Automaton Transfusion

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre horror Starring Garrett Jones, Juliet Reeves, William Howard Bowman Directed by Steven C. Miller Publisher Dimension Extreme External Links Official Dimension Extreme Website

What does Automaton Transfusion have in common with its flesh feasting counterparts such as Night of the Living Dead, Dead Alive, and Fido? As sad as this sounds, zombies... and not much else. At its best, this film serves as low budget homage to its horror predecessors. Unfortunately, Automaton fails to meet the standards set by the same movies it tries to emulate, hindered mainly by a sloppy story, sub-par acting, and poor editing.

The story revolves around the town of Grover City. A town so remote, that the military has decided to resume a project from the 70's in the hope of perfecting the process of bringing the dead back to life. (You know, without all the nasty side effects) But... just like the next big birth control option or weight loss drug, someone fails to read the fine print and sure enough, it hits the fan. At this point, a group of friends from the local high school are forced to fight for their lives, as swarms of the living dead treat Grover City as their own personal buffet.

Automaton’s death scenes and gore, the big payoff for any fan of the genre, are actually above average in quality considering its low budget origin. It’s too bad, then, that this opportunity is spoiled by just about every other aspect of the movie. Loose, lifeless dialog has you wondering if you aren’t actually watching an episode of "Laguna Beach" or "The Hills" until a passing flesh-eater puts an end to the boredom. Come to think of it, that type of occurrence might actually make those shows watchable…

According to some “in the know” resident of Grover City, this breed of zombie is smarter and faster than your average mindless roaming corpse. Now, after seeing the events in this movie, if I ever find myself in charge of a military project tasked with creating an army of undead, I’m going to go with the slow, persistent, and dumb type. “But why, Scott?” You may ask. Well, apparently the smart zombies get bored too easily and go home to chill or solve math problems. When forcibly held at bay outside a door with a rather large, seemingly easy to break window they try no longer than 10 seconds to reach their human feast and wander off to who knows where.

Automaton Transfusion sports an array of special features. Deleted scenes, a making of and commentary are all the standard DVD offerings. It also includes music videos for a couple of the bands featured on the soundtrack and “Suffer or Sacrifice” a short film by the director.

Being a huge fan of the zombie genre, it pains me to see a film with a lot of potential held back on so many levels. Perhaps when the sequel is released (yes this is the first in a series) the money and quality spent on blood and gore can also be invested elsewhere on the film.