Zombie Nightmare (1987) on Netflix
Tony Washington stops a robbery, then a car full of teenagers strikes him down. Molly Mokembe, a voodoo priestess who owes his family a debt, raises him as a zombi.
- Netflix1.4/5
- IMDb2.8/104,146 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Tony Washington is a baseball player who stops a robbery at a grocery store, saving the clerk behind the counter. A car carrying five teenagers, Bob, Amy, Jim, Peter and Susie, strikes him in the road, and the group flees. His mother Louise brings his body home and calls Molly Mekembe, a Haitian voodoo priestess, to repay an old debt: Tony's father, William Washington, was fatally stabbed defending Molly from two teenage boys years before. Molly raises Tony as a zombi and directs him at the teenagers who drove away. Detective Frank Sorrell works the case, and Captain Tom Churchman is his superior in the department.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Zombie Nightmare (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The role of Tony was first given to bodybuilder Peewee Piemonte, who was fired days into production for eating all the craft services and the crew's meals; he was replaced by Jon Mikl Thor, singer of the Canadian rock band Thor.
- Investors worried that a black-centric cast would not sell in the foreign market, so John Fasano renamed the teenage characters with white-sounding names; he typed the new names on an IBM Selectric II, cut them out with a knife and glued them into the script.
- Wrestler Superstar Billy Graham was originally cast as Tony's father, but nobody came to pick him up at the Montreal airport and he left after waiting ten hours; John Fasano took the part instead.
- Fasano clashed with the Canadian crew, who took him for an assistant director rather than a co-director, so his directions went ignored, including by cinematographer Roger Racine.
- Unions in New York refused the production a permit to film in the state, so Zombie Nightmare was shot in Montreal, Quebec instead.
- Fasano's college friends Tony Bua and Andy Clement made the zombie masks and did the makeup, and applying Jon Mikal Thor's makeup took five hours using glue and latex.
