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Sending Zeke to Hell was all Irma had.
Some of my favourite moments of my late high school/early college years were spent in the basement of my friend Bob, exploring the rich legacy of B-movies at our local video club like two young and horny Indiana Jones with nowhere else to go. This is the closest I've ever been to drive-in/exploitation culture, a phenomenon that died down around the time I was born. It's been extremely difficult ever since to find works that could replicate the same energy, the same earnest desire to sell you the insane and unhealthy ideas. Ed Kurtz' novella DEAD TRASH is more of a polite love letter to B-movies than a bona fide revival of the movement's philosophy, but it's accuracy and its untamed originality had the effect of a charleyhorse on my nostalgia muscle.
Irma and Arkansas are baaaaaddd girls. They were locked up in the pen for crimes they totally committed, and became slaves to a perverted female warden with serious control issues. When the plague that's been decimating the world reaches inside the prison walls, Irma and Arkansas take the opportunity to break out, only to find a world that left them behind populated by soulless flesh eaters. With nowhere to go and the world ablaze, Irma is holding on to an idea that keeps her sane: that her ex-boyfriend, the one she shot and got condemned for, would still be alive and still be an asshole. So Arkansas and her embark on a journey that'll lead them literally through hell (or almost).
Writing exploitation/pulp material nowadays is surfing a fine line. It's easy to tip over and fall into crude parody. There were sevral moments where DEAD TRASH could've taken the wrong turn and become a soulless copy or a deformed reflection of good ol' pulp, but Ed Kurtz managed to keep his balance and takes all the right decisions at th right tim. What kept the novella together, fresh and fun, was the zombies overarching plot. The title: ''a zombie exploitation quadruple feature'' announces the concept of DEAD THRASH which is to walk us through a series of B-movies tableaus: women in prison, zombies, blaxploitation and Kung Fu. While they have their own segments, zombies are the common denominator that ties the four parts of DEAD TRASH together. Zombie blaxploitation? You got it. Zombie Kung Fu? Got that right.
''So this is it, huh? This is the end of the world.''
''Looks like it.''
Putting zombies on classic exploitation tropes is as great as it sounds, at least in the hands of Ed Kurtz, who knows what he's doing. I have to confess that I liked the Kung Fu segment a little less. I undrstand that it's the martial arts stickler in me speaking and that there are probably several Kung Fu movies that resemble the last segment of DEAD TRASH, but I thought it was the only time Ed Kurtz' exploitation zen stumbled and that the novella versed into the parodic. It's not critical though and you might not even notice it if you haven't spent years in a sweaty gym, punching faces and twisting limbs. It's still quite the exploit from Ed Kurtz to tie up four radically different tropes in one seamless zombie story.
DEAD TRASH is probably not destined to sell millions of copies. It's a precise kind of person who watched 1970s exploitation movies and I don't think most of them would go out and seek all the exploitation fiction they can find. Nonetheless, if you're in the demographic of people targeted by the genre (like, uh, me), DEAD TRASH is a rather pleasant experience that doesn't tumble into the classic pitfalls contmporary pulp fiction. It's like watching an old, lost B-movie rather than a new production. Ed Kurtz is a talented storyteller, who understands the importance of getting out of the way of his own story, and DEAD TRASH is a smooth, seamless trip into another era, where storytelling was wilder and more unpredictable.
