The interspersing of zombie and military flick tropes has a
rich history, dating all the way back, of course, to George Romero’s Day of the Dead and beyond. Dead and Deader, though, I’ll give
credit: it might be the first film in which I’ve gotten/had to deploy both the phrases
“marauding zombies” and “illegal Cambodian incursion” (Henry Kissinger would not
be amused, I guess), and that’s not even including the movie’s obvious nods to 2004’s
Shaun of the Dead and Jim Carrey’s similarly
titled goof-fest.

A tonal mash-up of semi-successful execution if entirely
copped moves, Dead and Deader stars erstwhile
Superman Dean Cain at Lt. Bobby Quinn, a Special Forces commando who, during an
officially unauthorized reconnaissance mission deep into said country’s sweaty jungle
with his platoon, uncovers a secret experimental laboratory full of mutilated
dead bodies, an exceptional breed of life-extending scorpions and strange equipment.
Quinn also unfortunately gets killed… or so it seems.

When he wakes up Stateside after barely avoiding his own
autopsy, an only semi-zombified Quinn finds that, courtesy of said scorpion, he’s
been bestowed with certain powers that make him the ultimate fighter against a
growing band of fully infected, undead flesh-easters. Teaming up with military
cook Judson (Guy Torry), film geek waitress Holly (Susan Ward)
and others, Quinn tries to stop the plague before it infects the entire nation.

I remember flipping through Dead and Deader screenwriter Mark Altman’s 1991 behind-the-scenes
book on Twin Peaks, and being wowed…
by the number of typos and errors. Even for what was obviously a quickie
cash-in title, I thought, this was slung together in pretty haphazard fashion. The
same might be said for quite a lot of Altman’s hackishly referential writing
for the big screen, which includes Room 6,
starring Christine Taylor;
The Darkroom; Uwe Boll’s House of the Dead (and its sequel);
and 1998’s Star Trek-inspired Free Enterprise. He’s a co-writer here, though,
with Steve Kriozere, and the collaboration seems to have worked; certainly
there are no groaning inconsistencies on par with the aforementioned book, and
the tone is for the most part one of nicely balanced fun and splatter-driven schlock.

Its many genre in-jokes are frequently obvious and chatter
about other movies sometimes tedious, but Dead
and Deader’s characters are decently sketched out and given some fun lines,
and the cast (which includes Colleen Camp, Peter Greene, Dean Haglund and Armin
Shimerman) really helps elevate things beyond something like Devil’s Den,
which wants to be hip and fun but sinks under the weight of its own accumulated
inanity. By knowing what type of movie they’re making (and what kind they’re not), and all being on the same page,
along with director Patrick Dinhunt, Dead
and Deader actually earns a marginal recommendation for the hardcore horror
set who also found Shaun of the Dead such
a delicious, chocolate-and-peanut-butter-type flick.

The DVD for the movie comes in a nice cardboard O-ring (above) that spiffs
up what is otherwise a fairly drab cover, presenting a cut-out of a door that frames,
yes, a couple marauding zombies. The film is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen,
enhanced for 16×9 televisions, and comes with Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 English
language tracks, as well as an audio commentary track from writers Altman and Kriozere,
along with composer Joe Kraemer. The most tasty tidbit of the slate of extras is
a 35-minute making-of featurette, full of cast and crew interviews, as well as
some behind-the-scenes footage. A photo gallery and a DVD-ROM copy of the
script round out the bonus features. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)