It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
1990’s Chopper Chicks in Zombietown is a comedy-horror film distributed by Troma and written and directed by Dan Hoskins, who only has one other writing credit and no other directing gigs on his IMDB page. Try as I might, I can find no real details about Hoskins and next to nothing about the making of this film. So, what can I say about Chopper Chicks in Zombietown?
Well, first of all, it’s not terrible. That was a relief.
Going into this film with low expectations, I was surprised to find that despite a few raunchy moments here and there, Chopper Chicks is a relatively tame (despite the Troma Films connection) good time. The plot is pretty simple; the all-female motorcycle gang, the Cycle Sluts, rolls into the sleepy small town of Zariah to grab some food, some sex, and some fun, but find themselves on the front line of an impending zombie attack. You see, local mortician/mad scientist Ralph Willum (Don Calfa, Return of the Living Dead, Weekend at Bernie’s) has been murdering the townfolk and then reanimating them to work as slaves in a radioactive mine on the outskirts of town.
As one does.
The sex is sanitized, the zombie kills lack excessive blood and gore, the comedy lacks big laughs, and the action lacks, well, action. All in all, I’m kind of confused about just who this film is for. It is competently directed, if not interestingly so, and the Cycle Sluts are all distinctly characterized and well-acted. There’s nothing so bad it’s funny and there’s nothing so good it’s a much-watch zombie film. The mad scientist has a dwarf assistant (Ed Gale, the in-suit performer of Howard the Duck, Chucky, and Station), there’s a busload of blind orphans thrown into the mix, and for the grand finale they blow up a church, but the film still remains kind of uninteresting.
I’m flummoxed.
Catherine Carlen does her best Tura Satana impression as the constantly shouting, proudly lesbian leader of the gang, Rox, and gives 110% energy to every scene she’s in, particularly while interrupting a funeral at the local diner with a lusty song and dance that would make the Cramps proud. Jamie Rose plays Dede, the heart of the gang, who, it turns out, is actually from Zariah, was the prom queen, and has a redneck husband named Donny, who is played by Billy Bob Thornton (!?!?!?!) in one of his earliest film roles.
Comedian Hal Sparks is also in the cast, as the sarcastic blind orphan Lance. MTV VJ Martha Quinn appears as a put-upon townsperson, and the sheriff is played by Lewis Arquette (father of Patricia, Roseanna, and David). There are even songs on the soundtrack by Camper Van Beethoven and Lucinda Williams!
Seriously, on paper, this film sounds like a must-watch, but it somehow just barely makes an impression. It’s not too bad, but it’s not too good. For a film that was released around the same time as Frankenhooker, Maniac Cop 2, Bride of Re-Animator, and Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead, I’m surprised it didn’t seem to try to live up to its admittedly amazing title. How can a film called Chopper Chicks in Zombietown be dull?