The opening sequence of Attack Of The Lederhosen Zombies, contrary to what you might expect from the title, hints at the possibility of a film that has more in common with genre progenitor Dawn Of The Dead than what we’ve come to anticipate from today’s standard straight-to-DVD undead fare.
All wide-open panning shots and decidedly eerie forbidding, a real sense of place is developed on the snowy mountaintop, which plays host to a time-passing group of youngsters who find themselves stranded in the resort after one of them blows their chances of a sporting contract. Meanwhile, a deadly virus is spiralling out of control, and it’s not long before… well, you know the rest.
Despite featuring the word ‘zombie’, it’s got to the point where just having this in the title doesn’t mean that it’s a horror movie anymore – which is just as well, as there’s absolutely nothing scary about this whatsoever. Instead, the filmmakers spend more time trying to savage your funny bone rather than viewers’ stomachs, and while there’s some success (a prolonged deathbed attempt at poignant final words hits home), ultimately it feels slightly laboured.
It doesn’t help that the young leads all deliver fairly bland and unrelatable performances – standing in contrast to the (far better) older cast members, particularly Margarete Tiesel (Paradise: Love) as one of the survivors. Still, the film ultimately suffers through its lack of people to root for – most of the leads are so irritating that it’s genuinely hard to be bothered about whether they live or die, thus eradicating some vital suspense.
Still, it at least tries to do something a bit different with a sub-genre that long became saturated past the point of no return. It falls firmly into the ‘disposable fun’ category, but ultimately it isn’t much more than that.
