Movie Review: Gangsters, Guns and Zombies

Gangsters, Guns and Zombies
LMV Productions, UK, 2012.

A bank robbery goes all "Reservoir Dogs." Luckily for the robbers the cops have more important problems as the zombie apocalypse has just started. The main narrator Q (Vincent Jerome) wonders what he's gotten into. Gangster boss Tony (Huggy Leaver), loose gun Crazy Steve (Fabrizio Santino), strong and benevolent Muscles (Charlie Rawes), bank robbery middle manager Pat (Frank Rizzo) and injured Danny (Simon Mathews) get away in the chaos that ensues. The dumb robbers go to the countryside where it should be safer but it is not though. 

Tony

Muscles, Pat, Crazy Steve and Q

Is it Insane Clown Posse?

After some adventures the survivors meet an angry granny (Jennie Lathan) and her pretty granddaughter Cassie (Cassandra Orhan). They decide to leave Britain as it is not safe anymore. So just basic plot you could see in a dozens of other zombie films.

Granny

Q and Cassie

Official PSA

Tongue-in-cheek film has shoestring budget and takes influences from "Lock, Stock and Two Barrels" and other Guy Ritchie's gangster films. Why not also from Peter Jackson's early horror comedies although this doesn't go as gory or crazy as "Bad Taste." If it only had a larger budget...

In the IMDB trivia it is said that the budget was £1 200. I think it may have been a bit more (but not much) unless everyone worked for free, as already the camera costs and the gasoline costs were probably larger.

What is fun that there are some groups of themed zombies: medieval larpers, soccer zombies, and clowns. Crazy Steve (Fabrizio Santino) steals the show in the first half and granny (Jennie Lathan) with a gun in the second half. What is not fun is that most of the time the guys are just driving around and the second half just drags. The zombie makeup is just blood stains on the face and the effects use bad CGI blood. The zombies are amateurs but seem to have fun.

"Cockneys vs Zombies" was built with similar elements and it was a fun film. "Gangsters, Guns and Zombies" is not as good but could be worse. For a low budget zombie film it has a decent camerawork compared to many handheld shaky cam horror films. The characters were a notch more interesting than usually, and the British humour helped to make them likable. This was not so bad considering that there are many worse indie horror films. This is not everyone's cup of tea but I found the dumb humour quite entertaining.

Rating: Good (for a ultra low budget zombie film) / Bad (as a regular film)

Starring: Vincent Jerome, Huggy Leaver, Fabrizio Santino, Cassandra Orhan, Frank Rizzo, Charlie Rawes, Jennie Lathan, Simon Mathews, Dave Skirbeck Bedford, Gurpreet Bedi, Dean Boor, Lee Hardy, Sharon Lawrence, Chris Manning-Perry, Doug McCarthy, Jessica McManigan, Calum McNab, Josh Myers, Paul Neenoo, Andy Rawlings, Simon Woodgate
Director: Matt Mitchell