Directed by: George A. Romero
Written by: George A. Romero
Starring: Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe
1 Hour, 30 Min.
Pick it up at Amazon: https://amzn.to/31y8IKY
We start out in a military base that is In the process of being overrun by zombies. We get a couple of good gore shots and then the credits.
The real story starts on Plum Island, off the coast of Delaware, six days after the dead start to turn. For some reason, everyone on the island in Delaware is Irish. Old man O’Flynn gets a group of local men together and starts to clean up all the zombies on the small island. They get into a dispute with the Muldoon family, who thinks killing zombies is wrong, and O’Flynn is exiled.
Three weeks laker, in Philadelphia, we’re back to the soldiers. They kill a group of hunters in the woods. They see a video from O’Flynn (YouTube still works?) advertising that Plum Island is safe and under control. The group decides to drive there and check out the allegedly “safe” island.
There’s a one-sided battle between O’Flynn’s men and the soldiers, which leaves only O’Flynn and five soldiers alive. They take a ferry to the island.
O’Flynn’s dead daughter rides past them on a horse. O’Flynn and the Sarge join up to kill Muldoon. In the meantime, Muldoon has taken the dead villagers and chained them in place so they can “stay with them.” Except he seems to kill more of them than he saves. Muldoon thinks he can train the dead to eat something other than the living. He’s even got his wife chained up in the kitchen.
It turns out O’Flynn had two twin daughters, Janet and Jane. Janet is still alive and explains the feud on the island to Sarge. The two groups meet, and there is a gunfight. As is the case in all the Romero zombie films, things go badly for most everyone. There are a few survivors, and Romero had two more films planned before his death in 2017.
Commentary
How is it that no-one but Irish people live on Plum Island? I literally thought they meant Delaware, Ireland until the guys from Philadelphia decided to drive there. The idea of going to an isolated island has been a thing since the ending of Day of the Dead. The humor and the gore are a good mix, and at no point did I get bored; it all moved at a good pace. Kenneth Welsh is hilarious; I’ve liked watching him in anything since Twin Peaks, but he doesn’t get enough TV work.
This was the least successful Romero zombie film at the box office, but I don’t think it wasn’t bad at all.