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[Blu-ray Review] ‘The Zero Boys’ Are My Hero Boys
Nico Mastorakis’ The Zero Boys checks a lot of boxes in terms of what I’m looking for in an awesomely fun movies. This 1986 flick is part action, part horror and all B-movie glory. I love it, it’s great and you should watch it. Here’s why.
The Zero Boys opens in what appears to be the middle of a war zone. Our heroes are a 3-man team consisting of Steve (Daniel Hirsch), Larry (Tom Shell), and Rip (Jared Moses). Our bad guys are led by Casey (John Michaels) and we know he’s bad because he’s wearing a red Nazi arm band. The battle comes to an end when Casey takes a bullet to the head and we realize this has been a paintball fight the whole time. The camera pulls out to reveal a crowd cheering on what we then learn is a paintball tournament. Our good guys are a team known as The Zero Boys and they just won.
Despite this scene turning out to be just a paintball fight, it’s a wonderful 80’s action scene and the perfect way to start a movie. We don’t know it’s a paintball fight at first, so the stakes come off as quite high and we’re dead center in the middle of the action. The reveal that it’s a paintball tournament could have killed it since we then know this isn’t life or death, but the payoff of Casey’s defeat is so amazing that it didn’t even matter to me. All movies should start like The Zero Boys.
At the end of the battle, we learn that Casey put his girlfriend, Jamie (Kelli Maroney), on the line in a bet with Steve. Since The Zero Boys defeated Casey’s team Casey has to declare The Zero Boys are the best and Jamie has to spend a weekend with Steve. Neither Casey or Steve actually expects Jamie to go through with it but once Jamie learns of the bet she’s so upset that she decides that out of spite she will spend the weekend with Steve, who is going out to the woods for the weekend for paintball practice with The Zero Boys. Joining Jamie and The Zero Boys on this trip are Sue (Nicole Rio) and Trish (Crystal Carson).
Once in the woods the gang is just hanging out when they hear the screams of a woman off in the distance. After investigating they notice a girl running through the woods but are unable to locate her before she disappears. During their search they come across a house located in the middle of the woods. They enter the house and find a note on the refrigerator indicating that whoever lives there is currently away, so the group decides to make themselves at home and camp up inside the house.
After the power goes out in the house, Larry and Rip head out to find the breaker box and get the electric back up and running. While fiddling with the box Larry and Rip see a man with a knife but he quickly disappears. Larry and Rip head back to the house and get Steve and the three head out to make sure the house is secure. While doing so they come across a large shed that looks to be some sort of makeshift torture chamber. In the shed there’s a television that suddenly turns on and begins to play a video of someone being tortured in what appears to be that very shed. Soon The Zero Boys realize they’re being stalked by a family of maniac killers. Fortunately The Zero Boys are prepared for such a situation and are loaded with real weaponry to take on any type of assault.
From this point forward The Zero Boys turns into a slasher where the teens are replaced with a group of paintball warriors trained in wilderness survival. And it’s all pretty fantastic.
The Zero Boys isn’t super gory or graphic, but the gore that is there is quite effective. Especially the stuff we see on the TV in the torture chamber. The quality of what we see on the TV is very lo-fi, as you would expect given the film was done in the 80’s. This look gives it such a rawness that just makes you feel filthy. It’s very impressive because you don’t see much, but it all works so well.
Aside from the film just being awesome, low-budget fun, The Zero Boys is actually a very important movie in some ways. The movie has a wonderful army-influenced, synth heavy score courtesy of a young Hans Zimmer. It’s one of Zimmer’s first-ever feature film scores and he composed it with his former partner, the late Stanley Myers. The main theme song is particularly impressive. Much like the movie, the score does have a very low-budget feel to it, but in the best way possible. It sort of reminds me of something you’d hear in a war game like Desert Storm or something similar on NES.
Joe Estevez also has a small role as one of the killers. Seeing Estevez pop up is always welcomed as far as I’m concerned.
Director of photography Steven Shaw deserves a lot of praise for The Zero Boys. While the film is definitely low budget, it is beautifully shot and features some camerawork that I would go as far as to say is breathtaking at times. I’m fairly certain the film was shot handheld or at least mostly handheld, but it’s done with such style and makes great use of some interesting locations.
The Zero Boys is now out on Blu-ray and it’s another loaded release from Arrow Video:
Special Features:
•Brand new 2K restoration of the film, approved by writer-director Nico Mastorakis
•High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
•Original Stereo audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)
•Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
•Audio Commentary with star Kelli Maroney, moderated by Shock Till You Drop’s Chris Alexander
•Nico Mastorakis on… Nico Mastorakis – brand new interview with Mastorakis on the making of The Zero Boys
•Brand new interview with star Kelli Maroney
•Brand new interview with star Nicole Rio
•Original Theatrical Trailer
•Stills Gallery
•Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
•Fully-illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by critic James Oliver
I’ve said a number of times that I don’t consider myself an expert when it comes to discussing picture quality on Blu-ray and DVD releases. If something looks aggressively bad I can spot it and if something looks extremely good I can pick up on that as well. It’s the middle stuff that blends in for me. I can happily say that The Zero Boys has pristine picture quality thanks to the new 2k restoration that comes director-approved. You can tell there were a few imperfections with the print making for a few scratches here and there, but by and large this is a gorgeous Blu-ray that does a masterful job highlighting the terrific camerawork of Shaw.
I haven’t listened to the audio commentary with Maroney and Chris Alexander yet, but I’ve made my way through the other special features and they are really terrific. There’s new interviews with Maroney and Rio that are great, but the best special feature is far and away an interview in which Mastorakis interviews himself. This is edited together so perfectly and does a great job making it look like Nico Mastorakis is actually interviewing himself. And Nico sort of gets in character, like he plays an interviewer and asks dumb reporter like questions, while also sort of playing it up like a snobby director at times. In between the funny bits, Mastorakis does give a lot of interesting information and insight into the making of The Zero Boys. One of his stories is about Frank Darabont who worked on the crew. Obviously Darabont has gone on to be extremely successful but at this point he was just getting start. Nico talks about how Darabont was really eager to help and he would just send him off to sweep floors and do things of that nature. Absolutely a must-watch.
Is The Zero Boys a perfect film? Not at all. It’s awesome and a ton of fun, but it has it’s flaws, most notably a middle section that slows down a bit and has some clunky pacing. But the film has an opening that hooks you and once you get to the slasher/survival element it’s very tense and keeps you on the edge of your seat. And now there’s an awesome Blu-ray available. Definitely one for the collection.
The Zero Boys is available on Blu-ray now from Arrow Video.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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