Hey, how about a culturally relevant horror movie that addresses the issues of pollution, environmental laws, hunting, gun rights, Lyme disease, animal rights activism, the threat of cutesy animals, zombies, etc.? Wouldn’t it be nice to cover all these topics and more all at once with a timely horror film to make people think? Let’s demand they make it! It would be called Fawn of the Dead, and it would be all these things and more! (But it still wouldn’t be as good as the book. If there is a book. But that’s always what book snobs say, isn’t it?)
So here’s the plot: A Republican is afraid President Obama wants to take away his guns, but there’s a big problem with this issue: he doesn’t own any guns. Okay, well, that’s easy enough to solve: he goes out to get some. But his wife gets angry with him, saying that he’s never been interested in guns before, and that he’s just listening to Rush Limbaugh too much. Well, just to show her, he decides to go off hunting, and he takes his little kid with him.
Well, they don’t know how or where to hunt, so they just wander around in the woods for awhile, which leads to his son contracting Lyme disease. Well, that’s done it! Them deers is gonna pay now, son! So he hears that there is an area where the deer all like to congregate near where this dastardly deed of Lyme infection occurred, and the deer are much more relaxed there, since it’s illegal to hunt there, seeing as how it’s right next to a hazardous chemical factory that makes all kinds of secret and illegal chemical weapons and stuff. (You can’t have a serious horror movie without illegal corporate malfeasance related to the military industrial complex and secret weapons and stuff. I don’t make the rules, so don’t blame me.)
Okay, so the guy goes to this wooded area out back behind the evil military chemical corporation, where there are a bunch of deer hanging around. He comes walking up, but they don’t seem to mind much, as there are lots of signs reading: “No Trespassing!” and: “Hunting Prohibited”, etc. all over the place. (Deer can read some stuff, if it’s written big enough, I think.) So he gets within a few yards of the deer and he fires his gun at them. Well, never having fired a gun before, he’s not very accurate, and he misses them all. The sound of the shot, however, sends the deer all scurrying away in different directions, except for one little fawn, which just stands and quakes in place, frozen in sheer terror. But the man hasn’t missed everything, it seems, and before you know it, a glowing green cloud comes to hover over the little fawn, poisoning it. But the man does not see this happen, for he has become so unnerved by firing the gun that he too runs away for home after dropping the gun on the ground where he stood when he fired the shot.
So based upon where the shooting incident occurred, so close to the town, it’s no surprise that people heard the shot fired. And wouldn’t you know it, but the local animal rights group has their headquarters right near there! So they hightail it over there and find a dead fawn and a recently fired gun: a-ha! So the group takes the carcass of the fawn over to the local news station, where they plan to show it on the TV news to expose the crime! Oh, but just as they do so, the fawn comes back to life as a ravenous, carnivorous zombie and attacks the news crew and the animal rights group, who must fight the cutesy animal to the death to survive! Well, the camera is on, and this would be too bad of publicity for them to kill the fawn on camera, so they let it kill them, which makes them come back to life as zombies as well! (Horror movie music stab, please!)
So this is just what the hunters have been waiting for: a chance to shoot at the animal rights activists, and so they waste no time by first shooting the still-alive uninfected ones in their homes, and then going over to the news station to get the infected ones. While this is happening, the fawn escapes into a Chuck E. Cheese and attacks all the little kids who come over to hug it (it still looks really cute in spite of being zombified), making them all into ravenous zombies as well! Having dispatched the remaining animal rights activists, the hunters follow the trail of the killer zombie fawn to find a gaggle of undead tykes, and unable to kill cutesy kids, they are thereupon devoured and zombified.
Well, the police are called out, and the president finds out about it, revealing the existence of a covert illegal chemical weapons program designed to make exposed subjects into ravenous flesh-eating zombies, headed by a rogue general who is a rabid fan of zombie movies, and who hoped to be able to live one (a zombie movie, that is) himself in combat. Well, his secret exposed, he has nothing left to do but turn himself in to the FBI: but not before secretly exposing himself to the zombie gas (!). So once in custody, he attacks the FBI, turning them all into zombies as well!
Well, this has become an emergency situation which requires a response from Congress, who votes to end all such secret weapons programs and to mobilize the army to fight the threat. But by then it’s too late: the zombies invade the capitol building and descend upon the sniveling representatives, paying them in full for their lack of oversight of the military industrial complex! And the newly formed zombie government makes the zombie fawn the new national mascot, whereupon it presides over all future Army vs. Navy football games.
The End.
(Yes, actually I’ve found that MAD has already done something similar to this title as a sketch, and I’ll attach that video, which is pretty fun. This idea above I think is different enough plot-wise that it stands on its own. I hadn’t seen this MAD skit before I looked up “Fawn of the Dead” on Google to see if anyone else had done it, but the name seemed like something someone else might have thought of before, and sure enough, someone had. But names/titles aren’t copyrightable {How many movies are called The Uninvited? Actually, 14, and 12 of them within the last 15 years alone!}, and in any case, theirs is called Zombi: Fawn of the Dead, so there you are: it’s different-ish. So long as the idea is different enough, it’s generally okay, and this is pretty different, you must admit. So here’s hoping Alfred E. Newman doesn’t come after me!
Here’s the MAD video:
BTW: The show MAD looks pretty funny if you’re up on your children’s programming. It’s on Cartoon Network. Check it out!)
