When you hear the title Zombie Prom it brings images of Carrie crossing over with Night of the Living Dead or perhaps The Evil Dead. In all actuality it’s more Grease than anything else. Vince Marcello’s Zombie Prom is a tribute to 1950’s horror comics brought together in the style of 1940’s musicals. The result is an instant classic of unabashed nostalgia.
Jonny (Darren Robertson) is a rebel. Why you ask? Look at his name. He’s dropped the ‘H’ from John. Oh, the blasphemy! What would John the Baptist think? So says the wicked and out-of-touch Miss. Strict (RuPaul Charles). Still, he’s a teenager and his hormones are running wild. Because Jonny is a sensitive soul with a nice haircut, he attracts the beautiful and oh, so innocent Toffee (Candice Nicole) to his letterman jacket. But like Romeo and Juliet, outside forces convinced Toffee that this love just wasn’t to be. Suffering from a broken heart, Jonny takes advantage of his hometown’s booming nuclear industry. He hurls himself into the abyss of a reactor in a noble act of suicide. Only thing is, he only sort of dies. Jonny returns – sort of – as a zombie to test how true his and Toffee’s love really was. And it’s all done to be-bopping song and dance routines. This, my friends, is Zombie Prom.
Broken apart into its many elements – musical, teenage melodrama, zombie horror – Zombie Prom sheds little to no new light. But the resulting mash-up is what makes it so original and refreshing. Marcello is so confident with the conflicting genres that make up the film that he is able to bring them together with tremendous poise and bravado. It’s a postmodern trip that given time and exposure, could very well result in a cult following รก la Rocky Horror.
While there’s likely no scientific proof to prove it, Zombie Prom is probably the least offensive zombie film ever made. With the exception of a few points of innuendo that are tamer than something you would find on The Simpsons, there is nothing that would make even the staunchest conservative take charge. The sense of nostalgia is taken to the extreme in recreating the utopian world of 1950’s pop culture. There’s no swearing, no naked bits, no flesh eating, no sappy music that isn’t done with its tongue in cheek. Zombie Prom is simply good old-fashioned fun.
Zombie Prom Trailer
