Mourning Wood plays the ‘Indie Horror Card’ to the hilt to get away with much more than common decency should allow… that’s why I love it.
Once upon a time two Texans, Texas John Wood (Zack Brown, kind of) and Texas Jim Callahan (Erik Johnson) devised a plan to acquire the perfect land to create the world’s biggest and best used car lot. The key to this plan was a partnership with Dr. Jacob Pendleton (Ed Gutierrez), an inventor famous for his sprays to kill the odor of flatulence and creams to enhance erections. In an evil twist, however, the Dr. duped the dual Texans and took the land for himself, dooming John Wood and Jim Callahan to a second-rate used car lot schlepping lemons on daytime television. Oh, the dastardly doctor!
When John goes to confront the doctor he mysteriously disappears, leaving his Texas buddy alone, mourning Wood. Haha.
Meanwhile the doctor is very successful, continuing to improve his products and make millions, until one of those batches of snake oil goes terribly wrong and has the effect of creating zombies with high sex drives of the unwitting users. With horny zombies now roaming the streets it is up to “the boys” to find the antidote and save the town.
Mourning Wood is completely ridiculous – in a way that I love. Many folks don’t appreciate the kind of stupid humor in The Naked Gun
The production quality and cinematography in Mourning Wood are surprisingly good, albeit obviously cheap. Something as simple as bad sound and lighting can ruin an otherwise great movie, and often does in the Indie world, but this one checks those essentials off the list of “to-dos” and avoids that fate. Not that this is an otherwise great movie mind you, but the sound and cinematography are good.
The performances of all of the actors are just terrible, but in the context of this film it is to be expected, and works well. Actually, if one individual would have become consumed in the method of their acting and really done a fantastic job, they would have looked silly next to the other miscreants. Luckily, everyone was equally bad so nothing really stands out or upstages the film. All of the characters are likeable and have their part to play in the grand scheme of this films ridiculousness.
The story itself is, well, also really stupid. The fact is it doesn’t even make any sense… at all. But, here again, that actually works. Once you add car-humping zombies who spooge in your face to the storyboard, there really isn’t anywhere to go but up. I can only imagine the writers of this film sitting around scheming on what could possibly happen next. In many films the “wheels fall off” in the end as a good story and build-up are ruined by hastily put together and illogical climax and conclusions. Not Mourning Wood. This film never had any wheels to begin with so round after round of outlandish unbelieveability is accepted without question.
Mourning Wood is so stupid that it’s great, in its own special way. This goofy film is highly recommended for those who seek out films like Airplane!
Oh, I almost forgot – there is some claymation during the film’s intro that is quite exceptional, and very gory. One option would be to put Mourning Wood into your DVD player, watch the claymation, then put it back into it’s case. That would work too.
Written by The Horror Czar, Don Sumner
February 2, 2011
Courtesy of: http://www.best-horror-movies.com/
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