As a child I watched a heck of a lot of the Australian soap Neighbours, a show that sadly aired its final episode last week. Due to this my sister had started to watch the final few episodes and while on YouTube she discovered something really unexpected. Back in 2014 there was a five part horror themed spin-off about an undead outbreak on Ramsay Street fittingly titled Neighbours vs. Zombies, and I'm pleased to say that I have now seen it.
This mini-series is split over five episodes, roughly six minutes each, a grand run-time of thirty six minutes. That this manages to tell a competent story in that short time is impressive, and that it puts a fresh feeling spin on a familiar concept even better. It begins with Paul (Stefan Dennis), Hope and another woman running through the Lassiters complex, being pursued by flesh hungry zombies. It then heads back to five hours earlier that day to show how events came to be. The dead have started to return from the dead, but it only seems to be affecting former residents of Ramsay Street. Rather than the brain dead ghouls you might expect, these zombies retain their memories and personalities and on the whole are very baffled as to what has happened. At first the reappearance of so many lost loved ones is seen as a miracle, but the longer the dead stay resurrected the more flesh hungry and brain dead they become. What at first seems a wonderful thing quickly devolves into a fight for survival and the possibility of an apocalypse sweeping Australia. The solution to this problem may well lay with Dr. Karl Kennedy (Alan Fletcher), who is inspired to develop a potential cure after his wife, Susan (Jackie Woodburne) is bitten.
I never thought something as off the rails as Neighbours vs Zombies would ever be a thing, it is like a wish from a fever dream. Having not seen the show since I was a teenager in the nineties there were a lot of characters who I had no idea about. It was good to see familiar faces with Paul, Karl, Susan and Toadie, but the rest of the cast were a mystery to me. That also applied to the undead, there is Robbo (apparently an evil character who died in a car crash), as well as Stingray, David Bishop and Drew (a character I think I vaguely remember). The tone of the show is quite comedic, though things become more serious with the cliffhanger that takes place at the end of the third episode. By the time of the final episode this has become much more horror based with no end of traditional undead. In keeping with the somewhat family friendly tone, victims are killed off screen (usually with a biting sound effect). With such a short length some storylines are left unresolved, but there is an explanation provided for how this has all happened, with a surprise revelation of the person responsible for it all.
For the surreal nature alone I had tremendous fun watching this, a 'what-if' alternate reality that was as fun to watch as the Marvel Zombies series was to read. It may be fairly generic in terms of what occurs, but the setting and characters were a strong selling point. Well worth a watch if you have ever had a passing interest in Neighbours, even more so if you count yourself an avid fan of that show. Neighbours vs Zombies can be viewed for free on YouTube, as can another spin-off titled Neighbours vs Time Travel.
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