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The Dead and the Damned (Movie Review)

While everyone was going to the theaters to see Cowboys & Aliens the last week of July another movie was released on DVD called: The Dead and the Damned the original title was Cowboys & Zombies but was changed because it was being released the same week as Cowboys & Aliens. I found out about this movie while I was at Comic Con this year. I had the pleasure of meeting Rick Mora after the Breaking Dawn panel.  Rick played a Native Werewolf Tribe #1 – in the flashback sequence of Twilight in 2008.  As we spoke he told me about 2 of his projects that he was excited about, the above captioned movie and another called Yellow Rock which will be released later this year. I promised him I would do a review for the movie, and who doesn’t love a good zombie movie? The Dead and the Damned was written and directed by Rene Perez. 

The movie opens with a gunfight, cowboys against cowboys, and ends with a gunfight cowboys against zombies! This is a low budget film so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It started off slow for me, and there is some bad acting. But somewhere in the middle of the movie there is a scene where Mortimor

(David A. Lockhart) and Brother Wolf (Rick Mora) talk about their reasons for the things that they do. It was the turning point for me because I started to care about them. There is some nudity in this movie, and I really can’t tell you why, it serves no purpose, maybe just to appeal to the male masses. The zombies looked decent, I was surprised, but I didn’t like the CG bloods splatter, it was obvious it was computer generated, they would have been better off using corn syrup and red dye.

Mortimor is a bounty hunter in search of outlaws with big rewards. He is saving every dollar he makes, but we don’t find out the reason he is hoarding all this cash until later in the movie.  He is on a hunt for an Apache Indian/Brother Wolf with a high price tag over his head.  As he heads for the mountains he passes through a gold mining town. He is approached by a man who offers him 3 women to choose from to be his wife.  He chooses Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery) but not to marry, to use as bait to trap Brother Wolf. In the meantime we see 2 miners unearthing a meteor, it is glowing green. They take it into town where they use a pick axes to try and break it open. They crack a piece off and it begins to smoke and green spores explode from it. The spores infect the town people and turn them into blood thirsty monsters.

Mortimor captures Brother Wolf, as he is returning him back to town so he can collect his pay check, they are attacked by the blood thirsty zombies. They have to join forces to fight off the monsters.  They make their way back into town with Rhiannon only to find that the town is abandoned. They decide to spend the night in the saloon. Things are calm for the night. Mortimor and Brother Wolf start telling their sad stories. This is the part of the movie where I started to feel something for these 2 men, up until than I had no connection with any of the characters.

The zombies are starting to get restless, and hungry. They are once again fighting to stay alive.

 

 

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