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Rating: 
Summary: fantastic trash!
Review: I liked both these movies. They were very, very low budget films. Thirsty Dead is a bit tame, but still bizarre and fun. Swamp of the Ravens has eerie zombies and actual autopsy footage. There is an episode of some horror show with Lon Chaney, and a bunch of (i can't believe anyone would make movies like these) trailers. A super cool easter egg too.
Rating: 
Summary: WARNING! MISLEADING REVIEWS & SNIPPETS!!
Review: I'm here to help, as a fellow zombie movie fan. 'Swamp of the Ravens' IS NOT A ZOMBIE MOVIE!! Beware of the misleading description & reviews! I don't know who's watching what, but there are no undead in this film. It's a rather stupid, boring, nonsensical movie, like most Euro Horror offerings. The storyline is akin to 'Re-Animator', but with most of the storyline missing. Our Dr. Frosta is apparently run out of dodge by his medical board, yet somehow still retains his job while conducting secret experiments at his villa near a swamp. What the experiments are we never really know, but there is mention of an 8-minute time period after brain death where something is supposedly going on. Anyway, the Doc dumps his failed test subjects into the swamp behind his shack, and that's about it. They aren't zombies, they aren't undead, and they certainly don't rise from the grave to seek revenge on Dr. Frosta. They just kinda bob up and down in the water, that's about it. It isn't very creepy imagery at all, it just looks like actors standing in water up to their necks. One victim was a leper, so the face looks pretty rough, but the rest look like mannequins.
A very stupid movie that ruins a good horror concept. It would've been great if Dr. Frosta's failed experiments rose out of the swamp and stalked him through his villa, but why do that when you can make a completely incoherent mess of a film that makes no sense whatsoever? I'd much rather see a bad lounge singer (is that an oxymoron?) croon about his robot lady than watch waterlogged zombies rip a guy's heart out. That's what you get with 'Swamp of the Ravens'. How some films get published is beyond me.
Rating:
Summary: The Something Weird collection is an oasis in a vast desert
Review: The Thirsty Dead
There's this tribe of ancient zombies who live in the jungles of Bangkok, or Beijing, or the Philippines, or some other such Asian province, and in order to survive and stay young they must drink the blood of beautiful young women. So, they send out their young Asian goons to go to the strip joints, and the red lamp houses to kidnap bodacious young babes and carry them back to their camp in the jungle. After one excursion they inadvertently capture a young woman who strongly resembles some goddess that they once worshiped. Apparently there was some ancient prophecy that stated she was going to return to them, so they begin treating her like a queen. The fun has only begun... NOT!
I didn't even bother to watch this film when my DVD came in the mail, because I had already seen it. I ordered this for the other movie. I rented this movie about two years ago, and the print was so old and dilapidated that it wouldn't even play on my VCR until I used the head cleaner about a dozen times to clean off the dust that was left by the tape. By the time the film was over I ended up wishing I hadn't even bothered. This film is dullsville. I rented it hoping to see a really cool zombie flick, featuring beautiful young maidens being knocked out, and carried off into mysterious dark caves. What I got instead was a low-budget mess that just reminded me of a really bad episode of Star Trek. That was the last time I trusted a movie box that had no pictures on the back.
Swamp of The Ravens
Dr. Frosta is a biochemist. He is conducting research on animals based on a theory that certain parts of the brain continue to live eight minutes after clinical brain death. Hence, with the right drug injections, the dead can be brought back. He puts forth his theory to the medical council, and requests permission to conduct further experiments on cadavers, but of course they refuse (...). Of course that doesn't stop the good Dr. He decides to ignore the council and find his own test subjects. He preys on the homeless, winos, the handicapped, even his ex-girlfriend (I'll go into more juicy detail about that later).
Needless to say, most of his experiments are failures, and his rejected test subjects get dumped into the raven-surrounded swamp outside of his home. Hence the title of the film. But a filthy swamp can only hold so many corpses, and it eventually starts to reject them, as the heads of many of the Doctor's victims begin floating up to the surface and bobbing on top of the water like apples.
Pretty good movie overall. The Pink Floyd/Moody Blues/Jimmy Hendrix style soundtrack is totally awesome and compliments the dark mood of the film rather nicely. The heads floating on the water imagery is excellent. It got me cracking-up with laughter, as a matter of fact. Maybe that's the wrong reaction, but I don't care. I still liked it. My favorite part, though, was when the Dr. kidnapped and murdered his ex-girlfriend and turned her into one of his test-subjects. Just before he conducts his final experiment on her, he decides to get one last handful of hanky panky. So, he climbs on top of her corpse and begins screwing her, and kissing her cold dead lips. Ah, yummy. That was worth the price of admission, right there.
I would have given this DVD 5 stars if not for the first film. The Thirsty Dead just wasn't very good. I think Swamp Of The Ravens would have done just fine as a stand alone film on this DVD, but of course that would break "Something Weird Video's" tradition of sticking several films on a single disc. I guess it's a good policy to have. It offers great bargains on many obscure horror films that you might not otherwise be able to find anywhere else. I still think this DVD was worth it, though, and I'll definitely be checking out the other inhabitants of the "Something Weird" catalog very soon.
Rating: 
Summary: An UNDEAD DOUBLE FEATURE From "Something Weird"
Review: This installment in the "Something Weird" DVD collection has GREAT sleazy & scary movies titled,The Thirsty Dead and The Swamp Of The Ravens. In Thirsty Dead, kidnapped women of Manilla (this is a Philipino-horror film) are held under the cult-like spell of a 500 year old disembodied head in a box & a high preistess/dragon-lady! The members of the cult can live forever by drinking dining on human blood. Stated simply in the film - "They need a special liquid to stay young. It's red & thick & WARM!!!" Another strange little sicky from Something Weird! The Swamp Of The Ravens deals with an experimental doctor-Dr. Frosta and his "human mistakes". He dumps these mistakes into a swamp and now the dead become "undead" to find the good doctor and exact their revenge on him! Actual autopsy footage & necrophilia are touched upon in this undead cheesefest of GORE!
Some of the best things about the whole "Something Weird" DVDs are the extras like: movie shorts, TV spots,Shockorama horror trailers for lots of their weird movies, galleries of exploitation art and even Horrorama RADIO SPOT ADS! These DVD's are fun and interesting if you are into this kind of genre...
Rating:
Summary: An UNDEAD DOUBLE FEATURE From "Something Weird"
Review: This installment in the "Something Weird" DVD collection has GREAT sleazy & scary movies titled,The Thirsty Dead and The Swamp Of The Ravens. In Thirsty Dead, kidnapped women of Manilla (this is a Philipino-horror film) are held under the cult-like spell of a 500 year old disembodied head in a box & a high preistess/dragon-lady! The members of the cult can live forever by drinking dining on human blood. Stated simply in the film - "They need a special liquid to stay young. It's red & thick & WARM!!!" Another strange little sicky from Something Weird! The Swamp Of The Ravens deals with an experimental doctor-Dr. Frosta and his "human mistakes". He dumps these mistakes into a swamp and now the dead become "undead" to find the good doctor and exact their revenge on him! Actual autopsy footage & necrophilia are touched upon in this undead cheesefest of GORE!
Some of the best things about the whole "Something Weird" DVDs are the extras like: movie shorts, TV spots,Shockorama horror trailers for lots of their weird movies, galleries of exploitation art and even Horrorama RADIO SPOT ADS! These DVD's are fun and interesting if you are into this kind of genre...
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