Call it what you will: Toxic Zombies, Bloodeaters, Forest of Fear, Crying Fields. No matter the title chosen, this Pennsylvania regional with many a name remains a nifty little horror film with more on its mind than splatter — although it delivers plenty of that, too, with cheap but effective makeup.
Somewhere among the 60 square miles of hill country, hippies — one of whom looks like “Refugee”-era Tom Petty — are growing $2 million worth of marijuana plants. After our far-out farmers kill a pair of federal officers looking to make a bust, the government retaliates by crop-dusting the area with a new herbicide. As you’ve guessed long before now, this action has an odd side effect in transforming the druggies into cannibalistic zombies.
In his one and only film, writer/director Charles McCrann (tragically a 9/11 victim) resourcefully takes the lead as Tom Cole, a “forest department” exec who uses a visit to the hills as a good excuse to bring his racist joke-spouting kid brother (Phillip Garfinkel) with him so they can fish; Tom’s wife (Beverly Shapiro) basically invites herself to third-wheel the outing.
Meanwhile, the toxic zombies wreak havoc on local campers, immediately orphaning a teenaged Amy (Judy Grown) and her overalls-wearing, learning-disabled brother (Kevin Hanlon), whose name seems to vacillate between Tommy, Timmy and Jimmy. Tom and company come to the kids’ aid, forming a temporary nuclear family for a fairly tense final stretch that holes them up for part of it, per subgenre rules established by George A. Romero.
Shrewdly crafted, Toxic Zombies was too late to ride the ecological movement of the 1970s and too early for the nuke-fueled zeitgeist ushered by Reagan’s America. Perhaps now, with the undead’s rise at the dawn of this millennium as a cultural phenomenon that still lingers strong, the movie finally can find its proper audience. Aside: Look for a cameo by the largest can of Campbell’s Pork & Beans the screen has dared show. —Rod Lott