For most of us, our love for Halloween stems back to when we were children. There was nothing quite like a night of trick-or-treating with a group of friends, hitting the streets for big bags of candy. Our next Halloween Horrors entry similarly features a group of friends, albeit ones older than the average trick-or-treater, and ones looking for bags of something other than candy. 

Please welcome Robert Freese back to the Halloween Horrors series for a 3rd year. To say that Rob is a busy man might be an understatement. He currently contributes to magazines such as Scary Monsters, the French language film zine Medusa, and Videoscope Magazine, including the Fall issue which features his recent interview with Joe Bob Briggs! The 5th issue of Rob’s co-created book-sized magazine It Came From Hollywood should be wrapping up soon, but you can head over to Makeflix.com to pick up the first four issues, as well as Robert’s novelization of Galaxy Warriors. He’s also working on a novelization of 1984’s Splatter University! See, I told you! Busy, but not too busy to be a part of our series once more!

Here’s Rob on…

I Was A Teenage Zombie (1987)

Off the Jersy shore, the Mohawk Point Nuclear Plant goes into full lockdown. No one knows why, and no one knows about the toxic waste leaking into the river.

After this toxic prologue, we are introduced to five high school friends; Dan (Michael Ruben), Gordy (George Seminara), Chuck (Robert Sabin), Rosencrantz (Peter Bush), and Lieberman (Allen Rickman). There is a sixth friend, The Byrd (Kevin Nagle), who is sort of a Fonzie wannabe. He tools around on a motorcycle and acts like a bully but is not really threatening. He wears acid wash jeans and tucks them into his boots. (I feel like the other guys have been letting The Byrd think he’s some kind of bad ass since they were in grade school. The Byrd seems like the kid that would have gotten picked on the most out of the group.)

With the Spring Dance approaching, the boys get busy securing dates and some weed for the big night. Dan, the baseball star of the group, pines for Cindy Faithful (Cassie Madden). Cindy is the kind of blonde beauty that most heterosexual high school boys dream about, and when they do, the soundtrack swells, the world around Cindy disappears, and a gentle breeze whips her hair around. Unfortunately, Cindy is dating douche-flute Kevin Kramer (Ken Baggett). Dan does not keep his affections for Cindy hidden and stares at her in class until Kevin tells him to buzz off.

Meanwhile, Tenafly, New Jersey is experiencing a weed drought. Drug pusher Mussolini (Steve McCoy) arranged a giant weed shipment for local “Drug Lord” Lordavico that ended up going to Grassiano’s mob out in San Diego (?). One of Lordavico’s gangsters (played by Sal Lumetta- the howling “Wolf” from Splatter University) says whoever orchestrated that mistake was a real idiot. Mussolini admits that he was that idiot and now he has to get Lordavico three grand by the end of the week or he’s “Doooog meat.”

To achieve that, Mussolini says he’s selling the “bad weeds from Mexicos to the teenyboppers at the high school.” (It should be noted that Mussolini has a wonderful way of pluralizing most of the words of his dialogue. It grows funnier the longer he talks.)

The gangster notes that the Mexican weed was tainted by a toxic spray the government coated it in. He goes on to say he wouldn’t give it to his mother-in-law. Mussolini isn’t afraid to tell the gangsters that he’s hanging out at the local high school, and the kids are going to buy it, and like it, even if he has to “stick it in their fuh-aces!”

The boys stop by Moon’s (Theo Polites) place to see if they can score a twist of herb. Moon is the typical paranoid hippie burnout, pushing eucalyptus while telling the guys something strange is going on at Mohawk Point. His crazy rant goes a mile a minute. “I put a Duran Duran album on backwards yesterday and do you know what happened? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”

They finally get around to asking him about the weed and he says the town’s dry. No one has any weed. He’s got acid and cocaine (and eucalyptus), but no weed. Discouraged, the boys head to Lenny’s malt shop.

At Lenny’s, Dan tells senior soda jerk Lenny (Ray Stough) about wanting to ask Cindy Faithful to the spring dance. Lenny encourages him to go over and talk to her, which he does and fails miserably.

The Byrd shows up for his piece of the weed and loses his mind when Gordy tells him he hasn’t been able to score any yet, but he promises he will. Mussolini overhears the boys talking, introduces himself to Gordy as the “Weeds Man” and sells him the toxic pot. After the friends smoke it and get sick, Gordy tracks Mussolini down to get his money back. Mussolini beats him within an inch of his life.

Back at Lenny’s, The Byrd comes by and finds Gordy all beat up. They hatch a plan to get their money back, and this time all six friends will go and they’ll have baseball bats.

The interaction with Mussolini in the park does not go well. The drug dealer goes feral and actually attacks the boys with a knife but knocks himself out when he slips on a banana peel. Believing he’s dead, they decide to dump his body in the river.

At the river, Mussolini awakens and goes crazy when he realizes they have him tied to a big rock and are about to dump his body. He struggles and begins choking the teens. They cry for Dan to help them. Dan is in a daze. Nothing seems real. At last, when he sees Gordy being choked, he whacks Mussolini across his melon with a baseball bat. This kills Mussolini for real and his body falls into the tainted river. They swear to tell no one what happened.

Days later, at a party at a nearby lake, The Byrd is murderized by Mussolini when his bike breaks down near the river. Mussolini pulls the boy’s tongue out and eats it, then leaves his savaged body on the side of the road to be found later.

At the party, Dan finally gets his opening to talk to Cindy. The group is still upset about the incident with Mussolini, and everyone knows the power plant has shut down under mysterious circumstances. (Worker Lloyd Kaufman was contaminated during whatever happened at the plant!) He sticks up for her when Kevin goes into jerk mode. They talk and he finally asks her to the Spring dance.

A couple nights later, the guys are down near the pier. Rosencrantz is about to lose his virginity to Hilda (Lynnea Benson). Before he can seal the deal, Mussolini comes out of the water and assaults and kills Hilda. Rosencrantz runs screaming to his friends that Mussolini is back. Before they can get away from the pier, a police officer rounds them up and takes them in for questioning. The boys play dumb and afterwards concoct a half-ass plan to get Mussolini in the park. Their plan fails and Dan is killed.

Paranoia grips the remaining friends. They expect to see Mussolini spring out from around every corner. They decide the only way to fight a toxic zombie is with their own toxic zombie. They kidnap Dan’s body from the chapel and dump him in the river.

After Dan awakens–thinking he’s had a bad dream–they stash him in the basement of Lenny’s. There they confirm that the toxicity in the water has supercharged Mussolini, and Dan gets to work off the tab he owed Lenny when he shuffled off his mortal coil.

Alone, Dan remembers the day at the lake with Cindy. Here, we find out that not only did he get the nerve to ask her out, but they also sealed the deal and fooled around! The dead dope is in love with the girl and he can’t help wandering across town to her house to watch her in her bedroom.

He waits for her ’til morning and approaches her as she walks to school. He offers to carry her books. This does not go well and he runs back to Lenny’s where the guys are looking for him. Cindy soon arrives and demands to see him. It’s killing him. She feels for him what he feels for her, but their love would never work. She insists he take her to the dance. Quickly, he spins around, his face catching the light just right, and bellows, “Look at me! I’m a teenage zombie…” She runs away crying.

On the night of the dance Lieberman is picking up supplies with his girlfriend when Mussolini attacks. He rips the boy’s face off and stuffs it in his mouth. His girlfriend runs away.

Dan can’t help going to the dance. He hides in the bleachers and watches Cindy and his friends from the shadows. He wants to join them, but knows he can’t.

Mussolini learns about the dance and is soon crashing the soiree. The toxic zombies finally battle. Cindy is killed in the scuffle defending Dan. Mussolini is decapitated and his severed head is cut into finger food for the snack table. After the fight, Dan collects Cindy’s body. Kevin yells after him, “Put her down… you teenage zombie!” and Gordy is quick to call him a dick.

Gordy, Chuck and Rosencrantz watch Dan carry Cindy’s body out into the lake. Chuck speculates that they’ll have some time together before the radiation dissipates and they die for good. Dan spares one last look back at his buddies and smiles. Ed watches his best friend disappear into the murky, toxic waters. “So long, buddy. I’m gonna miss you.”

I Was A Teenage Zombie is one of those films most of us discovered on VHS in the late 80s. I remember buying a reasonably priced copy of the film on VHS just based on the cover art, which is striking. I’d never heard of it before and to the best of my knowledge it was not covered in any of the horror magazines at the time. (In fact, I don’t recall Chas Balun ever writing about this film, which I always thought was weird since its mix of gore, music, and humor seems like the kind of flick he would have appreciated.)

 

Falling firmly into the horror-comedy subgenre, the film’s best attribute, in my opinion, is the relationship of the friends. The core group of five friends really seem to be friends. They seem like the kinds of guys who had probably hung out together since grade school. They reminded me of me and my friends.

The relationship between Dan and Gordy is especially tight. Gordy is sort of the troublemaker and Dan is the straitlaced one. You can see this, but you can also see how much they care for one another. It was Gordy getting choked by Mussolini that snapped Dan into action with the baseball bat. After they dump Dan in the lake, it’s Gordy who keeps vigil all night waiting for his friend to return. Only before he goes to school does Gordy allow himself to be disappointed and angry at Dan for not coming back. Seems selfish, but it is a real human emotion that you don’t get in too many films like this. (And of course, Dan does show up later at school.)

Most of the male characters actually have a lot to work with and are able to be seen as real characters. Not so much the female characters, unfortunately. Cindy is more or less just there to be the object of Dan’s desire, while the rest of the female characters are comic relief. In the case of Lynnea Benson’s “Hilda”, she’s there to be brutally assaulted and murdered.

The film suffers most of the typical challenges of any low budget production. There’s an inconsistency in Dan’s zombie make-up once he’s revived, but overall, the gore effects work well. You can imagine effects creators Carl Sorensen and Mike Lackey consulting their dogeared copies of Tom Savini’s “Grand Illusions” (or probably the version that came out as “Bizzaro”) to achieve the effects and keep them above the level of gag shop gore.

James Martin’s script, as already noted, sells the bond the male characters share. I also really liked how the “Dan Wake” character, although a jock and popular guy, is still unsure of himself and lacks the confidence to talk to Cindy. Whatever kind of geeks you may think his friends are, Dan is the last one to get a date for the Spring Dance.

Michael Ruben does well conveying Dan’s isolation once he’s brought back. The scene that stands out is when Dan goes to the dance and sits in the bleachers watching his friends. We know he wants to join them but cannot. I think this speaks to most people who had a hard time fitting in at school. There’s that desire to join in the fun, but we feel unable to do that. So, we join in vicariously by watching. This is a bittersweet moment that succeeds without any dialogue. Dan’s expression says everything that needs to be said.

Director John Elias Michalkis (John Michaels) shows some visual flare throughout, particularly in the scene of Dan wandering to Cindy’s house at night, the Violent Femmes “Good Feeling” playing over the scene.

Later, when Dan wanders to the dance around dusk, there’s a long shot of him walking across what looks like a quiet stretch of field, the sun going down, and it is visually stunning. It’s simple, but it calls to mind George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. It’s an eerie sequence. Dan, still dressed in the black pants and white dress shirt he wore when they snatched him from the chapel, recalls the shambling ghouls from that Romero classic. (And it always gets me when Dan looks forlornly at the chapel his friends grabbed him from when he walks past.)

The comedy works. The bickering among the friends seems genuine and never mean-spirited. There are sight gags that come out of nowhere that always get me giggling. (Particularly the scene with the frisbee.) Steve McCoy is the standout, delivering his lines with the fractured intensity of a machine gun that shoots a “Bang” flag every third or fourth shell. It seems like he was making a different movie than everyone else. His line readings are the best. It’s a shame he didn’t have a long career in independent, regional movies. (He and George Seminara receive an end credit for additional dialogue. This was because McCoy had difficulty remembering his lines, so he and Seminara worked to streamline the dialogue in a way he could remember it.)

What this movie is probably best remembered for is its outstanding soundtrack. Long out of print, this album kicks off with The Fleshtones’ catchy title track “I Was A Teenage Zombie”. It is followed by “Have You Forgotten” by The Del Fuegos, “Neverland” by the dB’s, “Halloween” by Dream Syndicate (this tune later showed up in the opening scene of 2000’s Wrong Turn), “Good Feeling” by Violent Femmes, The Waitresses’ “I Know What Boys Like” (it later showed up on an episode of Adult Swim’s “Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil“), “Why Do You Do” by Los Lobos, “Stuff” by Alex Chilton, “Vibrato in the Grotto” by Ben Vaughn Combo and “Nobody Knows” by Bob Pfeifer. Released by Enigma Records, it’s a kick ass soundtrack that’s among the best rock soundtracks of the era, right up there with Fastway’s metal score for Trick or Treat and AC/DC’s score for Maximum Overdrive (both from 1986). (To the best of my knowledge, the only song appearing in the movie that’s never been released is the end credit ditty “Why Must I Be a Teenage Zombie”, performed by Brian Stanley and written by Stanley and Seminara. Other songs credited on the soundtrack include “Whenever You’re On My Mind” by Marshall Crenshaw and “Looking for Something” by The Skunks.)

After a theatrical run courtesy of Troma, the movie hit the mom ‘n pop video shops via Charter Entertainment, with the eye-catching artwork of the zombie holding the girl. It was released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 1999 and that stands as its final stateside homevid release. It has streamed on Prime, but when it did it was missing the scene when the boys go to talk with Moon. (However, Prime included the Fleshtones’ video of the title theme before the movie.) It is currently streaming on MAX and The Criterion Channel, which is a whole other story that goes back to when a lot of the crew worked together at the theater that eventually became what we know today as the Criterion Collection film library.

I know this film has its cult following. It’s a solid effort from an exciting time in independent filmmaking, when movies were shot on film and still played on theater screens. Many credit it as the first official Zom-Rom-Com (Zombie-Romance-Comedy), which I see. It was how the movie was sold once it made it onto VHS. I think the bond between the main group of friends is what’s always attracted me to it. They’re just believable enough that if you saw the film at the right time, you could imagine yourself and your own group of friends in the same scenario.