"Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie"
review by Diablo Joe



Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie

When you encounter a title like “Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie,” your expectations tend to follow certain paths. No one expects high art. Camp, bawdy humor, silliness, and slapstick are more like it. And hopefully some ridiculous gore. All done in the name of fun and plenty of laughs. The problem with “HAGZ” (and one wonders if the whole film exists to justify that title acronym–there are no aliens) is simply the fact that it’s not much fun. It’s actually quite tedious.

It starts promisingly enough. An ancient, forbidden tome creates a gay zombie; meanwhile, the scientist’s wife's severed head, kept in a suitcase, helps revive a dead woman by reincarnating her as a plant that then becomes a killer housewife. Across town, the police are dismayed that they may be out of work due to superhero ZebraMan, animal-pajama-wearing, otherwise ordinary, guy.

It’s a hodge-podge of crazy ideas, and sometimes that can work. But silly ideas, tossed in heaps and without explanation, had better do more than just puzzle. Shootouts with toy flintlocks. A police chief who communicates only in grunts and possesses fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows. A sudden switch to black and white with silent movie intertitles. A drag queen 911 operator. ZebraMan himself. These and hundreds of other absurd, out-of-nowhere bits of business would all be utterly acceptable if only they were entertaining. And the Housewife Alien and the Gay Zombie never meet, let alone square off.

The film suffers from an infantile vibe that could be, in part, a cultural issue. While entirely in English, the film is from Sweden. Much in the way master director Sergio Leone was convinced all Americans used the phrase “Duck, you sucker!” one has to wonder if the Swedes thought some of the jokes were how Americans interact and talk. So much falls flat that it has to be a consideration. Indeed, the overuse of the word “gay” as if it were something terribly naughty, seems evidence of this.

As a film with a gay zombie, you expect a lot of sexual innuendo and humor. Yes, it’s there, and yes, it’s mostly in shameful bad taste. But you’d have to be reaching for a reason to be offended to find it any more than childish.

The film just goes on and on, with weak joke after weak joke. There really doesn’t seem to have been a lot of thought put into it. Somewhere while watching the film for review, the mistake was made to check the time. The realization that thirty minutes still remained to a ninety-six-minute length became the film’s most frightening horror.

This devil of a reviewer gives “Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie” 1 out of 5 imps

Housewife Alien Vs. Gay Zombie from Adler & Associates Entertainment on Vimeo.