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Review

Oh, what horrors Night of the Living Dead hath wrought – and I don’t necessarily mean the good kind of horrors, either. We may all wholeheartedly approve of the European zombie rip-offs that followed in the wake of George Romero’s 1968 classic Night, and particularly those that came after its sequel Dawn of the Dead, but the homegrown Pittsburgh genre efforts made to capitalize on their filmmakers’ associations with Romero are another matter altogether. Case in point: Flesheater, an ultra-low-budget 1988 gorefest directed by Bill Hinzman, a Pittsburgh industrial filmmaker whose claim to genre fame rests with his portrayal of the inaugural graveyard zombie at the opening of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (he later served as cinematographer for Romero’s underrated The Crazies). Away from the Romero camp, Hinzman directed two horror films in the 80s, the slasher movie The Majorettes, and Flesheater, a 16mm zombie shocker with production values that make the earlier Majorettes seem like Ben Hur, and performances that must rank among the horror genre’s all-time worst. But you have to hand it to Hinzman, for his film certainly delivers in the exploitation department: gratuitous nudity abounds (one post-shower zombie attack is notably explicit), and the frequent bloodshed is gleefully grisly in that rubbery 80s horror movie kind of way. The story is formulaic and paper-thin, as a group of partying teens – guys providing performances that would have them kicked out of a community theater group and back into their fraternity, girls resplendent with big 80s hair, bad skin, and acid-washed denim wardrobe – are forced to flee an ever-expanding army of flesh-eating undead. But Hinzman’s film does have an undeniable no-budget “Let’s put on a show!” DIY appeal, and he also makes effective use of the autumnal rural locations of northern Pennsylvania. Romero threatened to sue at the time of the film’s release (the film is rather cheekily subtitled Revenge of the Living Dead), and many viewers may wind up considering a class-action lawsuit of their own after they sit through this one, but Flesheater has its modest charms, and it does deliver the blood-drenched goods.

 -- Travis Crawford