Well, I had some really ambitious reviews in the works, but those will have to wait. They’ll have to wait because I’m a lazy mutha fucka. That’s right. I said I’m a lazy mutha fucka.

You know who else is a lazy mutha fucka?

Sam Lee.

Only he’s not a lazy mutha fucka the way I’m a lazy mutha fucka, because on top of once being in a successful Cantonese hip hop band known as LMF, he’s also a terrific actor, who back in 1998 starred in a taut and comedic little Dawn of the Dead rip-off known as Bio-Zombie, which was sent to the states with much love from China’s then only Democratic hold-out, Hong Kong. Hong Kong incidentally is, I imagine, the only place in China where a shopping mall could be considered a realistic setting for a zombie movie. You know, because anywhere else in China, for political/economic reasons, it would be totally un-kosher to let zombies in a shopping mall. GO USA!!!

I love Sam Lee, and not just because his name coincidentally fuses the names of two of my ex girlfriends, making it sorta awkward for me to ever talk about him, but also because he’s smooth as goddamn honey drippin’ down a bee’s behind. And not just any bee. A fucking CRAZY BEE!!!

The first copy of this movie I ever owned was a bootleg of the laserdisc or maybe VCD. Either way, it was two sided and during the bootlegging process of the first side something went wrong, and both the Mandarin and the Cantonese language tracks played simultaneously. You can not possibly know a more excruciating pain than having to hear this. If you are an honest man and need to use that old chestnut of an excuse not to have sex (headache, duh) and don’t want to be fibbin’ ’bout it, yo, watch Bio-Zombie with both the Cantonese and Mandarin language tracks turned on at once. To continue with the metaphor, it’s like being rough-fucked in the ear continuously for forty-five minutes. Rough-fucked in the ear while crazy people scream at you. A confusing jumble of annoyingly shrill Chinese voices, like a chorus of drills in your skull will cause your brains to be so friggin sore by the end of the movie, you’ll have at least a month long excuse for celibacy. Perhaps your sex-life will dry up completely. I mean, when I was in high school and viewed this movie repeatedly I wasn’t getting any at all, and I think I’m totally allowed to blame this awesome movie for that. Right? Thank you, Bio-Zombie. Back then, all I really wanted was to watch this movie with a hot girl on my birthday. Didn’t happen. I was so sad and lonely. But I had fucking awesome hair, even if it kinda looked like a mullet from a certain angle. Then I turned into a zombie and my best friend had to shoot me.

Oh, shit, no. That’s what happens in Bio-Zombie. And I guess I totally ruined the movie for you now. But seriously, it doesn’t matter if you already know the ending. The movie is full of zombies in a mall, and where the fuck else are you gonna find that? And Sushi Boy! You can’t find Sushi Boy anywhere else.

Actually, I guess I did find one at LAX.

Anyway, where was I? After I got fed up with the VHS bootleg and when that newfangled internet thing started giving me the opportunity to steal movies via file-sharing software, I upgraded my copy yet again to an AVI version beautifully ripped from the DVD and compressed in stunning DIVX quality. I did have to do a bit of searching to find the subtitle file so that I could understand the (thank the Lord! single track of) Chinese language audio. I burned the thing to a nice 700mb Memorex CD-R and placed it affectionately in my CD library. Minor problem: The subtitle file was accidentally left out of the burning process, but that was alright. I just kept it on my computer for when I needed it. (The thing was like 65 Kbs). But it was worth that small amount of space to read such verbal gems as “So big the balls!”

Oh, but then my hard drive died and I lost the file.

My next attempt to upgrade my copy was about a year ago. A good friend of mine purchased the DVD. Score! I’m gonna copy that shit right onto a shiny new Memorex DVR! So I grab the box out of his bookshelf, bring it on home, pop that sucker open, and . . . Oh, shit the disc isn’t there. I call my friend up, and he’s at a loss. No pun intended.

Fast forward to today. I wanna write a review of this, the only movie that fills all three categories of being my favorite Hong Kong movie, my favorite Sam Lee movie, and my favorite movie featuring Sushi Boy. I still got that CD-R of the DIVX version. Problem is my computer is some kinda stupid piece of shit, and Windows won’t let me view thumbnails of, click on, or attempt to open any AVI files whatsoever. (If anybody has a fix for this, let me know.) So, as I write, I’m converting back to DVD the DIVX that was ripped from the original DVD. When it’s done, I can watch it, re-rip it, and then convert stills from the MPEG2 file to JPG files to pretty up this here little review.

Anyway, here is said review:

Some Chinese Mafioso type dudes are testing out some bio-chem war shit that turns people into zombies. They store it in a soft drink bottle. Which is totally an awesome idea, dude. Then shit happens, everybody dies, and some fucker runs away with the bottle. Two ne’er-do-well punks named Crazy Bee and Woody Invincible accidentally run the fucker down with their car and when he mumbles “soft drink” with his last ounce of strength, they think he wants to drink the shit and not warn them that it’s toxic zombie juice that will turn the entire world into a hell of the living dead Dawn of the Dead rip-off come to life. So they pour the swill down his gullet, he gurgles, dies, and then Woody and Bee do the logical thing: They lock him up in their trunk and head to work at their VCD store in the local shopping mall.

More shit happens, then zombies happen, then finally awesomeness happens. Really, this movie is fucking great. And you probably hear me say that about a lot of movies. And maybe most of them you don’t think are fucking great. But I swear you should believe me when it comes to this one. It’s the best, and I mean best, Hong Kong zombie movie you’ll ever see. The jokes are, well, at least as good as the ones I’ve been making in the course of this review, and what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity. Like a good piece of blogging douche-bloggery, the script of Bio-Zombie tries to force something stupid and interesting into every second in order to keep you paying attention to the movie and not reaching for that porn VCD. Cause even a bad this joke is better than no joke if it keeps you from whackin’ the monkey.

So anyway, I could write more about this movie. I really could. There’s a lot of memorable scenes, lines, and gags. But writing about all that would take a lot of work, and when you get right down to it, it’s like I said: I’m just an LMF, man. Lazy Mutha Fucka.

And so you’re totally SOL.

TTYL
– Jason Deadcat

Sam Lee image stolen from this place: http://mehitobel.com/licansen/
Other images stolen from I forget where.