Movie Review: Bong of the Dead (2011)

Directed by Thomas Newman

Starring Simone Bailly, Mark Wynn and Jy Harris

Ok, here's the scenario....Meteors infected with a zombie contagion are falling to Earth, the world is now over-run with the undead. The country has been divided into sections, green zones where the living reside and red zones where the zombies are contained. We have dim-witted Tommy (Mark Wynn), a pot dealers who has somehow discovered that if he liquifies the brains of the undead it makes a pretty bodacious fertilizer for his pot crop.

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So, along with his brain-fried sidekick Edwin (Jy Harris) they come up with a plan to venture into the red zone and get their hands on a fat supply of zombie gray-matter. Along the way they encounter a zombie king-pin in a Nazi uniform who, along with his legion of undead, are out to feast on our hero's brains. Soon after their first encounter with the Nazi zombie they hook up with Leah (Simone Bailly), the hot loner chick who lives behind a gas station, has a well stocked bar for partying and even has a zombie-powered shower, via a chained up goulie powering a well-pump on a treadmill. (Yes, she's not only hot but clever as well.) After a night of partying and pot smoking she decides to help the hapless duo and this leads up to a big, bloody showdown with the undead hoards.

THE GOOD~ Bong of the Dead is basically a labor of love by one man. Thomas Newman did everything including the camera work on this. He even edited the movie on his Mac using Protools for sound editing, so its pretty hard to rip on a guy just for trying to make a movie. The gore level is higher than average for a movie like this and although he had to resort to some pretty hokey CGI at times, he still pulled it off without it being too annoying. Simone Bailly as Leah was a pleasant surprise, unlike the others involved, she can actually act and she's pretty much smokin' hot. The highlight of Bong of the Dead is of coarse the big finale where our three characters take on the zombies with a souped up weed-whacker and a pickup truck modified with three lawnmowers on the front grill. (A clever idea that actually made a pretty fun time of the last five minutes or so of the movie).

THE BAD~ One would think a movie like this would be ripe with sophomoric weed humor, something even non-smokers like myself still find amusing. Unfortunately this movie is just not funny, not even a little bit funny. The script is just horrendously bad, as is most of the acting. I shudder to think how much pot someone would have to smoke in order to get a laugh out of this movie, maybe cutting out 20 minutes of this film would have helped too. When your watching a comedy and every joke is falling flat it can become a bit torturous getting to the end credits.

THE UGLY~ There are no titties in this movie, we have a couple of topless zombie girls but that doesn't count in my book. Undead titties are not real titties, I am sorry but I have to draw the line somewhere.

Who knows, maybe Bong of the Dead is a modern-day Plan 9 from Outer Space and somewhere down the road people will develop a fondness for this really bad movie....stranger things have happened.

3.5 out of 10 Reviewed by KennyB