The Film Co-Operative

COMPANY DETAILS

Production Companies: Sugar Skull Films, The Film Co-Operative LLC, Mania Entertainment

Director: Ani Kyd Wolf

Writer John A Russo

Producer: Nuala Quinn-Barton

Cast: Casper Van Dien, Michael Berryman

Bill Moseley, Trina Parks, C Ernst Harth

NEWS:  Deadline, JoBlo, Vancouver Sun,  Yahoo Uk, Yahoo Canada, MSN, GeekTyrant,  Home of Horror, Bloody Disgusting

SYNOPSIS: 

The 1968 “zombie plague” is ending. The living dead, eaters of human flesh who are lurking in the Evans City Cemetery, are being gunned down and burned by an armed posse led by Sheriff Ken Johnson and Deputy Jeff Sanders. Dr. Harold Ormsby is also on the scene with a team of white-coated laboratory assistants, collecting “zombie specimens” by shooting them with immobilizing darts, the same way wild animals are captured for zoos. Their mission is to carry out experiments on the undead in hopes of finding out what caused the plague and how it can be cured. But when Ormsby stoops to examine a female zombie felled by darts, the sexy but hideous creature — not quite immobilized — lunges at him, rips at his face and bites him in the throat. The lab men shoot more darts into the zombie, and she finally falls back, inert. Sheriff Johnson and Deputy Sanders know that they must shoot Dr. Ormsby in the head, because the moment he dies he will come back as one of the living dead. But the lab men beg for a chance to treat Ormsby and possibly save him from this awful fate. Against their better judgement, the lawmen let the scientists have their way, thus unwittingly setting up conditions that will enable the living dead to walk again.

Sixteen years later… Due to a harrowing experience with a mob of zombies on property adjacent to the cemetery, Jeff Sanders, still a deputy, is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He freaks out sometimes, and his angry outbursts make him a danger to his wife and threaten to break up their marriage. Dr. Ormsby is miraculously still alive, the only known person to have survived a zombie bite. Rural folk living near the Ormsby Medical Center, by the cemetery, believe in the rumour that the “good doctor” saved himself by injecting himself with a serum made of zombie blood. And they spin tales of bizarre occurrences and disappearances in their neck of the woods.

These matters come to the attention of Sheriff Ken Johnson, and instead of firing Jeff Sanders, he gives Jeff a chance to rehabilitate himself by taking on a dangerous mission. The sheriff urges Jeff to go undercover to investigate whatever is going on at Dr. Ormsby’s place, partly because an investigation clearly needs to be done, and partly because he believes that this might be the way for Jeff to confront his old demons and conquer them, thus saving his marriage.

Disguising himself as a drifter hitchhiking on his way to the Ormsby compound to try to get hired as a handyman, Jeff is picked up by a scraggy, unsavory man named Thad and his big feeble-minded pal Jimbo, who have been illegally shooting deer and other wildlife out of season and selling the pelts. The other passenger in their beat-up van is a wild, sexy teenage girl, Tiffany, who seems to have some sort of strange, controlling power over them.

Meanwhile, traveling on the same road as the van through the isolated countryside, are a timid college professor, Albert Mathews, his prim and proper wife Meg, and their teenage child Stevie. They have contributed to the campaign to rebuild the chapel in Evans City Cemetery, the same chapel that was seen in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and now they want to go and see it in person and volunteer to work on the refurbishing. At a rest stop, the Mathews family meets up with the weird characters in the van — Thad, Jimbo, Jeff and Tiffany — and they can’t help being leery, even scared, that they might be robbed or worse. To their great relief, the people in the van depart without doing them any harm. But when the professor and his family are back on the road again, they find the van abandoned — and inside, under a bloody pile of blankets and sleeping bags, are the bloody bodies of Thad and Jimbo. The man, Jeff, and the girl, Tiffany, are nowhere in sight. Did they do the murders?

Albert Mathews and his wife and child peel out and drive away fast, anxious to report their macabre discovery to the police, when a tire blows, their car crashes, and Albert receives a head wound that renders him unconscious. And as Meg and Stevie are trying to restart the badly damaged car, so they can get Albert to a hospital, Jeff Sanders stomps onto the scene all by himself, and the sight of Albert’s mangled body sends him into a severe post-trauma flashback, making Meg and Stevie even more scared of him. Jeff, whom they suspect is a murderer — and who might be one as far as we know — comes shakily out of his flashback and pulls himself together with great difficulty, and helps get the car started again by fixing a leaking radiator hose. But as soon as they get a chance, Meg and Stevie make a desperate escape from the hitchhiker and abandon him on the lonesome highway. But the radiator hose is still leaking and the engine is steaming — and the car can’t go much further when they thankfully spot a sign that says: ORMSBY MEDICAL CENTER.

Thus, Meg, Stevie and Albert find themselves trapped in the clutches of the now demented Dr. Ormsby; his strange, secretive wife Jessica; and his even stranger daughters, Victoria and — surprise! — Tiffany! In an action-packed climax, they find themselves attacked by a pack of zombies led by the demented Ormsby clan.Bill