"This evil which will take the flesh and blood from thee and will turn all ye unto evil."
FleshEater: Revenge of the Living Dead, or known more simply as just FleshEater, is a 1988 independent Horror film directed, written, produced, edited, and starring Bill Hinzman.
The film tells the story of a group of teens settling out in the country during Halloween. A couple of farmers who own the area offer to drive them around and plan on picking the teens up after dark. However, one of the farmers comes across a tree stump, removes it, and finds an old buried coffin. The farmer reads an old warning on the coffin (see the text at the top of the page) but dismisses it as a joke and opens the coffin anyway, in which he is attacked by the zombie (played by Hinzman) inside and proceeds to attack anyone else he comes across.
This film provides examples of:
- And Show It to You: The girlfriend of the man killed with a pitchfork is killed when the Flesheater rams it's hand inside her stomach and pulls out her heart which he proceeds to eat.
- Black Comedy: When the Hinzman zombie picks up and bites the little girl, she drops the candy she was holding... which was a Krunch bar.
- Cop Killer: Since the zombies only see the living as something to eat, they have no qualms about killing and eating the police officer sent to investigate the group's frantic phone call.
- Covers Always Lie: Flesheater's home video release, under the title Revenge of the Living Zombies
◊, has a zombie dressed in a suit holding a pickaxe on the front cover. This zombie never appears in the film. - Cruel Twist Ending: After all the zombies are killed off, one police officer goes down to the now burned down barn to investigate... only to be attacked and bitten by the very same zombie that started the whole mess.
- Death of a Child: Two of the victims in the film are young kids (an infant girl and her slightly older brother specifically).
- Devoured by the Horde: The fates of Officer Harv, the Porsche-driving father, the Dirty Coward who refused Tom and Sally entry into the boarded-up farmhouse, and David.
- Dirty Coward: Once the house is boarded up, two members of the group arrive but one of them already inside refuses to let them in due to the zombies being too close, forcing them to take cover in the house's basement via the outside entry. When one of the others inside is reaming him out, he pulls a rifle on him and threatens him with it. He is easily disarmed and later becomes an Asshole Victim.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Nobody in the main cast survives.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The movie starts just before sundown on Halloween and all of the zombies are thought to have been shot by the posse or killed by burning down a barn the next morning. Barring the final scene which occurs a few days later, the majority of the movie takes place inside a time frame of just over 12 hours.
- Fanservice: After her first scene has her stripping off her bathrobe for some full frontal Fanservice beforehand, one of the Flesheater's victims is a completely naked young woman who just got out of the shower and is wearing a Modesty Towel. She becomes Fan Disservice once she's turned into a zombie and is later seen fully naked.
- Gorn: For a zombie flick, the film is mostly light on gore, but two moments that stand out are the aftermaths of a police officer and a father of three upon being eviscerated by the zombies.
- Here We Go Again!: The original zombie that started the outbreak ends up creating another one at the end of the film, when a police officer investigates the area to double check that there are no more remaining zombies.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: At least twice someone arms themself with a melee weapon (first time it's an axe, second time its a pitchfork) against the Flesheater, only for him to easily disarm and then kill the person with it.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The film takes place on Halloween.
- It Can Think: The zombies, especially the eponymous Flesheater, show clear signs of intelligence. Examples include cutting the phone line of an abandoned shack, grabbing a rock to smash the windshield of a police car, and even being able to wait for the right moment to attack their victims.
- Kill It with Fire: After more than a few zombies exit the barn, the sheriff surmises that it must be full of zombies and has every door locked before it's set ablaze and burned to the ground. When he investigates the remains at the end, three burnt corpses are seen amongst the debris.
- Laser-Guided Karma: A downplayed but amusing example; one member of the posse enters the house where the family was attacked and steals a large handful of candy for himself. Upon entering the eldest daughters room, he almost loses his breakfast at the sight of the mostly-devoured father.
- Monochrome Casting: Most if not all of the characters in the film are light skinned.
- Mythology Gag: Twice in this movie do cellars prove the safest place to hide in a zombie apocalypse, just like in Night of the Living Dead (1968).
- My Car Hates Me: The farmer who drove the teens into the woods has his tractor unable to start so he can leave. While investigating the issue, he is killed by the Flesheater's first victim.
- Noodle Incident: No cause for the outbreak is explicitly stated, though questions asked by a reporter about a long-gone Satanic Cult and the warning on the Flesheater's coffin imply a supernatural cause.
- No-Sell: One partygoer dressed in karate gear attempts to subdue a zombie with a karate chop. This does nothing except cause the zombie to divert it's attention to him.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: Averted; though it's well into the movie before the word is said, the undead are referred to as zombies, but only three times in the span of five minutes, one of those coming from a radio reporting that "Zombies are on the prowl" and one drunk partygoer dismisses Tom and Sally's warning as them having "seen one too many cheesey zombie movies".
- Our Zombies Are Different: Like in Night of the Living Dead (1968), the zombies retain enough intellect to use items as weapons, take out phone lines, subdue and disarm a target.
- Patricide: The father of the family arrives home after the attack and is surrounded and eaten alive by his zombified family, including his own three kids!
- Outliving One's Offspring: While the posse is hunting down zombies, a group of three spot a hula girl zombie exiting the barn. One of them shouts at the other two not to shoot because it's his daughter. He stands back while the other two kill the reanimated girl and looks visibly distraught afterwards.
- Shout-Out: Near the end of the film, two of the teens that were hiding in the basement of a barn are shot and killed by a posse of policemen who mistake them for zombies, which pretty much alludes to Ben's exact same fate at the end of Night of the Living Dead (1968).
- Stop, or I Will Shoot!: When Officer Harv arrives at the now-overrun farmhouse, several zombies begin shambling towards him. Harv, thinking they are just kids in costumes, orders the closest one to halt, pulls his gun and repeats himself while having his gun pointed at the still-approaching zombie, fires a warning shot and then shoots a few seconds later when the zombie doesn't listen, hitting it in the chest to no effect before shooting it in the head, now realizing that the "crank call" he was tasked with responding to wasn't a joke after all.
- Super-Strength: Seems to be an effect of zombification; one man killed with a pitchfork is able to snap the wooden handle like a toothpick and later effortlessly impales a girl through the chest until the broken end sticks out of her back.
- Tempting Fate: While hiding in the barn, Bob and Sally confess that their love for each other, plan to get married and embrace the future once they exit the barn. Too bad they're mistaken for zombies by the posse.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- While removing a tree stump, one of the farmers come across the coffin containing the Hinzman zombie. Despite the warning clearly written on the coffin, the farmer dismisses it as a joke and opens the coffin anyway.
- The very first cop that appears in the film gets bombarded by a small group of zombies. He retreats to his car... but doesn't even think about driving away.
- Tom and Sally later approach the aforementioned police car and kill what's left of the officer once he reanimates, but then continue to flee on foot instead of pulling the officer's remains out of the vehicle, getting in, and driving to safety. Granted, they probably weren't thinking straight out of panic, but still.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: One of the farmers that owned the area where the teens were staying is pretty much responsible for letting the plot happen, seeing as how he was the one who released the original zombie in the first place.
- Your Head Asplode: Several zombies are taken out this way by the posse's gunfire, one of whom being the farmer who was the Flesheater's first victim.
