Zombie Nightmare is a 1987 Canadian horror film starring Adam West and Jon-Mikl Thor, a follow-up of sorts to Thor's Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare.
Our film opens in a time supposedly in the 1960s or so, showing us a softball game led by a beefy guy named Bill (played by writer John Fasano). Bill's the center of activity in the community, and he's even brought his family (wife and young son Tony) to the game. Unfortunately, a couple ne'er do wells are also in attendance and decide to stalk and assault Molly Mokembe, a young Haitian woman (played by Manoushka). Bill stops the crime in progress, saving her, but the two thugs fatally stab him and flee, all in front of his son.
Flash forward to the present day, and Tony is all grown up (now played by Jon-Mikl Thor), playing softball on the same field. That evening, he becomes a hero in his own right, foiling a convenience store holdup. Unfortunately, as he walks outside, he's the victim of a hit and run courtesy of a bunch of idiot kids, one of whom is the son of one of the thugs that killed his father.
Aggrieved, his mother decides to go for extrajudicial justice, calling upon Mokembe to do some form of voodoo to catch the (presumably unknown to her) culprits. This results in the animation of a zombie whom gradually hunts down not only the kids but also the two thugs from the beginning of the movie... one of whom is now an upstanding pillar of the community!
Like The Horror of Party Beach and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, this is another movie gadding about calling itself a horror musical, but it's got even less than those two on which to stake the claim; there is plenty of incidental metal music on the soundtrack, but no actual musical numbers. Oh, and Adam West is in it, too. Neat, huh?
For those interested in more Thor, a documentary
I Am Thor will serve as his biography. He also has a trope page.
The film was riffed in a sixth-season episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The episode page can be found here.
This film contains examples of the following tropes:
- Anti-Hero: The zombified Tony, Molly, the Hollywood Voodoo practicioner, and Frank, the Jerkass detective.
- Asshole Victim: Nobody mourns when Jim Batten is killed. That includes his parents, according to what his father Fred, a friend of Churchman, tells him.
- The Bad Guy Wins: If you consider Tony the villain, as he stops attacking people right after he finishes killing everyone he had been raised to kill.
- However, considering the fact that Tony was a good guy who foiled a robbery/assault and was resurrected by a voodoo priestess to kill a bunch of idiot kids and a crooked police chief, one can't really count him as a full on bad guy.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Jim keeps bragging about his cock size, making one wonder if he's Compensating for Something.
- Bittersweet Ending: While a few sympathetic characters do die (usually as collateral damage or by the doomed villains), the primary target of the zombies are a corrupt police chief and a group of young delinquents led by an annoying psychopath... who all get dispatched.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Jim claims that he wants to have sex with his older sister to the waitress he keeps harassing.Waitress: I'm old enough to be your older sister.
Jim: Hey, that's cool, I always wanted to make it with my older sister! - Cassandra Truth: The cops on scene practically roll their eyes at the waitress' story that a giant was Jim's killer, despite his corpse having been impaled by a baseball bat.
- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Churchman flat-out ignores the coroner's report and tells the press that Tony's murder of Peter and Susie were a drug-induced murder/suicide.
- Delinquents: Our five teenage leads, most of who exist to pad out the runtime and the body count.
- Deus ex Machina: Churchman has killed Tony and Molly, and prepares to do the same to Frank, when all of a sudden, Tony's zombified father bursts out of his grave and drags Churchman to Hell.
- Dirty Cop: Captain Churchman, and possibly most of his department.
- Downer Ending: There's probably four surviving named characters, though you might consider this the Villain Protagonist variant, as Tony was sent to kill those who killed him and harassed Molly, and it explicitly spares the most innocent and uninvolved characters (even if one of them still gets tossed around).
- Dragged Off to Hell: Churchman, by Tony's zombified dad.
- Fanservice: The hot tub scene. And Tony's nipple-revealing shirt.
- Fate Worse than Death: Churchman begs Frank for a Mercy Kill while he's being Dragged Off to Hell, but Frank decides not to shoot him.
- Food Slap: Jim throws a handful of cold spaghetti in his mother's face during an argument.
- For the Evulz: The apparent motivation for Churchman and Fred attacking and almost raping Molly in the first place can be seen as a mix of racism and their own sadism. The hit-and-run that kills Tony averts the trope, since it was a genuine accident and Jim is the only one who feels pleased about it.
- Hate Sink: Jim Batten, the only member of the teen gang who expresses psychotic glee at killing Tony, and later harasses and tries to rape a waitress. The funny-voiced police coroner even tells Frank, having known Jim's parents all his life, that Jim himself was an absolute disgrace to the family. It's shown earlier in the film that not even Jim's parents themselves can stand him, and they don't even mourn or hold a funeral when he dies.
- Hollywood Voodoo: The extent of "voodoo" in this movie involves Molly putting on skull make-up and bringing Tony back as a zombie to avenge his killers.
- Idiot Ball: The incredibly violent suspect at the police station somehow fails to be restrained by three or four officers. Captain Churchman exacerbates the situation by kicking the guy in the head, enraging him.
- Improbable Use of a Weapon: Jim Batten is not beaten by Tony's baseball bat, but impaled by it.
- Ironic Name: Captain Churchman is a bigoted Dirty Cop who commits more crimes than he solves.
- Jerkass: Jim Batten, and Capt. Churchman to an extent.
- Large Ham: Shawn Levy as Jim Batten, and Adam West as Churchman.
- Like Father, Like Son: Fred, Jim's father, was one of the delinquents who attacked and nearly raped Molly. Though he wised up and cleaned up his act, his son is similarly evil, if not moreso.
- Look Both Ways: Subverted. Tony is looking straight at Jim's car as he walks into an unlit street in the middle of the night, and still doesn't seem to see it until it's too late.
- Misplaced Retribution: Tony is sent after those who killed him (and his father). While Churchman and Jim's father Fred were actively involved in the assault on Molly and his father's murder, Jim's passengers didn't do anything except be in the same car that killed Tony. They're generally unpleasant people, but they had no agency in the killing (and are very clearly shaken up about it, unlike Jim himself), while other unrelated characters who got in the way were spared (it also makes the other armed robber look like a Karma Houdini by comparison).
- Neutral Female: Tony's mother, during the scene where Tony is a kid.
- Susie, the blonde from Jim's gang. She's the only teen who seems to have a conscience by feeling the tiniest bit guilty about running down Tony. Yet for some reason, she receives the most brutal death out of any of them.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Tony and his father get killed immediately after helping someone in trouble, the latter as a direct result of helping, and the former by getting caught in a hit and run shortly afterwards.
- Police Are Useless: Churchman is more interested in closing cases than solving them. Frank at least tries to do a proper investigation, but he's not very good at it.
- Rape as Drama: And the abuse heaped on the victim by the police.Frank: But you went into the alley with him.
- He later harshly instructs the police, "Get her outta here."
- The Sociopath: Jim Batten is outright called a psychopath by his own friends, given that he stalks and attempts to rape a waitress, throws food at his mother's face, and relishes snuffing Tony's lights out.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Tony successfully stops an armed assault and walks away, unlike his father. And then he's immediately killed by a group of unrelated teens. In a bit of an exaggeration, everyone in the movie just knows he's dead immediately, even the reckless driver who wasn't paying attention in the first place (they only doubt it when they don't see anything in the paper). It's to the point that Tony's friends don't even bother calling an ambulance, and simply deliver him to his mother's lawn under a sheet.
- Too Dumb to Live: Being rock-stupid makes it laughably easy to get killed by a zombie. Here are good ways, demonstrated by three particular brain donors:
- If you're Susie, pass by the exit sign when being pursued by a zombie. Also make sure to stop while still in the same room as said zombie.
- If you're Fred, sit in your car and don't turn it on. Also, be sure to leave the door wide open.
- If you're Amy, hide behind a window.
- Two-Person Pool Party: Peter and Susie strip down to their underwear and climb into the hot tub at the gym. However, their intimacy is interrupted by the appearance of the zombified Tony. According to Old Joe, the janitor, this little hot tub celebration was traditional after their tennis matches.
- Useless Protagonist: Frank presumably ends up being the hero, albeit through no extraordinary effort of his own. He was at least correct that the murders weren't caused by a common street thug.
- The Unintelligible: Molly. One line sounds like she's saying "feel again the worm."
- Voodoo Zombie: After Tony disrupts a robbery at a grocery store, he is struck and killed by a car full of teenagers: Bob, Amy, Jim, Peter, and Susie. The teens flee the scene and Tony's body is carried to his home, where his mother Louise mourns over him. She contacts Molly Mekembe, the girl William saved, to repay the favour of her rescue. Now revealed to be a Haitian voodoo priestess, Molly resurrects Tony as a zombie and uses her powers to guide him to the teenagers, aiding him in his revenge.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Tony's mother features consistently in the plot and kicks off the whole zombie thing by calling in a favor from Molly. She eventually disappears from the movie, however, and when Molly dies making sure that Churchman is dragged off to Hell, it's treated like the entire affair just wrapped itself up, even though a primary instigator is still out there.
