Review #127: Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker (2000)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #13- Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker (2001)

Alright... a few disclaimers before I really get into this. First, I've seen this movie before, many many times. I've shown it to people many many times. I probably didn't need to watch it again, since I know it so well. Also, the two hardest parts of this review are going to be deciding how insulting I want to be (and who I want those insults to be aimed at), and whether my personal rating system allows for a zero, or if one is the lowest it can go.

I'll waste no more time: this is a bad movie. Like, it's terrible. It's so bad it seriously makes me question the integrity of literally every person involved in making it. The reason I've shown this movie to so many people is that for many years, it was the prime example of how bad a movie can be while still being called a movie (edging out Carnage: The Legend of Quiltface for worst movie I owned, though that's arguable.) This movie is disgusting, off-putting, INCREDIBLY racist, and one heck of a slog to get through its meager 59-minute runtime.

The problem with just calling this a bad movie, though, is that I guarantee most of its poor quality is completely intentional. There are countless production errors that had to have been left in on purpose (like the director saying "Go" at the beginning of a couple shots), the dialogue is needlessly wordy and incredibly hard to follow at times, and many scenes have nothing whatsoever to do with the overall plot and seem to be just some random goof that got improvised on the day of shooting, because someone thought it would be funny. So the real crux of how bad of a rating to give this movie comes down to: Is a movie bad, if it was made bad on purpose?

Because tell you what: I know someone had a blast making this movie. I'm not sure exactly who (most likely director Chris Seaver, but who knows), and the viewers certainly didn't have a blast watching it, but someone put a lot of (misguided) love into making this. Basically everything in this movie from beginning to end is some kind of an inside joke that I'm clearly not privy to, and this is likely the product of someone getting their hands on a video camera, calling up their friends, and saying, "Let's go make a ridiculous movie, it'll be so funny, trust me." But also, this isn't the first movie made by Chris Seaver- believe it or not, he had FIFTEEN short films under his belt by this point, so if this is the result of ten years' worth of goofing around with a camera, I have to ask at what point the creator has to be held to any kind of a standard. I can appreciate that this was likely just a goofy project made with friends, but can I still call it out as poorly-written, poorly-shot, and incredibly offensive in many ways, especially when it's being sold on various public marketplaces with a blatantly misleading cover image depicting a completely different movie?

But also, even if this was intended to just be a fun goof between friends, even if it was INTENTIONALLY made to be bad, I still think that the filmmakers actually did a bad job of what they set out to do (even if that goal was to make a bad movie). Many of the problems with this movie simply stem from laziness and/or lack of skill, rather than intention. Having the main character speak with a palatal lisp, which makes basically all of her dialogue INCREDIBLY difficult to understand, is bad whether it was intentional or not. Having actors with incredibly poor improvisation skills improvise several scenes, is bad whether it was intentional or not. Having most of the script be written in a crude, sexually verbose style is one thing (I don't like it, but whatever), but all of the characters do it the same way. So the characters end up all using the same catch phrases and language style as one another, and that's bad.

Mr. Seaver: I get it, you think just mentioning John Stamos is funny. You like referencing other, better movies (to the point where you clumsily insert the name of the movie, the name of the director, and a brief description of both into every sentence, while trying to pass it off as ordinary speech). You really like portraying yourself as a stereotypical African-American person, including blackface makeup, malappropriated slang, references to your penis size, and constant mentions of Bill Cosby and Jell-o Pudding Pops. Maybe in 2001 those were all hot takes and were really funny, but I doubt it. I can understand you were goofing around with your friends and I can understand you probably didn't expect people to still be watching your movie twenty years later (and in a way, it's probably some kind of an achievement for you that I'm writing this). But I have to call a spade a spade, and this is very, very bad movie is a spade.

The only good thing this movie has going for it is the practical effects, which (while often used very poorly) are more well-done than I would expect in something with as low a budget as this movie appears to have. Also, however bad this movie is, it's only 59 minutes. True, those 59 minutes FEEL like 590 minutes, but when it's over you'll have more time to go watch one of those other, better films that they mentioned numerous times.

Overall Rating: 1/10 Inside Jokes Literally No Viewer Is Ever Going to Understand

Surprise Guest Appearance: Naked Cowboy is in this movie, and apparently he's still alive and still performing as of this year!