The Supernaturals

The Supernaturals (1986)

Runtime: 86 minutes

Directed by: Armand Mastroianni

Starring: Maxwell Caufield, Nichelle Nichols, Talia Balsam, Bradford Bancroft, LeVar Burton

From: A crappy low-budget company

Believe it or not-despite this being on Amazon Prime-this was not a random watch for me. Years ago, I heard about this film and while I suspected it to be bad, how could I forget something which had a plot of “Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War” rise up as zombies after over 100 years to kill a small regiment of soldiers training in the Alabama woods” and a cast including Maxwell Caufield, Talia Balsam, LeVar Burton, and Nichelle Nichols; of course I've always laughed at this featuring someone from Star Trek and another person from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Last night I finally saw this film and wow, is it not good. I don't watch this TV show but I imagine things would have been better had the Winchester brothers and Castiel been around. Instead, most of the troops are immature buffoons who are better off in the Police Academy franchise; it's hard to imagine them as actual soldiers. Some are obsessed with “getting laid”, for example, and the one female soldier is someone they obsess over. Their sergeant is Nichols and while she does sometimes chastise those dumbasses, I wish she would have been constantly angry and constantly cursing them out like her Dorinda character did in Truck Turner.

Instead, what you get is a lot of boredom and as you see a trickle of blood, I suppose that counts as “gore”... typically the few zombies you do see stand around or walk slowly around... “tedious” does not even begin to describe this yawn-fest. It's not scary in the least, either. Then again, it fails even harder at telling a cohesive, logical story than it does at offering frightening moments. There isn't really much else to say about this film; it's not worth the effort to parse out why exactly this film is so terrible; just note that it is. Not even the cast or the novelty of Burton cursing up a storm is worth a viewing.

Actually, I will mention one last thing: sometimes a Prime video does not hide that it's a direct VHS or DVD rip; there's the FBI warning, the opening logo plays for whomever released it, etc. In this case, it was obviously a print from a tape that was 31 years old (meaning, it looked absolutely terrible) and the ending told me it was indeed a 1986 Embassy Home Video release.