Available at Amazon.com.
Directed by
Scott Thomas
Cast
David Chisum ………. Truman Burrows
Kristen Kerr ………. Meagan
Kevin J. O’Connor ………. Frank Lee Strathmore
Richard Tyson ………. Paul Judd
Erick Avari ………. Dr. Leo Bennett
Derek Webster ………. William ‘Long Shot’ Freeman
Todd Babcock ………. 1st Officer Randy Stafford
Siena Goines ………. Anna Freeman
Mieko Hillman ………. Stacy
Raymond J. Barry ………. Capt. Ray Bashore (as Raymond Barry
Run Time: 94 minutes
Unrated
DVD Release date: October 2, 2007
Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane seems to be made up entirely of other movies. It’s title alone is evocative of both Night of the Living Dead and Snakes on a Plane. The movie itself tends to be quite green, recycling heavily from other flicks. It’s managed to gather a bunch of movie cliches all in one spot:
– The pilot is one day shy of retirement.
– They are on a long flight and forced to go trough a storm.
– Secret government guys are transporting secret stuff with the cargo.
– On the flight is one random nun in the full habit and nun-gear which nuns have rarely worn in the last 20 years.
– Also on the flight is a cop with a prisoner handcuffed to him.
– And a FAA agent.
– A girl cheats on her boyfriend with his best friend, joining the “mile high club”.
– There are utterly useless shots of the Pentagon in which random government people explain the plot of the movie to Tucker Smallwood in order to persuade him to warn the president about the possibility of zombies.
– People crawl through air vents, women say “Down, boy” to flirtatious men, a body gets sucked into a jet engine, and you know that the people of color won’t make it out alive. Truly, we are in Cliche: The Movie.
Even the actors seem to be in on this cinematic environmentalism. One Life to Live‘s David Chisum seems to have added a degree of separation between himself and his character by playing his role by means of a Nathan Fillion impersonation. Kevin O’Connor (best known as the wormy guy in 1999’sThe Mummy) seems to be channeling Paul Lynde for his role as the charming con-artist. Richard Tyson is playing Jeff Bridges playing the offbeat FAA agent.
The film also stars Derek Webster as William “Longshot” Freeman, a golfer who spends the majority of the flight polishing his putter, while being abused by his vociferous wife (Jericho‘s Siena Goines).
The movie telegraphs each plot movement, and is padded out with a lot of unnecessary exposition and clunky attempts at character development. It also isn’t particularly smart as characters will often do things such as haphazardly firing machine guns inside the plane. Also the scientists in the movie think that malaria is caused by a virus, not realizing that it is in fact caused by the protozoan parasite plasmodium.
In the end, though, the movie is filmed competently enough. Be being derivative and cliche, it is also familiar and comforting. It’s watchable; it’s acceptable entertainment.
Imagine a re-run of the Tim Daly-Steven Weber sitcom Wings with come zombies thrown in; that’s basically what you get here.
The DVD
Audio and Visual
The movie looks and sounds okay for a direct-to-DVD release.
The Extras
We are afforded trailers and a passable gag reel.
Other than that two Audio Commentary tracks are provided. The first is by the director Scott Thomas and producer David Shoshan. It’s sparse, mumbling, rambling, full of obvious comments: in a word, useless.
Slightly more useful is the commentary track inexplicably provided by the editors of IGN.com. They mock the film, hang out and drink. It’s less like MST3K and more like the Rabblecast.
Flight of the Living Dead |
|
