Fido, a Romantic Zomedy

Hello blogging compadres!  I’ll be heading to merry old England for a couple of weeks and probably won’t post much while I’m away.  I realized my last couple of posts have been about movies I’ve hated, so I thought I’d leave you on a positive note (for once) with a movie I adore.  Part satire, part romantic comedy.  With zombies (of course).

The Film:

Fido

The Premise:

A boy forms an unlikely friendship with the family’s new pet zombie, Fido, in an alternate 1950s.

The Trailer:

The Uncondensed Version:

Our film opens with a 1950s-style educational video about the Zombie Wars. The discovery that zombies could be controlled through remote-controlled collars made by Zomcon turned the Zombie Wars around. When zombies wear the collar, they become docile servants, and thus can be trained to perform basic household chores. Zomcon also provides burials complete with a head coffin, guaranteeing a burial you won’t wake up from.

The educational video alone makes this movie worth watching.

Like all 1950s-set movies made after Grease (and, in my opinion, including Grease [shudder]), there is something dark and sinister lurking beneath the seemingly perfect suburban life. Timmy, our protagonist, and the other elementary school children receive training on loading and firing guns. He can’t help noticing Cindy, the daughter of Zomcon’s new security chief, is a total badass. Timmy, on the other hand, is pretty terrible at target practice, which earns him some teasing from the class bullies, two Zomcon cadets.

Though a zombie is a status symbol, Timmy’s father, Bill is strongly opposed to having a zombie after traumatic experiences in the Zombie Wars (it’s later revealed that he had to kill his father at the age of 11 when he turned into a zombie). However, in an effort to impress the new neighbors, Timmy’s mother, Helen acquires a zombie, the titular Fido (played by Billy Connolly!).

At first, Timmy treats Fido like a servant or pet with no feelings. Soon, however, Fido is Timmy’s only companion, as he has no friends at school and his parents have little time for him.

This has to be the most adorable zombie movie ever made.

One day, Timmy takes Fido to the park. Fido defends him when the bullies arrive and threaten to shoot him with a BB gun. Timmy and Fido play catch, which ends in tragedy when Fido’s collar malfunctions, leading him to kill and eat Mrs. Henderson, the elderly woman who lives across the street. Luckily, when Timmy finds him, his collar has switched back on.

That night, Mrs. Henderson rises and kills a man out walking his dog, beginning a minor zombie outbreak. Timmy returns to the park and manages to find and decapitate Mrs. Henderson with a shovel, burying her under a flowerbed.

Fido’s collar stops functioning again later that night, and Timmy is trying to calm him down when Mr. Theopolis appears and helps Timmy fix the collar. One of the more eccentric neighbors, Mr. Theopolis, used to work for Zomcon. His zombie, Tammy, is pretty much his girlfriend, though Zomcon discourages people from getting overly attached to their zombies. I think he gets turned on whenever she tries to eat him?

Later, Timmy goes on a long walk with Fido through a meadow when they encounter the bullies, who are armed. They tie Timmy and Fido to trees and break Fido’s collar. Their plan is to set Fido free and kill him before he reaches Timmy in an effort to paint themselves as heroes; however, one is shot accidentally, and Fido kills the other. Fido returns to Timmy and tries to set him free, but is too clumsy to unknot the ropes. Fido brings Helen to help.

When she notices his collar isn’t working and wonders why, he makes significant eye contact. I think this may be the first romantic zombie movie. Helen and Fido arrive, locking the zombie boys in a shed and setting it on fire (I promise this movie is much funnier than it sounds. If you have a very twisted sense of humor like me).

Nothing brings a family together like killing zombies and lighting their corpses on fire.

Meanwhile, Zomcon discovers the body of Mrs. Henderson in the park, and Cindy’s dad, Mr. Bottoms realizes Fido is responsible for the outbreak. Fido is taken away to be put down.

Bill tries to give Timmy some words of wisdom, but this backfires horribly because he is the typical 1950s male who doesn’t know how to talk about emotions. “I know when you’re a kid you feel things. A lot of…feelings. But you have to get over that.” TRUTH. At this point, Bill gives up and gives Timmy his first handgun.

Cindy, who has befriended Timmy, tells him that Fido is still alive in Zomcon headquarters. They enlist the help of Mr. Theopolis to break Fido out. Mr. Bottoms discovers what Timmy has done and locks him outside of the fence, in the wild zone. Meanwhile, Bill discovers Timmy’s plan and rushes to Zomcon to help him. After Mr. Bottoms shoots Bill, Fido attacks and kills Mr. Bottoms.

Bill, who had a mortal fear of becoming a zombie, gets a funeral complete with head coffin as he requested. Mr. Bottoms becomes a zombie and a much nicer human being.

And they all lived happily ever after. Or whatever it is zombies do.

The Critique:

The concept sounds terrible, but the satire and dark humor of this movie work really well.

It’s also interspersed with these 1950s-style commercials for horrific things like funerals with head coffins and the Zomcon version of Life Alert. “The elderly—they seem friendly enough, but can you really trust them? No.” That’s why you need Life Alert, which contacts Zomcon as soon as the heart stops.

The only thing that still puzzles me about this film is the logic behind Zomcon’s cover-ups. I suppose in a satirical film, government cover-ups can occur for no apparent reason, but it was still an unsatisfactory element of the movie. After the outbreak at Zomcon, the news reports that a random security guard was responsible. Why blame the security guard? To maintain the status quo and uphold the idea that Zomcon always has its shit together?

Maybe I’m overanalyzing. But that’s unlikely because I NEVER do that. EVER. It just felt like there was some kind of conspiracy theory in the script that was either cut or never fully developed.

The Rating:

4/5 Pink Panther heads

I flipping love this movie. It’s like Lassie or maybe Pleasantville with zombies. What’s not to love?