Awfully Good: Corona Zombies

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Corona Zombies (2020)

Director: Charles Band
Stars: Cody Renee Cameron, Robin Sydney, Some Italian people who have no idea they're in this

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I was not planning on ever watching CORONA ZOMBIES. Charles Band's Full Moon Features has provided Awfully Good with plenty of enjoyable content over the years (PUPPET MASTER, THE CREEPS, EVIL BONG), but an exploitation comedy capitalizing on COVID-19 seemed crass at best, distasteful at worst. I mean it's not entirely out of the wheelhouse for the people that brought you GINGERDEAD MAN: PASSION OF THE CRUST, but still…

A few avid readers wrote in, however, saying it was different than they expected. Some positive reviews popped up online. One even compared it to recent AG Hall of Famer KUNG POW! ENTER THE FIST, which admittedly piqued my interest.

So is CORONA ZOMBIES good fun or just bad taste?

Even this guy with no brains knows how important it is to wear a mask.

Well, it's definitely… not what I was expecting. There's no denying it's an attention-seeking cash grab, which may understandably be a dealbreaker for some off the bat, but it's also not your average DTV no-budget zombie movie. I don't know if that makes it a failed experiment or just an even lazier mess.

Credit where credit's due—the speed at which Band and Co. conceived, shot and released this is impressive. It's not a case where they just slapped the title on an existing movie that was already shot and awaiting release. No, the filmmakers turned this entire thing around in less than a month. (Granted, it shows…)

The final product is a Frankenstein's monster of wildly differing sources. The majority of the film is comprised of footage from the 1980 Italian zombie movie HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD with badly dubbed new dialogue on top of it (ala KUNG POW!). That is also interspersed with clips from Full Moon Features' own 2012 horror comedy ZOMBIES VS. STRIPPERS (not to be confused with the Jenna Jameson-starring ZOMBIE STRIPPERS), as well as real current footage of President Trump and coronavirus news coverage.

The only new element that was shot specifically for CORONA ZOMBIES are some random bookending scenes that follow a blonde bimbo named Barbie as she learns about the virus and zombies while reluctantly self-quarantining. Everything else—the Italian movie, the zombie strippers—are all presented as news stories that Barbie watches and comments on. ("This is like SO not lit!")

Was an actual undead person in charge of the cinematography?

All put together, the whole thing is predictably not great, like a less polished, less funny version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Everything was clearly rushed and made up as they went. The dubbed parts of the movie are a weird mix of outdated celebrity references (a Charlie Sheen joke in 2020?) and an unending stream of coronavirus references—social distancing, hand sanitizer, face masks, you name it. Hell, there's even a gag about TIGER KING's Joe Exotic. That's both how timely it is and how irrelevant it will be in six months.

There's also no real attempt to put together any sort of overarching plot to blend together any of the cobbled-together footage. The Italian movie is turned in to a story about a group of poorly trained soldiers dubbed The Corona Squad, who are tasked by the President to track down the nation's stolen supply of toilet paper. No matter where the original footage takes them, they just add a recent reference to the virus to explain it. They're at a factory? It's a bat soup factory! Now they're in the rainforest meeting with an indigenous tribe? Um, the shaman might hold the key to curing this "corona-tastrophe.."

Ironically, the wraparound story that the filmmakers had complete control over is the worst part of the entire movie. It's just painfully bad, with Barbie confusing Wuhan, China with the Wu-Tang Clan, suggesting the Coronavirus is related to Corona beer, and other "jokes" that were already bad memes a couple months ago. Thankfully, it's short, probably adding up to only a few minutes of screen time, so you don't have to suffer for long.

Shoutout to all the parents stuck at home with their kids right now!

While a handful of the dubbed jokes did make me laugh, almost all of enjoyable parts of CORONA ZOMBIES come from the source material itself. HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD seems bonkers, even for an Italian zombie movie. There's unexplained crossdressing during a tense zombie attack, silly playground antics and people with death wishes, and what can only be described as an intestinal cat infection. Seeing it featured here only makes me want to watch the original version on its own.

Especially for the scene where the heroine randomly takes off her shirt and goes topless in the jungle. Really need to know the context there.

I don't think this is real, but you can't be sure anymore…

At barely an hour, CORONA ZOMBIES still feels too long for what it is and what it offers. I checked my watch at one point only to discover that I was only 19 minutes in. I know we're strapped for entertainment while we're quarantined, but I bet you can do better. If you get bored or desperate enough, CORONA ZOMBIES might help pass the time with a couple timely, low-hanging laughs. But would I spend any of my stimulus check on it? Probably not.