Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of witnessing such cinematic atrocities as Zombiez and Vampiyaz can attest to the irreversible bowel damage sustained while viewing these inner-city attempts at horror. I lost my beloved Uncle Mortimer to one of these films last fall, an event that shook my deep-fried heart to its tender core. "Of all the things in this world that can kill a man," Uncle Morty said as he gripped the shoddy metal railing of his soiled deathbed, "I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be one of them cheap, African-American zombie pictures." I wept for humanity that day, vowing on the still-warm corpse of my dearly departed friend that I would never watch another low-budget urban horror flick again.
Whoops.
Ol' Morty would be very disappointed with his only nephew, for I have intentionally gone back on my not-so-rock-solid word. Do I at least have a good excuse for committing such a heinous moral crime, you ask? Not really. In fact, it's actually quite lame. The promise-eating reason for my backpedaling ways, of course, would be the appearance of Phantasm's own Reggie Bannister in Duane Stinnet's indie zombie epic Gangs of the Dead, also known in certain circles as Last Rites. Yes, dear readers, it would appear that I am willing to break a promise to any dead relative if and when you agree to feature everyone's favorite ice cream man in your latest horror production.
Naturally, there is one rule you must follow in order to qualify for this exclusive offer. Beware, hungry horror hippos, for a meaty spoiler lurks within the opening sentence of the following paragraph. I usually don't include such information when mindlessly crafting a review, but I feel this needs to be addressed. For the sake of humanity and blah blah blah.
Anyway, the oh so important rule I'm referring to is this: If you want me to go against my word as a weak white man, you have to feature Reggie Bannister in a role that doesn't find him squished beneath a van roughly ten minutes after his character has been introduced. I'm sorry if you think this stipulation is cruel and unjust, but I don't make the rules around here. I just collect them from the chap upstairs, rush down to my cubicle on the first floor, and print them out for distribution amongst the homeless guys in the alley out back.
However, if you've read the above passage and are completely cool with the nugget of info buried within its crusty stomach folds, I don't think you'll have too many complaints about Gangs of the Dead. You may find yourself whining a little about the film's astonishingly familiar plot and its lack of brutal on-screen zombie carnage, mind you, but Stinnet's stark visual stylings and his stable of intriguing victims should keep you mildly enthralled for at least 80 minutes or so. By the time you've grown weary of Stinnet's microbudget shtick, the credits will be rolling smoothly and your mind will have already deleted roughly 65% of this experience from your short-term memory.
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