Although the likeable SNAKES ON A PLANE wasn’t the box office smash New Line anticipated, the flurry of pre-release publicity helped encourage similarly themed old-school B horror movies to the screen. New Line have also picked up FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD which, like its slithery counterpart, trusts in its material enough to play it straight, while gaining unforced laughs from the escalating absurdity of the scenario. It never tips over in to self-conscious parody, but the fun is enhanced by amusing secondary characters, including Kevin J O’Connor as a wrongly convicted prisoner and Richard Tyson as a laconic air marshal.

As in SNAKES, the set-up is purely the stuff of 70’s disaster movies, with a straight-forward horror twist. Scientists experimenting with Malaria have found a way to rejuvenate dead organs and, by extension, dead people. The U.S. government is plotting to use the zombie-creating agent as a bio-weapon but a secret stash in the cargo hold of a passenger plane (also holding the undead wife of prominent scientist Dale Midkiff) gets loose and havoc breaks out.

Just one of many zombie flicks being unleashed during 2007, Flight of the Living Dead offers no major wrinkles or innovations in the realm of zombie lore, unless you count a revised version of the usual “shoot ‘em in the head” mantra dryly summarized by Tyson as “two in the chest, one in the balls – it works for me”. The film’s chief pleasure stems from its enthusiasm at delivering on the thrills promised by the gimmicky plot : it’s zombies on a plane, man! Making imaginative use of the confined setting, director Scott Thomas has turned in a zippy, good looking flick with some witty visual flourishes. One neat shot is filmed through a pair of increasingly blood-spattered specs on the floor near their savaged owner.

Significant fun can be had from figuring out the horrible ways in which the abundance of clichéd characters will perish. Raymond J Barry is a pilot on his last flight before retirement (can you say “dead meat”?!). There are two shallow but hot bickering teenage girls, perky stewardesses, an arrogant professional sportsman and, inevitably, a nun – though, unlike Helen Reddy in AIRPORT 1975, this nun doesn’t sing and does get her legs torn off, later returning as one of zombie movie history’s precious few undead sisters.

The movie has ambitions far beyond its limited budget, with variable but sometimes impressive CGI utilized for elaborate action set pieces. The zombies are effectively scary and prone to alarming shrieks reminiscent of the pod people’s shrill cries in both remakes of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. The plentiful gore gags are often ingenious : a show-stopping exploding head is eclipsed only by a novel death-by-umbrella. FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD even captures one genuinely eerie climactic image of zombies slowly emerging from a wreckage – albeit one slightly marred by a standard-issue final-scene scare.

-Steven West


DVD SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:

  • Feature commentary with director Scott Thomas and producer David Shoshan
  • Feature commentary with IGN.com editors
  • Outtakes reel
  • 16×9 widescreen (1.85) version of the film
  • English Dolby Digital 5.1 and English 2.0 Stereo Surround
  • English DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete Track
  • English & Spanish subtitles
  • Closed captions
  • Animated menus