Bio Zombie is the story of two friends, Crazy Bee (Sam Lee, Gen X Cops) and Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan). They run a bootleg VCD shop in a small mall somewhere in Hong Kong. They're a pair of obnoxious slackers whose big mouths frequently get them into trouble. They screw around with other people who work there including two girls, Jelly and Rolls, who work at a beauty parlour. They also encounter the slimy owner of a mobile phone store, and his very put-upon wife. They're sent by their boss to pick up his Jaguar from the garage where it was in for a servicing, but on the way home they run into a spot of bother. A meeting between some mysterious men is taking place, something is being kept chained to the inside of a large box, and a briefcase containing a mysterious fluid in a bottle of Lucozade is to be exchanged. Before the exchange can take place, whatever it is in the box escapes and eviscerates one man before attacking the others. One man escapes with the briefcase, but runs straight into the path of the speeding Woody Invincible and Crazy Bee! They hastily check on the man's condition, and mistaking his murmuring “Lucozade” to mean he wants a drink from the bottle of mysterious liquid, they pour some down his throat and he promptly dies. In a panic, they bundle the guy into the trunk of he car and return to their mall car park. Taking a look in the trunk reveals a problem later however, the body has gone and left just a load of foul-smelling gunk and a mobile phone behind. When this happens they do what comes naturally, forget all about it and sell the mobile phone!

Woody and Crazy Bee meet up with Rolls and Jelly (after they ROB ROLLS IN THE TOILET – more on this later) and offer to buy them dinner at the mall's sushi place, mocking poor the Sushi Boy Loi who works there, who himself has a big crush on Rolls. After getting suitably inebriated on sake and Rolls and Woody having an drunken make-out session, things start to go pear shaped. A security guard is dragged underneath the Jag in the carpark and gets his insides forcibly removed by the zombie that used to be in the trunk, then he wanders inside to look for more victims, as they tend to do. Poor Loi soon falls prey to the lumbering undead, and as the number of zombies increases, Woody, Crazy, Rolls, Jelly, and the slimy phone store guy and his wife are locked inside and have to take up arms to defend themselves against the zombie menace.

Its safe to say that this movie is something of an homage to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and though I'm afraid I have to say I'm not a massive fan of that particular film, I have a bit of a soft spot for this one. That's not to say it isn't without fault though, no sir. My prime criticism is that this movie almost entirely lacks any likable characters. Woody Invincible and to a lesser extent Crazy Bee are so obnoxious that they often go beyond being entertaining and become just unpleasant. When they don't have enough money to pay their boss, they follow Rolls into the bathroom and mug her, before Woody ends up playing tonsil hockey with her a mere ten minutes later. Now call me old fashioned, and I guess these are the anti-heroes we're supposed to root for, but especially in Woody's case you really don't care if they make it or not. At least Crazy Bee has some endearingly goofy personality traits, Woody is just a prize bastard. It doesn't end there, even the main love interest herself, Rolls, just isn't terribly nice! Sure she's kinda cute, but she isn't likable either! Maybe this is more realistic, but it harms the suspense of the movie when you're not made to care about the characters and want them to survive. The other thing that bugged me was the whole style of the movie changes once the zombies pop up. The first 35 minutes or so is a goofy, amusing tale about these two slackers, but when the zombies turn up it goes dead serious. I'm not a fan of jarring changes of pace if its not done logically, or if the film was perfectly fine the way it was, that's probably why I don't care for From Dusk ‘Till Dawn. For me, Bio Zombie more or less loses what made it original when it goes ultra-serious on us, and it ends up being a lot less fun as it just kinda degenerates into a Dawn of the Dead tribute.

Its not ALL bad though! First off, if I can object to the characters so strongly, that must suggest that they do a decent job in there roles, or it wouldn't bother me right? Both Jordan Chan and Sam Lee (who I'm really getting to like from what I've seen him in) are both pretty good actors, even though they're not exactly working with dynamite original material. Another thing that stands out is that apart from all the Romero-worship, there are some nicely original touches. Emotion Cheung's (love that name!) Loi the sushi boy turns in a great performance as a zombie with a heart, trying to protect Rolls from the other zombies, aw. There are also some moments of entertaining dialogue early on which exhibit the goofy humour this movie really needed more of. All in all this is a good effort, and while it wears its influences rather too proudly, it is not lacking in some style and originality of its own, and is still better than the insipid crap Hollywood keeps forcing on us.

Hollywood's interest in horror movies has sputtered more often than Ash's chainsaw. Although low-budget productions have never faded (you can churn out a fright flick on the cheap, and directors from John Carpenter to George Romero proved that you can even make a good one), studios shied away once the slasher genre was bled dry in the late 1980s. Recent hits like Scream, The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project revived studios' interest; unfortunately, it now seems the best they can do is remake William Castle movies.

But as Hollywood's horror offerings become increasingly lame, Asian studios have produceds a number of noteworthy fright titles. One example is the 1998 Hong Kong release Bio-Zombie. Director Wilson Yip melds elements from triad flicks, kung-fu comedies, Clerks and Dawn of the Dead into an entertaining if slightly incoherent package.

The film's heroes boast the memorable names Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) and Crazy Bee (Sam Lee). The pair are employees of a VCD store in a small shopping mall. They pass the days playing video games, hassling a minor Triad functionary who runs a booth selling hot cell phones, and flirting with employees of the neighboring beauty shop, among them the lovely Rolls (Angela Tong).

When the store owner calls to tell the pair to pick up his Jaguar at the auto repair shop, Woody and Bee close up shop and head out the garage, which seems to be stuck out in the countryside. Cut to a warehouse where a group of Chinese agents are looking to buy chemical weapons from some shady Iraqis-in this case, a chemical (stored for some reason in a soda bottle) that turns people into nigh-unstoppable zombies.

Unfortunately, the Chinese agents get too close to the Iraqis' demonstrator model, resulting in a panicked agent, still clutching the lethal soda bottle, running straight into the path of Woody and Bee's boss' car. Panicked themselves, the pair comfort the injured man with a sip from the bottle, then dump him into the trunk and return to the mall.

Does the stricken man become a flesh-hungry zombie? Are Woody and Bee trapped with a few survivors in a locked mall? Will Rolls need to be rescued from the clutches of the undead? Is soy sauce salty?

However, be prepared to wait for all that. Unlike the zombie epics of George Romero, which waste little time in establishing the ghouls' rampage, Bio-Zombie takes a leisurely path to the eventual mayhem. Apart from a bit of carnage when the Iraqi's "sample zombie" breaks loose (a scene that also establishes Yip's adherence to the Romero-style zombie, which is vulnerable only to a shot in the head), the film begins in a comedic vein as Woody and Bee banter with each other, attempt macho postures for the beauty shop girls and bully the hapless Sushi Boy.

Bio-Zombie delivers one crucial element of a successful zombie film-depicting a group of characters the audience will root for. The viewer wants to see the band of survivors escape despite knowing that some or all of them are inevitably doomed.

With a well-established tradition of a high mortality rate, zombie movies are better able to maintain suspense-who will make it? Will anyone?-than some other flicks. (For example, in a slasher movie, once you've identified the Final Girl, you know everyone else is toast.)

Woody and Bee begin as flawed, almost unlikable characters. (Woody and Rolls share two memorable scenes in the mall's restroom, both with very different emotional charge.) But under the stress of the zombie attack, they gradually transform from irresponsible layabouts to grimly determined zombie fighters. Meanwhile, their fellow survivors also have memorable moments of bravery or cowardice.

Bio-Zombie also provides a memorable zombie character in the tradition of Bub from Day of the Dead. In this case, it's the Sushi Boy, who carries a torch for Rolls even after succumbing to a contaminated zombie bite. While his undead compatriots prowl in search of human victims, Zombie Sushi Boy roams the mall looking for gifts for Rolls. He conveys emotions even through increasingly grotesque zombie makeup and, judging from the subtitles, even retains the power of speech to some degree.

The film makes clear it draws inspiration from zombie-themed video games as well as movies. When a zombie attacks a cop, he blasts at the creature to no avail until Woody and Bee remember their House of the Dead game sessions and chorus, "Shoot it in the head!" (Another nice touch is that the cop's gun is the only one available-and there isn't much ammo for it, forcing the survivors to improvise.) Yip acknowledges this debt to videogames by pausing for a console-style summary of each character's stats.

Appropriate to the Hong Kong setting, the mall isn't as spacious as its American counterparts, but rather a series of hallways with glassed-in kiosks on both sides. This setting, with its rows of identical reflective corridors, becomes spooky and disorienting when the gang is on the run from the marauding undead.

The film doesn't go overboard on the gore; for the most part, red paint on the throat serves as the signature of a zombie attack. But the blood is generally effective in ratcheting up the tension (or providing comic relief, as when a security guard is pulled under a car, and Yip cuts to a shot of a bucketful of red paint flowing across the floor).

Bio-Zombie is far from perfect; it was obviously shot on a limited budget. Although the zombie makeup is generally effective, at times it's obvious that the ghouls are wearing interchangeable "zombie skin" gloves. Director Yip also seems to disregard day-and-night continuity to a degree reminiscent of Ed Wood.

Yip generally keeps the action going too fast to notice all but the most gaping plot holes, but some still stretch suspension of disbelief. For example, the zombie attack seems to occur after closing time, and Yip establishes that a zombie security guard traps the survivor by closing the automatic shutters. Yet the crowd of ghouls in the mall keeps increasing. Where did that soccer team come from, anyway?

But despite its occasional drawbacks, Bio-Zombie is an energetic and entertaining film. Once the zombies attack, it's relentless in its sense of danger, but it never goes over the top with gore. Fans of Hong Kong films will recognize and perhaps have a greater tolerance for the comedic style, but it should be a satisfying outing for anyone. The Mei Ah DVD also provides an alternate ending, which is different yet remains satisfying.

COMMENTS
Many people have said that this film was funny and I have to agree that it was pretty funny. Some scenes were hilarious, while others will give you a slight chuckle. Also the dubbing made it all the more comedic.

What I didn't like about the movie was the b-movie effects and the silly plot, but I have to keep reminding myself that a film like this shouldn't be taken too seriously. I couldn't really follow the beginning for the film well, because it didn't quite make much sense. All I know is that some guys ordered a new bio-chemical weapon in the form of a soft drink that turns people into zombies and all hell breakes loose.

A lot of the movie was just silly, but some scenes weren't bad. I remember one scene where we get to see a zombie fight a group of other zombies because he likes this girl and he was trying to protect her from getting eatin. I didn't like that whole idea much, but the fact that zombies were fighting each other was pretty cool and you really don't see zombies do that in any other films. I always wanted to see something like that.

The directing was pretty good, but the acting could have been better. Like I said before though, can't take the film too seriously. I was hoping for a lot more zombies, so I was a bit let down when I didn't see that many. Some people compared this to Dawn of the Dead because of the whole being trapped in a mall with zombies thing, but really that's the only thing that's similar between the two. I guess I was hoping for a comedic Dawn of the Dead and was a bit let down.

The reason for giving the film a 6-rating was because of the let down and I didn't much liked the look of the zombies. You can't expect much from a film with a low-budget, which I'm sure this one had.

OVERALL
Basically this film had some cool moments here and there and delivered a lot of good comedy. If you're looking for a good zombie film though, I don't really recommend this. If you want something silly you should check it.

Woddy (Jordan Chan from Big Bullet) and Bee (Sam Lee from Skyline Cruisers) plays two pirate vcd-sellers that late one night accidentally hits a man with their boss's car. With him, the man has a mystic bio chemical liquid that he, in pain, asks to have a zip of. Shortly after the man passes away and Woddy & Bee leave him in the trunk and drives back to the mallwhere they work. In the trunk however the man is rapidly turning into a flesheasting zombie and soon a night of terror begins...

The first half can almost be described as extremely boring. The actors almost scream out their dialogue (sorry I can't describe it any other way) but maybe they did that to compensate for the, I'm sorry to say, bad and flat dialogue. The attempts to comedy doesn't work at all and actors Jordan Chan and Sam Lee does not have very much chemistry between them. Their scenes during this part of the film are plain bad but maybe these scenes work better if you're a cantonese speaker, but I somehow doubt that.

Things get a bit better during the second half of the movie where we get all the zombie action. It's here that Yip lets loose some of his trademark creativity in terms of camera angles and direction. Some highlights include the scene where the movie uses game symbols from House of the Dead and some of the killings are fairly cool. But even here some of the zombieactionfalls flat and I felt the film dragged during some of these segments.

This was 1998 and Yip was probably still experimenting (and learning to make movies) with lightning and camera movement. He decides to have a lot more steady and shaky cam that is really neccessary and the green colour scheme the movie employs doesn't really work. In later movies Yip has learned a whole lot more when it comes to combining his kind of direction and his choice of cinematography to better effect.

In a zombie movie you don't really need a huge amount of character development but Yip and Chow do try to infuse some depth into them. Sadly it doesn't feel right in tone with the rest of the picture. I don't really mind tone changes in a movie but here it feels conflicting. They should've gone with the more serious and grim tone, that is present during the last third, throughout the entire movie. That would've made a more interesting experience in my opinion..

Out of the actors I can really only say some good things about Jordan Chan. His acting is really off in the comedic parts. Jordan has the kind of face and charisma that seems more suited for action and drama roles and we do get glimpses of that during the actionbits. They're far and between though and all in all he's average in this movie.

Sam Lee on the other hand is as annoying as ever. Maybe the Hong Kong movie audience likes him when he's shouting and doing funny faces, but for this swede it just feels like bad acting. Sam has proven that if he calms down he can be a good actor and he showed restraint in 2002, something I hope to see more of in his future roles.

In the end, what we have is a movie I really wanted to love but it's only worth one viewing really. Fans of Wilson Yip should check it out to see glimpses of what would be seen in his later movies. I think he's at his best when he does small character dramas but it's VERY evident that he likes to try out different genres. It does seem that a lot of people do like Bio Zombie but I can't see that anyone would enjoy anything but the second half.

I've always been a fan of zombie movies. Whether it's the level of gore or the nihilistic ("everybody dies") attitude, I don't know. So when Bio-Zombie began to create some buzz in the newsgroups, I was very anxious to view Hong Kong's take on the "classic" zombie movie.

I wasn't disappointed -- Bio-Zombie is the best horror movie I've seen in quite some time. Don't get me wrong -- the film is nothing serious and won't give you recurring nightmares; it definitely has its tongue planted firmly in cheek at all times. While this may turn many people off, I've always found that the best zombie movies (such as Peter Jackson's Dead/Alive) have just as much humor as gore.

Everything about Bio-Zombie is done well; Chan and Lee, while no thespians, do create a couple of likeable characters as the hooligan VCD dealers. Chan, in particular, is great as he delivers lines like "Monster? Monster? Hell, I've got a monster in my pants!" The supporting cast is also good as well; I'm waiting for the "sushi boy" to come back in the sequel, and the nerdy guy who complains to Woody and Bee that his VCD has crappy quality (something which with a lot of US HK film fans can sympathize with) is a nice bit of comic relief. The cinematography, while nothing extraordinary, is really far above many other horror movies; for instance, there's a great sequence where the survivors are profiled ala video games such as "Street Fighter." And, suprisingly to me for a movie made after 1997, there's a high level of gore. While it's no Dawn of the Dead, there's enough blood to keep any gore hound happy (let's put it this way -- Woody's weapon of choice is an electric drill). Combined with the great cliffhanger ending, Bio-Zombie marks a great new chapter in the book of zombie movies. At any rate, it's one hell of a lot better than the recent "teen" US horror movies and definitely worth a look if you want a laugh along with your shocks in a horror movie.

This is the industry that gave us such genre classics as Untold Story, AKA Human Pork Buns, and the intense graphic, hard to stomach atrocity exhibition Men Behind the Sun. It's also the industry that gave us horror-fantasy wonders like Chinese Ghost Story, kungfu cannibal films like We Are Going to Eat You, and more hopping vampire films than you can shake a lucky Buddhist charm at. The sheer diversity of Hong Kong horror makes it a somewhat overwhelming, but endlessly exciting world to explore.

It's not horror like we've come to know in the West. Though a foppish looking Dracula may swoop down from time to time in old kungfu horror films, Hong Kong tends to rely much more on an indigenous cast of ghouls. Hopping vampires are sort of the banner carriers of the genre, and no creature is more uniquely identified with Chinese horror than these bouncing demons. Comprising the rest of the parade are a curious cast of witches, devils, sexy ghosts, fetus eating freaks, and countless possessed people with eerie green lights shining on them.

Conventional Western monsters are few and far between. Werewolves and Frankenstein monsters may have defined the genre in the 1930s, but you'd be hard pressed to find them in Hong Kong. And when you have the rich folk horror tradition of China and surrounding countries like Thailand from which to draw, why would you waste time ripping off wolfmen and vampires who wear frilly Renaissance garb even though it's 1999?

The composition of Hong Kong horror is also unique. The films are almost always bizarre, often uneven blends of horror and gore, slapstick comedy, and much of the time, kungfu or sleazy softcore sex. All good stuff, obviously, but the Hong Kong films that actually make all the elements work together are rare. Your average Hong Kong horror film has a lot of "roll your eyes in boredom" sequences of people just sort of shouting and falling down. That's fine and all, but I can get it for free on Galavision. Of course, most American horror films are the same way. The real short-coming of Hong Kong's prolific but not entirely impressive horror industry is that horror simply works best outside the mainstream. Hong Kong has no independent cinema or music scene, so getting anything but big studio crap is more or less impossible. The films may be influenced by Evil Dead, but it will never make a movie like Evil Dead.

Which is too bad, because the whacked creativity and willingness to skip happily down even the most tasteless of paths is present in spades. If someone in Hong Kong actually had the ability to work outside the studio system, the potential for an insanely great, totally wild horror film is staggering. Unfortunately, that's not happening any time soon. But then again, it's probably having to dance around studio censors and government madmen that has resulted in Hong Kong horror making up for outright gore with totally mind blowing weirdness. In the end, I eat my own words and go, "Why should Hong Kong horror be anything like Western horror? Western horror is already like Western horror." Thus, Hong Kong has a whole new batch of stuff ready to offer up people who have already seen all the Fulci and Deodato there is.

I can count the number of Night of the Living Dead type zombie films from Hong Kong on, well, one finger. The United States, Japan, and especially Italy embraced the shuffling flesh-eaters, but even in Hong Kong films that make use of the term "zombie," one rarely encounters anything resembling the ghouls that have been more or less defined by George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

Bio-Zombie is the one of the only Romero-style zombie flicks to come from Hong Kong. The result is curious, to say the least. For the most part, it's uneven but definitely enjoyable. Although, predictably enough, it fails to effectively blend its horror with its slapstick comedy, the overall result is an energetic, bloody zombie romp that should satisfy fans of the genre.

The goofy, charismatic Jordan Chan, who made a name for himself in the popular Young And Dangerous movies I love to make fun of (mainly because they were the catalyst for the whole annoying "young triad guy" movie trend), stars as a wannabe street tough named Woody Invincible, which is also a pretty good porno name. My friend Stacey tells me you can derive your porno name by taking the name of your last pet and the name of the street you grew up on. Her name was "Galaxy Green," which pretty much rocks. Mine, on the other hand, was "Stumpy Meadows." No one but me would ever rent a porno movie starring Stumpy Meadows. I wish my name had been Woody Invincible instead.

Woody Invincible and his pal, Bee, work at a video game store in a mall that looks exactly like this mall down in Chinatown, only bigger. They spend their days goofing off, crossing the security guard, and flirting with a duo of mind blowingly cute flirty girls. Sometimes, they take time off from this busy schedule to bug the older wannabe gangster guy and his attractive wife. And there's also a nerdy guy who works in a sushi restaurant and lusts after one of the girls, which you can't blame him for.

A botched underworld transfer results in an experimental virus leaking out and turning people into gooey, flesh-craving zombies. The zombie make-up is simple but effective. It's higher class than painting people blue a la Dawn of the Dead but is nowhere close to the master zombie make-up of films like Zombie and Day of the Dead. Still, it's not bad stuff for their first time out. In a turn of events that reflects a definite Dawn of the Dead influence without any of the harsh social commentary, the zombies start wandering around the mall looking for victims. Woody Invincible and his small band of cohorts are the only ones who can combat the growing legions of the living dead. Why? Because they are the main characters.

When the zombies show up the action is fast and bloody, with all the requisite flesh eating you expect from a zombie movie. We're not talking Lucio Fulci buckets of blood here, but heads do roll and necks are chomped. Woody Invincible and a girl named Ruby face off with the living dead in the parking garage as they attempt to escape, only to discover that things are a lot worse than they thought.

The final scene of the two battered youths pulling into a deserted gas station and seeing emergency bulletins on the television is superbly apocalyptic, and a fitting end to any type of zombie movie. We can't win, after all. Have the humans ever won in a zombie movie? And who would want them to?

Bio-Zombie has youth, good looks, fast pacing, and inventive direction on its side. It's slick looking and technically well made, playing itself out like a Resident Evil video game. Unfortunately, nothing is perfect. The movie's first forty minutes lag as we are subjected to a long string of shouting and slapstick that isn't very engaging. Still, it's a lot less boring than Fulci's boring moments. At least something is going on.

That's really the only major drawback. More zombie action sooner would have made this good movie great, but as it is, I'm hard pressed to complain about what I got. Ultimately, the weird humor of the film makes the bleak ending that much more effective. And some of the moments are pretty interesting, if not out of place. When Woody Invincible braves the hordes of zombies to try and reach a telephone, the movie goes into full Resident Evil mode, with little flashing icons and "Reload!" messages popping up on the screen. Like I said, sort of out of place, but interesting. John Woo did the same thing in his one foray into horror-comedy, To Hell with the Devil, in which a battle between heroes and demons takes on the scoreboard of an Atari game.

And that video game was probably the biggest influence on this film. Once the zombies start showing up, it really gets to be a lot of fun. No heavy political messages or anything a la George Romero, but plenty of quality zombie action. Jordan Chan would seem an unlikely lead character, but once the shit hits the fan, he starts looking cooler and cooler.

As an aside, this is probably the only zombie movie where you'll see a group of soccer playing zombies demand human sushi from a zombie suchi chef.

So Hong Kong's first real attempt at "classic" zombie films is not perfect, but it's still quite a bit of fun. I hope they give it another shot sometime soon, as a sequel to this movie could be really cool. Jordan Chan and sexy sidekick wandering through a degenerating Hong Kong that is filling up with mindless zombies.

Hmmm. Seems like there might be more to the social commentary side of this movie than I first thought.