The Alien Dead (1980) (USA)

aka Swamp of the Blood Leeches/It Fell From the Sky

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

There are plenty of reasons you shouldn’t own a houseboat even if you don’t reside in Florida. Outside of people automatically assuming you’re a divorced rapist or drug smuggler or both, they’re easy targets for meteors. I would know. I’ve seen Alien Dead. Some Floridians reside on a houseboat (Yes. They are the exact kind of people you would envision residing in a houseboat) in the swamps and a meteor crashes into their floating residence, making their already sad existence much worse. Instead of just granting them the sweet release of death, they turn into zombies and once the fauna population dwindles, they turn their hunger towards the nearby town. As the small town residents end up eaten, the sheriff (Flash Gordon himself, Buster Crabbe) suspects a large gator (along with the rest of the town) but we know that ghouls are on the prowl and all hell is breaking loose. A journalist exposes the story (catching the eye of a blonde cutie with some cutoffs covering her booty) and a whole lotta bumpkins end up dead and/or walking dead. A game warden also doesn’t buy the story of a renegade gator. Pappy blames chemical warfare and giant possums… now that’s a movie I’d watch the hell out of! Fred Olen Ray makes some trash movies but he makes these trash movies for people like me so you won’t hear me complaining. The state of Florida may be an infected butthole on the corpse of America but the genre output (especially in that sweet spot of the 60s - 80s) is some of the greatest braindead backyard terror to ever grace this planet. It’s no different here. Performances come off like Mr. Ray picked his cast from folks who couldn’t cut it in a dinner theater run by a former pornographer and the zombie hijinks ain’t at all convincing but that’s why they warm my idiot heart. Dinky bars, a local band, Floridians with Californian accents, underwater (pool) action, barren sets and the Florida wilds further endear. There’s plenty of drag and nobody is all that likable (except for maybe the topless chick but she doesn’t do much but get topless, go for a dip and get eaten. Still. She seemed nice.) but it’s Florida so that tracks. But for every bit of lag there’s something just a bit special (the zombie attack set to a folksy country song comes to mind) and that’s all I ask for.