Dance of the Dead starts as the students & teachers of Cosa prepare for the big end of year prom, everyone who's anybody will be going which means the likes of the geeks, punks & no hoper's have to find something else to do. A bunch of sci-fi geeks head down to the local cemetery & soon discover the dead rising from their graves hungry for human flesh, they try to survive as best they can with what weapons they find & encounter various other people also trying to survive the zombie outbreak. The assorted oddball group decide to stick together & warn everyone at the prom but when they get there they find out that zombies beat them to it & have already killed & eaten most of the guests, it's then that they come up with a plan to destroy all the zombies & save the world...Edited, produced & directed by Gregg Bishop this very light hearted tongue in cheek zombie horror comedy (a Zom Com?) offers a decent enough way to pass 80 odd minutes but it's nothing amazing or as clever as it tries to be. The script places far more emphasis on the comedy & self referential mickey taking than the actual horror aspects, I think the main inspiration for Dance of the Dead was The Return of the Living Dead (1985) & even more so it's sequel Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988) which large parts of the main story here are taken from but Dance of the Dead doesn't have quite the right mix of humour & horror & I personally didn't think it was that funny either. The humour is very hit & miss, fans of 80's horror & the genre in particular will get more from Dance of the Dead than most I would think. At only 80 odd minutes long Dance of the Dead is pretty short & moves along at a very quick pace but all of the character's are deliberate clichés that are likable enough I suppose & there's not much of a story here, there's some silly ideas as well like the zombies who stop when they hear (awful) rock music. So it has it moments, it's never boring & there's s a few amusing one liners, some decent gore & it's fun for the majority of it's duration.There's some gore but none of it is lingering or sadistic, it's more played for laughs & is fleeting. There's some flesh eating, some severed limbs, a decapitated head or two, various gory gunshot wounds & a similar sequence as in Return of the Living Dead Part II where a zombies legs walk around after it's upper bodies is ripped off. Not to be confused with the awful Masters of Horror episode Dance of the Dead (2006) from the first season directed by Tobe Hooper. Since the film goes for laughs there's not much in the way of suspense or scares on show.Probably shot on a low budget the production values are good & it's well made, it doesn't look cheap & has good special effects as well. The acting is alright, I can't say I recognised any of the faces on show but they do a decent enough job.Dance of the Dead is a perfectly likable & watchable zombie horror comedy with far more emphasis on the comedy than the horror. I thought it was pretty good overall but many of the jokes & gags aren't that funny, at least it's short.

Hasn't this prom-night zombie massacre shtick already been done in "Cabin Fever 2"? Nevermind. Horror films are rarely about originality; in some ways, it's almost a badge of honour among horror directors to rip each other off.The problem with this zombie comedy is that it wants to have its cake and eat it too: wants both the laughs and for us to care for these cardboard stereotypes. I am a firm believer in the Jerry Seinfeld philosophy, and that's when you do comedy, do it all-out, 100%, with no sentimental BS whatsoever. Unfortunately, DOTD has such moments too, believe it or not, just like some cheesy US sitcom (won't mention any names "Friends", "The Bill Cosby Show"), which is fascinating in a way. Cringe-worthy, because so idiotic, but fascinating. Fascinating that someone would even try it in a goofy teen zombie flick.The first 15 minutes serve to establish the various high-school stereotypes that we have all grown to hate so much - thanks to American movies and television. Most of the gags suck at this point, but not all. The gags do in fact get worse when the zombapocalypse commences, but the abundance of action scenes covers up for the dozens of lame one-liners and seen-them-before sight gags. The movie is fluff, but it's watchable fluff. It isn't a bad movie when everything is said and done. It might even be considered a masterpiece to the occasional viewer – provided he/she is no older than 15, has never seen a horror comedy before, and doesn't have an IQ higher than 100.I had thought that "The Simpsons" (and others) had already squeezed out the last drop of juice from the stale power-plants-cause-mutation/disease/zombies mega-cliché, but apparently not everyone on this planet agrees with me, so here's DOTD doing the same thing, for the gazillionth time. I am not accusing the writer of being left-wing, just of being predictable and lame. Not bad, the notion that zombies enjoy crappy pop-punk/baby-punk, and that it soothes them. After all, isn't every Green Day fan a bit of a zombie?

My first and obvious reaction when I saw "Dance of the Dead" standing on the shelves of my local video store a couple of years ago was: "Yet another highly acclaimed and supposedly hilarious zombie comedy? I think I'll pass…" Zombie comedies (also referred to as 'zom-coms' or even 'zomedies') exist since many years, as in the 80's and 90's we already had cult classics like "Night of the Creeps", "Return of the Living Dead" and "Braindead", but particularly since 2004 and the release of "Shaun of the Dead" we can speak of a genuine epidemic. A selected few of them actually manage to be original and funny (like "Zombieland", "Dead Snow" and "Fido") but the vast majority of them are just dumb, derivative and downright pathetic. Automatically assuming that "Dance of the Dead" would fit right into the latter category, I always refrained from watching until now I could pick up an ex-rental DVD copy for the bargain price of $1. Now I'm pleased to announce that "Dance of the Dead" is a lot better than I thought it would be, merely because it's a 200% unpretentious, straightforward and rejoicing little flick. Nearly all the characters are stereotypes and the gags/situations are hugely predictable, but at least the movie is never boring and doesn't waste any time on wannabe intellectual dialogs or far-fetched plot twists. The film opens with a quirky cemetery caretaker having enormous difficulties to keep his cadavers underneath the ground. As the camera zooms out, we perceive that the cemetery lies right next to an overactive nuclear power plant; so there's your explanation. In this same sleepy nuclear energy town, the popular kids prepare themselves for the annual high school prom, whereas the outcasts carry on with their Sci-Fi club meetings, rock band activities and pizza deliveries. As the zombies adrift from their regular cemetery boundaries and head towards the prom, it's up to the freaks and geeks to rescue the rest of the school. Personally, I wouldn't refer to "Dance of the Dead" as one of the best zombie comedies ever made, and I would definitely not label it as an instant cult classic, but it's undeniably a fun and unhinged little gem. The clichés and stereotypes are amusingly enlarged and the make-up effects are often gloriously over-the-top. The pacing remains fast throughout the entire running time and the movie doesn't contain any redundant sequences or padding footage whatsoever. The acting performances are more than adequate, as you can clearly tell that everyone truly enjoyed starring in this one. Recommended to watch in group, or on a lazy and rainy Sunday afternoon.

I thought dumb high school students with zombies would be a good mix of comedy with death and would at least be somewhat mildly entertaining. Even for a movie like this the acting in this is super atrocious, even if all the characters in this movie is so very stereotypical which is fine in some cases. But they are all also way too over exaggerated, which is also passable in some cases but in this it just wasn't even funny. Maybe some of the audiences may laugh because of how bad the dialogue is but that is about it. Even the zombies in this movie looks really fake looking. The movie revolves around prom night while most of the students act all obnoxious and while this is going on zombies attack. It may seem like a entertaining premise but it just doesn't work really well. On a positive note the movie does have it's moments although very few, such as the parts where the teens start working together to fight the zombie outbreak. And although the high school parody isn't very well executed when the zombie gets mixed in, it wasn't as terrible as I thought it was going to be. Plus although most parts about this is film had many flaws to it, it sort of gets a bit entertaining because of the situation as the movie progresses and is a decent effort. But still this is far from being a good zombie movie and is worth watching if you really have nothing to do and is in the mood for a below average zombie flick.5.8/10