Swamp Zombies!!! (2005)

Directed by Len Kabasinski [Other horror films: Curse of the Wolf (2006), Fist of the Vampire (2007), Wendigo: Bound by Blood (2010), Ninja: Prophecy of Death (2011), Skull Forest (2012), Blood Mercury (2014), Angel of Reckoning (2016), Blood Prism (2017), Swamp Zombies 2 (2018), Schlock-O-Rama (2018, segment ‘Film Trailer’)]

This is a film I have somewhat mixed views on. Certainly Swamp Zombies!!!, at a two-hour run time, is a bit much. They certainly could have cut more than a bit of it out, and the movie would be a more digestible one. At the same time, there’s a certain element of fun to be had here (and given the rather low ratings the movie generally receives, I admit it may just be me), so I still find value in it.

Being a very low-budget movie, there’s not much in the way of performances that are particularly good. However, there were a few individuals who stood out somewhat positively, not because of their acting, but their solid fighting skills (Swamp Zombies!!! is virtually a kung-fu movie at times). Len Kabasinski (who is also the director of this film) has much of the fighting sequences, and he’s decently fun to watch. Certainly he’s one of the most kick-ass park rangers I know. Brian Heffron (who randomly had an origin flashback for some reason) and Dan Severn (who unfortunately didn’t appear much) also got some good fright scenes in.

Overall, the story is about as uninteresting as you could expect, and the zombie attacks, along with the fighting back, are as repetitive as zombie movies tend to be. Gore-wise, nothing really stood out, and while I had no big issues with the lower-budget special effects, I do sort of wish there was a bit more variety insofar as the zombies were concerned.

Another thing that Swamp Zombies!!! threw in was quite a bit of nudity. I guess that’s one way to keep people watching, and admittedly some of the ladies were pretty attractive, but when there’s a woman showering for a few minutes, rubbing soap over her breasts multiple times, adding nothing to the story, I can’t pretend I wasn’t a little bored.

This said, Swamp Zombies!!! is probably the exact type of movie you would expect if asked to imagine a low-budget zombie film. It runs on far too long, but there’s still fun fight sequences and solid neck-snappings to keep us moderately engaged. I saw this once before, and to be honest, I forget what I really thought about it, but seeing it again, while it’s far from being a good movie, I was amused enough to see that, despite how bad many think it is, I almost liked it. I probably wouldn’t recommend this to anyone else, though.

6/10