I watched Zombie Werewolves Attack because I was looking for something on Amazon Prime that was (A) short, and (B) made in the 80s. (To keep things fresh during this movie a day thing, I try to not watch too many movies made in the same era consecutively.) The Roku Amazon app had this listed as being made in 1984. But that's a pretty obvious typo, and this is clearly a 2000's shot-on-consumer-grade camera deal. But I guess qualification (A) won out, because I finished the darn thing.
My synopsis: A strain of werewolfism breaks out in a small Canadian town. (At least it feels small-townish - there are only like 3 locations in the whole film so who knows what it actually is.) A group of twenty-something friends try to survive the night when "Zombie" Werewolves Attack!
Elaborate genre: Werewolf Microbudget Comedy. Notice the lack of "zombie" here. Zombie Werewolves Attack has zero to do with zombies. No one's coming back to life or anything of the sort. I expect it was just trickily named to capitalize on the zombie craze... that's our Troma!
Overall: Not that good. You want to cut it some slack (considering how low budget / independent it is). But it's got a bad script, bad acting, and takes a *long* time to get going.
So, if you can't stomach microbudgeted homemade horror films, definitely don't bother with with Zombie Werewolves Attack. It's the type of flick where your werewolves get masks and gloves, and that's about it. It's clearly shot around on location and I'd guess at a parents house (or at least somewhere that can't be stained with fake blood, as a guy gets his arm ripped off and no blood comes out). The lighting and camerawork leave a lot to be desired, and it sometimes recycles shots you've seen earlier in the film. Pretty much everything about it is amateurish. So it goes with these types of films - I guess you know from the get go what you're getting into.
But I'm always willing to give poor technical qualities or bad acting a pass if you get a decent story, or a little charm, or a clever take on a subgenre, or even just a decent amount of dumb humor. But unfortunately Zombie Werewolves Attack is lacking in all of these departments.
The story takes a *very* long time to get going. For the first half-hour or so (well over a third of the movie), it's pretty much just a bunch of stoners playing video games and bitching about their jobs. The three super-stoners here are played way too broad and are *super* obnoxious. And the script has problems on multiple levels. It sets up conflicts and never mentions them again (a potential love triangle situation), or finds a conflict and drives it into the ground, saying the same thing over and over again (see: the argument about whether they should kill a friend who was bitten and has turned into a werewolf). Overall, the whole thing just feels rushed and sloppy - like just getting a script period was more important than getting a good one. I will give it credit for one cool idea - the lead werewolf tries to avoid turning by timing it so he's on international flights during the full moon. I haven't figured out if that actually makes sense, but it's at least an interesting concept.
The makeup is pretty average for this sort of thing. They obviously don't have a ton of money to work with, but it's a step up from Halloween masks. They at least try to blend things in a bit. But the makeup goodwill is wasted by the attack scenes - limbs come off an there's no blood, and the bites/whatever look kind of crummy.
But again, it's easy to look past this stuff if you've got some good humor or interesting characters. But there's only a couple of jokes that land in the film, and everyone as a character is either annoying or very bland. Their inherent Canadian charm can only get them so far. Plus, a lot of the characters are essentially interchangeable - the two male leads, the two women in the group, and the two stoners are more or less the same characters. No one does much of anything (in the script, or performance-wise) to make them stick out.
Ultimately, Zombie Werewolves Attack is just kind of a rough watch. A solid B for effort (I do think there's some heart here, and you get a decent dream sequence out of the deal). But it never comes together in a way that's fun enough to justify a viewing.
I would not recommend this film.
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