be blue-tinged. There seemed to be no debating that well known fact, but the shade of blue was always up for interpretation.

The Teenager Zombie does have a nice love-interest though. He can sure pick 'em. I'm talking about the girl in the pink, just to be clear.

Maybe Papa-Smurf has some ointment for that skin condition there, young man.

The infamous John Woo deleted "Face/Off" scene.

Y'all ready for the Zombie-Shuffle?

I suppose the bottom line here is entertainment. This movie isn't as stinky as some bad horror movies, but it tries. Believe me, it does. There's a certain distasteful side to it, but it's just so dumb, corny and ridiculous that you can't even process it in a serious way. The ending actually has the nerve to attempt to move us. Puh-lease!

Perhaps this was the movie that inspired MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK, and I know some people who actually liked the latter. Well, I wasn't a fan, but I'd watch My Boyfriend twice, forward and backwards, before watching another second of this one again.

And maybe even take a bite of tongue, for good measure.