There are a lot of places I would like to have been in, over the course of history—the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963, Roswell, New Mexico on July 6, 1947, Backstage at the Academy Awards when Jack Palance announced Marisa Tomei as best supporting actress for MY COUSIN VINNY and in whatever conference room, or bar, or deli the powers that be decided that not one, but two, long overdue and wholly unnecessary sequels to the RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD franchise were in order.

That’s right, they’re back for more brains, and baby, it’s way worse than last time. Director Ellory Elkayem along with screenwriters William Butler & Aaron Strongoni are bringing us one more RotLD film. Shot simultaneously with NECROPOLIS, RAVE TO THE GRAVE reunites all the cast members that weren’t killed off in the last film. However, for the life of me, I can’t determine why.

You see…the four principal actors who return, Aimee-Lynn Chadwick (Becky), Cory Hardrict (Cody), John Keefe (Julian) and Peter Coyote (Needs a better agent) have nothing to do with the events of the last film. In fact, other than their names and Coyote’s occupation, they have no connection to the cast of NECROPOLIS at all. It’s as if RAVE TO THE GRAVE exists as a “what if” scenario. What if, fate destined these four individuals to the same horrific set of circumstances in an alternate dimension? What if, no matter how differently your life could have turned out, the ending was always the same? What if, I decided to watch PENNY DREADFUL instead of a film, which is just plain dreadful? All truly esoteric questions, but sadly none are probed on screen.

This time around, Cody, Becky and Julian are in college. Cody and Julian are pretty tight but Becky is just sort of on the outside of the circle. Cody has a hot girlfriend named Jenny (Jenny Mollen) who’s brother Jeremy (Cain Manoli) is a hype DJ. After Cody’s uncle Charles (Coyote) is killed while selling a vat of stolen Trioxin to some Russian mob-types, Cody discovers a hidden stash of the barrels in the attic. This is where the film skips right past stupid and dives directly into the deep end of obscenely retarded.

What do the buddies do with the secret government canisters of gooey green slime? Well, they take a taste of course! What? Yeah, you got it! They just dip their finger in and lick it up. Stoked by the hallucinogenic effects the goop lets loose in their cortex, Cody and Jeremy decided to compound the liquid into capsule form and sell it off at their next rave as “even better than ecstasy”. And they call it “Z”. At twenty bucks a pill the guys are making a killing, until they discover that the drug eventually turns their good-time-gang into a mass of blood thirsty zombies with only one thing on their mind…yours.

I just can’t even get it through my thick skull, what would possess someone to make a film this idiotic. I understand, the need to make KINGPIN or DUMB AND DUMBERER or even ERAGON, but I still can’t fathom who thought this was a good idea. They shot these two films in Romania, what I’m thinking is, the cast was trapped and chained to the set. The filmmakers had an extra five grand—and in the Eastern European Bloc that was like the equivalent of ten million bucks. They didn’t need any sets, just a building, an abandoned gladiatorial coliseum, some spray-paint, a few techno records and bam…a feature film’s in the can. Even the gore effects are like leftovers from the first film. This isn’t lackadaisical filmmaking; it’s filmmaking from people who obviously don’t even care enough to be lazy.

The last time around, NECROPOLIS at least tried to pay homage to the original films. It has a few bits of humor tossed in and the body count was amped way up. This time, the zombies have a smorgasbord of doped up teens to dine on but the gore is weak and uninspired. The only thing that Elkayem and his crew added more of was boobs. In fact, the nudity on display in RAVE TO THE GRAVE is gratuitous almost to the point of distraction, and that’s saying a lot.

You know, Elkayem had a pretty good career going. His short film LARGER THAN LIFE was a great big-bug movie, he followed it up with THE NEST—another bug movie, and then the Warner Brothers motion picture EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS—an even better big-bug movie. Starting to see a pattern here? Obviously Elkayem has moved too far out of his comfort zone. Someone get this man some cockroaches and a camera quick before we have to endure any more Zombie films!

After the minor fiasco that was NECROPOLIS, I wanted to like RAVE TO THE GRAVE. I knew better than to expect much, but I still expected something. What I got was far worse than I could have ever imagined. Frankly, It’s gonna take a hell of a lot of Trioxin for this to not be the final nail in the coffin of the RotLD film series. In fact, at this point, I think the saga is better off left for dead.