Battle of the Damned 2013 4 out of 10
Fresh off of recording our Zombie themed podcast
I came across this Zombie movie on Syfy "Battle of the Damned"
The movie is a mix of a whole bunch of other movies and never really stands on its own. It kicks off with Dolph Lundgren (cashing in on the coat tails of the Expendable movies as much as he can) getting a military assignment to go into a quarantined Zombie area. His mission in to rescue some rich businessman's daughter.......Hmmmm that plot sounds familiar... (Escape from New York anyone). The producers must have been sitting around thinking "Hey lets just make Escape from New York, but with Zombies and robots ----oh and Dolph Lundgren can limp around like the an old grandpa in military gear". Well that is exactly what they did. It is such a direct rip-off of Escape From New York that they didn't even change the name of one of the characters??? (Lazy) The main leader of the survivors in this area is named The Duke straight out of Escape from New York.
The rip-off plot starts out okay as Dolph and a crew of no name Expendables wannabes are running around taking out Asian Zombies with minimal Zombie makeup. His crew is basically all killed off except for him -- because he still has a mission to complete. We then meet the feisty rich dudes daughter named June ---whose character acts and looks like Juno from the movie Juno (lazy again). The movie and its stolen plot still could have been good --but it comes to a screeching halt --due to lack of budget. It gets bogged down in a bunch of of dull dialogue as the group of about 6 survivors that she is apart of (that is all they could afford). Dolph tries to help her escape and the Duke doesn't like it and handcuffs poor old Dolph to a street lamp to suffer a fate of death by zombies. Luckily only about 7 Zombies show up which he is able to beat down before being rescued by one of the survivors. Dolph and the guy that rescued him run across a rag tag group of Zombie killing robots that look like failed designs for Cylons which they recruit after some terrible dialogue to help them escape before the whole region is fire bombed. The best line in he film from Dolph is "Zombies.....Killer Robots ..... Nice town you got here " It was a decent concept despite its complete lack of originality. It's limited budget turned it into a very slow moving plot with only a few interesting yet poorly executed zombie scenes. We really don't even get a good Robot vs Zombie battle ---because they just couldn't afford it. All in all it was a waste of potential that could have been a lot better if they had bothered to get beyond the concept stage and actually written a story.
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