Cowboys and Zombies Review

Cowboys and Zombies is rubbish, and I could really lay into it here, but ultimately I’d rather watch this amusing if unaccomplished film than see Sucker Punch or Pirates of the Caribbean 4 again, and that’s because director Rene Perez and his cast and crew do at least seem to be having a good time here, there is an air about this film of ‘hey kids, let’s put on a show’. It’s usually a pretty terrible show, but at least someone’s trying, and enjoying themselves doing it.

That said, by God can it be bad. The story sees a bounty hunter (David A Lockhart) ride into… I’d say a one horse town, but I think his is the only horse we see, so technically it’s a no horse town, on a mission to capture alive an Indian (Rick Mora) accused of the rape and murder of a white woman. Separately, two of the townsfolk, gold prospectors, dig up what looks like a big piece of kryptonite surrounded by rock, they take it back to town, smash it with a pick axe (because, that’s why) and it turns everyone into zombies (again, because). Thereafter, the bounty hunter (whose name, though as far as I could tell it’s never stated, is apparently Mortimer), the Indian and a local whore named Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery), who Mortimer, charmingly, buys to use as rapist bait, must fight for survival against the hordes of undead.

The obviously low budget and rather rudimentary filmmaking skills start to bite from the first frames, which throw us straight into a gunfight as our introduction to Mortimer. The problem is that we don’t know who he is, who he’s fighting or why he’s fighting them, and for three very long minutes a poorly edited gun battle with some hilariously fake CGI blood splatter ensues. I’d like to say that the film then stops for some character development, but it doesn’t do that for a good hour. The film is 81 minutes including end credits, making us wait till the last reel for any insight into the characters is not the way to get us invested, Rene. The closest it comes to development before that is a weird two minute montage of Mortimer silently tending to his horse (I think this is meant to show that he’s sensitive, which is slightly undermined three minutes later when he buys a woman).

The zombies take about forty minutes to show up, and until then we’re stuck with Mortimer. Unfortunately the softly spoken David A Lockhart has all the authority of a wet rag on a stick, and so his role as a grizzled bounty hunter never really convinces. His stubble does most of the acting, quite badly. That said, he at least has a few variations in his tone of speech, not something that can really be said for Rick Mora, who seems to have been cast for his heritage and his lovely hair (well, one hopes that ‘droningly monotone voice’ wasn’t something on the casting wishlist). Saying that someone gives the ‘best’ performance in Cowboys and Zombies may in fact be the Oxford English dictionary definition of the phrase ‘to damn with faint praise’, but even so, the dubious honour goes to Camille Montogomery, for giving a competently frightened performance in the film’s one legitimately effective scene.

There’s a whole lot of stupid and bad things to go around in this movie from the risible set design (complete with signs that appear to have been painted in a hurry by someone’s twelve year old cousin) to the terrible script and acting, to the regular and gratuitous unveiling of fake boobs (in 1849!) On the other hand, things do sometimes come good despite the clear budgetary restrictions, and there are one or two nice touches here. Perhaps my favourite idea in the film is that the guns; early model Colt revolvers, are inaccurate and often jam not only is this historically quite accurate, it adds in a bit of tension to the zombie attack scenes. I wish Rene Perez had made a bit more of this idea, but it’s a nice touch. The zombie make up is obviously quite cheap, but it is also often quite effective, there are several different zombie looks on display here – no, the movie never explains why – and some work better than others, but all are nicely rendered for the price and there’s some solid bloodletting as well.

For the most part, no more than thirty seconds of this film goes by without some example of total ineptitude (my favourite being that nobody called for take 2 when a dead guy closed his eyes on camera), but there is one sustained scene here that works in and of itself, when an injured Rhiannon finds herself stalked through a house by the film’s best and most grotesque zombie. There’s an effective stalking scene there, and a cool little final girl moment for Rhiannon. It’s not much, but it does suggest that given a little time and money this film could have been more effective as a whole.

As I said, Cowboys and Zombies is rubbish, but for the most part it’s amiable rubbish, and I didn’t hate it. That said, it doesn’t deserve more than…

3/10

Cowboys and Zombies is out now on UK DVD, thanks to Left Films for the screener.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvSRKAyE3Q0