Raiders of the Damned

Post-apocalyptic zombie movie starring Richard Grieco? Yes please.

The funny thing is, Raiders of the Damned wasn’t nearly as good as I expected, and that says something, because I didn’t expect it to be good at all. Honestly, I don’t have faith in my words to accurately portray how horrible this movie is. I’m not sure that the depths at which this movie exists can be fathomed by the human mind. Imagine the worst piece of shit you’ve ever seen, and then imagine that it was able to have a baby with Hitler. Horrifying, right? This might be worse. Some kids from my hometown once made a short movie called Mafia Busboys, and this is worse. Raiders of the Damned makes Manos: The Hands of Fate look like Shakespeare.

Here is the story. There was a nuclear war and somehow the nuclear blasts spread a compound called Agent 9x into the atmosphere, causing everyone who breathed it to become a zombie. Only these aren’t your typical zombies, these zombies can still talk and organize and use tools and are basically normal except they don’t have any vital signs, are decaying, and eat human flesh. Oh yeah, and they’re insane.

Humanity managed to build a giant wall, like a wall that is miles high, to contain the zombies in a quarantine zone, but the humans have to retreat underground so they don’t breathe in Agent 9x and become zombies themselves. The Whitecoats, future slang for scientists, are trying to figure out how to combat the zombification, and fly over the quarantine zone dumping various chemicals, most of which just burn through the zombies. Oh well, no big deal, they’re zombies. The only problem is, the CGI helicopter with the head Whitecoat just got shot down with a catapult, and the zombies are holding him hostage. Richard Grieco plays the number two Whitecoat (yes that Richard Grieco, and yes, I said that he plays a scientist), who sends a team of half assed soldiers to go retrieve the first scientist.

Then some shit happens.

This seriously looks like a group of high school horror nerds made this movie. It looks like it was shot with a home video camera, and not a good quality, or even recently produced model, I’m talking one of those big ass ones from the early ‘90s that you rested on your shoulder, and after they filmed it they dubbed it repeatedly from home VCR to home VCR. And I suspect it was lit entirely with flashlights and birthday candles.

The costumes aren’t quite the rubber skeleton masks that you buy at the drug store around Halloween, the ones that are green and have synthetic black hair and always make your face itch, but they aren’t much better.

I have a theory about how Richard Grieco ended up in Raiders of the Damned. First off, he looks grim, like Mickey Rourke on a bender grim, like if Mickey Rourke had a zombie child. And he’s out of his fucking mind. Like I said, I think high school kids made this movie, but I think they were high school kids who just happen to live next door to Richard Grieco. So I suspect they were filming this movie, then one of them got the brilliant idea to give Richard Grieco a bunch of cocaine and a pack of cigarettes, and film what happened. Are you kidding me? The entire time he’s on screen he’s petting a fucking cat toy. After that all they had to do was cut the Richard Grieco cocaine footage with what they already had, and, voila, they had a movie staring Richard Fucking Grieco, which is how I imagine he refers to himself.

Raiders of the Damned is a good news/bad news proposition. The bad news is that they made this, and that this exists. The good news is that left it open for a sequel. Fuck yeah they did, why wouldn’t they?

Oh, and did I forget to mention that zombies can potentially impregnate living human women? I didn’t? I swear I did. But regardless, zombies can potentially impregnate living human women. Think about the possibilities of that for a while.