Naked Zombie Girl     by

Bobbie L. Washington

Have you ever ran across something that for whatever reason, resonates something in you that leaves a lasting impression? Well. I made such a discovery of a somewhat innocuous little gem of a film that's called Naked Zombie Girl that came out in 2014. It is exactly what the title claims, but it's about a girl who kills or rather re-kills zombies. So the premise is this, apparently there is a plague of zombies roaming the land. They just jump right into it without any setup. They have to since the little innocuous film has a running time of 28 minutes. And so there is a 1971 Cadillac Broughham chugging along down the highway with three people in the car, two women and a guy. The car comes to a stop having engine trouble and at the same time, the guy is sick, apparently bitten by a zombie.

All of a sudden a horde of zombies come out of nowhere attacking the occupants in the car. One of the girls in driving. The zombies grab the girl in the backseat and the dead guy. The driver eventually is under attack as she fights off the zombies. In her escape, her dress is torn off after getting caught in the car door. She runs to a barn or some structure where she finds a chainsaw. Now unlike some other teen horror slasher movie, this chick figures out things and she gets the chainsaw started and now the fun begins.

Unlike The Avengers: Age of Ultorn which is long, laborious and lacking the fun element that's gone missing from the earlier films, Naked Zombie Girl has it's tongue planted firmly in cheek with the camp factor. It's not thought provoking, it won't make you cry for Ryan Gossling, it won't do your taxes, it won't have a dog rescuing you from a well. Here you have a naked girl running around with a chainsaw dispatching zombies left and right. And then you realize that her being naked is her super power. It sort of reminds you of Buffy Sommers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Here was a high school girl who had this gift of killing demons, vampires, ghouls, etc. while attending the prom in a ball gown. But Naked Zombie Girl takes it to a whole different level. After she kills her first set of zombies, a guy in a white pickup truck pulls up and blows one of the zombies away, saving our heroine from a fate worse than death, literally. But he didn't bat a eye when he tells her to get into the truck and he drives her back to his place so she can wash all of the blood off her. Of course you can see this coming because while she is in the bathroom, the zombies get into the house and eat the guy. She hears the noise and puts a towel around her and goes out into the hallway and looks down the hall to see the zombies devouring the guy. She drops her towel and she has her super power again as she goes on the attack.

And that's what I took away from this and that was her “girl power” was her being naked and I don't know if she knew that her power was derived from her being naked? She seemed to free herself from those conventions that were placed by the social norms. Those emotional shackles, invisible as they are, were liberated from her when she grabbed that chainsaw like it was her “new dick” and stuck it in the zombie splitting him into. What you saw was someone who wasn't looked at as some sexualized creature but a different kind of warrior that's worthy of further examination in the cinematic structure on women in film.

Writer/Director Ricky Bird did a masterful job with the resources that he had. And with a budget of $17,500 the zombie makeup and effects didn't seem cheap. Meghan Chadeayne plays Barbara/Naked Zombie Girl without reservations. Money was raised though crowd funding sources and I don't know if a feature film is planned. It falls under the category of grindhouse and there is a graphic novel of Naked Zombie Girl floating out there. But please find this film and be surprised by it all. Become a fanboy of Naked Zombie Girl and go to the website at nakedzombiegirlmovie.com , it's worth the trip.