Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Paul Andrews Shadow: Dead Riot starts as multiple murderer & all round evil bloke Shadow (Tony Todd) is executed in prison, his supernatural blood leaks out & a full scale prison riot ensues which ends in a massacre. Jump forward 'Twenty Years Later' & the prison is now a rehabilitation center for women where loner Solitaire (Carla Greene) has just been sent, Solitaire is a hard lady & stands up to the prison bully Mondo (Tatianna Butler) & gains the respect of the lesser inmates. However Solitaire has strange visions about Shadow & after blood is spilt on a patch of grass in the grounds under which Shadow is buried he & the massacred inmates are revived & rise from the dead to eat the flesh of the living & only hard as nails Solitaire can stop Shadow & his dead rioting zombie friends...Photographed & directed by Derek Wan this is a pretty crappy low budget mess of an exploitation film that is saved by a fast pace & a bit of cheap gore but as a film make no mistake Shadow: Dead Riot is rubbish. The script tries to have it's cake & eat it, it tries to be the ultimate exploitation flick as it is an odd mixture of horror, comedy, kung-fu, blaxploitation, women in prison & zombie gore film all in one but the various genres don't come together that well & Shadow: Dead Riot isn't nearly as much fun as it should have been. There's no thought behind the story at all, there's never any reason given as to why Shadow comes back from the dead or why a bunch of zombies do either, there's some random nonsense about his blood & it feels like the makers of Shadow: Dead Riot made it up as they went along & to be honest they probably did. Every part of Shadow: Dead Riot is stolen from somewhere else, everything is predictable & clichéd. The character's are awful, the dialogue is embarrassing & maybe the makers will argue that it's all intentional but do I really want to watch a bad film that know's it bad? Also what about that inmate that made a run for it & got sucked down into the ground? Didn't the warden or guards not find it strange that an inmate suddenly vanished? At 90 odd minutes I got pretty bored with it even though the final third is almost none stop zombie action which says a lot, the first two thirds are more concerned with cat-fights between the inmates, the inmates taking showers, a lesbian guard (named Elsa Thorne after the infamous Ilsa & the actress who played her Dyanne Thorne) & a male Doctor who takes advantage of the female inmates. It's all pretty predictable although I suppose there's a lot going on & your never far from a naked woman or some cheap gore which might be a recommendation to some on it's own. Shadow: Dead Riot sounds great but, well, it isn't.The special effects are poor, the one or two CGI computer effects are embarrassing while the prosthetics & on set make-up effects look tatty with the worst mutant baby you can imagine. There's a fair amount of gore here, eyeballs hang out, there's plenty of zombies, bitten off nipples, mutant babies, bitten throats, severed limbs, blood spurts, ripped out guts, exploding heads & some really badly choreographed fights. The entire film takes place in just one location to keep the budget down even further. Neither funny nor scary Shadow: Dead Riot pays homage to better films such as Zombi 2 (1979), Burial Ground (1981) & any women in prison film like Chained Heat (1983) even though the women here are not what I would call attractive to be honest & the nude shower scenes aren't as much fun as they should be...With a supposed budget of about $750,000 it looks every bit as low budget as it was, the production values are poor & the whole thing looks cheap. Filmed in an old disused prison in Holmesburg in Pennsylvania. The acting is bad, Tony Todd is here for the money & looks stupid in thick rimmed glasses & wearing a wig of dreadlocks while everyone else is terrible.Shadow: Dead Riot is a film that wants to be fun but isn't, it's bad on every level but at least it keeps going & there's lots of blood & breasts even if the effects are poor & the women are unattractive. There are better films out there for sure.

Woodyanders Evil voodoo-practicing serial killer Shadow (deliciously essayed with lip-smacking villainous hammy brio by Tony Todd) gets executed for murdering pregnant women. Twenty years later the prison he was put to death at has been turned into an experimental women's penitentiary. Tough and fiercely autonomous new inmate Solitaire (nicely played with admirable seriousness and intensity by Carla Greene) has some kind of link with Shadow. When Shadow and his lethal shambling zombie minions are resurrected, it's up to Solitaire to stop them. Director Derek Wan and writer Michael Gingold whip up a suitably outrageous and hence immensely enjoyable homage to vintage 70's exploitation fare that blends elements of grisly zombie horror, scuzzy chicks-in-chains flicks, lively chopsocky, and groovy blaxploitation into an extremely nutty and energetic go-for-broke tacky'n'wacky whole: Among the choice cheesy low-rent cinema stuff to relish herein are plentiful gloriously excessive blood-spilling gore, a pleasing smattering of tasty distaff nudity (which naturally includes the inevitable group shower scene), brutal catfights, wild martial arts, gnarly CGI effects, hideous rot-faced flesh-eating ghouls, and even a nasty killer mutant baby who takes a gruesome bite out of one his own mother's breasts (ouch!). This movie further benefits from game acting by a fun cast, with stand-out contributions from Nina Hodoruk as bleeding heart liberal Warden Danvers, Michael Quinlin as mad, lecherous dirtbag Dr. Swan, Cat Miller as the sweet, pregnant Emily, Andrea Langi as mean, predatory lesbian guard Elsa Thorne, Tatianna Butler as fearsome top con Mondo, adorable soft-core starlet Misty Mundae as the mousy, browbeaten Crystal, Ruby Larocca as the scrappy Rage, and Anna Curtis as twitchy junkie Meth. Popping up in cool bits are veteran zombie thespians Captain Haggerty (the big fat ghoul at the very start of Lucio Fulci's "Zombie") and Bill Hinzman (the cemetery zombie in George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead") as two of Shadow's undead followers. Wan's slick cinematography gives the picture an impressive polished look. Vernon Reid's funky'n'moody score does the rousing trick. A total trashy blast.

lovecraft231 Solitaire (Carla Green) goes to an all female prison. Too bad for her (and everyone else) that a notorious serial killer known as Shadow (Tony Todd) is about to come back-along with some zombies. Also, it seems that Solitaire and Shadow are somehow connected."Shadow: Dead Riot" is really three kinds of movies crammed into one as an tribute to old school exploitation: Gory Kung-Fu flicks ("Story of Ricky"), Women in Prison flicks ("The Big Bird Cage") and Italian zombie flicks ("Burial Ground.") While it looks great on paper, it sadly doesn't add up. This is partly due to the fact that none of these elements feel like they go far enough. Sure, there's decent gore gags, martial arts mayhem, and lesbian action, but it all feels somewhat restrained, as if the people behind it felt nervous about going too far.Also problematic is the acting. Erin Brown actually does a pretty good job (I would have liked to see more of her character), and Tony Todd is decent enough (even though he looks too much like an evil version of Lee "Scratch" Perry-not exactly something that will strike fear into men's hearts), but everybody else seems unrehearsed or bored, spewing forth terrible dialog and bad one liners. Finally, some of the tributes and references to past European horror movies like "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Burial Ground" are too obvious (though it's nice to see a horror movie that doesn't reference "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Phantasm" for a change.) "Shadow: Dead Riot" is a movie that could have been a really fun tribute to the Exploitation movies of old. Sadly, it's refusal to go that extra mile ends up giving off that "sizzle without the steak" feeling. If you want to see a great tribute to old school Grindhouse movies, you'd be better off watching "Grindhouse."

donjon If you are fond of over the top, camp experiences like Brain Dead or Ricky-O (Story of Ricky), then you should enjoy this. It is totally ridiculous and a not even close to being a good film, but that doesn't stop it being loads of fun.I saw this at a horror festival with a really appreciative audience (which definitely helped it out), and the audience was in hysterics throughout and there was regular applause too. OK, some people walked out as well, but that is to be expected with films like this.There is good gore, loads of tits, terrible dialogue ("I see you're going to be a handful....maybe 2 handfulls"), bad acting, (with a couple of half decent performances thrown in too), zombie babies, shower scenes, mad professor type doctors, bad kung fu, female body builders and probably loads more that I have forgotten.Quite clearly a "so bad it's good" classic. Can't wait to get the DVD.