Combining short films with titles like Wadzilla and The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, Chillerama is an anthology film stuffed to the brim with movie references from the collaborative minds of Adam Green (Hatchet), Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs), Adam Rifkin (Detroit Rock City), and Joe Lynch (Knights of Badassdom). Weaving the films together is the over-arching movie Zom-B-Film, a tale of a zombie pervert invasion at a drive-in movie theater.
Chillerama features Joel David Moore, Lin Shaye, Ray Wise, Eric Roberts, and the man behind many masks, Kane Hodder, all of whom are intentionally hamming it up in roles ranging from cliched military generals to a Frankenjew to Adolf Hitler. Never taking itself too seriously, the film makes an inordinate amount of dick jokes, spills a lot of blood, makes two dozen poop jokes, and sprays all sorts of fluids across the screen.
So if you’re into that…
Kills
As a whole, Chillerama probably kills somewhere between 35 and 50 people. Wadzilla kills a bunch in a monster rampage, while each of the others contribute plenty of individuals getting things bitten, stomped, and popped.
Ills
There are a wide variety of nasty things in the movie – most of them of a bodily fluid nature, not a death nature. The violence is pretty much all campy, but we get to see a bunch of heads getting popped, eyeballs eaten, a menorah rammed through a face, arms ripped off, heads knocked off, people ripped in half, bit in half, and fucked in half. On the just regular gross side, there are plenty of sperm, seminal fluid, balls, zombie dicks, burst testicles, and human excrement. Oh, also a Werebear rapes a guy in the ass so hard a pink bear dick pops through his stomach.
Lust
Wadzilla features several smoking hot women, fully clothed, while Zom-B-Film features a couple of real lady tits. There are also some prosthetic dicks and balls, the Statue of Liberty does a sexy dance and then gets raped by a giant sperm, there are a few blowjobs enacted, and two dozen zombies fuck each other in various states of death.
Learning
Zombies are perverts and the level of maturity in this film makes a preschool class seem like a Gatsby party.
Review
Chillerama starts off strong with Wadzilla, a tale of a giant sperm told through a non-stop barrage of euphemisms and blatant dick jokes. It’s hilarious, with a fantastic sperm-creature design, though there is some poor CGI spread throughout. I Was a Teenage Werebear is second in line and is easily the worst of the shorts, though I must admit I was partial to he 60s style doo-wop music.
Adam Green’s The Diary of Anne Frankenstein is a close second after the sperm-tale, featuring Joel Moore as hilarious Hitler who ends up building a super-Jew. The short starts off with Moore speaking something close to German, but by the time it finishes he’s spouting off non-sense before a Kane Hodder Meshugannah breaks into a traditional Jewish dance. The story bringing them all together, Zom-B-Film is okay for the most part, but it really wants to shock you with its depictions of zombie blowjobs, zombie masturbation, and blue ejaculate.
I really wanted to love Chillerama from start to finish. It sounds like the most amazing of films and I was totally on-board, full steam ahead until I Was a Teenage Werebear. Despite how enjoyable Anne Frankenstein is, the film never really recovers and starts to slide down an immature slope. If you’ve read my writing, it’s clear that my tastes aren’t too sophisticated so for me to call a film immature, something has gone wrong.
From pretty much the first frame, the film is packed with trying-too-hard on the nose references to other films or actors, whether it’s theater owner Cecil B. Kaufman (combining Cecil B DeMille and Lloyd Kaufman) or the countless quotations, it really starts to grate on you after awhile. There are call-outs to Star Wars (Red Five, Standing By), Gone With the Wind and pretty much every movie you can think of. It seemed as if every character was only speaking in quotes during the last 10 minutes – and one of them was. At one point Cecil Kaufman (played by Richard Riehle) just shouts catch-phrase after catch-phrase as he kills zombies. That was mildly entertaining, but before that, the constant quotes were driving me nuts. When Riehle told two kids to “get to the chopper” when there was no chopper, I literally threw my pen and said “what the fuck.” It’s as if they ran out of dialog and decided to just recycle other films. It wasn’t all that clever at the beginning of the movie and let me tell you, 100 minutes in and you’ve had enough – but they’re just getting started.
Really, the entire film is one big dick joke about ejaculation – there isn’t a single segment that doesn’t feature ejaculation and most of them also feature rape and blowjobs. I’m obviously not against any of this, but it’s just repetitive and seems like shock for shock’s sake that isn’t all that shocking. Perhaps the film wanted to make a statement when Cecil Kaufman stares at the camera and says “Fuck modesty” while zombies rape and masturbate and someone shits on a painting, which is clever the same way a child thinks he’s clever when he shits himself. That is, it’s not clever.
Again, I really wanted to like the movie, but overall, it was just immature and fell short of expectations. I would definitely watch Wadzilla and The Diary of Anne Frankenstein again, as well as most of Zom-B-Movie, but viewing Chillerama a second time will benefit from the fast forward feature. A for effort and the idea, C+ for execution.
