Bio Zombie

Jordan Chan and Angela Tong

Wilson Yip's Bio Zombie is a comic splatter film from 1998, the missing link between George Romero and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead. Jordan Chan and and Sam Lee star as Woody Invincible and Crazy Bee, two overgrown adolescents who ostensibly work at a video store selling pirated discs in a Hong Kong shopping bazaar. We soon learn that the store is a front for an organized crime boss and that the duo are lower level minions of said boss. The two, who are similar to Beavis and Butthead or OC and Stiggs in their idiocy, spend their time engaging in petty theft or fruitlessly hitting on two comely beauticians who also work at the mall, Rolls (Angela Tong) and Jelly (Suk-Yin Lai). While fetching a vehicle for their boss, the duo accidently run down a gangster who possesses a magic zombie elixir or something. Our heroes try to revive the accident victim with the fateful elixir which turns him into a zombie. Soon the denizens of the mall are caught up in a virtual remake of Dawn of the Dead. 

Bio Zombie is the type of film best viewed without the help of one's cerebral cortex. Its gory silliness, heads roll as Joe Bob Briggs used to write, is akin to a Troma film, but the display of film craft is at a much higher level than most films of this ilk. The acting is also spiritedly silly. Kwok-Man Keung's vibrant color photography gives the film a pop fizz. Both Mr. Keung and Mr. Yip parlayed the success of this film into long careers in Chinese cinema with many credits to their name. The film has been released on disc in the US by Vinegar Syndrome and is another sterling restoration by the company.