-Grindhouse Fest spotlights the cult gems, sleaze classics, and deranged wonders that defined exploitation cinema’s golden run. Proceed with delight and caution-
Directed by Charles McCrann
Written by Charles McCrann
Starring:
- Charles McCrann as Tom Cole (credited as Charles Austin)
- Beverly Shapiro as Polly Cole
- Dennis Helfend as Hermit
- Kevin Hanlon as Jimmy
- Judith Brown as Amy (credited as Judy Brown)
Rating: 
At times the busted homespun aesthetics of Toxic Zombies feel so perfectly aligned with its grubby regional-horror milieu that the movie accidentally captures the sheer thrill of no-budget exploitation moviemaking in action. You can practically feel the filmmakers improvising solutions on the spot, patching together scenes with whatever resources they had lying around. That’s the strange charm of this backwoods zombie cheapie: it’s slapdash, awkward, and frequently looks like proto-SOV sludge despite being shot on rough 16mm stock, yet all that cinematic squalor somehow works in its favor. Charles McCrann’s gloriously idiotic premise about marijuana growers getting sprayed with toxic herbicides that transform them into flesh-hungry zombies is exactly the kind of drive-in nonsense that thrives on raw enthusiasm rather than competence. McCrann wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the thing while on sabbatical, and every frame radiates the excitement of somebody making a horror movie simply because they were obsessed enough to will it into existence. Sure, the acting is wooden, the pacing lumbers around aimlessly, and the natural lighting is often atrocious, but the gore effects splatter with enough handmade conviction to compensate for every technical disaster surrounding them. The movie never fully transcends its limitations, yet all its random flaws and aesthetic ugliness create this oddly compelling mix of terrible and wonderful at the same time. Not exactly so-bad-it’s-good — more like so sincerely ramshackle that it becomes impossible not to admire.
