Shaolin vs. Evil Dead

2004 kung-fu zombie movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Something about the star of Kill Bill and a pair of sidekicks fighting evil and giving the dead proper burials. It involves voodoo papers. His brother's turned evil and fights against him every step of the way. There are hopping zombies all over the place, too.

First off, I want to find the guy who played Buck (Michael Bowen) in Kill Bill Volume 1 and put him in the kung-fu sequel to The Diary of Anne Frank that I plan on writing and directing some day. That way I'll be able to put "From the star of Kill Bill 1" on the top of my dvd box and make a little extra cash despite having dialogue as bad as the dialogue in this movie:

Master: Take a piss!

Kid: What? Now?

Other Kid: You heard the master. Do it.

Kid: [Pisses]

Other Kid: Master, why did you tell him to take a piss?

Master: I need virgin's pee.

See, sometimes it's poor translating combined with poor dubbing that makes it all sound much worse than it actually is, but I'm not sure that's the case here. Maybe with the later "Where do you come from, devil? How dare you invade my little brother?" is the result of the translation/dubbing combo though. This whole thing's a lot of nonsense. Why do the zombies hop? What's with the ad nauseum chanting? Why's that kid keep slamming his groin into a wall? Does a suddenly materializing Mike Tyson tattoo really give a person special powers? Why so many references to whizzing? What the hell are voodoo papers? There are a few moments when this movie almost looks good, but for the most part, it's one of those modern kung-fu flicks injected with some horror that isn't very scary and some humor that doesn't fit at all. The special effects are the scariest part of this, a kind of CGI nightmare. The Shaolin vs. Evil Dead story isn't even completed in this movie which is really frustrating. Clips during the credits promise a sequel, and it looks like they've found a way to make the special effects even uglier. I have no interest in sitting through the sequel to figure out what the hell this one was about.