The Story:
Horror fans will be interested to know that this movie is apparently the directorial debut of John Saxon (Nancy's dad in the Elmstreet movies, as well as star of other horror gore fests including a role in an Argento classic), who shares the director's chair with Nick Marino. Anyway, on to the plot.

Derek Keillor (played by hunk Dennis Cole, a childhood crush of mine, once husband to Jacklyn Smith, and practically a regular cast member on shows like Fantasy Island and The Love Boat in the 70s), is screwing the boss's wife. Mob boss Vic Moretti (Anthony Franciosa), that is. Derek is a chauffeur, and he's having an affair with Moretti's wife (a 1980s Lita Ford look alike who does indeed bare her breasts in the first ten minutes of the movie). When Moretti finds out about the affair, he kills his wife and has Derek framed as a murderer.

After this odd action/mob movie setup, we switch gears to a prison movie! Derek is pushed past rows of muscular inmates in tight 80s blue jeans who are all offering to do nasty things to HIS pretty 80s blue jeaned ass. Then he meets up with Moretti's brother, who is already an inmate, and is the big bear daddy to his pretty boy inmate boyfriend, with whom he shares a cell where they do each other's hair and have a poster of an oiled up Dolph Lundgren on the wall.

But behind the fun loving antics of the man hungry inmates lies something more sinister. Colonel Gordon Burgess (John Saxon) knows the best place to find men who love men for the army is in a prison! And he plans to make them powerful soldiers—with an experimental drug. So the death row inmates begin getting vaccinated (or should I say, viralnated). And soon, they are turning into what I guess is supposed to be crazed zombies of some sort. So Saxon calls in a beautiful blond scientist to help control the breakout of the virus in the prison. As soon as he made the call to her, I knew she was going to be naked at some point in the movie—and she was, thanks to an out of place dream sequence by Derek. But hey, it wouldn't be an indulgent 80s horror flick without at least one hot big breasted blond to balance out the male-on-male anal sex scene, right?

So anyway, all hell breaks loose and the prisoners get out of jail free, but are still stuck in the prison because the virus is airborne, and they are all turning into these zombie-esque creatures. So, how IS the zombie action, you ask? Well, first of all, are they really zombies, since they never actually die? And second, these zombies take a heck of a long time to finally start munching on human flesh. They spend the first half of the movie just pushing victims through prison bars, ripping heads off and nasty things of that sort. It isn't until about the last 20 minutes of the movie that they begin the eating. There's a fair amount of gore, really bad dialogue, corny acting, and no impressive camera work or shocks. This is a very straightforward try at a zombie flick. It's not so bad that it's good, yet you can't help but keep watching. It's all very cliché zombie action, but you will feel right at home. It's definitely not a classic and just falls short of being campy enough to be a cult fave, but any zombie aficionado should give it a look.

The DVD

Video:
Overall the visual presentation of the film isn't so bad considering it's a movie from the 1980s—part of its charm is that it has that visual quality to it. It's a full frame presentation, aspect ratio 1:33:1. There's some specks and dust on the print, and it has some pixilation and grain, but none of it is too distracting. The biggest issue is with the brightness, which creates a soft image and blacks that are, in essence, gray. The color tones are nice, but a bit washed out due to the brightness of the image. Also, there's a hiccup due to layering about 35 minutes in, and it also seems there's quite a bit of layering in the last 10 minutes of the film—but I suspect the actual culprit is some really bad film editing.

Sound:
Dolby 2.0 mono delivers muffled bass and a rather bland, monotone audio track, but it doesn't hinder the clarity of the dialogue or sound effects.

Extras:
Not much here. You get the original 35mm trailer, which features a cheesy voice over. Remove the narrator and some of the clips of bad in-film dialogue, and the remaining zombie clips could have offered an eerie trailer. The real extra is a DVD case insert card that is a $1000 dollar shock insurance policy from Retromedia Entertainment, due to the risk of "death by shock" when watching this film. They made a smart move by offering that policy on this not so shocking feature.

Final Thoughts:
Zombie Death House offers every cliché in the zombie movie book, and mixes in what should be campy cult additions, like man-loving prison inmates and mob bosses, but the film is mostly flat, with all the zombie action saved for the end, and nothing jolting to captivate you. There's gore, there's nudity, but this is not going to stand out in zombie loverss collections, despite the unique prison setting. Of course, there have been worse zombie movies, so you should see this one at least once so you'll realize that it's so bad you just have to watch.