No Surrender Cinema: Dead 7
Backstreet’s back to battle the undead in this month’s No Surrender Cinema! When a zombie outbreak overwhelms the world and causes survivors to embrace the ways of the Old West, it’s up to a pack of pop music powerhouses to protect it! Can members of the Backstreet Boys, ‘NSYNC, 98 Degrees, and O-Town defeat the larger than life threat of Apocalypta and her undead army? Will we have to say “Bye Bye Bye” to any of them along the way? Find out as we do the deep dive on Dead 7!
Written by Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter (who also stars), Dead 7 begins by letting us know that the world has gone to hell. Some type of epidemic zombified a good portion of the population, and everything came crashing down. Most modern amenities are gone, cold hard cash has been replaced by teeth, and everything and everyone seems slightly grimy. As if zombies aren’t enough, there’s a wacky woman named Apocalypta (Debra Wilson) who speaks in tongues and looks like the Bat Boy from Weekly World News. Apocalypta’s big plan is to take these Copperheads (the term used for the undead throughout the film) and enslave them, training them to do her bidding. Her human henchmen Johnny Vermillion (AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys) and Stamper (Jacob Underwood from O-Town) are on board with having the dead do their bidding, and it’s not long before they’re leading a crew of Copperheads into Harper’s Junction.
Harper’s Junction just so happens to be home to Billy (Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees), and while he’s working on his motorcycle and getting eye-banged by a few local girls, shit hits the fan. Billy manages to dispatch of a bunch of Copperheads, saving some local girls in the process, but nearly finds himself eaten until he’s spared by his girlfriend Daisy Jane (Carrie Keegan). With the town overrrun, Billy and Daisy capture Vermillion and flee to Desert Springs, where he’s thrown in jail. It turns out that Mayor Shelby (Chris Kirkpatrick of ‘NSYNC fame) lost an eye during an encounter with Apocalypta, and Vermillion is all to happy to tease him about his grudge. It’s not long before Stamper shows up to break Johnny out of jail, and Shelby and Sherriff Cooper (Grammy Award winner Jon Secada) decide to put together a team to take out Apocalypta once and for all.
This is where the formation of the Magnificent Dead 7 comes to fruition. Billy and Daisy are on board, and they’re soon joined by town drunk Whiskey Joe (Joey Fatone from ‘NSYNC), his buddy Vaquero (Howie Dorough of the Backstreet Boys), and the sword wielding warrior known as Komodo (Erik Michael Estrada of O-Town). The group seem to agree that they all need additional help, but those who would be best for the job are nowhere to be found. See, Billy’s brother Jack (Carter) is off doing his own thing, and Komodo mentions that there’s a warrior woman named Sirene that’s got a knack for killing Copperheads, but they won’t find her…she’ll find them. The group soon loses Cooper as an ally after Vermillion turns his foster son into a Copperhead (I’m not sure what kid would want to go near a fully strapped, tattooed man in facepaint…unless they were at an Insane Clown Posse concert), and Cooper is turned by him. The ensuing battle in the local saloon sees Jack finally arrive to lend a hand, and our motley crew are the only ones left standing. Mayor Shelby tells the group that he’ll give them anything they want if they go off and kill Apocalypta and the Copperhead army, so our heroes set out to shoot and slice anything undead that stands in their path.
The first part of the mission sends our heroes into the mines to recoup some ammo that Jack says was left there, and it’s not long before they’re in combat with Copperheads. The six are swarmed, but Jack’s close call is put to an end by Sirene (Nick Carter’s wife, Lauren Kitt-Carter). Stamper, having been sent by Apocalypta to spy on our heroes, meets his maker during the battle as well, and the now complete Dead 7 continue on their way, with Sirene taking the lead. Besides being a mysterious warrior queen, she also reveals the history behind the Copperheads and how her own grandfather was the first one to turn. The next morning the group splits up again, with Joe, Vaquero, and Komodo finding a nearby brothel while Daisy, Billy, Jack, and Sirene make their way up the mountain to kill Apocalypta. No sooner can you say “it’s a trap” then Billy has been taken captive by Vermillion and the brothel is a front for turning customers into Copperheads. Vaquero gets duped into being bit, and begs his best buddy Whiskey to put him out of his misery. Looks like he won’t be coming on any reunion tours.
Things don’t get any better for our heroes, as Apocalypta sends her Copperhead army out to destroy Desert Springs while our heroes are indisposed, and Daisy is stabbed by Vermillion right in front of Billy, forcing her to turn and having to be shot by Jack. That’s two down in a short amount of time, and our heroes still have to travel through the mines and the mountain, reunite with the others, and kill Apocalypta to complete the mission. As you may expect, more casualties are coming, and the final act of Dead 7 features a cornucopia of gore as good battles evil and more of the characters we’ve come to know and love in the last 90 minutes take their final bow.
This probably won’t surprise many of you, but Dead 7 was an Asylum production (and for those who don’t know, The Asylum is the studio responsible for the cinematic greatness known as the Sharknado series) and premiered back in 2016 on SyFy. I wish I could tell you I was watching this on premiere night, but I didn’t discover the movie until recently when I came across it during one of my famous Dollar Tree movie buying binges. It’s no secret that I have an affinity for pop music of the past, and the boy band era was where some of my favorite songs of that type come from. Little did I know that when I saw these acts on stage (and I’ve seen all four of the top billed bands in Dead 7; I even met the members of O-Town!) that I’d one day watch them as a zombie fighting supergroup. The Asylum reminds me of the early days of Troma, where their films are charming oddities, and Dead 7 is easily in the upper echelon of Asylum releases that I’ve seen. It probably helped that Nick Carter was the creative force behind what we saw here on film, so he and his friends threw a little extra effort into it. Everyone looked like they were having a good time; I’d say that McLean as the giggling creep Vermillion and Fatone’s bumbling badass Whiskey Joe were the standouts. Both of them stole whatever scene they were in, even if McLean drifted a little too far into channeling The Joker for the role. There are also cameos from plenty of other pop stars like Art Alexakis from Everclear and even “Rico Suave” singer Gerardo! We even get an added bonus in the form of a song, “In The End”, sung by all of the featured players. You mean I just watched an hour and a half of bodies being torn apart, and now I get a catchy pop tune to cap it off? That was the cherry on top of this bloody zombie sundae.
Dead 7 is well worth your time, and well worth the dollar it will cost you if you come across it at your local Dollar Tree store. If you’re not into physical media you’re still in luck, because you can watch it with Amazon Prime right now. There’s even an international Blu Ray release for those of you reading this from outside of the US! It’s not the scariest or the goriest zombie film you’re gonna see, but it’s definitely the only one where a guy with a multi platinum selling album blows a zombie’s head off. Dead 7 might not go down in history as a #1 smash hit, but it’s a fun flick that will get more than a few encores from me as the years go on.
