I'm not really sure why some things happened in this movie because
the narrative doesn't take the time to flash back to the story's development
in the previous four films. The filmmakers undoubtedly felt that
such a recap would be unnecessary because ... well, because nobody
would be stupid enough to watch a film called Return of the Living
Dead 5: Rave to the Grave unless they were already rabid fans of the
series. They were wrong. I guess I showed them a thing or two because,
by God,
I am that stupid!
What can I tell you? I'm just the kind of devil-may-care moron who
will jump into an unfamiliar swimmin' hole without checking it out in
advance. I'm too dense to be afraid of the unknown. I even watched
Anal Addicts 18 without having picked up all the nuances and plot
twists which were developed in 13-17.
Anyway, as near as I can tell, the plot of Rave to the Grave goes a
little something like this:
Several industrial drums of a top secret substance are floating
around. When ingested in large quantities, this substance turns humans
into brain-eating zombies, but when taken in small doses it can be a
powerful hallucinogenic. Crossing over to zombie status is obviously
not desirable, but getting to the brink and pulling back appears to be
the ultimate high. Some teenagers find one of the canisters and the
resident science nerd analyzes it and figures out that it is very
similar to Ecstasy. The science guy's best friend is the drug dealer
guy (isn't that always the way?), who immediately realizes how the
chemical potential can be converted to financial potential.
Their home-made drugs basically all end up being passed around at a
Halloween rave, where the uninhibited ravers take them with abandon,
in quantities so large that many partygoers pass the point of "at the
doorway of the living dead" and actually become brain-craving zombies.
Raves and Halloween being what they are, it's really not possible to
distinguish zombie lunatics from ordinary lunatics dressed
like zombies for Halloween, so a fair share of brains are consumed
until the party goes from pretending to be out of control to being out
of control for real.
The film is played strictly for low-brow laughs, especially by two
bumbling Russian agents who want to recover the missing canisters for
their own motherland, in the hope that the senior Russian authorities
will reward them with free trips to Euro Disney. The heavily armed
Russians go to the rave and, assisted by a few of the teens, end up
blasting away virtually everyone there until ...
Dude, do you need a review? How good could it be? It was made in Romania for the Sci-Fi
channel and is rated 2.7 at IMDb after more than 1000 votes. The cast consists almost entirely of unknowns, although Peter
Coyote makes an unexpected appearance in the opening scene. Your heart
has to go out to Coyote for having to accept a tiny role in a cheesy
project
like this after once having worked with Spielberg, Polanski and Road
Runner.
I guess there might actually be circumstances in which one
might want to watch this film. One might be hooked on the series, or
one might want to be the second person stupid enough to watch a film
called Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave without having
seen all of the previous ones. I would assume that anyone in one or both of
those two groups is incapable of reading these or any other
words, so it seems safe to tell you readers to avoid it.
In the unlikely event that I am wrong, and that you are in one of
those target groups and also capable of recognizing written languages,
I have to admit that the film did provide me with some entertainment,
although I fast-forwarded through a lot of really dumb stuff. I even
laughed out loud a couple of times. For example, while the zombie
students bite most of their fellow students in the head, they bite the
cheerleaders ... well ... elsewhere.
Maybe you had to be there.
At any rate, the film is probably a bit better than I'm leading you
to believe. It's technically competent, has a pretty good
score, and is fairly well acted. It also offers plenty of brief
flashes of breasts from anonymous zombies and partiers. Granted that
is not much of a recommendation, but if that's enough for you ...
party on, dudes.
