Bath Salt Zombies (2013) Poster

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4/10
Ambitious but still feels somewhat lackluster
Humdinger6926 September 2014
Warning: Spoilers
**ONE OR TWO POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD**

This is the first Dustin Mills movie I've seen so far, I have heard many good things about his other films such as Puppet Monster Massacre and Easter Casket so I really hope Bath Salt Zombies is not up there with his more acclaimed output because, despite the fact that I somewhat enjoyed this movie, I still found it to be lacking in several places.

First things first, let's start off with the good. The set pieces looked fantastic and the movie is extremely well-shot for such a low-budget. Some of the gore effects are decent if ultimately unsatisfying, but unfortunately most of them are below par (more on that later). There are two scenes of nudity for T&A fans, one of which shows pretty much everything, and both go on for quite a long time. The cartoon segments are cool, and the puppetry is well done (the best scene in the movie involves a dog mutated by chemicals).

Now for the bad. For one, the plot is bare bones, what you read in the IMDb summary is as deep as it goes. The sound is all over the place, whenever people are talking the volume could be quiet as a mouse one second and blaring the next. There really isn't that much gore and, while a few effects look decent enough, a majority of what is there is really nothing to write home about and looks rather poor (any blood splatter from gunshot wounds is just red fog imposed on to the screen with CGI). The make-up for the titular Bath Salt Zombies is rather laughable. Then, just when it looks like things are going to pick up a bit, the film ends abruptly.

Despite these flaws, I did find the movie to be moderately entertaining in places. But unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good. I will still be checking out Dustin Mill's other films eventually, I do like his style, so hopefully he is capable of impressing me.
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a poor, home-made feel.
totally-tonto1 November 2013
An odd theme that had the potential to be quite funny, but wasn't. Cartoon-style intro was good, but rest of the film appears to be very home-made and poorly directed. Sexy/erotic scenes were pointlessly long. Don't bother watching unless you're just intrigued by the title.

Acting:Not great - Plot:Poor - Ending:Odd- Effects:Basic

Laughs:None - Scares:None - Twists:None - Gore:Poor - 3d Version:N/A

Overall opinion:

>>Worth watching for free: No

>>Worth watching at bargain price: No

>>Worth watching at standard price: Hell No
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1/10
Awful Awful and real Awful!
mphill1491-786-8765623 November 2013
How can I describe this with 10 lines of text? Well this movie should never ever been made! Who ever did the special effects should never be allowed to do them again! Who ever wrote this should be banned for life! Avoid this movie at all costs! The actors are just bad! No other words can describe it. The plot is just down right awful! Cheesie comes to mind on the special effects! I can not ever remember seeing worse effects in my life. Haunted houses are so much better than this movie. What is up with the cop? Where did they get these actors from? I have seen some grade school kids act better than these people! It is best if you just avoided this movie at all costs. You will never ever get your time back that you wasted on this movie!
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1/10
I HAD AN IDEA ONCE
nogodnomasters21 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
This film is not about zombies in the traditional sense. An illegal drug called bath salts is making its users become violent and rip people's faces off. Done to a punk rock sound track, the film is more about the music than the production. Bad acting and dialogue. The opening is animation, and not very good animation. A short 70 minute film for people who are stoned. Good nudity.

Parental Guide: F-bomb, sex, nudity (Erin R. Ryan, Bella Demente FF)
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1/10
Zombies weren't the only ones on bath salts.
pipelinerer5 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
How in the world am I gonna pull 10 lines out for this review? Probably the same question the writer & director said when they got a hold of a camera & had to come up with real lines & a script. All I can think of is, Well when you give an 8th grader a movie camera & ask them to go out & make a movie, this is what happens, Actually these kids today are pretty slick & would probably have done a better job all the way around. I'll go ahead & do this review simply because I wouldn't want anyone to endure the 70min of mind waste this movie provided. I kept thinking the whole time.... If Zombies were real.. This is what kind of movie they would make. And how in the word did it get a 3.1 rating? I would have a hard time giving it a 0.1. This is one movie that won't be making it into my Z collection,
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5/10
B is for Bath Salt Zombies.
BA_Harrison19 April 2015
In 'M is for Mastication', an episode from the 2014 horror anthology 'The ABCs of Death 2', a user of the recreational drug known as bath salts turns into a flesh-eating zombie. But low-to-no-budget SOV horror director Dustin Wayde Mills got there first…

Mills' 2013 film Bath Salts Zombies sees a potent and highly addictive strand of the designer drug (developed from a missing chemical weapon that sounds suspiciously like the one from Return of the Living Dead) being pushed to junkies, with precisely the same results: the user is transformed into a violent, uncontrollable monster with a hunger for human flesh.

Working with very little cash but lots of enthusiasm, Mills brand of horror is unashamedly lowbrow, his films designed to appeal to fans of splattery trash, with lots of cheapo gore and gratuitous T&A. However, for a purveyor of such gleefully lurid entertainment, Mills also displays a remarkable sense of style and creativity: Bath Salt Zombies might feature full frontal nudity, severed breast and penis gags, and a crazed ghoul that eats peoples' faces, but it also sees the director experimenting with some surprisingly impressive film-making techniques, including a neat POV sequence complete with 'blinking eye' effect, cool slo-mo shots, experimental use of colour filters, and time-lapse photography. There's also a highly stylised comic-book inspired smack-down between the main character and a SWAT team. For such a cheap production, this is ambitious stuff indeed.

The film opens with a crudely animated intro that I found rather perplexing (and which almost had me turning off before the film had really got started), and Mills does struggle to keep the momentum going at times, but I still had enough fun with this flick to recommend it to fellow gore-hounds and fans of underground horror.
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1/10
An Example of Poor Film Technique
Uriah436 October 2020
This film begins in New York City where a chemist by the name of "Sal" (Dustin Mills) has just made a new batch of the designer drug known as bath salts and given it to a pusher named "Bubbles" (Ethan Holey) to test on the street. Bubbles, being the persuasive marketer that he is, gives a free sample to an addict named "Richie" (Brandon Salkil) with the understanding that if he likes it he can come back and purchase some more. What Bubbles doesn't tell him is that Sal had strengthened the new drug with a powerful chemical stolen from an Army laboratory which also has the benefit of making it extremely addictive as well. In any case, Ritchie is more than happy to try it out and takes it back to his friend's apartment to enjoy. Not long afterward he comes out of his drug-induced stupor to discover that he has blood all over his face and shirt with his buddy's girlfriend lying on the bed partially dismembered and devoured. Yet even though he is initially horrified at what he has done, he still craves more of the drug and rushes to get another sample from Bubbles so that he can share it with some other friends. And then the wave of murders really begin. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off relatively well but the low-budget aspects were apparently too much for the director (Dustin Mills) to overcome with the most glaring problem being the audio which was quite erratic in nature. Other major weaknesses included poor acting and extremely bad special effects. And I mean really, really bad special effects. To that extent, other than being used as an example of poor film technique for aspiring directors I cannot recommend this film to anyone and have rated it accordingly.
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7/10
A Fine, Fun Film
hbeeinc27 February 2014
I'm not really sure what film the other reviewers saw. The movie I saw, for the budget, rocked. Some great performances, good soundtrack, nice direction and good editing. Is it a masterpiece? Nope. Is it blood, gore, drugs and gratuitous nudity. Yup. Can it be mistaken for The Shining or Dario Agento movie? Nope. Can you enjoy the living hell out it? Yup.

Seriously, there was some great writing and performances. For the budget they had, the special effects were fine and inventive. My biggest complaint is that the fight at the end went on for far too long. Outside of that, the lack of pretension that the other reviewers apparently expect in their low budget horror films worked in its favor.

I spent $0.99 to watch this on a Roku channel because who can resist blowing a buck on a movie called Bath Salt Zombies? It's literally the best bang for the buck I've gotten in a long time.
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6/10
Not bad for one watch
machetemassacre4 February 2016
There's many ups and downs in bath salt zombies, at times it's pretty impressive what they've done with this no budget flick, while in other instances it's pretty apparent that they're filling time until the good stuff can happen again. Judging it as a no budget movie I've certainly seen worse, hell the last half hour is quite good and makes you wonder why the same care and attention wasn't used in the slower moments. Also the sound editing is a huge issue as it's almost non existent. Blaringly loud one minute to super quiet within the same scene. Overall if nothing else this is a good starting point to all those involved, they're definitely on their way up! If they improve on what's here their follow up projects will be worth viewing. It's just too bad they've already burned through this great concept. These are the kinds of remakes that need to happen.
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6/10
Bare minimum, but not the thrills and spills.
lost-in-limbo30 December 2018
Dustin Mills' small scale, penniless SOV production feels like amateurish punk rock splatter adoration to "REEFER MADNESS". While its bare-bones technical limitations show, his enthusiasm and ambitions have no boundaries. Luridly trashy with cheap thrills, discount gore, punk tunes and gratuitous titillation, but for such an assembly Mills shows moments of creative style in using experimental animation, slow-mo and camera trickery. There are stylized scenes where the whacked-out visuals (mainly the massacre sequences) look like they have been ripped right out of a comic-book. They do become more prominent the further the film goes along, even the transformation of the central bath salt junkie (Brandon Salkil) over constant use of a newly developed batch of bath salts even stronger than the norm, but with a major side effect; turning users into violent flesh eating zombies. Once the recreational drug has worn off, you return to your normal self, covered in blood, dazed and confused, but your addiction to the substance only intensifies and so does the bloody mayhem.

The concept simply plays around with the Dr Jekyll and Mr.Hyde formula. Even the appearance of the junkie pepped up; large grin, eyes bulging, red face and of the course the wicked laughter managed to add to the craziness. When it wasn't being gung-ho, I found the pacing to stall. Scenes (like with the detective) just seemed to be going around in circles and dialogues (about donuts and good citizens) going through the motions. The payoff does make it worthwhile. At the beginning it starts off with a public service announcement cartoon highlighting the usage of bath salts which was a neat little touch. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of Mills' output after the likes of "EASTER CASKET", "SKINLESS", and this.
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7/10
Eat the dessert first
barrelhousegutboy17 November 2019
Pretty standard low budget faire with the exception of 2 parts of the film that are worth sitting through the rest of this thing imo, and those 2 scenes adjust my score from a 2 to a 7. Think of this movie as a coconut and you are marooned on an island with nothing harder than the only food source. It's a lot of work but the reward is so tasty... as long as rescue happens sooner rather than later. Surprised this hasn't shown up on Svengoolie or Elvira (they even still on the air?) I wouldn't recommend going out of your way but if you get the chance those 2 scenes show a humor, technical ability, and creativity lacking in the rest of it. If you have seen John Dies at the End think of the scene were the invaders are explaining what their plans are making use of an earth medium (think spiders), like that but better.
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