Attack Of The Lederhosen Zombies

 

Mountain Tension

Attack Of The
Lederhosen Zombies
Austria 2016 Directed by Dominik Hartl
ScreenBound Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some slight plot spoilers.

Attack Of The Lederhosen Zombies is one of those blind buys I found going for a reasonable price a few years ago and thought, yeah, genius title. Of course, I always thought Lederhosen were some kind of Swiss frilly undergarment so it’s not quite the film I was expecting but, yeah, this is still a pretty solid entry into the ‘zombie comedy’ genre... following in the footsteps of movies such as Dead Snow and its sequel (reviewed here).

The film starts of strongly with a pulse beat on the score by Paul Gallister which is, I believe, deliberately reminiscent of the score to John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing (reviewed here) and a snowmobile riding around the mountain on which the entire movie is set. The snowboarder finds a zombie deer eating a human hand (I’m pretty sure the same prop hand is re-used later in the movie) and then we get the opening credits before meeting some of the main characters.

It mostly follows the exploits of Branka (played by Gabriela Marcinková), her boyfriend Steve (played by Laurie Calvert)... a snowboarder who she has dumped because of a fairly funny incident shown near the start of the movie... and their snowboarding friend Josh (played by Oscar Dyekjær Giese). But they are stranded on top of a mountain in a bar with the landlady Rita (played brilliantly by Margarete Tiesel) and a bunch of zombie humans and zombie deer.

And its the usual comedy mayhem that these films do so well, coupling silly humour with over the top gore as the young and old protagonists work together to violently dispose of the zombie threat... not without sacrifice. And, like other movies, it uses the extreme nature of the violence to help elicit some of those laughs but, unlike many, it’s also really well shot. The acting is great but the film is also beautifully lit with red and green lightning, which looks fantastic on the snow. And the compositions are quite clean and crisply defined, often using slow, fluid camera movements which draw the viewer in.

The lead characters of Branka and Steve also have really good chemistry and you’ll definitely be rooting for them to survive their encounter on the mountain. There are some nice set ups with things like one of them being caught in a bear trap while the zombie menace is right on them or another sequence where a character, I‘m not saying which, keeps getting hampered in his actions as a zombie by the undignified way in which Tina manages to damage him.

The film is quite pacey and even uses those ‘dots on a map’ moments to show where some of the characters are at certain points in the tale, which have their own charm and use multi-graphic representations when called for. They’re nicely done and there are even a few... not many but a few... surprises along the way. For instance, when Tina accidentally incapacitates a zombie by cutting him and having his innards unwind onto the floor, the pull also takes his eyeballs and teeth with it so, we’re left with a pile of intestines with a smiley face that’s trying to talk on the floor...which was a humorous touch in a film filled with much to laugh at.

Another great moment, long after the main protagonists have discovered that the zombies are mesmerised by music and stop to dance to the rhythm whenever anything is playing, is where a montage sequence of shots of a snowboarding character with various limbs and body parts flying up in the air is set to Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz. There’s another little set piece where the romance of two of the characters come to the fore and they find themselves dancing in a circle of zombies... so yeah, there are some nice things going on in this movie.

And that’s that. I’m sorry this is such a short review but, honestly, I haven’t much to say about Attack Of The Lederhosen Zombies because it doesn’t get much  of anything wrong, is very entertaining and makes good use of its small budget. Definitely a great movie to put on for a drunken, zombie marathon with friends, I would say. Can imagine it goes down well at horror festivals too. Certainly one I’d recommend to any fans of the genre and something I may well find myself revisiting at some point.