Remembering Zombie Brigade: The Best Zombie-Vampire-Soldier Allegory You've Never Seen

Zombie Brigade was the last movie made under the controversial, much-abused Australian government-stimulus program in which investors could claim up to 150 percent of their monies back against their tax bill but pay tax on only 50 percent of any income earned from the film. It's unclear whether Pattison and Musca conceived their undead-tale as such a write-off, but it's clear that some intelligence went into writing Zombie Brigade. There are enough Down Under caricatures to fill a chook shed, but they come with a self-mocking awareness. "As soon as it gets dark, every man, woman and child in the district will be slaughtered!" says one bushie, adding with perhaps greater concern, "Maybe even the dogs and the sheep!" While the filmmaking and acting waiver between rudimentary and terrible, what sustains the interest and affections are that the earnest performances are set against a backdrop of real and ongoing Australian concerns, such as racism, the marginalization of Aboriginals, the flight of young country people to the cities, and the challenges presented by international investment. Most remarkable is that we get an Aboriginal hero and a Japanese heroine, something that, to my knowledge, has never before or since been seen in an Australian film.

Pattison and Musca seemed aware of their movie's prospects as they made it, hence the scene where the undead paw at a video store window in which is prominently displayed a crude Zombie Brigade poster. And that's where the film ended up, in the most minor of VHS releases. Available internationally in a crummy DVD release, Zombie Brigade has long been out of print in its country of origin, although it did get a rare theatrical showing two years ago in Sydney.

So, given the mania for remaking 1980s horror, is Zombie Brigade worth resurrecting for the big-screen? The concept of an outback Aussie town over-run by the walking dead is no more or less interesting than any other current zomb-pocalypse. But we've perhaps lost our taste for Aboriginal ju-ju sub-plots, thanks to Baz Luhrmann's po-faced "exploration" of such in his modestly titled Australia. Speaking of Baz, there's one Zombie Brigade image that'd no doubt tickle his camp sensibility and perhaps bring a patriotic tear to his eye: that of a tattered zombie-vampire in his uniform, proudly bearing a tattered Australian flag. For that, he and we must salute it as a Bad Movie We Love.

Michael Adams is the author of the upcoming comic memoir Showgirls, Teen Wolves, And Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest To Find And Watch The Worst Movie Ever Made (HarperCollins)

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