Dorm of the Dead (2006) Reviews

• Not As Good As It Looked

  danthewrestlingmanorigin2006-10-24

  All right first I'll vent my beefs' with the film. Number one the makeup and gore effects were pretty bad, even for a no budget film. Plus there was no suspense, or zombie money shots. Second the soundtrack, which had a couple decent rock tunes, but also featured some really weird out of place techno music during a love scene, that was quite laughable. Number three and maybe this isn't so bad, the film only went barely an hour. Really a three rating is generous, the only good thing I can say is the women looked good, and Tiffany Shepis is always a pleasure to watch. Speaking of Tiffany, she has a lesbian scene in this film, that ends way to soon and shows little. Other then that, this film really should have upped the sleaze factor, as the brief nudity in the film was all it had going for it. Sorry to say skip this one.

• Just another lame shot-on-video zombie flick.

  capkronos2008-09-23

  After a Criswell-like introduction (featuring "Dukey Flyswatter"/Michael D. Sonye, a vet of several notable 80s B movies), the action cuts to Arkham Hall Girls' Dormitory, where some strange things are afoot. A sorority girl and her boyfriend are both killed by zombies; one of whom does a back flip for no apparent reason. Tiffany Shepis then puts in a cameo and manages to make it through a long lesbian scene without losing any of her clothing. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. She and her abusive boyfriend, as well as her friend Jane (Amanda Barnett), are killed by more zombies in a parking garage. After wasting about 15 minutes on basically nothing, the film finally gets to the meat of the story. Two best friends, the more straight-laced "geek" Allison Gellar (Adrianna Eder) and goth vegetarian Sarah Hannigan (Ciara Richards) want to do "something cool" so they go visit a cemetery to do some charcoal tracings of tombstones. Afterward, they encounter Southern fried campus bitch queen Clare Ryan (Jackie Hall), who looks and sounds like a less-talented version of Tara Reid. Yes, that IS possible. All three girls attend science class, where their hunky professor Dr. Xander (ugh, kill it with the "Buffy" references already...) talks about death and claims he has a vial of zombie blood he acquired on a trip to Haiti two years earlier. Clare observes in her monotone voice "Someone's been watching too many crappy movies." Tell me about it, sister. Double billing this flick with POT ZOMBIES tonight has almost turned ME into a zombie. Well, Sarah is called to the financial aid office and is told her tuition check has bounced and she has three days to come up with 4 thousand dollars. She's kicked out of her dorm room and forced to go to dreaded Arkham Hall, a run-down building used for "charity case students" who have no money. Arkham is also the hot spot for zombie activity since Dr. Xander (Christopher Slade) had already used his blood sample to turn a female student who tried to blackmail him into a zombie. Since then, things have spiraled out of control and the zombie girl has infected several other students (including Ms. Shepis) who lurk around in the house. Meanwhile, Clare coerces her bimbo friend Julie (Andrea Brooke Owneby, who apparently is "America's Dumbest Stripper" after her IQ score came back near the mental retardation bracket during her appearance on The Howard Stern Show) into helping her break into Dr. Xander's lab to steal his zombie blood. Julie wusses out (and promptly disappears from the rest of the film despite her star billing on the DVD cover), but Clare gets the vial after the doc is killed by zombies. Being the nice girl she is, Clare goes to Arkham Hall and dribbles some of the blood into Sarah's mouth while she's sleeping. That next morning, Sarah awakens in a daze and soon she's feasting on rare meat before graduating to human flesh. It's at this point, nearly an hour into the film, that the films gets slightly better for about ten minutes as Sarah goes on a mild rampage around town. She chews on a dummy head that's supposed to look like Kimberly Lynn Cole and kills the dean's wife. She also hitches a ride from a guy (played by Jim O'Rear) who takes her to a drive-in playing SEE NO EVIL and SILENT HILL. Poor girl. Then it's off to a bar to get back at a drunken Clare, and then to a carnival. There are a few OK metal songs that sounds a lot like White Zombie that play during her feeding frenzies. Director Donald Farmer is a name somewhat familiar to fans of horrible horror films. He's been making no budget movies like this since the mid 1980s, but sadly doesn't seem to have improved much over the past two decades. DORM was shot on digital and the picture quality is decent for the format. However, it's otherwise full of technical goofs usually attributed to amateur first-time filmmakers. There are tons of continuity errors, it's badly paced, it's padded, the attempts at humor almost always miss the mark and the editing, acting, script, gore fx and sound are all pretty lousy. The Clare character is only seen in close-up and doesn't interact with most of the rest of the cast, which makes it seem like all of her scenes were shot separately. The zombie make-up is almost nonexistent. A little dab of faint green paint and a little blood is all there is to it. There are three instances of T&A in the film, which is basically all it has to offer its target audience.

• It does not get much worse than this

  Shattered_Wake2008-11-06

  Synopsis: Clare (Jackey Hall) and Julie (Andrea Ownbey), the campus snobs of Arkham University, are attempting to seek their own brand of revenge on goth girl Sarah (Ciara Richards) and her friend Allison (Adrianna Eder). When the campus is overrun by zombies, the snobs see a good opportunity to get back at their black-clad enemies. Unfortunately, things may not go as smoothly as Clare & Julie want and they might be the zombies' prey instead. . . Review: This is about as bad as a zombie flick can get these days. Other than the attractive females that like to take their clothes off, there isn't a single positive element to this stinkfest. It's not funny, it's not scary, it's just horrible. The story, if there is one, makes little sense at all. The script (if there actually was one and it wasn't just a bunch of idiots running around speaking in 90s clichés) is offensively bad, and it's only worsened by sincerely THE worst acting I've ever seen in my life (no exaggeration). I mean, these people make walking look difficult. They make Keanu Reeves look like Laurence Olivier. As the film progresses to the actual 'zombie invasion' (which, strangely, wasn't the first ten minutes when zombies were wandering all over campus), it only gets worse and worse. The direction during 'action' (for lack of a better word) scenes is almost unwatchable. Hell, even during the still shots, the camera-work is pathetic. By the end, it's a grueling experience to get through and I, with my very high tolerance for total crap, barely made it through. This is, without a doubt, one of the worst films I have ever seen and will probably ever see. Avoid at all costs. Obligatory Zombie Elements: Cause of Outbreak: The spread of blood of a zombie brought back to the states by some idiot professor. . . or something. Zombie Characteristics: They're mostly slow, shambling, etc., except for the occasional one with superhuman strength and kung fu abilities. Zombie Effects: Apparently powdered sugar and ketchup = Zombie faces. Not even remotely terrifying or realistic. Violence/Gore: There may be quite a bit of zombie violence, but the gore is just ridiculously bad and some of the worst I've ever seen. If strawberry syrup and Fruit Roll-Ups are disgusting gore to you, then this is the film for you. Sex/Nudity: The film spends the first ten or so minutes acting like softcore porn, but that ends abruptly and the rest of the film is spent mostly clothed. Final Verdict: 1/10. Truly, truly painful. Recommended? I would not wish this curse upon anyone. -AP3-

• Fun but flawed

  slayrrr6662009-01-19

  "Dorm of the Dead" is a perfectly decent if flawed zombie effort. **SPOILERS** At Arkham Hall College, students Sarah Hannigan, (Ciara Richards) and Allison, (Adrianna Eder) run into trouble with finances for the college, forcing her into a special dorm on school grounds for financially-challenged students. Immediately getting under the skin of Clare, (Jackey Hall) and her friend Julie, (Andrea Ownbey) they conspire to get even against the two. When they learn that a professor on campus has gotten a hold of a special formula that creates zombies, they see it as the perfect way to get back at them and decide to steal it for themselves. Getting the formula, they use it to get back at them but it eventually gets out-of-hand, creating a horde of zombies across the campus and forcing them to fend off their advances and craving for human flesh before they succumb to the virus as well. The Good News: This one wasn't that bad when it tried. The fact that it's so short is one of the better reasons for this one being so good. The fact that this one barely tops an hour manages to make it fly by without too much difficulty, making it not too taxing at all, and while not everything makes sense, the fact that there's always something going on is a good move, keeping it from being boring. There's plenty of attacks in here, and some of them aren't that bad. The confrontation in the parking garage is nice, with the human squabbles taking center-place, then the zombies arrive in the distance and take over, leading to some pretty entertaining scenes. The opening is also rather enjoyable, with the supposed antics coming to a halt when its revealed too late that it's not the scenario hoped for and becoming instead a rather bloody zombie attack. There's more good stuff to come from a later scene of the zombies attacking in a basement complex as well as the individual attacks spread throughout it which are rather fun. It even manages to have some really decent amount of nudity on display, which come from a couple of really interesting scenes. The opening lesbian sequence is quite erotic and really enjoyable, as it's a little bit longer than expected. The flashback sex scene is even better, and it's a rather lengthy scene as well which makes it even more packed with nudity. The last good plus is the rather cheap-looking gore, even though there's a lot of it. There's tons of bites, including stuff to the arms, shoulders, face and neck, a head ripped off, some limbs removed and even an eye eaten out and various scenes of flesh-consumption included amongst it all. These here are what make the film enjoyable. The Bad News: There was a couple flaws to this one. One of the biggest is that the zombies here are very problematic. The main thing is that these look nothing like zombies, rather people with make-up on their face to make them look decomposed, but it looks rather cheap and not all that realistic, which takes a lot of out of their scariness. This one also manages to really rewrite a couple rules about the zombie behavior as well that might irk some, namely the scenes of the zombies interacting with the humans. By first showing signs of understanding English, including following directions given to them, as well as halting their advances enough for a flashback, as well as being able to engage in conversation as well are quite hard to get a hold on for the more hardcore zombie fanatics. Also quite hard to believe are a couple of other scenes where the creatures are seen moving kills somewhere else, despite their still being ample amounts of flesh still there. Usually they're taken down and devoured, but this one has them move the kill around without finishing their work, which is a compete change-of-pace from what's to be expected from these creatures. Combined with the weak look and these behavior issues, they come off as really weak overall, and then because there's so little screen-time devoted to them that they become even less threatening. That's another rather big problem, this has so little time to devote to the zombies, due to the overall length of the film and since it has to flesh out it's back-stories that it leaves very little actual time with the creatures. A lot of the scenes last way too long for what they should've been, including the flashback to the infidelity, the opening fight amongst the characters not even in the rest of the movie and the zombie's quest around town. These should've been trimmed or removed and left more time for the zombie action. The last flaw is the low-budget that's expressed through the zombie make-up and gore, which is quite obvious. These here are the film's problems. The Final Verdict: With about an even mix of flaws and good points, this one pretty much evens out and really doesn't do much either way. Give this one a shot if you're into the cheap, low-budget zombie films or need a quick, harmless nudity-fix, otherwise more discerning zombie-fans should look elsewhere. Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Nudity and several sex scenes

• I Took the Money And Ran

  michaeldukey20002012-06-27

  I know some of the people involved in this and they are all truly nice people and I was glad to do them the favor by appearing in a cameo role as The Doom Sayer at the beginning of the picture much like Criswell did at the opening of the Three Ed Wood Films he did. It was fun. I brought my own costume and improvised the opening in about five minutes. We shot another improv where I appear as a girls father and her horny date shows up and starts to talk about anal sex. It was stupid and sort of funny but SOme older woman who was there started to object in the middle of the scene so that was that. It didn't even appear as a special feature. The rest of the film well...It's pretty effin bad. Pretty much an excuse to show off some lovely young things and waste your time and money. If you care to rub one out to some very soft core erotica then be my guest just don't do it to my part. You have been warned. Dukey Flyswatter