THE ZERO BOYS (1986)
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Aside from starring 80s B-movie babe Kelli Maroney, having the score composed by future mega-composer Hans Zimmer and Frank Darabont as an assistant art director, there is little or nothing remarkable about this flick. Three paintball enthusiasts who fancy themselves survivalists and call themselves The Zero Boys, take their girls into the woods for a camping trip and wind up spending the night at a secluded cabin, that does not belong to them. The actual owners turn out to be sadistic, murderous rednecks and decide to make the group pay for the intrusion. But the Zero Boys are armed and ready and when rednecks attack, this means war!…sort of.
Flick is written, produced and directed by Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis and is a tedious and dull movie with very little of the action that the premise would suggest should be in abundance. The story unfolds very slowly with a lot of uninteresting dialog with the rednecks only making brief appearances here and there until they kidnap one of the girlfriends, later on in the flick. It’s only in the last few minutes where we finally get a confrontation and that’s over quickly with minimal body count…not counting various miscellaneous corpses that seem to pop up here and there to illustrate the good ole boys have been doing this for a while. The acting from the cast of mostly unknowns is wooden and bland across the board, with only Maroney showing a little spark getting to play a bad girl this time instead of the more wholesome types she played in Chopping Mall and Night Of The Comet. As for the villains, they are seen in shadow most of the time and are stereotypical creepy rednecks. They lack much threat and even their leader (Joe Estevez billed as Joe Phelan) is dressed like a suburban dad complete with sweater and collared shirt. Not very scary for a homicidal redneck. Director Matorakis provides little or no tension, suspense or even fun and stages everything very by-the-numbers. His script gets borderline silly at times and only moderately delivers on the throw-down that the story sets up.
Despite seeming to have a bit of a following, this is a really lame and dull movie even for slightly under 90 minutes. The premise would suggest a lot of action, yet there is very little till the last 10-15 minutes and even that is very by-the-numbers and over quickly. The Zero Boys themselves are a dull group and only Kelli Maroney gives her feisty Jaime a little life and is the only recognizable cast member. Worst of all, it even lacked the 80s charm that can sometimes make stuff at least a little fun. Only if you are an 80s movie completist.
-MonsterZero NJ
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