I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE (1987) ***

I Was a Teenage Zombie is one of the more unlikely movies to wind up in the Criterion Collection.  I kind of understand why as it’s pretty good for a shot on 16mm low budget horror comedy.  What makes it stand out from the glut of similar pictures that were being churned out at the time is the fact that the comedy stuff is actually funny.  That’s good news too, since it takes an awful long time before the horror aspects kick in.  

 

A drug dealer named Mussolini (Steve McCoy) is desperate to move some tainted marijuana that has been laced with toxic waste.  Some teenage friends looking for a buzz, buy some of the deranged dope and smoke it.  After getting sick from inhaling the weird weed, they get revenge on the dealer by killing him and tossing his body into the river.  Little do the teens know the river just so happens to be contaminated with toxic waste.  Before long, Mussolini returns as a green-faced zombie and attacks the teens.  During the struggle, their leader Dan (Michael Ruben) is killed.  The only resort is to put Dan in the river too and hope that once he is resurrected, the teenage zombie will have what it takes to bring down the undead dope pusher.

 

I Was a Teenage Zombie feels like a slightly more polished version of a Troma movie (which is fitting because Lloyd Kaufman gets namechecked at one point).  The gore includes tongue tearing, neck twisting, and there’s a pretty great face ripping scene too.  At one point, the zombie gets it on with one of the heroes’ girlfriends, so fans of zombie hanky-panky will probably enjoy it.  

 

While it’s better than your typical low budget zombie comedy, it’s far from perfect.  There are some real lulls in between the highlights and the ninety-one minute running time is a bit unwieldy at times.  Ultimately, I think it would have benefitted from some tighter editing and a snappier pace (Dan doesn’t turn into a zombie until the film is two-thirds of the way over), but it’s an entertaining and amusing horror-comedy.

 

An acid head dealer gets the best line of the movie when he bemoans the modern music scene and says, “I played a Duran Duran record backwards, and you know what it said?  NOTHING!”