Undead

This was made in Oz a year before Simon Pegg took his urinal's eye view of George A Romero in the deliciously irreverent Shaun Of The Dead.

The Spierig brothers have to be joking, because their sci-fi zombie flick is too absurd to be considered a contender. The trouble is that even horror spoofs require rules and Undead dispenses with these.

Aliens are invading Earth and turning Aussies into walking corpses. The reason for this is never explained. In fact, the introduction of an X-File element into what is a disparate-strangers-trapped-in-a-house scenario only complicates matters.

People are transported up beams of light to hang, like crucified cadavers, above the clouds, only to be brought down again, shaken but not stirred. At one point, a biplane bashes into a couple, but it doesn't lead to anything.

The Spierigs appear to be emulating Peter Jackson's debut, Bad Taste, in their fascination with stomach-churning yukfects, such as a brain-eating zombie, human guts spewing over the floor and torsoless bodies staggering on mannequin legs.

Snatches of dialogue stick to the walls of your memory.

"Where are the police?"

"Eaten alive, like the rest of them."

Only the ex-beauty queen (Felicity Mason) and the spooky backwoodsman (Mungo McKay) remain halfway normal. The rest are screaming their heads off, some literally.

This is piffle on a stick, which starts out as a darkly comic left field oddity, with interesting characters and a possibly intriguing plotline. Once the unkillable zombies have their emaciated forms shot to ribbons, only to pop up seconds later, as good as new, you know there's only one place to go and that's out.

The backwoodsperson complains of being attacked by a zombie fish as acid rain, caused by alien interference, forces everyone to tear off their clothes. Is this a sad excuse for stripping Mz Mason down to her bra and panties?

What might be dismissed as student high jinks ends with a feeling of being duped. Who are these invaders from Planet Stupid? What do they want?

Don't ask.