Shadow: Dead Riot (2006)

Crappy film

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This movie is the definition of not judging a movie by its cover. The cover makes it look alright but the movie itself is crap. The movie would be okay if the director actually put some effort into this 81 minute movie. Me and my friends watched this tonight and we laughed so hard at a movie thats supposed to scare us. The plot is crap, the animations are disgusting and look like cut scenes from an old play station 1 game, the baby in the movie is literally a dummy you can buy in a supermarket for like 5 bucks and when it attacks people they seriously hold him and tilt him so it looks like he is attacking them, the fight scenes are way over done and the special effects are something you can do on windows movie maker and the ending is a failed cliff hanger leading to a non existent sequel and the music can be downloaded free off google. Overall this movie is not worth your 10 bucks. The directors were just taking a dump all over zombie movies and the cover has reviews on it right? yeah, they even misspelled "decade" on one of the reviews. If you want a good laugh at a crappy movie, go and watch it. Just don't buy it.

Oddball mixture of women-in-prison, zombie, and kung-fu genre elements has Tony Todd starring as an executed psychopath who murdered and raped women before his death by lethal injection. Todd's name is Shadow and his blood is powerful due to a successful ritual which equipped him with superhuman capabilities. When a riot breaks out after Shadow's body explodes(!), during the process of his execution, the prisoners are gunned down by a prison warden's guards. They are buried in a pit on the grounds of the prison along with Shadow's remains, to be forgotten.20 years later, the prison is a women's reformatory, built as a sort of rehabilitation center for female criminals to help them recover from their past mistakes which brought them to their current situation. A new prisoner is entering the institution, her name Solitaire(Clare Green), a tough young woman with amazing martial arts fighting skills..which she'll need in order to combat a nasty, muscular felon named Mondo who commands an authoritative, intimidating presence among the other inmates, afraid of her because she's stronger and bigger than they are. The prison's doctor has a vial of Shadow's blood and begins injecting Solitaire with it, hoping the powerful properties will prove that it is a source of eternal life. Meanwhile, Shadow's remains will be resurrected when an inmate(Misti Mundae, AKA, Erin Brown), attempting to escape, snaps her ankle, bleeding into the ground which represents his burial place. Not only will Shadow rise from the earth, but so will the dead inmates buried along with him. Shadow will confront and attempt to destroy Solitaire, the one he sought after when he killed her mother many years ago. Director Derek Wan is mostly concerned with showing bodies hurled in the air and up against walls with brute force. Solitaire has the uncanny ability to withstand brutal punishment which would paralyze most people, but the excuse for this is Shadow's blood which courses through her veins. Included are the sleazy head of security, Elsa Thorne(Andrea Langi), a lesbian who offers certain inmates privileges as long as they service her sexual needs, and the usual naked showers. Tatianna Butler is Mondo, one of the major antagonists which Solitaire must contend with, although our heroine gets the best of her every time. Michael Quinlan is the other antagonist, Dr. Swann, who actually injects the newborn baby of an inmate, Emily(Cat Miller), with Shadow's blood turning the infant into a bloodthirsty monster reminiscent to the creature in IT'S ALIVE. Swann wants to test Shadow's blood on others before using it on himself. He also supplies a junkie inmate with pills in exchange for sexual favors. But Todd and Greene own this movie as villain and heroine respectively. They have not one but two showdowns and there's plenty of wire-fu where poor Greene gets tossed around, not without getting her licks in. Misty Mundae has a minor role as one of those abused inmates who Mondo mistreats..and, yes, she does get naked on occasion, but leaves the film far too soon. Nina Hodoruk is the warden who desperately wants to rehabilitate and help her prisoners, deeply worried about the occurrences which threaten her institution. You get plenty of zombie carnage at the end, when the female prisoners must ward off(mostly unsuccessfully)the undead awakened by Shadow's blood. Todd makes his appearance in the beginning and end of the film, showing up in flashback when past incidents pop up in Solitaire's mind after she touches a ritualistic symbol carved in the floor of a solitary prison cell she's confined to for fighting with Mondo. Most of the effects are small scale which is probably why Wan edits violent scenes with the gore fast as to not dwell too long on them. The ending involving a special knife and the mark on Shadow's hand makes no sense at all.

Shadow: Dead Riot starts as multiple murderer & all round evil bloke Shadow (Tony Todd) is executed in prison, his supernatural blood leaks out & a full scale prison riot ensues which ends in a massacre. Jump forward 'Twenty Years Later' & the prison is now a rehabilitation center for women where loner Solitaire (Carla Greene) has just been sent, Solitaire is a hard lady & stands up to the prison bully Mondo (Tatianna Butler) & gains the respect of the lesser inmates. However Solitaire has strange visions about Shadow & after blood is spilt on a patch of grass in the grounds under which Shadow is buried he & the massacred inmates are revived & rise from the dead to eat the flesh of the living & only hard as nails Solitaire can stop Shadow & his dead rioting zombie friends...Photographed & directed by Derek Wan this is a pretty crappy low budget mess of an exploitation film that is saved by a fast pace & a bit of cheap gore but as a film make no mistake Shadow: Dead Riot is rubbish. The script tries to have it's cake & eat it, it tries to be the ultimate exploitation flick as it is an odd mixture of horror, comedy, kung-fu, blaxploitation, women in prison & zombie gore film all in one but the various genres don't come together that well & Shadow: Dead Riot isn't nearly as much fun as it should have been. There's no thought behind the story at all, there's never any reason given as to why Shadow comes back from the dead or why a bunch of zombies do either, there's some random nonsense about his blood & it feels like the makers of Shadow: Dead Riot made it up as they went along & to be honest they probably did. Every part of Shadow: Dead Riot is stolen from somewhere else, everything is predictable & clichéd. The character's are awful, the dialogue is embarrassing & maybe the makers will argue that it's all intentional but do I really want to watch a bad film that know's it bad? Also what about that inmate that made a run for it & got sucked down into the ground? Didn't the warden or guards not find it strange that an inmate suddenly vanished? At 90 odd minutes I got pretty bored with it even though the final third is almost none stop zombie action which says a lot, the first two thirds are more concerned with cat-fights between the inmates, the inmates taking showers, a lesbian guard (named Elsa Thorne after the infamous Ilsa & the actress who played her Dyanne Thorne) & a male Doctor who takes advantage of the female inmates. It's all pretty predictable although I suppose there's a lot going on & your never far from a naked woman or some cheap gore which might be a recommendation to some on it's own. Shadow: Dead Riot sounds great but, well, it isn't.The special effects are poor, the one or two CGI computer effects are embarrassing while the prosthetics & on set make-up effects look tatty with the worst mutant baby you can imagine. There's a fair amount of gore here, eyeballs hang out, there's plenty of zombies, bitten off nipples, mutant babies, bitten throats, severed limbs, blood spurts, ripped out guts, exploding heads & some really badly choreographed fights. The entire film takes place in just one location to keep the budget down even further. Neither funny nor scary Shadow: Dead Riot pays homage to better films such as Zombi 2 (1979), Burial Ground (1981) & any women in prison film like Chained Heat (1983) even though the women here are not what I would call attractive to be honest & the nude shower scenes aren't as much fun as they should be...With a supposed budget of about $750,000 it looks every bit as low budget as it was, the production values are poor & the whole thing looks cheap. Filmed in an old disused prison in Holmesburg in Pennsylvania. The acting is bad, Tony Todd is here for the money & looks stupid in thick rimmed glasses & wearing a wig of dreadlocks while everyone else is terrible.Shadow: Dead Riot is a film that wants to be fun but isn't, it's bad on every level but at least it keeps going & there's lots of blood & breasts even if the effects are poor & the women are unattractive. There are better films out there for sure.

This movie incorporated at least 3 genres:women's prison,oriental action, and ghoulish horror. In that respect, it was an adventurous 90 minutes! While Tony was his usual imposing self, the guy playing Dr. Swann struck some realistic chords. He let his motivation for power and sex come through slowly and built up to the final climax.Given the ambitious nature of the film, the cast did the best job they could with minimal dialogue and tough action sequences. Speaking of the action, it was done in a way familiar to those who know Asian action films -- fast, violent, and well interspersed throughout the film. Carla Green looked great in a demanding physical role and I'd love to see more of her! As in many of these kinds of movies, maybe they tried to please too many people, but I'd love to see a sequel