Shadow: Dead Riot (2006)

A serial killer/voodoo practitioner is executed in jail. But something happens and he explodes instead. His blood flows through prison and turns the inmates into zombies. The warden orders all shot and they bury them in the yard.Years later the jail is now for females only. Some supposedly tough chick called Solitaire is incarcerated. She doesn't want to deal with anyone, but trouble finds her nonetheless. We meet the usual jail characters. The nice but clueless warden, her gorgeous enforcer, the baddest inmate of them all, her gang, and her servant (the lovely Erin Brown), a pregnant nice girl, the evil Dr who experiments on the girls by injecting them with someone's mysterious and powerful blood.Things quickly turn violent between Solitaire and the bad muscular girl. But Solitaire also starts having visions about the voodoo guy. And whenever blood flows, the earth will suck it up, and people too end up disappearing. The pregnant girl gives birth to some monster baby. And voodoo guy is resurrected together with his army of zombies. That will lead to the eventual confrontation between Solitaire and voodoo guy.Shadow: Dead Riot was somewhat of a revelation. Trailers of it looked quite awful, but it's a surprisingly good movie. It's not perfect or even good all around. In fact it's like two movies made by two different sets of people. One movies looks good, is well-acted, well-lit. The other looks cheap, is poorly acted, and boring.When this movie is good, it's very good, it has a bit of the 70s look and feel to it and music by Vernon Reid. The action and fight scenes are outstanding, performances are good, the zombie aspect is also well done with lots of attention to detail, stunts are superb and there's some gore and a bit of nudity.The problems though include the main character and the lead actress, poor acting by some actors, the cheap CGI effects, the lighting in some sets, the live sound with pronounced echo.Usually movies that combine different genres altogether don't work at all. But Shadow does. It's a women-in-prison movie with lots of fights inspired by the precision of martial arts, with zombies, and the supernatural. All of these aspects work very well. And I'm more than willing to overlook the negative aspects, after all this isn't a A-level or even B-movie. It's a C+ movie that dared to be different. I wish there had been more emphasis on the women-in-prison theme, more nudity, more gore, more of Andrea Langi, Ruby Larocca and Erin Brown.Shadow was produced by the same team that produced Flesh for the Beast, another excellent C level horror movie that I'm very fond of and that is overall more consistent than Shadow. Here they had to compromise a bit more but they also took more chances and tried to make an ambitious movie with few resources.If you give Shadow a fair chance you won't be disappointed.

The Women in Prison genre was once saturated by the sleazy films of the likes of Jess Franco and Joe D'Amato; but has all but died out since then and all we are left is the residue; which includes Shadow: Dead Riot. The film is something of a coming together of the aforementioned Women in Prison genre and the zombie genre; although by only giving fleeting glimpses of both, it fails to really nail down either one, and what we are left is a rather silly mess; although it is a sporadically entertaining mess. The film begins with execution of a prison inmate who goes by the name of Shadow. Shadow is apparently a mass murderer with voodoo powers (and just to give you an idea of the overall quality of the film; he's played by Tony Todd in a ridiculous wig!). Anyway, Shadow is killed and his death triggers some sort of curse on the prison. Years later; the prison has become a woman's prison and is welcoming a new arrival in the form of a chick called Solitaire. Solitaire apparently has some link with Shadow and her arrival triggers his second coming...The film is obviously very low rent and anyone going into it is liable to know that; so it would be a bit pointless to say that the acting is atrociously wooden and ridiculous. My main reason for seeing this film was undoubtedly the presence of soft porn star Misty Mundae. She's bad in this film even by her own low acting standards; and her role is made even more disappointing by the fact that she's not in it for long. The only other name on the cast list likely to be recognised by horror fans belongs to the aforementioned Tony Todd...who picks up his pay cheque. The plot is always silly and ridiculous; but there are a couple of good ideas in there that keep things interesting. There are plenty of coincidences and plot holes too...so, as is often the case with films like this, it's best to turn your brain off before the film starts. The central plot involving the new prison inmates is actually one of the less interesting parts of the film, however, which brings it down. All in all, this is a decent way to kill ninety minutes and while film critics won't be impressed; if you like low budget trash, you might like this.

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."

This movie incorporated at least 3 genres:women's prison,oriental action, and ghoulish horror. In that respect, it was an adventurous 90 minutes! While Tony was his usual imposing self, the guy playing Dr. Swann struck some realistic chords. He let his motivation for power and sex come through slowly and built up to the final climax.Given the ambitious nature of the film, the cast did the best job they could with minimal dialogue and tough action sequences. Speaking of the action, it was done in a way familiar to those who know Asian action films -- fast, violent, and well interspersed throughout the film. Carla Green looked great in a demanding physical role and I'd love to see more of her! As in many of these kinds of movies, maybe they tried to please too many people, but I'd love to see a sequel