Sometimes you have to watch a movie with an opened mind. You have to just set aside ALL expectations of quality, and just enjoy a movie for what it is. Redneck Zombies is a movie that set a new bar for zombie movies, both high and low.
In the backwoods of New Jersey (because that’s where all Troma movies take place, New Jersey.) a military jeep is hand delivering a 55-gallon barrel of toxic waste. The driver runs off the road and the drum ends up falling down a hill. When the driver goes to recover the drum he is confronted by Ferd, a “redneck” with a gun telling him that the drum now belongs to him. Ferd is then confronted himself by the Clemson family of rednecks that say, no, the drum is theirs. Seeing as how he is outnumbered, Ferd then runs away as well. The Clemson family takes the drum back to their land to use as a still to make moonshine. The drum is emptied but it still contains enough radioactive material to contaminate the moonshine brewed in it. This shine is then given to the other denizens of where ever-ville and turns the rednecks into “tobacco chewin’, gut chompin’, cannibal kinfolk from hell.”
I have quite the love-hate relationship with Troma movies. I haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact year or movie when it turned sour for me, but somewhere in the early 90s they all just stopped being fun dumb movies and just started being childish idiotic nonsense. I have reviewed a lot of them. Some of them I have really enjoyed, and some of them I have truly hated. Redneck Zombies is one that I enjoyed for what it was a cheap, thrown together, insane, poorly acted, over-the-top ridiculous movie.
Redneck Zombies is one of those rare films where I want others to see it so that we can all collectively yell “what the hell is going on” through the majority of its runtime. One of the more insane moments I can get behind was the introduction of “The Tobacco Man” character. He is sort of like an ice cream man in a “normal” neighborhood. He drives to farms and sells tobacco from the back of his truck. But, the tobacco man drives a beat up truck, wears a bag over his face like Jason in Friday the 13th Part 2, and his voice is pitched down and distorted. Once he is introduced, you don’t see him again until the final scene of the movie. It’s bizarre and I love it.
Putting aside the events of the film being not only implausible but impossible, the acting is so over the top its what really sells Redneck Zombies as a comedy. Sure the rednecks are the main cast but the star of the show is “Bob”. He’s part of a group of “kids” that are out camping in the wilderness around where the rednecks live. Bob snaps at one point when his girlfriend is viciously murdered by the zombies and he never recovers, and I don’t want him to. The actor playing Bob portrays that character like he is a cartoon character come to life. Every bit of his actions are explosively overdone and it’s hilarious to see. Bob really set the bar high for other actors on set that wanted to achieve his level of insanity.
Redneck Zombies is not a movie for everyone (how many times have I said that this year alone?) but if you approach it with a certain mindset, it’s pretty alright. You have to really be able to tolerate a lot, like… A LOT a lot of terrible acting and worse writing to really appreciated it, but I did. Also, this is another one of those movies that is just free to watch on YouTube, the link at the bottom is the full movie.
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