Horror Movie Review: Chillerama (2011)

Chillerama will delight & frustrate in equal amounts…it is one of the finest anthologies I’ve ever seen for at least half of the movies length.

The anthology is made up of 4 stories that are told around the backdrop of a zombie outbreak at a drive-in movie theatre. The movie opens in black & white as we see Floyd digging up the grave of his dead ex-wife. He is drunk & attempts to make the corpse give him oral sex when it wakes up as a zombie & bites his dick off.

Hurt & now infected he returns to work at the drive-in movie theatre (the movie moves to colour now). Over the span of the movie Floyd will get sicker &eventually end up infecting the popcorn butter. This zombie virus is a bit different as it basically makes everyone super-horny but in that dick-ripping off kind of way. Think Shivers but way more violent & gory.

The first of the shorts to be shown is Wadzilla, a brilliant spoof of 1950’s monster movies.

In Wadzilla, Miles has gone to see his doctor after being turned away from a sperm bank. There he discovers his sperm count is super low (he has one) & is prescribed an experimental drug that will enhance his sperm count. Instead it creates one massive sperm that gets outs & starts attacking the city.

Wadzilla is all kinds of fun, it’s silly & pokes fun at all kinds of monster movies. It had me laughing out loud several times.

The second short is the best of the bunch (in my opinion) & is called I Was a Teenage Werebear. Set in the 1960’s it is inspired by a number of movies such as The Lost Boys & Grease.

Ricky is an in the closet teenage boy who ends up falling for the new ‘bad-boy’ of the school. He is struggling with his feelings & during a wrestling match he gets bit on the ass by the outcast leader. After being propositioned by his coach, Ricky crushes his head with his knees & discovers that he is now a Werebear like the outcasts.

When aroused they transforms into leather-wearing bear-men. It’s quite something…

I Was a Teenage Werebear has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek with its smart tale of forbidden love & cheesy Grease style songs. Love Bit Me On The Ass had me grinning from ear to ear…

At this point in I was in love with this movie…the 2 shorts were excellent & the drive-in story was moving along nicely. Sadly that momentum is halted with the third of the shorts.

The Diary of Anne Frankenstein is a black & white parody of Hitler & the means he would go to take over the world. He creates Meshugannah, a Jewish Frankenstein but it inevitably backfires.

It’s a boring one mixed with comedy that falls flat a lot of the time (such as Hitler not actually speaking German but gibberish that could be mistaken for German). It’s unmemorable & a relief when it ends & the drive-in zombie outbreak really kicks off.

The 4th & final short is the zombie outbreak in the drive-in theatre although at first you’re led to believe it is a movie about people shitting. I was not particularly impressed by that…

The zombie outbreak falls flat as well & lacks the cleverness that marked out the first half so well. The sex side of the outbreak does make for some gory & graphic scenes but it’s nothing a hard-core horror movie fan hasn’t seen before.

Regardless of my issues with the final half of the movie the first is so good that it is worthy of praise. There is loads to enjoy here & it is rare to find any anthology that can entertain as much as this one has.