If you've ever been sitting at home watching one of John Hughes' numerous teen comedies of the 80's (Sixteen Candles, for example) and you were just hoping a zombie might show-up and nibble on their brains, Dance of the Dead has you covered. One of the movies going under the "Ghost House Underground" line being distributed by Lionsgate, it's a lot more fun than you'd expect thanks to director Gregg Bishop and writer Joe Ballarini who nail the feel of the high school movies of the past and a young cast who nail their purposely clichéd characters perfectly. Toss in lots of creative zombie attacks, witty humour, and a good amount of gore and you have something that'll appeal to fans of movies like Night of the Creeps as well as those looking for a few chuckles with their yucks.

Things open at the local graveyard where the caretaker's regular duties are interrupted when a corpses' hand reaches out from the grave and grabs him by the neck. It's nothing his handy pair of hedge clippers can't handle but it seems to be a much bigger problem than anyone knows, at least judging from the wheelbarrow full of re-animated body parts he's collected during the day. It's also prom night at Cosa High. Things have been set-up in a Hawaiian theme, everyone's trying to get a date at the last minute, and it promises to be a night of underage drinking and nookie. That's why it's probably the worst possible night for the entire cemetery to start coming back to life craving human flesh. It also might've been a bad decision to build a nuclear power plant in between it and the school, since that's what caused the outbreak in the first place.

Amongst the outbreak of undead a group of students are forced to team-up. There's the smart-assed Jimmy (Jared Kusnitz), the sci-fi club nerd Steven (Chandler Darby), and redneck troublemaker Kyle (Justin Welborn) as well as a few others who couldn't find a date for the evening. In between bouts of being trapped in a house, fighting off the undead horde, and recruiting the help of gym coach (and Military nut) Keel (Mark Oliver) they decide to head to the prom and put a stop to the zombie menace for good.

Dance of the Dead is a lot more fun that you might expect going in. It has an irreverent sense of humour about it and is completely over-the-top (like the opening moment and during a bout of, literal, zombie wrestling proves), which isn't really anything new for the genre since it has been filled with smirky horror-comedies for years but what they've done right here is fill the movie with likeable characters, cast young actors who understand what they were going for and deliver that, and slung enough body parts and blood at the screen to keep you happy.

Kusnitz (Doll Graveyard, Otis) comes out of nowhere to deliver a wry, amusing performance and steals almost every scene he's in, Wellborn (who's set to appear in the fourth Final Destination movie) plays up his white trash character perfectly and Greyson Chadwick fills the movie's "cute" factor as Jimmy's girlfriend, Lindsey. And while his gung-ho character isn't a new thing in this type of movie, Oliver also gets a good amount of laughs - he's no Michael Gross in Tremors but, really, who is?

When you consider how highly I think of Fred Dekker's aforementioned Night of the Creeps, to put this movie in company with it is possibly the best compliment I can give it. Along with Fido and Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer there's been a great amount of comedic monster flicks that not only appeal to those who grew-up with them in the 80's but are actually highly entertaining, funny, and rely more on old school practical effects and the audience's nostalgia than trying way too hard to mock the genre and insult fans in the process like the inexplicably popular Scary Movie series has. (Chris Hartley, 1/27/09)

Directed By: Gregg Bishop.
Written By: Joe Ballarini.

Starring: Jared Kusnitz, Greyson Chadwick, Chandler Darby, Carissa Capobianco.