Chillerama (2011) Is Horror with a Capital Hilarious
After a weekend drowning in holiday music and videos, I needed something to take my mind off the merriment—I reached for Chillerama, which is really five horror flicks in one. The last drive-in movie in the world is closing, and on its last night it presents four rare horror films; that’s the framework and premise of “Zom-B-Movie.” The four short films within that framework are horror/comedy/satire/parody that so sharply vivisect the films and genres that inspired them, one expects to be hit with blood spray.
Following an introduction in which a necrophiliac sexist attempts to obtain oral sex from the dead wife he just dug up but is attacked and zombified (you know how these things go), we join moviegoers who are attending the very drive-in where the zombie is about to report for his last night at work. Chillerama, like many horror films, contains a lot of sex, although it is not violent/sadistic sex, kinky sex, romantic sex, or erotic sex. What it is…well…it’s goofy sex. And there’s lots of it. Even more than Klown Kamp Massacre, another horror comedy with lots of goofy sex.
If one doesn’t already love Ray Wise and Eric Roberts, “Wadzilla,” written and directed by Adam Rifkin, will do the trick. The two veterans deadpan their way through the roles of a nutty fertility researcher and an army general who is called in to contain the monster that results from star Adam Rifkin’s use of a drug that will increase the effectiveness of his sperm (he only produces one per…you know). Don’t try to count the number of monster movie clichés that are skewered in “Wadzilla,” you might twist a vein (or something). This short film is an excellent example of the parody at which My Stepdad’s a Freakin’ Vampire failed.
Between the movies, the drive-in patrons do what people did at drive-ins: flirt, go to the snack bar, make out, socialize, argue, feed babies, have sex, and turn into hyper-sexed zombies. At least that’s what drive-ins were like when I was a teenager. Richard Riehle, as tag-line-spewing drive-in owner Cecil Kaufman, has some of the best lines and moments; keep an eye on him (don’t worry there are plenty of loose ones to go around).
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