Review of Bone Sickness (2004) by Tim B — 29 Feb 2008

BONE SICKNESS (2004).

This one is the fan made cheapo zombie movie to end all fan made cheapo zombie movies. It starts out with a grave robbery (a little too dark) and a graphic axe to the face. So far, so good. After the creepy ass credits, we meet Alex (Producer Rich George) and his wife Kristen (Darya Zabinski). Alex is very sick, and his wife is feeding him something to help his bones. This is her attempt at "alternative medicine". We know the crunchy things are not granola. Kristen snaps at Alex for puking. She goes to meet her grave robber,Tommy (Writer, director "Triple Threat" Brian Paulin), one of Alex's best pals. She uses a knife on the bones of the dead to extract the marrow, feeding it to Alex to cure his bone sickness. Meanwhile, two cops are on "spook patrol" at the graveyard when something breaks out the windows of their patrol car and murders them both. Lots of screaming and gouts of phony blood later, we see the investigation. Two cops and a night watchman have been murdered at the graveyard and someone's responsible! A detective stops Tommy in the graveyard as he is going about his gruesome work, but Tommy successfully lies to the cop and gets more bones for Alex to suck on. Lots of worms and bugs add to the overall creep factor in this scene. Tommy's wife Andrea uses the meat from the fridge to make hamburgers. I imagine that this is a big mistake. Mrs. Clancy, Andreas' nosy neighbor, fills her in on her hubby's activities, the nosy bitch. There's a nice scene of Kristen giving Alex a bath, for being sick he sure is a hotty! Refreshing to see some male nudity in these things for a change. With the size of the breasts on the women in this movie, I can see that there will be plenty of mammaries on display later! Did I say later? Damn, the nudity and gore are plentiful only twenty minutes in! Kristen has a dream where she's making love to the dead! So disgusting! Yay!!

Now a completely gratuitous scene showing Alex on the toilet... pounding out...worms!!! Lots of them!! After puking tons of wormy puke, Poor Alex is freaking out. Oh its okay now, he's eating the worms he puked. More nudity, mmmmm.....this is shaping up nicely. Ok, Andrea's fingering herself, this is completely uncalled for.

Forty Minutes in, we get our first Zombie. This one is a grave crawler, and he's pretty funky too. Well, howdy! Now the graveyard is filled with grave crawlers, ala "Return of the Living Dead" and they be a- shufflin". More gratuitous t and a, and we followers of Zombie movies know that a long sustained Zombie siege is imminent. Bring it on ! This is the first zombie attack in a pool that I have ever seen. Yup, all that nonsense about eating the dead really starts to pay off here for the second half. I can see that this is gonna be one Eyetie level zombie after another. The cops are soooo stoooopid!

The grue gets thick and deep here, with gunshots to the head, an axe, and a circular saw variously employed to horrific effect. All sorts of obscurely motivated fol- de- rol later, the zombies lay siege to Tommy and Andrea. These are definitely Fulci- type Zombies, not your Romero shufflers. (Which is okay with me, I love them all.) Alex, however, is now a living Zombie, a first for me. God, I love this movie ! There's all kinds of goopy horrific shit going on here. The cops are sooooo stooooopid! But they ARE heavily armed. Are they making love or being eaten? It's hard to tell, but I like it. Guts spilling out, fevered dreams, gore galore. How nasty can it get? Woo Hoo! Arterial spray really makes my day. Buckets of blood. How long can the blood spray out after one has been decapitated? Not this long, I'm sure. This puts "Land of the Dead" to shame. "You turned me into a fucking necro- junkie!" Oh, this must be Alex....Sweet Revenge...Now Tommy's a living Zombie...This is more an homage to the Italian Zombie movies, crappy acting and all...but, hey, at least they ACT.

The ending is as wild a ride as I've ever seen. It switches abruptly into a Romero movie, complete with obviously risky amateur stunts and some of the most effective make up work I've ever seen in an amateur production.

I urge all of you living suckers to check this one out.