Ever since 1985’s “The Return of the Living Dead,” punk rock and zombies have been like two peas in a pod – they complete each other. So it was a pretty damn durned good idear of filmmaker Jon Olsen (the man who gave us underground rape ape classic Ape Canyon) to spend the last two years of his life making zombie themed music videos for local bands in the Eureka, Humboldt County area. “Zombies of Eureka” is a 45 minute compilation of those music videos, all tied together by a very thin story of a chemically altered 40 ouncer of malt liquor creating a zombie invasion.
It’s not all punk rock here, but these videos as a collective definitely have the attitude and spirit. Featuring local Eureka bands such as The Ian Fays, The Buffy Swayze and Von Richter, “Zombies of Eureka” represent with a blast of indie rock and other abnormal sounds and being that Humboldt County is the birthing place of Mr. Bungle, one can imagine just how abnormal abnormal can get.
Keeping with a fun party atmosphere, these music videos generally find the bands galavanting about town or playing a living room party only to be crashed by zombies who just really wanna party too in their white and black grease paint make-up. Yeah, this isn’t “The Return of the Living Dead,” but who cares? The main attraction here is getting to check out Eureka’s local tunage and the tunage is good.
