Well, there’s a saying among film reviewers that goes something along the lines of, ‘for every good movie you review, if you really are watching everything you get your hands on, there are going to be some that make you wish you didn’t have to write the review for.’ The Quick and The Undead is one of those films that edges right up against the ‘how much can you handle’ but that’s not really being entirely fair to this movie at the same time. There are times when a movie bombs out in some places, terribly and to such a critical stage that it’s nearly rendered unwatchable, yet still manages to have some good ideas.

In terms of good ideas, this film gives you the idea with its title that it is something of a Western, a good old fashioned cowboy shoot ‘em up. And it is, with a twist. The twist is that about eight decades before the film starts there was a zombie outbreak. This little apocalypse essentially froze the world in a Wild West sort of setting, with huge numbers of people succumbing to zombiehood. These roaming undead hordes have to be dealt with and so the fictional government sets up a program to have bounty hunters bring them the pinkies of zombies to prove that the zombies are dead and collect a reward for each one. Because we know that if you have a zombie’s pinkie then they are most surely dead, right? I digress.

Now, the whole concept of zombies in the Wild West has probably been done, but it’s still interesting even if it uses the whole virus scheme we’ve seen done to death and back again. It’s a good time when you’ve got six shooters, horses and undead corpses shambling about waiting to get shot at. The main issue here is not that the premise isn’t entertaining, it’s that the execution is simply abysmal. It’s a good idea to bear in mind that any film is going to be far harder to make than it is to watch, so this reviewer tries to keep that in mind at all times. However, on the other hand, the job is to make sure that viewers understand what they’re getting into when they watch the movie being reviewed.

It’s certainly a good idea to avoid this film unless you are an utterly hardcore, diehard zombie movie super freak. Or maybe if you just love watching a movie that’s so bad you could find it entertaining in that way. There are loads of better movies to watch and as much as it would be nice to recommend this one, it simply would not be honest. The whole gothed-up cowboy idea is nifty, but not enough to save the movie.

In the end, The Quick and The Undead is a movie that wasn’t constructed too well and makes for difficult viewing. Hopefully the crew behind it learned a lot so they can bring us another effort with a bit more skill, but an equally interesting plot.