This viewer is sure most people would tend towards the latter judgment.
After a priceless opening text that educates us a little on cryogenics (yet is ultimately tongue in cheek), we get into the story of the living dead inundating a cryogenics lab. A bad storm creates a power outage at the lab, and the head security guard (Dan 'Grizzly Adams' Haggerty) thinks he's doing the right thing by transporting the tubes containing the dearly departed into the open where it's cooler. However, lightning strikes the tubes, and reanimates the bodies. Add to this a subplot about the nefarious head of the facility (Troy Donahue) selling human organs on the black market, and one has the recipe for a clunky and dumb B picture.
Now, this viewer loves B genre pictures, good and bad, but this requires more patience than usual to get through, as it just doesn't deliver much, and doesn't offer us much that we haven't seen before. That said, I think it can only be a *good* thing to see the shambling corpse of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Hey, any distinction is worth mentioning.
Directors Jack A. Sunseri (also the producer) and Deland Nuse (also the cinematographer) do what little they can with their material, and create some fun little moments here and there on the valuable "so bad it's good" level. However, they're also stuck with some unbelievably amateurish and unconvincing acting in pretty much all of the supporting roles. Jack De Rieux as nice guy businessman Joseph Davenport Sr. is a particularly big offender. Ever perky, ever lovely Linda Blair (as the evil docs' assistant (Don't worry, she wasn't in on it!)), Donahue, and Haggerty gamely put on poker faces throughout, and it is nice to see Haggerty become something of a hero after his earlier mistake.
Makeup effects are substandard, but who really would expect anything different from a regional production obviously done on a low, low budget?
Unfortunately, all of this just isn't as much fun as it could and should be. If one is a fan of Blair, she definitely did some better things during this period. At least at the end we get updates on all of the major players, and it does close out the picture with some real humour.
Four out of 10.
After a priceless opening text that educates us a little on cryogenics (yet is ultimately tongue in cheek), we get into the story of the living dead inundating a cryogenics lab. A bad storm creates a power outage at the lab, and the head security guard (Dan 'Grizzly Adams' Haggerty) thinks he's doing the right thing by transporting the tubes containing the dearly departed into the open where it's cooler. However, lightning strikes the tubes, and reanimates the bodies. Add to this a subplot about the nefarious head of the facility (Troy Donahue) selling human organs on the black market, and one has the recipe for a clunky and dumb B picture.
Now, this viewer loves B genre pictures, good and bad, but this requires more patience than usual to get through, as it just doesn't deliver much, and doesn't offer us much that we haven't seen before. That said, I think it can only be a *good* thing to see the shambling corpse of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Hey, any distinction is worth mentioning.
Directors Jack A. Sunseri (also the producer) and Deland Nuse (also the cinematographer) do what little they can with their material, and create some fun little moments here and there on the valuable "so bad it's good" level. However, they're also stuck with some unbelievably amateurish and unconvincing acting in pretty much all of the supporting roles. Jack De Rieux as nice guy businessman Joseph Davenport Sr. is a particularly big offender. Ever perky, ever lovely Linda Blair (as the evil docs' assistant (Don't worry, she wasn't in on it!)), Donahue, and Haggerty gamely put on poker faces throughout, and it is nice to see Haggerty become something of a hero after his earlier mistake.
Makeup effects are substandard, but who really would expect anything different from a regional production obviously done on a low, low budget?
Unfortunately, all of this just isn't as much fun as it could and should be. If one is a fan of Blair, she definitely did some better things during this period. At least at the end we get updates on all of the major players, and it does close out the picture with some real humour.
Four out of 10.