AFM Hidden Gem: “Cease, Decapitate and Pay attention” to Vanilla Ice in Bloody Comedy ‘Zombie Aircraft’

Most filmmakers — even the likes of Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan — have probably had a “pinch me” second on set after they’re watching some wild thought they as soon as dreamed up come to life earlier than their eyes. For Lav Bodnaruk, his second arrived earlier this 12 months in Australia whereas directing Nineties pop icon Vanilla Ice, who on the time was coated head to toe in blood and killing zombies with a drill.

“It was like, that is loopy,” he explains. “And Vanilla Ice was the identical. He couldn’t imagine that we have been turning him into an motion hero.”

The movie in query, Zombie Aircraft, being offered on the AFM by Studio Dome and which Bodnaruk co-directed alongside Michael Mier, won’t sound prefer it’s in direction of the intense finish of the cinematic spectrum. And it isn’t. In any respect. And Ice isn’t even the one as soon as massive title showing. In one thing of an unlikely on-screen pairing, Eighties motion icon Chuck Norris additionally stars.

The — comically ridiculous — movie sees Ice play himself, however an Ice utilizing his music profession as merely a entrance, disguising the very fact he’s a top-secret ninja agent who saves the world from zombies and high-level supernatural threats. Norris, naturally, performs Commander Chuck Norris, his badass mentor and coach in a plot the place the airplane Ice is on as a passenger is taken over by zombies, which he should dispatch earlier than it’s shot down by fighter jets (to cease the unfold, after all). 

Extremely, the thought is predicated on a real story. Kind of. In keeping with Mier, the author William Robust was watching TV in the future and turned the channel to TMZ.

“And the primary TMZ man was actually on the cellphone to Ice, for a number of hours, as a result of the airplane he was on had been grounded because of biohazard of some description,” he says. “So I believe he was simply sitting there going, ‘that is nice, however what if it was zombies?’ And with Vanilla Ice and zombies, you’re off.”

Becoming a member of Ice and Norris aboard Zombie Aircraft (which shot in Brisbane largely in a purpose-built 60-meter lengthy airplane) and in addition enjoying herself is Sophie Monk, the singer-turned-actress who Bodnaruk describes as “a darling of Australia,” having risen to fame again in 2000 on the native model of expertise present Popstars. Monk was forged for the Australian market, but in addition as a result of — like Norris and Ice — she faucets into the nostalgia issue of the movie (and there are a variety of cameos but to be introduced that accomplish that as effectively). She additionally, crucially, didn’t care a few script that mercilessly mocks its important stars. Really, it’s Monk who reportedly dishes out many of the abuse within the course of Ice, calling him a one-hit marvel and a has-been. 

“I used to be really shocked that he mentioned sure to it, however he simply took all of it on the chin from everyone,” says Pier. “He’s so likable and such a real dude.”

Monk can be accountable for the movie’s virtually sure R ranking for the U.S. “It’s not the blood or the gore, of which there’s lots, it’s the F-bombs,” notes Bodnaruk, who says that “she’s the darling of Australia, so what meaning is that she has an F-bomb in each sentence she says.”

The director claims that at one level they pulled all of the “fucks” out bar one, as per guidelines, however mischievously gave that one to an eight-year-old character. “They usually have been like, you possibly can’t do an eight-year-old!” They put all of them again in. 

“You recognize, we decapitate animals, a chihuahua — a zombie chihuahua — we kill children … you do all these things, however then you definately drop two F-bombs and instantly it’s R-rated, so we have been like, effectively, let’s embrace it and lean into it,” says Mier.

And for a film that the filmmakers declare is laden with jokes and potential memes, there’s a line that maybe helps unite each the worlds of maximum zombie-massacring violence, and Nineties chart hero Vanilla Ice – and will develop into one in all its most repeated.

Says Mier: “Yeah, it’s: ‘Cease, decapitate and pay attention’.”