Detectives Gill and Stevens find themselves head-to-head against the infamous Doctor Death, a Voodoo priest and a notorious crime lord, at the crime scene of one of his murders. Before both of them kill each other, Doctor Death throws a ritual potion into Gill’s face. Once Gill is buried, he breaks through his coffin as a zombie looking for Stevens and Doctor Death. Doctor Death is still alive and is the only chance Gill has in turning back into a human.
J.R. Bookwalter is an Ohio filmmaker who rose to prominence within the independent film circuit during the 1990s. He made his first appearance in 1989 with “The Dead Next Door” a zombie film that was financed by Sam Raimi. His films as a director include Robot Ninja (1989), Kingdom of the Vampire (1991), Ozone (1995), The Sandman (1995) and many more. He has also produced several other genre films. (Refer below for J.R. Bookwalter’s other films).
Even though Zombie Cop is Bookwalter’s second film endeavor, he eventually disregarded it. The movie was produced by his Suburban Tempe production house, and he received recognition for the tale and production. Unlike most films, where it would be the director’s name on the credits, it bears the name Lance Randas, which is actually a pseudonym used by Bookwalter. In the directorial version of the movie, the audiences had to bear the unfortunate reality of it being poured under the guise of Bookwalter, with Randas being the masked fiction. As the movie received major backlash from the audience on its poor execution, the alternative version flushed all the cursed scenes without Bookwalter’s name. Under the pseudonym Darryl Squatmpump, Bookwalter oddly functions as an editor. You also assume that the name of the cinematographer Brock N. Lenz (ie. ‘broken lens’) is a pseudonym too the only other credit Lenz has is on the Bookwalter directed snuff movie/action film Maximum Impact (1992). (This was simply out of not wanting his name on every credit, says Bookwalter).
Zombie Cop is a Zombie Film, even if it has very little in common with existing zombie films, which are all Romero-inspired in one way or another (Dawn of the Dead, 1978). Zombie Cop is closer to the more recent Dead Heat (1988) which was a rather unsuccessful venture at making a comedic after an undead cop was revived. There was also probably some influence of the relatively successful B movie hit Maniac Cop (1988) about a disfigured former cop on a revenge spree. Without a doubt the title, while not something that is played tongue-in-cheek, tends towards anticipating the deliberately mash-up concepts of zombie films that started appearing in the mid-2000s. It should also be made clear that this is one of the very neckable modern post-Romero zombie films where the zombie is actually the result of Voodoo magic.
The film seems fairly low in budget In particular the photography looks cheap, while the editing is frequently the “slapdash” type associated with amateur films. The performances range from mediocre to poor with Walsh playing an incredibly racially insensitive stereotype of a Middle Eastern convenience store owner who gets robbed on a regular basis.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think even Zombie Cop deserved one of those zero-star ratings that this site has applied. It is certainly lowbrow and unpolished, but it is not completely unwatchable. It is like imagining what this same film would look like with the budget of Dead Heat. It could be halfway decent. Also, one suspects that if the film had its tongue planted more firmly in its cheek like the zombie film of the 2000s and beyond, it could have been more enjoyable as it stands, even the knife fight between the sunglasses-wearing zombie and the voodoo priestess some scenes nearly call for a look at. Bookwalter even manages to get it together for some degree of creativity although some parts of the movie are well-edited and rather passable in segments involving voodoo priest nemesis James R. Black Jr’s car chase with zombie cop Michael Kemper, and the climactic scenes actually running away from Black in the forest.
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