Search - Zombie Aftermath on DVD

The quality is awful, but the story is watchable

C. Kelley | 09/23/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I bought a copy of Zombie Aftermath on DVD to replace my friend's aging copy on VHS. I bought this mostly for nostalgia reasons, since my old band had used a sequence from this movie in a music video back in high school. The video and audio quality are absolutely awful. This is due to the fact that it was obviously copied from a VHS version of the movie. There are occasional video glitches, and the whole package seems even worse than the original movie, if that's possible.

To prove this point, I loaded up my friend's VHS copy of the movie(originally titled 'Aftermath' in the US). Even though the VHS tape is 25 years old, the video and audio were sharper than the DVD. In fact, it's safe to say that my friend's VHS tape suffers from much less tracking noise and glitching than the DVD version. I believe this is a first for me, as I have never seen a DVD that made me yearn for the days of magenetic tape.

As far as the story goes, there are very few zombies in Zombie Aftermath. I believe the word Zombie was added to increase sales. It's the story of a group of astronauts who come back to earth, only to discover that there was a nuclear war that wiped out most of the population. There are 3 groups left---biker crazies(think Mad Max),regular people trying to cope, and mutated zombies. Sid Haig stars as the main baddie in the movie. I use the word 'stars' sparingly, since he was the only recognizable actor in the whole movie. The director did go on to star in several sub-B-grade movies, but most of those are rated worse than this movie.

Even with the quality issues and plot issues, there are still reasons to watch this movie. There is one scene near the beginning of the movie where an old man has his head blown off from a shotgun blast. The cheese factor of this effect is worth seeing a few times in slow motion, since it looks like a paper-mache head with a gray wig getting ripped off of his body. Some of the acting is decent, and Sid Haig is relatively believable. Also, the movie does have a fully-orchestrated score, which is amazing for a movie this cheesy. I have seen higher-budget movies take the canned-music route, so this was a real surprise.

Overall, this is not a terrible movie. My only real hangup is the price vs the video quality. If you can justify $13 for a cheeseball movie, buy it and enjoy it. If you ever see it available in VHS (As 'Aftermath', 'The Aftermath', or 'Zombie Aftermath'), pick it up for peanuts and forget about this dvd. Then again, this may be the last release of this movie, ever. I almost think that it should be given a viking funeral and allowed to fade into further obscurity."