GL84 Driving through the countryside, a doctor traveling with his family decides to stop off in a small town during a big town celebration where they notice they're the only survivors of a weird plague that has turned all of the locals into raving zombies and must try to get out of town alive.This is one of the greatest zombie comedies of the genre. One of the greatest attributes here is the fact that this one manages to both mix the serious zombie action with the humorous comedy which makes for plenty of enjoyment. The film gets some rather great jabs with comedy in here, including plenty of silly gags and physical pratfalls that always works well based on their complete unfamiliarity with the situation. The hilarious wordplay between everyone is also worthy of a few laughs, especially the argument on the doorstep as well as the ensuing one in the barn as they try to figure out what's going on and a later one with the characters standing around discussing whether or not they're dealing with zombies or just really sick people. Just as good is the segment where the zombies strike at the diner, which unleashes a torrent of gags including a dance sequence disguised as a fight to a jukebox playing an appropriate song for such a scene. The seriousness is made up with the graphic zombie attacks, which here are actually threatening to the others where the laughs are played more in trying to get away from them, not the zombies themselves, so they remain a fearsome threat. There's some rather nice gore to this in the multitude of attacks in the form of some rather big action scenes where they attack in the diner, which leads to some really big parts later which are just as good. The film also has a frenetic pace, able to incorporate a lot of good stuff into it from the zombies to the gags to a couple of really fun moments that make it even more of a blast to watch. This here was a thoroughly entertaining film since this here doesn't have a whole lot really wrong, and the few flaws aren't that bad at all. The main one is that the zombies here aren't that well done, looking really cheaply and without a whole lot to really make them memorable. The design is to slap on contact lenses and a few blood marks over the face and it's considered a zombie when all it does is really make the film look cheaper and is very hard to take seriously because of it. The other one is the fact that the storyline about the tainted farm's meat is a little too convoluted. First, it's mentioned that they're cows were sick, which became a big scandal, then used an experimental treatment to make them better, which no one knew about to make them healthy then gave it back to all of the locals. It's a little tough to understand and doesn't really make much sense. These here are what really strike the film down.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and mild drug use.

gavin6942 A father, a daughter, a future stepmother and a boyfriend are traveling when they stop in a small town (isn't it always a small town?) for some dinner and a place to sleep. The restaurant gets its meat locally, but sometimes local doesn't always mean healthy. There's a new kind of mad cow disease in town.When this film showed up in the mail, I was undecided on how to take it. It had "Billy Zane" written on the cover, which seemed like a promising thing. Because Zane, for whatever reason, seems to suggest greatness -- despite my inability to determine why. And then I watched the trailer on my DVD of "Bottom Feeder", and this looked like a possible American answer to England's "Shaun of the Dead". Boy, is that giving it way too much credit.The company behind this film is 235 Films (a new company behind such greats as "Bottom Feeder" and "UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine"). Their gimmick seems to be get a half-baked script, an unknown director, and then find one B-league star and put his/her name prominently on the cover. First Michael Madsen, then Tom Sizemore and now Billy Zane.Now, Billy Zane ("Demon Knight", "Back to the Future") is a great actor and a wonderful action star and comedian. I think I could say he was the best part of this film without much debate. But he just couldn't save it. They gave him no good lines and he was just way too big to fill such a small character (not a small part, mind you, just such a one-dimensional character).You see, the cool parts only take up ten minutes of the film. The rest is mostly a bunch of scenes where the daughter and future stepmother fight with each other. It's overdone, poorly scripted, poorly acted and really doesn't tie in to the overall plot. I was quite bored through much of this. I guess the daughter was sort of cute, but that didn't even come close to making up for the sheer blahness of it all.Best scene was the "zombie debate" scene where they were trying to determine if the people they were fighting were zombies or not. They were flesh-eating and not dead... but were they undead? It's a good scene, and way too short. This sort of discourse could have carried the movie if it came in copious amounts.Also, as with many films, I enjoyed the deleted scene. It was a music scene and nothing really happened in it, but it had artistic merit. And if you're going to give me a boring, pointless film -- you can at least make it artistic. Instead, they excised it out.This film wasn't worthless. It had some good scenes, it had some humor, it had Billy Zane and I think the story was interesting. Maybe it had the wrong writer or director or editor. Maybe it had the wrong actors. It's hard to pinpoint it, because it seems like something that should have been kick-butt. If someone wants to remake this twenty years from now, or even a year from now (heck, "The Incredible Hulk" gets away with it) I support your cause. Because I think this one has a piece of hope buried under its large, bulbous morass.

fheywood You are what you eat... THE MAD was fast, funny, had some terrific gross-out moments, and snappy dialogue. The main cast was great - you could transplant the central characters (a family) into any other kind of film (romantic comedy, say) and they would work just as well - they weren't just stereotypical horror movie fodder. Loved seeing Billy Zane in a comedic role. Get your zombie fix and see the movie!One weird thing: The upcoming DVD cover looks as if it is for a completely different movie - I'm pretty sure the picture on it isn't even from The Mad - it looks like a stock photo of a generic zombie. Why on earth would they do that? Why misrepresent a totally fun movie?

renfrew67 Having screened The Mad at the Gala Opening at the 2007 Canadian Filmmakers Festival, I can say that it would be a shame for this movie to be relegated to the 'Direct to Video Pile'. It's likely to become a cult movie in a similar vein to "Shaun of the Dead", "Evil Dead", "Return of the Living Dead", etc.A tad slow in places, the intelligent humour and earnestness of the characters more than makes up for any shortcomings. This movie makes no pretense to being anything other than fun.Nice to see Billy Zane in something other than a dramatic role, with luck we'll see more comedic acting from Zane in the future as he seemed to have a great deal of fun with this role.Go 'Team Chris'