TTT: Curse of the Cannibal Confederates (1982)

Outside of the gratuitous bikini scenes, Confederate zombies wearing Union uniforms, bad line deliveries, hilarious dialog ("You goofy bozo!"), and ancient policemen, one thing I got a kick out of from this film was the "I could make this" feeling. Just gather up a bunch of friends in a borrowed RV, grab your 8mm camera and start filming. If CCC can make it to a professionally-made DVD sold at the Borders down from my house, I should be able to do the same. What a great feeling.

I'm going to miss videotape. Nothing can enhance a bad movie like a bad tape transfer. Though I watched CCC on DVD, it quite obviously got there by way of some ancient master tape from deep in Troma's basement. During night shots -- and there's a lot of them -- the white zombie makeup smears and bleeds into the pitch-black night, leaving ghostly trails where ever the zombies move. It's surreal as all-get-out. As I drifted in and out of sleep towards the end of the movie, these blurred zombies surrounded by darkness flowed easily into dream-inspired shapes having nothing to do with the film. A pair of orange spots in the hands of zombies I assumed to be a large beetle, until I snapped into full wakefulness again and realized they were just entrails. A pile of abandoned Christmas presents turned out to be the corpse of a main character. The lead zombie's face would often resemble Cap'n Crunch.

The bad movie experience is completely subjective, which is one of the aspects I love about it.



aka The Curse of the Screaming Dead
d. Tony Malanowski