Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies (2014) 1h 28m

I've had this sitting on my shelf since Christmas when a family member bought it from a list of DVDs I gave them.  Utterly confused on their part, they just seemed happy to get me something that I was excited for.  I knew the gist of this film from Wrestling With Wregret's review but by now I've forgotten everything and it became a good time to revisit it.

Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies sums up most of the premise in its title.  In true Shane Douglas form, he's a dick and kills a man in the ring with a tombstone pile driver all because Shane caught his woman having the fakest sex ever with the now murdered wrestler.  The brother of the corpse approaches the promoter and says that he wants a private show at an abandoned West Virginia penitentiary with Shane as the main person.  The promoter also offers up Matt Hardy, Kurt Angle, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Reby Sky for no reason other than he was just handed about $3000.  The building is full of zombies and once inside everyone has to try and fight their way out... all because Shane Douglas is a dick.

Why am I not in this film?

Aside from the wrestlers fighting zombies and Shane Douglas being a shit bag, the remaining plot of this film gets muddy.  The living brother eats human hearts to gain power to create and control the zombies but he gets that power from some person or demon.  I'm not sure.  All I know is that if you're getting a bunch of wrestlers together for a film then your demon bad guy needs to be fucking James Mitchell!  That dude is probably Beelzebub for real.  Although, Kevin Sullivan makes an appearance at the beginning so I guess that hits some sort of Satan quota.

BFFs 5-Ever ('cause it's one more than 4)

Piper isn't quite up to his They Live level, but he stands out the most.  Matt Hardy and his then girlfriend/now wife Reby Sky literally exist just to have awkward teenage "my parents are downstairs" sexual encounters.  Hacksaw is Hacksaw.  I can't talk shit on him because I met him and he was one of the nicest dudes I ever talked to.

Overall this film is a mass of awkward pacing and clearance Halloween City zombie make-up.  Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies is really only for fans of wrestling and super low budget movie making, but there are some inside jabs such as Shane Douglas saying "Your checks aren't going to bounce like Paul Heymen's..." which you have to know about the business to get.  Also, low fuckin' blow, Shane.

I give Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies 1 ECW Extreme Music CD out of 5:

Friday's Choice Cuts: Horror in Pro Wrestling

WCW's The Yeti... not really a Yeti, more of a TP monster

Let's all be honest here.  If you're a horror fan then odds are you're also a pro-wrestling fan.  I don't know of many people that don't have that cross-over.  "Sports entertainment" has evolved from just the standard heel/face battles into developed characters with costumes.  I still remember being a kid and The Undertaker coming out with Paul Bearer.  We had Paul's spooky high pitched voice talking about the dead man returning from the grave with the Undertaker rolling his eyes back.  It was creepy.

There's Kevin Sullivan who embodied the role of a satanist at a time when that was unheard of.  Stables like the Dungeon of Doom, the Brood (existing because White Wolf worked with WWE to create the wrestler Gangrel to go with their LARP game), and the Disciples (which crucified the owner's daughter by the titontron) created an ominous presence.

 

In modern times we have Bray Wyatt speaking of supernatural powers, a spirit known as Sister Abigail, and practically crab-walking around  the ring.  He also was the reason we had the amazing "House of Horrors" match which involved the shittiest Halloween haunted house and a KO-by-refrigerator.  I wish every gimmick match was as awesomely bad as that.

Speaking of gimmick matches, sometimes you don't even need the characters to keep things evil.  Barbed wire, cage matches, hardcore matches, backyard wrestling, Japanese Death Matches, "C4" matches, all things that push the limits.  While WWE has pretty much banned any blade-ing (when a wrestler uses a concealed razor blade to cut their forehead during a match), there are still matches in other federations where you can catch some insanely bloody scenes.

Before I forget, there's Lucha Underground which is essentially everything you could want with wrestling and strange story lines.  Mil Muerte was introduced as having the souls of 1000 dead men inside of him.  Their plots blur the lines of reality in a way that we haven't seen since the late 80's/early 90's.  We also have New Japan Wrestling which literally has a character that is just named Evil and comes out holding a scythe and a stable of crazies.

I could go on and on.  I was going to post the video of Sandman vs. The Zombie from ECW (when they got picked up by the Syfy channel) because it's hilarious, but Hulk Hogan meets the Dungeon of Doom is so much funnier.  Plus it's a tiny B-movie in its own.