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Fred:
I can’t have worms, what about my
slippers?
Fred’s mind: Seriously Fred,
take those slippers and shove them up your ass, already.
Don’t be fooled, its goofy animation isn’t a
sign that it’s for kids. This is strictly an adult affair, folks.
Imagine “South Park” played with a straight face, imagine Romero’s
“Dead” films without a plot, and you’ll get Frank Sudol’s “City of Rott.”
An old man is the basic hero for Sudol’s zombie epic in which a new
toxin discovered in water creates a citywide epidemic of flesh eating
zombies that are rotting from the inside out. Armed with only a walker,
which is his best friend, his means of conveyance, and his weapon, he
looks around for some new loafers to help his ailing feet, but he can’t
stop running into those stupid zombies, and the parasites that leak from
the bodies when destroyed. Sudol’s film is gladly not all gimmicky, and
based around a series of typical but well done Romero homage’s, and
rules: Stay out of the malls, don’t drink water, don’t wash your hands,
and keep quiet.
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The rest is common sense. Avoid
the dead, don’t get bitten, and kill the worms. But Sudol’s
film is so shameless that it’s entertaining. With awfully
rigid animation, we’re given non-stop gore and splatter, and
well enough characterization that he keeps us watching and
slumping down in our seats anxiously. Sudol strives in
originality as well; an old man as a hero who kills the
zombies with his walker?
Who
has ever done that before? Surprisingly enough, the character of the
old man could have been played for comedy, but Sudol plays him with
the utmost sincerity. |
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He’s intelligent, fast, crafty, and
strong in spite of his fading memory and sanity. His mind betrays
him in spite of his best efforts toward survival—or is his fading
mind a tool? All he knows is that he can’t focus well enough until
he finds his trusty walker (lost in an attack), and a new pair of
shoes. Sudol’s film is basically nothing but the old man talking to
himself, and destroying zombies for a little over an hour. Normally,
I’d frown upon a movie with such a slim plot, but I just enjoyed the
hell out of “City of Rott” and every gory moment Sudol served to me.
Sadly, once the second half rolls around,
the film stalls and desperately clings to its own concept to attempt to
stretch the film to its running time which is a little over an hour. We
get to run around with Fred, but then, for no reasons at all, we’re
introduced to a slew of survivors struggling to find food, many of whom
are offed and torn to shreds. Why do we focus on them just to watch them
die gruesomely? I could never decide for sure, and even the climax where
a character is re-visited still left me scratching my head as to where
Sudol was going, and why he went there in the first place. The end feels
an awful lot like padding, and with a shorter run time, “City of Rott,”
wouldn’t have suffered.
Not many films can have a senile old man
with a walker as a hero in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and not
draw it comedically, but “City
of Rott” pulls it off with flying colors. The gore is plentiful, the
animation simplistic, and the plot slim, but it goes down smooth and
sweet even if the climax is hard to swallow.
- Frank Sudol
directed, acted in all the roles, animated, produced, etc.
- For more
information on "City of Rott," visit the official website: http://www.myspace.com/fsudol
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