American Zombie Trash! is a look at the core of current American Zombie B-Movies shipped straight from the zombie trash motherland.Since 2000 America has produced a run of zombie films with a facing of a pseudo-political agenda, offerings such as pot-zombie, the ghouls (made for just $15k) and raving maniacs. Most of the post 2000 American Zombie Trash cinema sits behind obvious satirical comedy/commentary on drug culture, sexuality and the repression of the media under the Bush administration.





Cannibal Dead: The Ghouls – Lets not get into an argument over if a Zombie Film has to have re-animated dead in it (I’m sick of the argument that is usually used against 28 Days Later to categorise it as a film of “infected”). The Cannibal Dead was made on a budget of $15k after the director sold his mustang. Eric Hayes is a stringer; he makes his money from listerning to police scanners and racing to the scene of an accident or murder, filming what he sees and sells it to the news stations. When he stumbles on what he thinks is rape he presumes his found his next pay check, but what he actually discovers is more terrifying than he could’ve possibly imagined.





Die You Zombie Bastards! – Another UK Premiere brought to you by the Trauma Team. Although this film sits outside it's zombie trash cinema comrades as it isn't strictly a zombie film, its sold as a "The World's First EVER Serial Killer Superhero Rock'n'Roll Zombie Road Movie Romance" and doesn't have one of the central criteria of an American Zombie Trash film, i.e. the political/cultural commentary but it does retain the comedy of it's Japanese counterparts. Deliberately over acted and camped to exploding point this probably deserves the same categorisation (although it is nothing like it) as Shaun of the Dead – a “Zom-Rom-Com”. With all the gore you could ask for and a weighted style heavily influenced by the Troma production company (that bought us such classics as the Toxic Avenger series and other not so well know titles as Poultrygeist and Surf Nazi’s Must Die) this film is an adventure into the disgusting putrefied heart of trash cinema

In recent years Japan has started to produce transformation horror films, low budget modern B movies, Wild Zero and Stacy being 2 but in a crowd of films such as “oh my zombie mermaid girlfriend” with an almost full cast of Japanese pro wrestlers or “Battle Girl” aka “Emergency, the living dead in Tokyo Bay”, “Junk” and the larger budget martial arts flick Verses. Without the development through the passage of time that in the west has created a foundation base of zombie movies these new Japanese Zombie Trash Movies are a filmic anomaly, a genre with no ingrained history in the country they originate, a filmic genre with a stolen history.


Zombie movies seem to be emerging from the B-Movie underbelly of the Japanese Film Industry, fed by more western horror traditions. This germinating trash cinema genre draws life from the classic zombie traditions of the American market, stripped of its plot and the gaps replaced with gore and winks and nods to western horror fans this developing category is western in its style and content and mocks Japans commercial and westernization.

Stacy was originally a short story, the author, Kinniku Shojotai, renowned UFOlogist and formally of the rock band Kinniku Shojotai created a series of 3 self contained tales based around a world on the verge of nightmarish change and disaster. Tomomatsu (the director of Stacy) adapted the screen play from a book published by Kadowkawa press, the publishers that gave us the original story of Ring. Stacy’s Director, with his previous career as a porn director, has subsequently (after Stacy) created such films as “Eat the Schoolgirl” and “Zombie Defence Force”. Tomomatsu’s obsession with the massacre and defilement of Schoolgirls seems to stem from his love affair with an un-known porn actress, that when not on film performing sexual acts for cash would attend the local high school. After becoming lovers and then breaking up, Tomomatsu ensued on an unrelenting, epic campaign of stalking that as it unfolded, quickly escalated from harrowing internet posts through to restraining orders being raised against him. Although you might find this all hard to believe it can all be found in his autobiography “Pure Love War Chronicle” all documented in fetishistic detail and he has already announced his project to film his book…


Stacy is a perfect example of the allures of Para-cinema, Japanese horror film history has developed a more psychological horror foundation, and it has missed the transformation horror genre that has become the keystone of western, with its underlying moral examination of the concept of Moe Stacy has underlying moral discourses on Japanese culture. As the girls in Stacy exhibit the symptoms of near death happiness, an elevated feeling of joy and giddiness, and dressed in the stereotypical, fetishised school uniform their days are numbered as a pure example of Moe until they transform into Zombie School Girls or Stacy’s.


Wild Zero is “bad-ass-rock’n’roll-don’t-give-a-fuck cinema” par excellence, Staring Guitar Wolf (the creators of the 'World's loudest album') as the superhero, mega-charged, rock-a-billy saviours of the World.
Lots of blood, drugs, beer, gender confusion, swearing, guns, zombies, motorcycles that have flames coming out of their exhausts and plectrums that are killer electricity-covered throwing stars. This is a piece of crystallised postmodernism, lacking in plot but packed with action this film is the Japanese-Bad-Ass-Zombie Filled-Mutant-Cousin of Spice Girls The Movie and Day of the Dead.