Search - Thirsty Dead / Swamp of the Ravens (Something Weird) on DVD

The Thirsty Dud / Swamp Of The Bobbleheads...

Bindy Sue Frønkünschtein | under the rubble | 12/28/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"THIRSTY DEAD- Great title, terrible movie. A wimpy cult of "undead" weirdos kidnaps young ladies in order to drink their blood. Sounds wonderful. Too bad the makers of this film decided to make this theme as dreadfully dull as possible! I sat there waiting for something, anything remotely interesting to occur. Nope, just goofy people running around in loopy outfits for 88 minutes. Horrid! SWAMP OF THE RAVENS is actually pretty decent. Of course, after THIRSTY DEAD, drinking drain-cleaner might seem enjoyable! Anyway, Dr. Frosta is a scientist (of the extremely mad variety) who simply must re-animate the dead. This compulsion leads to many murders and a godawful necrophilia sequence. I was most taken aback by the number of jars w/ babies in them! The autopsy (yeah, I think it was real) part is done in such a matter-of-fact style that they might as well be carving a turkey. SOTR is worth the price of this DVD and compensates for the idiocy of the other feature..."

The Something Weird collection is an oasis in a vast desert

Travis R. Wilson | Corona, CA United States | 10/03/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Thirsty Dead

There's this tribe of ancient zombies who live in the jungles of Bangkok, or Beijing, or the Philippines, or some other such Asian province, and in order to survive and stay young they must drink the blood of beautiful young women. So, they send out their young Asian goons to go to the strip joints, and the red lamp houses to kidnap bodacious young babes and carry them back to their camp in the jungle. After one excursion they inadvertently capture a young woman who strongly resembles some goddess that they once worshiped. Apparently there was some ancient prophecy that stated she was going to return to them, so they begin treating her like a queen. The fun has only begun... NOT!

I didn't even bother to watch this film when my DVD came in the mail, because I had already seen it. I ordered this for the other movie. I rented this movie about two years ago, and the print was so old and dilapidated that it wouldn't even play on my VCR until I used the head cleaner about a dozen times to clean off the dust that was left by the tape. By the time the film was over I ended up wishing I hadn't even bothered. This film is dullsville. I rented it hoping to see a really cool zombie flick, featuring beautiful young maidens being knocked out, and carried off into mysterious dark caves. What I got instead was a low-budget mess that just reminded me of a really bad episode of Star Trek. That was the last time I trusted a movie box that had no pictures on the back.

Swamp of The Ravens

Dr. Frosta is a biochemist. He is conducting research on animals based on a theory that certain parts of the brain continue to live eight minutes after clinical brain death. Hence, with the right drug injections, the dead can be brought back. He puts forth his theory to the medical council, and requests permission to conduct further experiments on cadavers, but of course they refuse (...). Of course that doesn't stop the good Dr. He decides to ignore the council and find his own test subjects. He preys on the homeless, winos, the handicapped, even his ex-girlfriend (I'll go into more juicy detail about that later).

Needless to say, most of his experiments are failures, and his rejected test subjects get dumped into the raven-surrounded swamp outside of his home. Hence the title of the film. But a filthy swamp can only hold so many corpses, and it eventually starts to reject them, as the heads of many of the Doctor's victims begin floating up to the surface and bobbing on top of the water like apples.

Pretty good movie overall. The Pink Floyd/Moody Blues/Jimmy Hendrix style soundtrack is totally awesome and compliments the dark mood of the film rather nicely. The heads floating on the water imagery is excellent. It got me cracking-up with laughter, as a matter of fact. Maybe that's the wrong reaction, but I don't care. I still liked it. My favorite part, though, was when the Dr. kidnapped and murdered his ex-girlfriend and turned her into one of his test-subjects. Just before he conducts his final experiment on her, he decides to get one last handful of hanky panky. So, he climbs on top of her corpse and begins screwing her, and kissing her cold dead lips. Ah, yummy. That was worth the price of admission, right there.

I would have given this DVD 5 stars if not for the first film. The Thirsty Dead just wasn't very good. I think Swamp Of The Ravens would have done just fine as a stand alone film on this DVD, but of course that would break "Something Weird Video's" tradition of sticking several films on a single disc. I guess it's a good policy to have. It offers great bargains on many obscure horror films that you might not otherwise be able to find anywhere else. I still think this DVD was worth it, though, and I'll definitely be checking out the other inhabitants of the "Something Weird" catalog very soon."

Fantastic trash!

Stranger Ranger | miami, FL usa | 11/09/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I liked both these movies. They were very, very low budget films. Thirsty Dead is a bit tame, but still bizarre and fun. Swamp of the Ravens has eerie zombies and actual autopsy footage. There is an episode of some horror show with Lon Chaney, and a bunch of (i can't believe anyone would make movies like these) trailers. A super cool easter egg too."