Nazi zombies - you just can't get better movie villians. In these days of left-wing, PC hand-wringing about TV/movie/game violence it seems that it's still totally justifiable to slaughter Nazis. I mean, zombies maybe bad on their own, but sometimes you can even have a twinge of sympathy for them - after all, it's not their fault! But Nazi-zombies, well you can slaughter them til the cows come home and nobody will complain.

The Outpost is yet another 'penny dreadful' based on the 'Doom' concept, with evil Nazi scientists - or variations thereof -  creating something nasty in a bunker. This idea has already had a couple of outings with such forgettable movies as 'The Bunker' and (made for TV) 'SS Doomtrooper', but to be honest these were...er...well, the word 'crap' is the one word that seems most fitting!

Reading the bumph on the back of the box of 'Outpost' didn't fill me with any kind of optomism that this movie would be better than the rest. And if I am honest, it was only the fact that Blockbuster was out of everything else I wanted to see that I rented this title.

However...This attempt at the format did seem to have one thing going for it, and that was that the main character is played by Ray Stevenson, who played the wonderfully lovable violent rogue Titus Pullo in the series 'Rome'. The rest of the cast were - to be frank - nobodys.

Sometimes, just sometimes, budget movies come up with a very nice concept but then f*** it up with very bad execution. I'm afraid 'Outpost' seemed to think that this truism was something to aim for rather than an pitfall to avoid. They particularly seemed keen on regurgitating that fine old tradition of budget flicks, the stock character, and filled out the cast with a collections of stereotyped characters that wouldn't have been out of place in a - bad - comic book.

" See, the bright light... it ain't heaven, son.
It's just a muzzle flare."

The 'baddies' themselves were OK, and at least they didn't go overboard or - worse - resort to cheap CGI effects to create the 'zombies'. And there were plenty of 'don't look behind you now' jumpy type moments and nasty gore sequences to tick all the right boxes for this to be a passable attempt at the zombie genre.

But overall 'Outpost' was lack-luster, just doing the bear minimum to justify it's own existance. Missing were any dark humour that elevates a average zombie movie to a good one and although the 'science' of plotline was above average it was let down by inconsistant adherance to it's own mythology...

For example, you couldn't kill these Nazi-zombies - yet you could blow holes in them and they were subject to the laws of physics when in their 'solid form'. They bucked in a believable way when hit by bullets, yet, they walked right through a mine field without so much as batting an eyelid!

Inconsistancies like this actually do matter to fans of this horror genre - they don't mind far-fetched storylines, but for goddness sake keep it consistant!

All in all, 'Outpost' was a filler, and it did keep me and the missus watching to the end and so did it's job. But, perhaps most sadly, even Ray Stevenson couldn't raise the quality of this production - perhaps because the wit and black humour of Titus Pullo was missing, and this was something this movie badly needed.

Score: 6/10

Useful links:

> 'Outpost' (2008) IMDB entry
> Ray Stevenson IMDB entry
> 'SS Doomtrooper' (2006) IMDB entry
> 'The Bunker' (2001) IMDB entry