When I first saw a blu-ray listing for 1993’s The Killing Box, I was more than a bit confused. It isn’t that weird nowadays to have a movie where, during the civil war, both sides find themselves facing a common enemy of undead confederate soldiers.
What did surprise me is the cast for this. Really, this material and budget is worthy of a cast of nobodies. Instead, there’s Corbin Bernsen, Ray Wise, Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams (who co-starred with Thornton in One False Move) and David Arquette. Matt LeBlanc is in this movie somewhere but, for the life of me, I couldn’t find him anywhere on the screen at any point. Most baffling is Martin Sheen, largely handling narration, supposedly as Adrian Pasdar recalling the war from the perspective of several years later. What is strange about that is Sheen sounds nothing like Pasdar. That, and Sheen also appears in the film as a different character.
I’m not sure I completely followed the nature of the zombies or the rules by which they are bound. One aspect of them which is odd is they can talk, and it isn’t just single words like “BRAINS!” Nope, these are quite yakky. At least one is rapey, which is disturbing. They also seem to have all the memories from before they were turned, and I found that peculiar. They kill many people outright, but they also “recruit” many new members into their army of the undead.
Many of these zombie soldiers were from a Confederate unit commanded by Bernsen. When we first see him, he is incarcerated in a Union prison. He is temporarily released, but only to assist Pasdar in hunting down Bernsen’s old regiment, which is rightly suspected of massacring people and crucifying them upside down on X’s.
Bernsen is a complete asshole for the roughly the first third of the movie, and I found his antics tiring. His character becomes more interesting around the same time the film improves somewhat. He is summoned by one of his former reports to a cave, where it is explained to him these zombies are possessed by an ancient, African demon spirit. These ghouls cannot cross running water. It is somehow also later accepted as common knowledge they can be hurt by silver objects, though I never quite figured out how the good guys know this. Also, I was confused by one character who is turned, then set on fire. Apparently, the fire is going to kill him, though this is only time one of these fiends is dispatched in this manner. Also, he regains his humanity suddenly and asks in a lucid manner not to be placed on the ground after his pending demise.
This picture has a curiously flat look to it, similar to direct-to-video fare of the time. An uneven tone also does not do it any favors. It moves in odd stops and starts that left me feeling like I was riding in a car where the driver too aggressively works the gas and brakes. If there is one element of the production I found intriguing, it is an oscillating tone running under the soundtrack at times, establishing a feeling of unease.
I found little to recommend in The Killing Box. This film was marketed under at least four different titles, and I suspect there were different edits made to some of those versions. What I watched felt like a patchwork piece composed of parts of films from different directors, editors and writers. Then again, I’m not sure what could have lived up to that title, which at first had me thinking this would be a film about a woman who takes the lives of others with her crotch.
Dir: George Hickenlooper
Starring Cobin Bernsen, Adrian Pasdar, Ray Wise, Cynda Williams
Watched on Scorpion Films blu-ray