Zombie Movie Review: The Quick and the Undead

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Vector image for zombie movie Quick and the Undead

I recently had a conversation about how on earth Zombie movies can still have even a modicum of originality, considering they have been around for over 70 years and almost exclusively revolve around dead people coming back to life and eating people.
“Well” said I, “recently we’ve had Fido”… and then that was as far as that conversation went.  However, had I been thinking properly instead of just drinking wine I could have remembered I had this little number on my shelf awaiting its first viewing, which certainly had the potential to be rather interesting.  A Zombie Western.

Set around 80 years in the future after a virus has turned most of the world into shuffling Zombies, The Quick and the Undead follows a bounty hunter who makes a living hunting down and killing off any Zombie throughout the country, and collecting their fingers as evidence to claim his reward.  However, he’s soon double crossed by his old gang and left for dead, his haul of fingers stolen.  Luckily being invincible he comes back from the dead and heads off after his old gang to reclaim his bounty.

However that is basically all that happens, one dude wandering around until he catches up with his old gang.  That’s it.  Sure there are some Zombies along the way that need dispatching \ running away from, and there is a slightly interesting parallel storyline involving the leader of the nasty gang trying to increase his haul by infecting healthy villages with the Zombie virus so he can kill them off and claim a larger bounty, but none of these ideas go anywhere.  Heck, even the idea of an indestructible hero is barely covered and is rarely used at-all in the movie.

The gore is reasonable, the direction is actually rather good, and the cinematography and overall look of the film is top drawer.  There is a great concept there but sadly the whole thing is spectacularly dull-ass boring.  It’s neither scary, funny, or tense.  The characters are uninteresting and really badly acted and to cap it all off there’s not a single nork shot in sight!  Sheesh, what a waste of time.

Gore Score C
Nork Score F
Originality Score B
Overall Score D