Let us thank Joris for sending in this review all the way from the Netherlands, also playing at FanTasia Festival 2005!

Matthias Dinter, who directed “Night of the Living Dorks” is mostly known in Germany for his apres ski movie “Feuer, Eis und Dosenbier” which is like a gross out comedy in the swiss alps. Night of the Living Dorks also is a gross out comedy but this one has the Nietzsche Gymnasium as a backdrop for all the teen stupidity and it also borrows some ellements from the horror genre which is the reason why you find a review for this movie on these pages.

Our main characters; Phillip, Konrad and Wurst try to raise the dead from their grave together with some goth kids who eventually want to bring back Kurt Cobain from the grave so he can play for them in the garage. Of course none of this happens but they find out some of the voodoo for dummies magic must have worked when they hit a tree with their Volkswagen bus on their way home and awake in the morgue, as teenage zombies. The boys don’t worry a bit about their deaths and their decomposing bodies but go out having fun instead, it becomes American Pie with three undead teens.

All teenage trouble is being shown along with all the jokes that come in that same package. Our teenage zombie dorks all have secret love interests who seem to be more interested in them when they're dead. They are all being pushed around by a couple of jocks who will, in their turn, be pushed around by the zombie dorks- like it always happens in these kind of movies.

The teenage zombie dorks don’t look much like zombies, they look like their having a terrible hang over and one of them (Phillip) starts losing some essential body parts. The nicest most dorky of the trio “Konrad” develops a craving for human flesh while “Wurst” develops a strong taste for sex and alcohol.

This movie totally plays out like any American comedy made back in the eighties when those movies didn’t try to teach us morals but were all about partying and getting drunk/laid. We are constantly reminded of the fact that this is a German made movie because of the language but that is about the only German aspect of the movie together with some native rock music, we are treated to a German rock version of Michal Jackson’s Thriller.

The opening for the movie is the only part where some horror influences can be seen and thus makes for a bad opening for a comedy flick. All the other horror stuff was cut out of there because a German test audience didn’t like it. The ending for “Night of the Living Dorks” was suposed to be a battle between the nerd zombies and the jock zombies and was a true gorefest with heads flying around and enough splatter for those looking for some horror. Matthias Dinter made a tribute to the teen movies from the eighties which is far from creative but was entertaining none the less. In the end “Night of the Living Dorks” turns out to be another teen movie that looks like it could have been made in America twenty years ago.