Raiders of the Damned (2005)

I’ve watched some bad movies for the site and then I’ve watched some movies that make me question my sanity for even running a website.  Raiders of the Damned is one of those movies.  The story is that the world has been overrun with zombies that were created by a combination of chemical and nuclear war.  There is a small group of survivors that are looking for a cure.  To that end they are running experiments spraying a new chemical on the undead, but these aren’t your typical zombies.  The dead manage to take the chopper down and capture a scientist.  A team of misfits is put together to get him back.  Zombies vs. misfit soldiers is pretty much the rest of the movie.

I don’t even know where to start with this one.  The story is something that I’ve seen a million times in horror/action films.  Which makes the inept writing and execution of it even more unforgivable.  The story and characters are bland to begin with and then you add to it that there isn’t enough material here for a feature length flick and you have a miserably boring experience.  Seriously there is more padding here then there was in that damn Nutty Professor movie with Eddie Murphy.  The movie introduces characters only to kill them off, and then ignores characters that might have been interesting had any time been spent on them.  There is also an entire subplot set up between the head zombie and the leader of the rescue team that is sort of ignored. 

But fear not we get to see Richard Grieco stroke a small stuffed animal while trying to crazy.  In fact we get to see a lot of this as the movie wastes far too much time focusing on the one named actor that appears.  The only problem is that they gave him a role that has very little to do with the movie.  Every minute spent on this character is just slowing down what is already a painfully slow movie. 

The gore here is about what you would expect to see… in your local haunted house every October.  Hell they don’t even take the time to apply black or green makeup to the exposed parts of the actors under the masks!  There aren’t any interesting kills with most of them being pretty damn tame.  At best you get an occasional plastic limb being dragged off.  And while I’m far more forgiving about CGI then I used to be this is a fine example of what not to do.  You have a terrible CGI helicopter in the beginning of the movie that looks like crap and then that is followed up with god-awful CGI muzzle flashes.  Other then one sort of fun gag with a spoon and an eyeball I found the effects to be thoroughly disappointing.

Raiders of the Damned is a perfect example of what I rail against when it comes to independent filmmaking.   You have a script that is poorly written and underwhelming (no excuse for this ever, regardless of budget) that contains scenes that the filmmakers can’t afford to pull off (the helicopter).  The ambition was here, but the talent was lacking.  Stay far away from this one.

½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2010 John Shatzer