''Toxic Zombies'' (also known as ''Bloodeaters'', ''Bloodeaters: Butchers of the Damned'', ''The Dromax Derangement'', and ''Forest of Fear'') is a 1980

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apo ...

directed by Charles McCrann, who also acted in the film. It was classified as a

video nasty Video nasty is a colloquial term popularised by the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (NVALA) in the United Kingdom to refer to a number of films, typically low-budget horror or exploitation films, distributed on video cassette that ...

in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.

Plot

Illegal drug plantations are sprayed with the chemical Dromax by passing aeroplanes in an anti-drug initiative organised by corrupt government officials. Instead of killing the plants, the

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

growers of the crop are turned into flesh eating

zombie A zombie ( Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in wh ...

-like creatures.

Cast

* Charles McCrann (credited as Charles Austin) - Tom Cole * Beverly Shapiro - Polly Cole * Dennis Helfend - Hermit *

John Amplas John Amplas (born June 23, 1949) is an American actor known primarily for his work with director George A. Romero, particularly his appearances in the title role of '' Martin'' (1978), as well as '' Dawn of the Dead'' (1978) and '' Creepshow'' ...

- Phillips

Production

The film was produced in the late 1970s while McCrann, who was a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School and senior vice president at Marsh & McLennnan, was on hiatus.

Release and controversy

The film was given a

limited release __FORCETOC__ Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unit ...

theatrically in the United States by Parker National Distributing. It was also shown twice on the

USA Network USA Network (simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. It was originally launched in 1977 as Mad ...

. ''Toxic Zombies'' is one of the films labelled a

and was banned in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.

Reception

According to McCrann's wife Michelle, the film "epitomized (his) sense of humor".

Leonard Maltin Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of f ...

qualified the film as a "bomb". The film was also panned in ''

Cinefantastique ''Cinefantastique'' is an American horror, fantasy, and science fiction film magazine. History The magazine originally started as a mimeographed fanzine in 1967, then relaunched as a glossy, offset printed quarterly in 1970 by publisher/editor ...

''. Writing in ''The Zombie Film Encyclopedia'', academic

Peter Dendle Peter Dendle is a professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto, teaching classes on folklore, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English (language and literature), and the monstrous (in film, folklore, and ...

said, "Despite inconsistent behavior patterns and embarrassing acting, ''Toxic Zombies'' has the dubious honor of inaugurating the entire 'redneck zombie' subgenre that would thrive inexplicably in the '80s." McCrann would later work for Marsh & McLennan and was killed in their World Trade Center offices during the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

References

External links

* 1980 films 1980s exploitation films 1980 horror films American zombie films American exploitation films American films about cannabis Video nasties 1980s English-language films 1980s American films {{1980s-horror-film-stub