NIGHT OF THE LIVING DORKS

D. Matthias Dinter :: GERMANY 2004 :: 35mm :: 89 min
Tino Mewes, Thomas Schmieder, Manuel Cortéz, Collien Fernandes, Nadine Germann, Hendrik Borgmann

It’s not easy being a misfit at Fredrich Nietzsche High School. You’d think life would only be harsher if one were dead and somehow still in school. As three "nerds" discover, in many ways, it’s a hell of a better time! Our story begins "three months ago" out in Haiti, when a family is attacked by a vicious zombie that they efficiently burn to a crisp in abject frustration.

Through the wonders of a global economy, the ghoul’s ashes end up on an eBay-like auction site and find their way into the hands of German teenagers, who use them for a hopeless love spell. After the ritual, a group of the teens drive off into the night, smoke a ton of hash and end up in a car crash. They wake up, not in a hospital but… well, okay, they’re in a hospital—a hospital morgue!

Two have fractured skulls and one has a windshield wiper wedged through his heart, but they’ve never felt better. Not knowing what else to do, they continue to go to school. Now with superhuman strength and a total insensitivity to pain, they can stand up to the school’s worst bullies. They can even play football. Perhaps most exciting, with no livers to worry about, they can get trashed around the clock! Their social status becomes as cool as their slowly decomposing bodies. Of course, suppressed urges are growing increasingly difficult to control and appendages are starting to fall off, but… who needs stitches when you’ve got a staple gun?

If John Hughes made raunchier, Porky’s-style teen comedies in his ’80s heyday and had a distinctly Germanic sense of comedy… Writer/director Matthias Dinter, a self-admitted member of the un-cool in his own school years, has brought the world an unusual high school comedy that proudly stands its ground with equal helpings of crassness and sweetness. It’s a surprisingly endearing affair, with a starry-eyed love story at its centre, in the midst of some of the funniest doper gags in ages and nasty bodily humour that would make the American Pie people drop.

Complete with a German pop-punk soundtrack, this film is a ton of fun, and not remotely the Shaun of the Dead cash-in you might suspect upon initially hearing its title. It’s also weirdly naïve, which adds considerably to the film’s goofball charm. An audience favourite wherever its been shown, Night of the Living Dorks is a whacked-out, feel-good flick that totally works.

—Mitch Davis Fantasia Festival