I’m still getting copy from the LEGLESS CORPSE FILM FESTIVAL, which I attended a couple of weekends back. Considering that many of the offerings featured were shorts, you will appreciate that there was, and is, a LOT of territory for me to cover. (And, yeah, if the title of the festival didn’t tip you off, these were ALL Horror movies, so, yeah, a LOT of ground to cover, there.) Knowing that zombies are the favored theme of new, independent, and upcoming filmmakers—we know this because Joe Bob Briggs said so!—it was surprising to me that there weren’t more of them on display over the weekend. This was good, though, as Mr. Briggs also pointed out that the tendency to fall back on the zombie genre because those movies are cheap and relatively easy to do, is really a boner move. Such films are almost never worth watching.
HOOKER WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER, which is obviously inspired by the film HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, which was itself inspired by a faux trailer that was part of the Tarantino/Rodriguez epic GRINDHOUSE, comprised one of the few zombie-related offerings at Legless Corpse. Did it fall victim to the same fatal flaws as all those other cheapie zombie romps derided by Mr. Briggs? It’s hard to say. It’s only a couple of minutes long, and is intended more to whet interest in a feature film, ala HOBO, than to comprise a self-contained film on its own. Essentially it’s a joke; I mean this in the literal rather than pejorative sense. Since the only bad jokes are the ones that fail to make you laugh, this one qualifies as a success. I didn’t belly laugh, but it wringed a few chuckles out of me.