Breaking News: This Movie is Terrible
Some movies are so bad they’re good. Dead Men Don’t Die is so bad it’s embalmed. It’s like watching a zombie newscast from hell where Elliott Gould’s dignity is the first casualty. Written and directed by Malcolm Marmorstein—best known for writing Pete’s Dragon—this horror-comedy about voodoo, drug smugglers, and news anchors manages to murder three things at once: comedy, horror, and your patience.
Plot? More Like Rot
Barry Baron (Elliott Gould) is a television news anchor who stumbles onto a drug smuggling ring operating out of his own building—because apparently, criminals love hiding kilos of coke behind the teleprompter. Naturally, he’s chased down and shot dead, because nothing says “hard-hitting journalism” like your anchorman bleeding out in the parking lot.
Enter Chafuka (Mabel King), the building’s cleaner-slash-voodoo-priestess. Instead of calling an ambulance like a responsible citizen, she decides the obvious thing to do is haul Barry’s corpse home and reanimate him with voodoo so she can squat in his luxury apartment. Because why pay rent when you can have a zombie butler?
The rest of the movie drags its rotting carcass forward as Barry continues reading the evening news while controlled by a voodoo doll, his co-anchor Dulcie (Melissa Sue Anderson) pokes around the drug ring, and a bumbling detective named Jordan (Mark Moses) wanders in like a man auditioning for the role of “most useless cop in cinema history.”
Oh, and every time the gangsters screw up, they die, only to be turned into zombies too—because this movie takes one gag and beats it into the ground harder than a corpse at a Haitian funeral. By the end, everyone’s dead, zombified, and working as security guards. Roll credits, bury the print, and pray it never rises again.
Elliott Gould: The Walking Deadpan
Elliott Gould is a good actor. You’ve seen him shine in MASH, The Long Goodbye, and even Ocean’s Eleven. Here, however, he plays a literal corpse—and that’s not a metaphor for his performance, that’s the actual plot. His character spends 90% of the movie stiff, pale, and staring blankly into the camera. In other words, the role was either written for him or for a department store mannequin.
Watching Gould deliver zombie newscasts while controlled by a voodoo doll is the cinematic equivalent of watching your uncle reluctantly perform karaoke at a wedding: embarrassing for everyone involved, but you can’t quite look away.
Mabel King: Queen of the Mess
Chafuka, the janitor with magical powers, is the kind of character who could have been fun in the right hands. Instead, she’s written like a sitcom character who wandered into a horror movie by mistake. Her entire motivation is… free real estate. She doesn’t care about justice, revenge, or even power. She just wants Barry’s swanky apartment and, apparently, an army of zombie interns to handle the menial work. She’s like the Martha Stewart of necromancy, except with worse timing.
Melissa Sue Anderson: From Little House to Big Trash
Melissa Sue Anderson, once America’s sweetheart from Little House on the Prairie, plays Dulcie, the spunky co-anchor trying to uncover the drug ring. Unfortunately, her big investigative method involves running into danger, screaming, and occasionally getting tied up. The character is supposed to be smart and determined, but the script hands her dialogue that makes her sound like she’s auditioning for a soap opera written during a writer’s strike.
Supporting Cast: Stiffs, Literally
The villains are faceless gangsters with names like Mungo and Carlos, and they exist solely to get killed and reanimated. Their boss, Nolan, reacts to seeing his zombified henchmen with the same level of panic you’d expect from someone who just found out McDonald’s ran out of fries. His “big plan” consists of running away and hoping the zombies don’t chase him. Spoiler: they do, and he dies like everyone else.
The station owner, Cavanaugh, is the surprise mastermind, but by the time his betrayal is revealed you’re too dead inside to care. He also gets zombified, because in this movie death is less of a punishment and more of an unpaid internship.
Humor, or the Lack Thereof
Dead Men Don’t Die markets itself as a horror-comedy. The horror part is debatable—unless you count horror at the script, acting, and directing. The comedy? Nonexistent. Every “joke” is either Gould stumbling around like a constipated corpse or someone screaming, “He’s a zombie!” in disbelief. It’s the same joke, repeated until you feel like the voodoo doll is being stuck into you.
Imagine Weekend at Bernie’s but without the charm, wit, or cocaine budget. Then imagine someone added voodoo, gangsters, and a police detective who couldn’t solve a game of Clue. That’s this movie.
Special Effects: Bargain Bin Necromancy
The makeup effects look like they were borrowed from a middle-school Halloween party. The zombies aren’t decayed, scary, or even particularly gross. They’re just sweaty actors in bad lighting. The most gruesome thing in the movie is Elliott Gould’s hair, which looks like it’s trying to escape his scalp.
The voodoo sequences involve Chafuka waving around dolls like she’s performing off-brand puppetry. It’s less “dark magic” and more “crafts fair demonstration.”
The Message? Don’t Do Drugs. Or Movies.
The movie occasionally tries to slip in some commentary about crime, drugs, and corruption in the media, but it’s buried under so much incompetence you’d need an archaeologist to dig it out. The actual message is clear: Don’t do drugs, and definitely don’t do movies like this.
The Ending: Mercifully Final
By the end, Chafuka controls the entire TV station, Barry is anchoring the news as a fully functioning zombie, and the villains are reduced to security guards. Detective Jordan quits the police to join the circus, I mean, the station staff. Everyone seems happy, except the audience, who are now clinically depressed.
The credits roll like a death certificate, confirming that yes, you really did just waste 90 minutes of your life.
High Points (Yes, Really)
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Elliott Gould saying absolutely nothing for half the film and still somehow having more dignity than the script.
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Melissa Sue Anderson reminding you of better times, like when you weren’t watching this movie.
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The title: at least it’s accurate. Dead men don’t die, they just keep acting.
Low Points (Too Many to Count)
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Zombies that look healthier than most of the cast.
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A plot so limp it needs its own embalming fluid.
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Humor that’s deader than the corpses.
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An ending that suggests the filmmakers thought this could launch a franchise.
Final Thoughts: The Real Voodoo is How This Got Made
Dead Men Don’t Die is a horror-comedy with neither horror nor comedy, starring Elliott Gould as a zombie newscaster, Melissa Sue Anderson cashing a paycheck, and Mabel King squatting like the world’s least intimidating supervillain. Watching it feels like being trapped in a morgue with a laugh track.
If you’re morbidly curious, sure, give it a spin. Just remember: when you’re done, you’ll wish you had a voodoo doll to erase the memory.
