Legion of the Dead (2000)
Artisan Home Video | Review by Dan Taylor

What hell hath Quentin Tarantino wrought? First PULP FICTION brought about an unwelcome rebirth of surf instrumental music.

Now, every filmmaker – QT included – thinks they can have a couple mis-matched, argumentative guys in suits discuss pop culture in the course of their work and we're gonna just sit there and take it.

LEGION OF THE DEAD is such an incoherent, schizophrenic horror flick that I wanted to admit it to a mental hospital. Some of the better flicks that come to mind while sitting through this dismal dreck include PULP FICTION, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DEMON KNIGHT, DESPERADO, and the list goes on. It's like the cinematic equivalent of putting a bunch of monkeys in front of typewriters to see if they can pound out something coherent. Hey, why not just throw everything we can on-screen and see if any of it makes sense.

Trust me, it doesn't.

William (Michael Carr) and Luke (Russell Friedenberg) are two buddies traveling through the American Southwest, an area that should collectively sue horror filmmakers for its never-ending depiction as home to zombies, vampires, serial killers, and other assorted scum. Speaking of scum, the pair get picked up by Psycho Mike (Chris Kriesa), a serial killer who has apparently killed a couple other tourists and kills a cop while he's readying to kill our hapless pair. Unfortunately, he doesn't kill them fast enough and they're rescued. Damn!

Their tale is interwoven with that of two, um, zombies – I guess – who are busy recruiting members for the titular legion of the dead. They, of course, are a wackily mismatched pair decked in snazzy grey suits. Nicolas (Harvey J. Alperin) is a nerdy undead alcoholic who wants to wear something with a little more flash. Jeff (Hank Stone) is a greasy, pockmarked member of the undead with a penchant for knives and chatting with his victims. Yawn.

Both stories come to a head at a sleazy bar – gee, where else –where William meets Geena, who we've already surmised is a member of the undead. They, of course, fall for one another just in time for the big standoff between one group of people we don't care about and another group we don't care about.

As one of the talking pieces of meat remarks, "This is so stupid." And while I don't think they were talking about the flick, they might as well have been.

We're barely introduced to characters before they're thrust into a life or death situation that we're supposed to give a shit about. Which we don't. It's nearly impossible to separate the bad from the kinda-bad, and the villainous Blonde Man is played by that guy Matthias Hues who shows up as the long-haired blonde enforcer in every two-bit piece of straight-to-video martial arts crap. Ewwwww, I'm sooooo scared.

LEGION OF THE DEAD is a dreadful mess and I haven't even mentioned the cop-out ending, the credit sequence that makes you go "huh?", and the flick's surprisingly tame gore sequences. I didn't think anything could make me recommend HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER, but...