Nudist Coloney of the Dead may be one of Mark Piros most infamous films, covered multiple times over the last 2 decades by the youtube Commentariat, Its a…BIZARRE work or comedy horror, taking a total dedication to unrelenting silliness and marrying it up to a scathing swipe at religious zealotry. And…I kind of love it for that? At a time when a LOT of the media were taking ‘concerned christian parents’ VERY seriously, this film quite happily mocks them in a way that, on the surface is blunt, idiotic and irritating…But below the surface knows EXACTLY what its trying to do and say.

The premise is simple enough, the film, as mentioned is a Comedy Horror, and a musical to boot! as we open with a judge reckoning on a case where some puritan Christians are arguing that the owners of a local nudist colony are taking up precious land that could be used for pure wholesome activities with there…NAKED SIN!…The Nudists protest and provide meaningful evidence to the contrary, but the Judge rules in favour of the Christians and the camp is forced to close.

But the Nudists have one final plan up their sleeve, they plan a kool aid style cult suicide, and with their final breaths swear unholy vengence on ANY religious zealots that happen to wander onto their land. After which they all die and are promptly buried at the former Nudist site.

Some time passes and a local pastor is preaching to his congregation, promising revelation and spiritual purification to the parents of sex mad, drug addled, EVIL teenagers, by sending them on a Christian retreat in the woods. Several members of the congregation jump at the chance and send their kids off on the retreat, led by two dyed in the wool, unwavering Christian evangelists. The retreat is on the land that was formerlly the nudist colony.

Cue mad running around, THE most catchy earworm musical numbers, DOZENS of fake blood soaked limbs and VERY anti PC language. As religion and personal freedom clash in the most bizarre and over the top ways, likely ever put to screen.

My score for this film would be higher if not for one, frankly tragic and fatal issue with this film. Up front, the script is absolutely delightful, Im a fan of dumb humour when its done right, and the way its done right is to get smart people to write it. See…when a dumb person writes dumb humour, its insufferable. Because Dumb people just write what they THINK dumb humour should be…meaning its often garish, over the top…but most importantly, not funny, its annoying. Smart people see dumb people every day, and learn what makes dumb people funny…they also see dumb ideas and points being taken seriously every day by people often regarded as smart, which gives them the perfect balance of being able to write from the perspective of being able to see why ideas dumb people think are great…are in fact dumb. meaning they can lampoon dumb people, while also stealthily working in complex satirical commentary on present day dumb issues, without feeling like they’re preaching to the audience.

The writers for the early seasons of ‘The Simpsons’ are probably the best example of this, but Piro here has essentially done this with his script, but gone a bit more farcical as a result. At its core the film is an anti zealot, anti ‘moral panic’ film, and for about 75% of the runtime, that intention is soft baked in across the runtime. The folks who’d actually be offended by what this film had to say, would likely have stuck their nose up within the first 5 minutes when an old woman with comedically saggy breasts knocks out half the nudists. They likely would have swanned off before the titles even played.

Which is unfortunate, becuase the films a laugh riot, hitting the audience with dumb humour, smart humour, ultra catchy musical numbers and some decent subtext to chew over…especially in the year that is 2025. By the final 20 minutes of the film, we’ve shifted from a subtle but continuous jabbing, to just a flat out admission of the films intentions…with 5 minutes of that runtime being filled with a muscial number called ‘Kill All the Zealots’ Which…is kind of wonderful really.

The pacings absolutely breakneck, we career through 90(ish) minutes of a movie right here being unrelentingly bashed over the head with every type of comedy going, I dont think theres a 2 minute window in this whole movie where it isnt trying to do SOMETHING to make you laugh, and much like Piros previous films, there really is something for everyone.

The act structuring is a little bit on the sloppy side, this is, at the end of the day, still just ‘some folks running around in the woods’ for the most part. The first act is probably the most stable of the 3, it at least sets the premise up and gets things rolling. But the other 2 acts are kind of melted into each other and theres no clear shift up, or down, between the middle and final acts…mainly because its SO high energy, it would be stupid to ramp down…but they cant really ramp UP any higher than they are.

The characters are all farcical pastiches of horror archtypes, the ‘villains’ of the piece are equally bizarre and over the top. it can be a tad overwhelming at times. But in the right headspace all these characters are a hoot!

But! the praise does kind of have to end there, because of the aforementioned ‘tragic’ faults that this film has.

The first, simply put, is unfortunately the film dabbles inconsistently in racist language and stereotypes. Theres literally a character in this film called ‘Juan Tu’ who is supposed to be a half mexican, half japanese immigrant. he spends the entire runtime of the movie speaking in a racist asian accent, he’s portrayed doing stereotypical racist things like eating a hotdog with Chopsticks and just…knowing kung fu. and more aggregiously, he’s the butt of multiple hard slurs across the runtime, which were frankly winceworthy. I believe theres also some gay and other racial slurs used in the film too…which is a real shame and did pull the joy out of it a bit.

But the other tragic thing, that really hits this film hard is the technical issues with the production. According to the DVD release, large chunks (i’d say as much as 55-75% of the movie) were hit with technical issues that made the footage largely unwatchable, this ranges from shots being underlit to the point of darkness, crew members appearing in shots, the wrong frame rates being used…basically anything and everything you could think COULD go wrong while filming a movie DID seem to go wrong here. For the original release, it couldnt really be corrected. So folks just had to…accept that over half their movie was basically unwatchable.

But for the DVD release. Mark Piro decided to try and fix it. and the way he’s tried to do that is by splicing out the problematic film scenes and recreating them with behind the scenes footage shot on video tape when the ACTUAL takes were being done. In any other movie, this would have made the film as unwatchable, if not MORE unwatchable than just leaving in the problematic footage. Here, its a bit more accepted/understandable…But it still renders the film a bizarre viewing experience.

The VHS footage doesnt look anything like the film footage, its in a different aspect ratio to the film footage, Piro here has decided to crop the film footage into widescreen, despite it being pretty close to 4:3 orignally…but NOT to crop ALL the VHS footage into widescreen, meaning the film bounces around in different aspect ratios for the full runtime. sometimes on a cut by cut basis within a sequence.

The film footage appears to have been sourced from an original VHS copy of ‘Nudist colony of the dead’ and Piro appears to have had a go at re-grading it, leading to huge sections of crushed blacks, weird artifacting and heavy overcontrasting. and the behind the scenes replacement footage varies wildly in quality, from some replacements looking and feeling totally at home, with no sense of anything being amiss. To moments where its clear the camera was set up next to the crew, and Piro has had to heavily crop and zoom into the footage to remove people out of the frame.

This presentation is a real dogs dinner of a production, but Piro considers this the ‘Directors cut’ and in a message to the viewer at the start of the film, it notes that he considers this ‘the way the film should be seen.’ …So I dont know, I reckon with the revelations in modern digital editing, if the original film elements of this movie still exist, a proper restoration could probably be feasable with much less interference…As it stands, its incredibly distracting in my opinion as it is, and…while the films style lends itself to this weird bouncing around in the edit. I think i’d much prefer to see this get a 2k scan, some decent colour correction and an attempt to save the damaged footage if im honest.

Other than that the performances are goofy, over the top, cheesy, corny, the works. its a manic production and not one person fails the assingment. Couple that with a HELL of a cheap tinny synth soundtrack, with musical numbers that WILL get stuck in your head TILL YOU DIE. And I have to say I have a real soft spot for ‘Nudist Colony of the dead’ My hope is that at some point a proper restoration of this can be done. Because I think restoring it back to its original aspect ratio, in HD, and with the tools to attempt a proper grade on it. I could easily see this become my favourite Mark Piro film.

Definitely recommended, ESPECIALLY if you like Smart/dumb humour. Its been too long since I last watched this one…and I wont make that mistake again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/nudist-colony-of-the-dead/1/