Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
In the dark days of the American Civil War the tide has swung towards the side of the Union Army, thanks in large part to the bloodiest battle of America’s bloodiest war, the Battle of Gettysburg. To commemorate the epic losses on that battlefield, President Abraham Lincoln (Bill Oberst Jr.) will travel to Gettysburg, despite the grave fears of his wife Mary Todd (Debra Crittendon), to deliver a speech that he hopes will begin the process of uniting this great nation. But first The Prez has to make a little detour… to kill some Zombies! Hell yeah. They didn’t call that battle ‘Abraham Lincoln vs. The Zombies’ for nothing now did they? They did call it that, right?
You see when Abe was around ten, he lost his mom. You might’ve thought it was to The Consumption or something, but no… she was a total zombie and young Abe had to take her out. This event had a pronounced effect on the man who would be president, so when The President heard of a similar sickness affecting some soldiers he sent on a mission, he knew exactly what was up.
Now The President has gathered up members of the newly formed Secret Service to go with him on a mission of utmost importance. The main reason was to secure some fort of something that will assist in the war effort, but also to contain the illness which President Lincoln knows all too well.
By the time Lincoln and the Secret Service make it to this fort, it’s already a clusterf@#k. The remaining confederate soldiers, led by no less than the great general Stonewall Jackson (Don McGraw) are on one side raining gunfire on these men, while behind them the Walking Dead are chewing peoples faces off. The Secret Servicemen are a little stunned at the callous attitude The President seems to have towards these people who seem simply ill to them, considering The Prez was using his amazing scythe skills to viciously lop off domes, and if any of his men had the misfortune of getting bit by one of these walking dead… Let’s just say you don’t want to be anywhere near The President if that happens.
The truth of the matter is we didn’t know precisely what these sick looking walking dead types were, at least until the one African American member of the Secret Service, Wilson Brown (Jason Hughley), gave us the name ‘zombie’ as passed down by his granny, considering he is African American and apparently all African American’s have innate weird, obscure voodoo knowledge and stuff. Regardless of what you want to call them, President Lincoln knows that this infection cannot spread because if it does then it will matter very little who wins this damn war. Believe me when I tell you, with that pimped out retractable scythe in his hand, Abraham Lincoln is badass and the zombies are doomed.
First off, allow us here at the FCU to tell you something that’s great about this film ‘Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies’ from our friends at the The Asylum, and that would be Bill Oberst Jr. as Abraham Lincoln. I know this is, at its core, a very silly movie completely ripping off the Graphic Novel and subsequent film ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’, and we would’ve completely excused Mr. Oberst jr. if he ‘Michael Madsened’ his performance or just took it ridiculously over the top. But no sir, Bill Oberst Jr. did about as good a job with Abraham Lincoln in this movie, complete with a stirring recital of the Gettysburg Address, as any actor I’ve seen play honest Abe. I mean my man stepped up to the plate and knocked it out the park with this one. Of course there’s no recorded video of Abraham Lincoln doing anything so who knows how the man really was, but I’ve seen enough renditions to know I really enjoyed this one. Great performance.
That’s what’s great about this movie, what’s good about this movie is the free and easy fun the screenwriters had with the history of Abraham Lincoln. It helps to be somewhat knowledgeable about Abraham Lincoln to appreciate much of this, but to his founding of the Secret Service to his relationship with Mary Owens (Baby Norman), though I’m sure Ms. Owens probably wouldn’t appreciate being turned into a prostitute, and we even get a young Teddy Roosevelt (Cannon Kuipers) showing up to kill some zombies, so there are lots of little fun, drastically altered, Abraham Lincoln facts in this movie.
What’s not so good about director Richard Schenkman’s film ‘Abraham Lincoln’ vs. Zombies’? Well, it is a pretty lousy zombie movie. It moves too slow most of the time, the zombies themselves are wildly inconsistent, sometimes attacking you out of the blue, which we expect from zombies, or at other times just sleeping on their feet allowing you to casually walk up to them and stab them in the eye. Not that any of us have any real-world zombie experience. Occasionally the old-time Asylum sloppiness will rear its ugly head, like when Abe turned and fled holding his scythe, turned the corner holding a gun, and turned another corner empty handed. Sometimes we notice this stuff folks. Also, often in this movie, Abe and his agents would go on these missions to accomplish something or another, and hell if I know what these missions were supposed to accomplish outside of thinning the ranks of the Secret Service.
But we didn’t hate ‘Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies’. I think it could’ve been a little better than it was, the zombie action could’ve been amped up a bit more and maybe the story compressed a good ten minutes but Bill Oberst Jr. as Abraham Lincoln tilts the scale on the side of the positive in this one. If Abraham Lincoln did slaughter zombies, and I’m not saying he didn’t, but if he did I’m thinking it would look a lot like this.
