Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane (DVD)

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What do you get if you combine "Night of the Living Dead" with "Snakes on a Plane"? OK, too easy, I know.

George Romero's 1968, super-low-budget "Night of the Living Dead" was a landmark motion picture that helped create a whole subgenre of zombie films, and the 2006 thriller "Snakes on a Plane" was at the least good campy fun. It should come as no surprise that New Line Home Entertainment distributes both "Snakes on a Plane" and "Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane," but what differentiates them immediately is that while "Snakes" starred Samuel L. Jackson, "Flight" stars David Chism, and while New Line had enough confidence in "Snakes" to distribute it theatrically, the studio is sending "Flight" directly to video. Those differences alone might tell you all you need to know about "Flight of the Living Dead."

Still, it's hard to keep zombie flicks down, especially if you view them as purely tongue-in-cheek, and this one is not entirely without merit. What's more, it's the Unrated Edition. Yeah, well, that's probably a part of the joke. There is only one edition, and this is it. The reason it's unrated has nothing to do with its being sexier, bloodier, or more violent than a rated counterpart; it's because New Line didn't submit the film to the Motion Picture Association of America's rating board. The fact is, the film contains no sex or nudity, and the violence is so exaggerated as to be more funny than frightening. So, I wouldn't put too much stock in the "unrated" business.

The movie begins with some very loud, very noisy soundtrack music playing behind a big Shirley Bassey-James Bond sort of title sequence, with images of blood and internal organs substituting for scantily clad young models. From that point on, things start going downhill.

The good-humored title says just about everything about the plot. On a flight from the U.S. to Paris, an airliner is carrying a top-level government shipment requiring an armed guard. Seems a group of mad scientists have worked out a procedure for bringing the dead back to life, and the military wants to use it to resurrect fallen soldiers. But the procedure is risky because it involves injecting the recently dead with a virus that the resuscitated body can pass on to other people. Oh, and it produces a zombie with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. But, you knew that.

So, these scientists have brought such a body (Sarah Laine) onboard (for reasons never clear), and halfway through the flight, it comes back to life. Then, all hell breaks loose on the plane as the communications system goes haywire, and the deceased infects first the guard and then most of the passengers and crew. But you knew that, too. It becomes a little like Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians"/"And Then There Were None," only with a growing number of very active zombies instead of inanimate corpses hanging around.

The filmmakers might well have titled their movie "Stereotypes on a Plane," given the number of clichéd characters we meet. The hero is a cop, Truman Burrows (David Chism), who is taking a prisoner named Frank (Kevin J. O'Connor) to face trial in Paris for conning people, including mobsters, out of quite a lot of dough. Burrows is appropriately macho, so macho that when he's knocked unconscious by an accidental blow to the head (letting his prisoner escape), he wakes up in about two minutes and without a moment's hesitation and with no apparent ill effects begins his pursuit of the escapee. I mean, I thought that only happened in old cowboy pictures. Frank, on the other hand, is clearly a bad guy because he looks so much like a bad guy. In fact, O'Connor is the best part of the show, playing his character as a cross between charming and creepy.

Then we find that every stewardess, er, flight attendant, is beautiful, young, and shapely, starting with the film's heroine, Megan (Kristen Kerr). The captain (Raymond Barry) is grey-haired and sturdy, but his copilot (Todd Babcock) is young and studly. Then there's a handsome, young golfing pro, Longshot Billy (Derek Webster), patterned after Tiger Woods, who is never without his beautiful, young wife or his beautiful, all-purpose putter; plus, there's a quartet of young, attractive, airheaded twenty-somethings; and even an attractive young nun. Have I mentioned that most of the characters on this plane are young? And attractive?

Of more importance, there's a TSA agent aboard (Richard Tyson) and the aforementioned mad scientists, chief among them a Dr. Bennett (Erick Avari), whom we know is a mad scientist because, uh, well, because he looks so much like one.