LordBlacklist When one comes across a movie like this, you tend to lower expectations to a pretty base level. Zombie action, some scares, low budget cheese, and an overall good cheeky time.The 30,000 dollar budget is apparent, but not as much as you'd think. There's some good bang for the buck, but not nearly enough bang. We'll start with the lead actor. Forgoing all subtlety, he's AWFUL. Most of the laughs in this came from cringes induced by his ridiculous and amateur performance, gun handling, smirks that scream "I look like a cool action hero to myself" only to look idiotic and embarrassing to the audience.There is some gratuitous nudity that likewise illicit some groans here and there. It's as if the filmmakers did not realize that with the production value they had, a GOOD zombie cowboy movie could have been made. If you're going at it from the view that no matter what you do, the movie will be crap, then at least make it entertaining crap.There must have been several 15-20 minute stretches in this movie where characters fall victim to the "we must sit down and tell our sad story" syndrome, when due to the level of acting, or lack thereof, a greater focus on the action and horror would have been preferable whereas to not make the audience feel like they've been ripped off in the end.That said, there are two scenes that come pretty close to showing how this could have been a GOOD little low budget genre mash-up and both of those scenes involve the main actress encountering zombies (a standout being a creepy hide and go seek scene that belongs in a better movie). What both of these scenes have in common? The horrible lead actor is nowhere to be found. Also these two scenes (due to their isolation from his awfulness) seem to have been filmed after the fact (after shooting was completed?) to fill out what is already a pretty short movie.All in all, don't let the cover fool you. There's not much action to be had here. Just long stretches of characters talking about back story that would have been better left in the subtext in place of what your audience was told to expect: Action.The good: A few inventive zombie make-ups, a couple genuinely creepy scenes with the main actress escaping zombies, and some nice location photography.The bad: Most of the performances, the music, pacing, and lack of action.The ugly: Every time the main actor shows his face or opens his mouth. He really is that bad.

Paul Andrews Cowboys & Zombies is set in 1849 & starts as a bounty hunter named Mortimer (David A. Lockhart) sets out to find & capture an Indian named Brother Wolf (Rick Mora) who is wanted for rape & murder but has a $1,000 reward on his head. Mortimer doesn't have much trouble finding where Brother Wolf lives & uses a woman named Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery) as bait to lure him out into the open, meanwhile in a small town called Jaemstown the locals are puzzled over a large green glowing rock that they find nearby, as they try to break it open a strange green gas full of spores escape & infect the entire town who turn into flesh eating zombies. Mortimer manages to capture Brother Wolf & handcuff him, heading back to town with Rhiannon the three are attacked by the flesh eating zombies & quickly realise that they are everywhere & that they must work together to survive...Edited, written & directed by Rene Perez who also gets a co-credit for the music one has to say that while Cowboys & Zombies is far from great it could have been worse I suppose, originally called The Dead and the Damned the title was obviously changed to Cowboys & Zombies to cash-in on the big budget Coyboys & Aliens (2011) which was released at the same time. What we have here is a script that takes the western & horror genres (which, according to a recent study are two of the three least successful film genres when it comes to making money with the other being thriller's) & mixes them together, it doesn't even try to do anything particularly new with the genres either. I mean the story about some bounty hunter in the Wild West capturing & trying to bring in a prisoner for money is nothing new neither is the flesh eating zombie film, is it? To be fair to it the script does a reasonable job here, at a thankfully short 80 minutes it moves along at a decent pace & while there's no great reasoning behind anything the character's are slightly better than usual although the fact that the captor & his prey team up & work together is totally predictable & the ending isn't what you would expect. The script takes itself pretty seriously, while many of these genre mash-ups plant their tongue in their cheeks & lay on the slapstick & silliness with a trowel Cowboys & Zombies plays it fairly straight which will appeal to some but maybe not to other's.The whole film looks quite cheap but I suppose you have to give the makers some credit for trying to make such an ambitious film, I mean the western setting & period clothes & props to the zombie make-up & gore effects. It all costs money & to be fair while Cowboys & Zombies doesn't have that big budget Hollywood slickness the majority of it looks alright & could have been worse. The zombie make-up & gore is alright but nothing more, none of the zombies are ever really seen in close-up & I am sure that was deliberate. The gore is sparse, there's a ripped-off leg & arm, someone's heart is bitten out & there are a few bloody gunshot wounds but not much else.According to the IMDb this had a budget of about $30,000 which is low even by low budget horror standards, the fact that the makers managed to make this on that low amount is impressive in itself (if it's true...), forget about the DVD cover as well Cowboys & Zombies is not Deadwood with zombies & there's no tough looking guy with a beard & rifle. The acting is alright, nothing more nothing less really.Cowboys & Zombies is a western & zombie film mixture that still feels unoriginal, the lack of any great gore or scares doesn't help neither does the uneven tone in which the first half is almost pure western while the second is almost total zombie horror. Not terrible but not great either.

Paul Magne Haakonsen Initially just by the DVD cover alone you know what kind of movies you will be in for when you pick up this movie. But still, being the zombie aficionado that I am, I just had to watch it regardless.The story in "The Dead and the Damned" or "Cowboys & Zombies" as it is titled on the DVD cover and in the actual movie, is some prospectors uncover what appears to be a meteor and brings it into town, attempts to crack it open and something green spews out. This green haze turns the prospectors into, yeah you guessed it, zombies! However, this puzzled me, because in a very short time the prospectors were quite decayed and decomposed, but still they remained their agility and ability to jump, run, sprint and do acrobatics.However, the movie actually have good production and good cinematography and that shines through the movie and actually makes it worth sitting through.The zombies, well I prefer shambling zombies that are unable of running and zombies that doesn't sound like marauding lions from the sound they make. That was a real bummer in the movie. The zombies also had that classic, low-budget-way-too-gray make-up on their faces, and for some reason their blood was green. And I just loved how the blood would spray up into the air whenever a zombie was shot, and then the blood simply just dissipated into thin air. That was just hilarious.Effects-wise, then "Cowboys & Zombies" wasn't actually too shabby. The zombies, aside from the lame sounds and the gray-skin, actually looked decent enough and the effects were alright. The setting of the movie was also quite good and believable, aside from the poor choice of music, which seemed really unsuitable for a horror western.I have sat through a lot of low-budget zombies movies in my time, and "Cowboys & Zombies" is actually on the better end of the scale of low-budget zombie movies. There are a lot of zombie movies out there far worse than this one.And what was up with the guy on the DVD cover? I don't believe I even saw him in the movie! Epic!Mixing cowboys/westerns and zombies have been done before. And in my personal opinion, it is not really the best of combinations. That period of time just doesn't work well with the living dead.

gbkimberley Once upon a time, when video stores first started to appear, each weekend I would go and rent 5 or 6 movies that I'd never seen before. Sometimes they were crap but sometimes I would unearth quite a gem. Eventually I got to the point where I would rent a movie because of who was in it, who it was directed by or even because of the studio that released it, knowing that I had a decent chance of getting something watchable at least.The one thing that would ALWAYS steer me AWAY from a movie though, was if the description/synopsis on the back concentrated on the soundtrack, the special effects, or a car chase/shootout etc; instead of the story. That was a big no no and the case went back on the shelf.The same is still true today when it comes to the older movies, but for the more recent ones I've found that gushing reviews on the cover from generally nondescript websites is the modern day warning sign that a movie is a woeful piece of rubbish. (I've even seen a movie with the quote "Brilliant! A must see!!" IMDb.com Where the only reviews are from Joe Public) This one has two! So take heed. It's a very cheap, very badly acted waste of time that seems to have been put together by a bunch of Wild West theme park employees during their lunch break. It's not even bad enough to be funny.1/10 but only because we can't give 0