The Zombie Army (1991) — Triskaidekafiles

THE ZOMBIE ARMY

WRITER: Roger Scearce

DIRECTOR: Betty Stapleford

QUICK CUT: An old building gets renovated, and stirs up forgotten secrets.

THE MORGUE

You will notice I didn’t list actors this week. Because they’re barely an afterthought in this movie. They get listed at the very end, there’s no character names, half the characters don’t even have given names. It’s a mess. And beyond that, there’s really only like…three people who have a personality beyond “soldier”.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Enough of this foreign filmed movie nonsense. This is AMERICA, and we speak AMERICAN in our AMERICAN movies, all about the great US Army! And their zombies! Wait what?! Yep, for the holiday celebration, I am taking a look at the Zombie Army. An...interesting movie, to say the least. Ten hut! MARCH!

The movie opens up in a busy classroom as Doctor Miller and his associate get ready to teach them all about mental disorders. Specifically, the assistant teacher doctor goes into "idiot savants" and how they come about from cycles of fixation and regression, and ooohh I am already cringing at the late 80s take on autism.

As the younger doctor goes on, I cringe more, as they seem to be conflating a lot of things. But as for important plot bits, he starts talking about a patient named Jim who murdered his little sister. However, after he was committed, he became Doctor Miller's greatest success.

Oh, that wig is straight out of the CW wardrobe department.

Jim only seemed normal though, as he became quite good at mimicry, especially of Doctor Miller, and if you can see where this is going, well...let me cut to the chase; yes, the "doctor" talking about Jim's case file, is indeed Jim himself.

When it's revealed, and it's time for Jim to go back to his room, he naturally doesn't want to go. His supposedly calm demeanor disappears, and he gets into a struggle with other doctors until they knock him out.

Later in his room, Jim starts setting toy army men on fire and melting the plastic and WHO LET HIM HAVE A LIGHTER??

While the doctors try and follow the smell of burning plastic, Jim's nymphomaniac gal pal shows up, and they find them playing doctor. ...Sorry, it was too good to resist.

Instead of taking them to separate rooms or therapy, or anything normal, some of the orderlies take the couple and look them in a closet somewhere.

At which point they get the word that the place is being shut down, and the patients moved elsewhere. Like...immediately. No no, faster than that. I am not joking, the hospital shuts down that very second, leaving the two psychos in love trapped in the closet.

The movie then jumps to the present of 1989, which is at least SOME ways away from the earlier scenes, as will become clear. The army is rolling in, as they have acquired the grounds to turn into a training camp.

We get a tour of the place which doesn't really set up any sort of geography, since it's a bunch of random halls and underground tunnels, that are an absolute mess. It actually looks like they’re walking BEHIND the walls in some cases, which is a handy way to reuse the back side of your sets, I guess. They comment that the whole place is like a maze, probably to justify nothing comes together right.

The movie spends the next little while focusing on soldiers Bell and Martinez, and let me tell you, it is a miracle they have names, as they wander the halls and snark about the place's former patients.

I may not know art, but I know what I like!

Eventually, they go looking to see if there are any drugs left laying around they can claim, and go wandering through the empty halls.

They open up a door, and somewhere in the bowels of the facility, a considerably older Jim and the nympho smell fresh air, and realise the door is open after all these years.

Now...the door the soldiers open is made up to vaguely resemble the one the inmates were tossed into, but it...can't be, for a number of reasons. Most notably, it is literally half the size. I'm going to assume they're two different doors to the facility's underground lair.

After much padding, they resume their search for drugs, but Jim finds them first, and kills them.

He drags both bodies to the shock therapy room to...I don't even know. I mean, he's going to give them shock therapy, obvs, but I dunno what he hopes to accomplish.

Jim also repeats almost every line of his dialogue. He and this movie are starting to remind me of Carl Sukenick. I have yet to decide how much of an insult is intended with that comparison.

His first attempt ends up with an exploding head, and rather than call it a night, Jim plugs in the next soldier.

And I am genuinely upset that whatever he was doing gets results, when the soldier comes back to life, eager to obey the faux doctor. So, the trio head off to find more ‘patients’ to 'convert.

Which doesn't take all that long, as more soldiers come looking for Martinez and Bell. And if those two soldiers kill two more soldiers and they kill two more soldiers...

This...goes on for quite awhile, as the titular zombie army grows. On the upside, a lot of random deaths. On the downside, lots of people I couldn't care less about.

Finally, the army gets tired of sending men to their death, and they decide to try something different; sending WOMEN to their deaths!

Someone thinks they’re freakin’ G.I. Joe in this.

The captain brings in the "Lethal Ladies"; an experimental unit of all women, who have a lot to prove.

We are treated to probably what is intended to be the highlight of the movie, but it is a low bar, as the "Lethal Ladies" get their own theme song as they stomp through the compound and it's underground tunnels...AND GET ABSOLUTELY WRECKED.

Oh, it's also worth noting that the Lethal Ladies are also wandering the halls with several of the male soldiers, so going through the trouble to introduce an all female squad is pretty pointless. Especially with how little we are introduced to any one. Just more meat thrown into the grinder.

Meanwhile, and this a truly egregious meanwhile, some random guy who claims he's a soldier is walking to the asylum, when a woman stops to give him a lift. There is a lot of flirting, and she offers to show him around the old tunnels and...this is like the scene you START the movie with.

But enough of that! We have to wander through the halls some more to questionable rock music! At least this is when the zombies finally show up to kill everyone.

Elsewhere, two of the soldiers have come across a file storage room, and found two files stored under "missing" for Jim, and Mary. So, they knew these patients were missing, enough to take the time to note it in their files, and didn't think to check the closet??

Before they can get too far, more zombies show up to attack them. One of the soldier's sacrifices himself so the Lethal Lady can get the intel back to their bosses.

In Jim's file, it mentions that he liked to burn toy soldiers, and she makes the MASSIVE leap in logic that since he's missing, and burned toy soldiers, he MUST be responsible for all this. And I hate that this stupid reasoning is right.

She realises that she stopped one with some drain cleaner, it was probably acid, so they pop on down to the garage, and fill up a ton of sprayers with battery acid. Okay, this is my ignorance, but would a place like this have that just...sitting around in drums? Some quick searching shows that yes, this is a thing, so just ignore me.

Whatever, fine. Battery acid. It does the trick, as the spraying makes quick work of cleaning out the zombies. So much so that this feels...really anticlimactic.

Finally, the soldiers come across the two lovebirds screwing in one of the rooms, and acid bath the pair of them, on sight.

They assume those two were the missing patients and call it a day, leaving the two inmates to run the asylum.

At least, soldier!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks all right, for a 1990ish shot on video movie, which isn’t saying much. It is what it is. This all leads to the tunnel scenes being very red tinged and eerie looking.

Audio: Not much to write home about.

Sound Bite: “More patients! More therapy”

Body Count: What it lacks in plot or characterisation, Zombie Army makes up for in corpses. And keep in mind that, even BESIDES all these, there are a few massacres that happen quickly that I just couldn’t keep track of.

1 - A little short of two and a half minutes, and Jim kills his sister in flashback.
2 - And then we are told he murdered his mother
3 - And his girlfriend
4 - Grown up Jim snaps Bell's neck
5 - He then bludgeons Martinez
6 - And later bludgeons another soldier
7 - And Zombartinez kills another
8 - And then just...a whole bunch of soldiers get killed and zombified
9 - The zombie army kills a soldier
10 - And then another
11 - Then at least one more
12 - The zombie army eats a lethal lady
13 - Beats up another
14 - Tears the eyes out of another
15 - A lethal lady shoots a zombie army in the face repeatedly
16 - The entire zombie army is stopped in ten seconds by battery acid
17 - Another two zombies get an acid bath
18 - Zombie Kim gets melted
19 - Another pair of zombie soldiers is melted down
20 - And then another two
21 - The random girl gets shot
22 - The random soldier she's screwing is also shot

Best Corpse: Spoiled for choices here…I’m kinda partial to the girl who gets her eyes ripped out.

Blood Type - B+: Lots of blood, lots of guts, lots of melted bodies. None of it is really believable, but there sure is a lot of it.

Sex Appeal: You know what, I can’t recall a single boob, just teases.

Drink Up! Every time Jim demands more patients.

Movie Review: On the surface, this has a straighforward, if absurd, plot. It’s kinda right up there with Garden of the Dead. Escaped mental patient accidentally creates zombies, and they run rampant over an army base. But beyond that, this movie is such a mess. Characters barely exist, outside of like…three people. Scenes just kinda happen. The Lethal Ladies are barely a thing, when the movie could, and should, have been built around that idea. The random soldier showing up last minute to give them an excuse to think Jim is dead. Just kinda marching through tunnels and getting straight up murdered. This movie just kinda casually flaunts any and all storytelling conventions. I do actually respect the “Wouldn’t this look cool??” energy the movie has with some bits, and wish it had done more of that. It’s worth checking out just for the ridiculousness of it all. There’s really nothing else quite like it. One out of fove zombies.

Entertainment Value: I kinda covered my main thoughts on this in the last section. There’s some fun here, there’s plenty of blood and cartoonish gore. There are plenty of mistakes to spot, which they actually leaned into when the movie came out, with a contest to list them all. I would love to know if anyone won that, and what the list is. It’s campy, it’s silly, and while you never care about anyone, the movie is constantly throwing stuff at the wall, so at least it’s never boring. Three out of five armies.