Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies (2017)

In my efforts to make the zombie movie marathon international I decided to watch and review this one from Austria. I don’t think that I’ve reviewed an Austrian movie before and honestly I don’t know much about the land of Schwarzenegger, but I figure they must know zombies! Or at least I hope that they do.

There are a pair of storylines that intersect in Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies. First, we have a local that is trying to save the mountain businesses with a new snow making machine. Global warming is playing havoc with their average snowfall, so they need the help. It does make lots of snow, but the chemicals also turn the local wildlife and a potential investor into zombies. You heard me right about the wildlife. I think they are zombie deer or reindeer. Regardless it is kind of awesome. The second storyline has a slacker snowboarder and his crew, including a girlfriend, getting trapped on the mountain after he gets fired. He is a screw up you see. They end up at a bar when everyone goes zombie and they have to try to survive the night.

Jumping into low budget zombie movies is always a risky thing. This is especially so of ones made in different countries as what is funny in one culture doesn’t always translate well to another. That said there are things that I didn’t like about this one and other things that I really liked about Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies. Going to start with the bad stuff first just to get it out of the way.

Snowboarders suck. The fact that our main characters are snowboarders on the mountain shooting one of those tedious videos of them jumping out of helicopters and doing “extreme” things annoyed me. I thought this would let up once the zombies started but then there is another sequence where they snowboard the zombies to death. Think zombies standing still while people use their boards to kill them. I get that this is supposed to be a comedy, but you have to do better than that. Honestly that is my only complaint about Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies.

Zombie Deer!

Most of the movie is just silly fun. The zombies do some ripping and tearing, some limbs are severed, and the gore is played for laughs. There is a bit with a snow blower that rivals the lawnmower scene from Dead Alive in both goofiness as well as blood spray. We have a decent trapdoor bit that I liked a lot. One of the best gags has the zombies trying to catch the survivors while they run away on the ice. Everyone is sliding around and falling all over each other. Having lived my entire life in a part of the country that gets a lot of snow and ice in winter I found it funny. Not sure why this hasn’t occurred to anyone else.

The zombie designs are decent. They are all fresh but there is some variety in how they died. I keep saying this in my zombie movie reviews, but I hate it when all the undead look the same. Speaking of the makeup the zombie deer puppets look goofy but in an awesome way. Occasionally silly works in a zombie flick and this is one of those times so good job with that. The kills are a bit tame, but they do some horrible things to the zombies. The best has to do with ski poles thru the eyes.

Far from perfect Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies has some good laughs and is never boring. I could have done without the snowboarding stuff but overall it is worth a watch. I will warn you that this doesn’t feel like a movie that I’ll need to go back and re-watch, so I’d say this is worth a rental. With that caveat, I recommend this movie.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer