Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie (2017)

It was the middle of August. I was sitting at my computer. I put up a post for the Sunday “Bad” Movies the day before and was working on the next one. I jumped over to Twitter for a moment and sent out a list of the four movies that I would be covering over the following four weeks. That was it. I went back to writing. Later on, I saw that someone had messaged me. He suggested a movie that I should watch. Here we are.

That person was Andreas Samuelson. I looked up the movie he had suggested for me, Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie. The title alone sounded like something that would fit right into the Sunday “Bad” Movies. It had one ridiculous creature versus another ridiculous creature. I noticed something about it, though. As I was checking out the movie to see how well it would fit into the overall blog, I saw Andreas Samuelson’s name. He was the director of Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie. He was suggesting his own movie for me to watch. I managed to plug it into the schedule sooner than expected, when I bumped a James Bond movie out of the schedule following the pushed back release date of No Time to Die. Now I have come to that movie.

Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie followed Detective Sheridan (Anna Modén) and Detective Reeves (Erik Nilsson) as they investigated a series of grisly murders. They discovered that there were two culprits behind the violence. One was Ken (Hector Lopez), a gay man who had been turned into a zombie. He was killing gay people and turning straight people into gay zombies. The other was Ruth (Anna Walman), a dead housewife who was resurrected by her sister with the help of an alien plant lifeform. She was killing people to punish them for being bad.

The first thing I noticed as I started the movie was how gay it really was. Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie was a full LGBTQ+ movie. Nearly every major character was gay. Many of the jokes poked fun at gay people from a gay perspective. It wasn’t punching down. It was a little love tap at the eccentricities of gay culture, wrapped up in a zombie story. That was completely intended. As he said in an interview with The Lost Creatives, Andreas “wanted to offer a horror-comedy for the LGBTQ audience.” It was caring tribute, rather than a mean-spirited insult.

The other main aspect of Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie was the parody within. The film was meant as a send-up to the exploitation flicks of yesteryear. Andres Samuelson didn’t have a large budget. He had to aim low if he wanted to achieve the entertainment value he desired. A B-movie felt like the perfect fit and infusing it with comedic elements would make it more palatable for audiences. He drew inspiration from people like John Waters and Lloyd Kaufman. Nearly three years later, he had a movie.

Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie had four main parody components that helped build out the entire comedic force that it was. The first came in the titular characters. The gay zombie brought about the gay humour that was already mentioned. Again, it felt like it came from a place of love, rather than a place of superiority. I don’t know if Andreas Samuelson is gay, but he surely has many friends within that community who helped him along the way of making the film. The housewife alien played into the visual stereotypes of a housewife, having fun with people’s ideas of what a housewife would look like.

The next component was the slapstick comedy throughout Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie. Like many parody films, the comedy always went a tad further than reality. One scene that comes to mind is when Ken’s boyfriend left for work and Ken started crying. His tears came out like squirts from a sprinkler. Quick bursts of water shot from his hands rather than tears rolling down his face. It was a visual gag that showcased the heightened world that the characters lived in.

Component number three was the send-up to exploitation movies. Andreas Samuelson made sure that his movie gender swapped the typical exploitation dynamic, allowing women to become the heroes and the men to become the objectified characters. The main detective was a woman. That checked off the heroic part of that dynamic. Then came the sexualization of the men. There was the shirtless viking superhero guy who came in for one scene. There was the one male character who wanted no more than sexual gratification from pretty much any man he met. And this discussion couldn’t be complete without mentioning the scene where Ken’s boyfriend was seduced by a horny repairman in a blatant parody of bad porn.

That brings us to the last component of the parody, direct references to other work. The way that the repairman came to fix the shower before getting sexual with Ken’s boyfriend was clearly pulling comedy from the porn scenario. There was even a line about whether it was a wrench in his pants or if he was happy to see Ken’s boyfriend. Another direct reference that came up was during a big scene of death at a park. A man and a woman were playing with a frisbee. Another woman joined them. One woman said the other had a nice ass. The other returned the opinion, adding the word “pilgrim” on the end. The housewife alien then showed up and threw the frisbee through the face of one of the women. This was clearly a reference to Hard Ticket to Hawaii and the infamous razorblade frisbee scene.

The only thing that never quite worked in Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie was the story. The comedy clicked for what the movie was going for. The characters and acting style fit into that comedic style. The story, however, never landed in the way it should have. There was no real character arc to what was happening with either of the monstrous villains. Perhaps they weren’t meant to have any depth. The characters weren’t meant to change. The movie was simply meant to be entertainment, horror, and comedy. But it would have been nice to have a little more depth to the characters and their plights to connect better with what was going on.

Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie was a movie intended to be a bad movie. It was meant as a sendup to the grindhouse exploitation flicks of yesteryear with a modern spin. It was meant to blend the sensibilities of the older movies with the modern LGBTQ+ community. Andreas Samuelson didn’t have enough money to make a serious movie and went with a campy, low-budget horror-comedy instead. How well that succeeded would be based on the opinion of each person who watched it. I would say, for the most part, he nailed what he was going for.

I was only made aware of Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie when the director contacted me on Twitter and suggested his own movie for me to watch. It was a good suggestion. It was a bad movie that celebrated bad movies. It referenced them, it poked fun at them, and it loved them. There were many reasons that I should watch it, and I’d like to thank Andres Samuelson for bringing his movie to my attention. That was something special.

Now for a few notes to close things out:

• Hard Ticket to Hawaii (week 352) was referenced in Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie.
• Here’s a link to where you can find Andreas Samuelson on Twitter.
• Here’s the interview Andreas Samuelson did with The Lost Creatives.
• Have you seen Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie? What did you think about it? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• If there’s a movie that you think would be a good fit for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, tell me about it. I’m open to suggestions. I like them. It helps me to discover movies I might not otherwise have heard of, like Housewife Alien vs. Gay Zombie. You can find me on Twitter or in the comments to let me know.
• Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for both picture and video fun.
• The tournament to determine which movie will be rewatched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies eighth anniversary is underway on Twitter. Make your votes to push certain movies ahead. You could easily be the deciding vote.
• Finally, let’s talk about what’s coming up next week. I don’t have too much to say about the movie as I haven’t watched it yet. I’ve only heard it mentioned in conversations about bad movies, but I don’t know the full context. I’ll find that out soon, though. I’ll be watching Solarbabies for next week’s post. I hope you come back to see whatever it is that I have to say about it.