Twenty years after he was immortalised on film as the cemetery zombie in Night of the Living Dead, actor Bill Hinzman directed and starred in Flesheater (released on DVD in the UK as Zombie Nosh!), a gory, low-budget tale of the undead that shamelessly ripped-off the plot from George Romero’s 1968 horror classic.

Being much better at acting dead than at making movies, Hinzman inevitably turned out a technically poor effort hampered by leaden pacing, dreadful acting and terrible dialogue. Fortunately, however, the inclusion of much cartoonish gore and female nudity prevented this mess from being completely unwatchable, and fans of z-grade trash who stumble upon the film should have a fair amount of fun as the untalented cast struggle to remember their cues, fail to convincingly deliver their god-awful lines, and try to look scared as Hinzman and his fellow flesheaters stagger clumsily towards them.

The film opens as a group of college students prepare to spend Halloween in the woods, drinking Iron City beer, dancing (badly), smoking weed, and having sex. Their drunken fun is interrupted, however, when a zombie (Hinzman) is unwittingly released from its tomb by a farmer, and they are forced to flee to a nearby, ramshackle farmhouse for safety.

As the number of undead outside the house gradually increases (from one to at least three or four), the students struggle to fortify the dilapidated property (they find plenty of wood and nails, sharp weapons, and a handy shotgun with ammo!), but to no avail: the zombies eventually force their way in, and carnage ensues. Only one couple escapes the onslaught, and they must struggle against the odds to survive the night…

Dubious highlights include gratuitous child munching, loads of OTT gore, some very bad 80s fashion, more dodgy dancing than you can shake a bloody stump at, and lots of tits and bush (Hinzman’s lead zombie gets to grapple with a couple of the nekkid girls—a perk of being in charge, I suppose); insufferable low points include the opening hayride (several protracted shots of a slow moving tractor), a laughable chase scene through the woods (why does the girl throw away her jacket?), a miserable performance from one particularly bad actress as a policewoman, all of the actors feeble attempts at looking shocked, and the entire last half hour, which follows a bunch of rednecks as they clear up the zombie problem (and yes, Hinzman does go so far as to even rip off Romero’s shock ending from NOTLD!).