the audience applauded

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

The frozen bodies at a cryogenics lab get revived by a lighting storm and go on the rampage as lethal shambling zombies. Boy, does this honey possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as an uproariously atrocious four-star stinkeroonie: Flat-footed (mis)direction by Jack A. Sunseri and Deland Nuse, a plodding pace, some hysterically horrible acting (Ron Vincent cops the top thespic dishonors as a twitchy bank robber), ineptly staged action scenes, laughable zombies wearing shoddy dimestore plastic masks that are wrapped in tinfoil, clumsy flashbacks, tacky gore (an impalement on a forklift and a decapitation by sword rate as the definite splatter highlights), a heavy-handed central message about the evils of cryogenics, a slapdash script, and gut-busting idiotic dialogue ("Die you green bag of snot!"). The Faded Name Hall of Shame Cast further enhances the considerable campy merriment: The ever-personable Linda Blair as perky lab assistant Mary Hampton, Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty as gregarious security guard Sergeant Vince Marlow, and Troy Donahue as sinister mad scientist Dr. Miller. Don't miss the ridiculous "Where are they now?" updates at the very end. An absolute cruddy hoot and a half.

***SPOILERS*** Former blond 1960's teenage heartthrob Troy Donahue looking at least 15 years older then he really is, at 52, plays the crazed and greedy Dr.Miller who runs a cryogenic center outsider of Kansas City city limits. Conning his clients that he's keeping their loved ones in cold storage until a cure is found for what put them there Dr.Miller is really involved in the black market human organ trade selling off the frozen stiffs body parts for tens of thousands of dollars to the highest bidders.It's when on Halloween night a lightning storm hit the center and struck the steel containers containing the bodies of the frozen, with liquid nitrogen, cryogenic clients that they suddenly became "Zombiifies" and came back to life. It's Mr.Miller's assailant Mary Hampton, Linda Blair, who was suspicious of what her boss was really doing with the stiffs he was handling when she noticed that one of them bullet riddled bank robber Joe Davenport Jr, Ron Vincent, wasn't in the container meant for him. Joe Jr together with his mom Mrs. Ilene Davenport, played by Suzanna Camp in a non speaking non breathing and non living role, were put on ice by Joe Davenport Sr, Jack Derieux, in order to have them brought back to life in he very near future. As things turned out they came back to life a lot sooner the he as well as Dr. Miller expected them to! But not as living and breathing human beings but walking and cannibalistic dead zombies dressed in what looked like aluminum astronauts or space suits!With the cryogenics zombies running amok it's the center's it's the handsome, with a full head of hair and beard that Bruce Willis would envy, security guard Sgt. Vince Marlow, Dan Haggerty, who takes it upon himself to stop them. While all this is going on Dr. Miller with his secret illegal human organ operation about to be exposed tries to get all the evidence, names addresses phone numbers and money transactions, of his crimes out out the center and burn them is himself attacked by the zombies and placed into a steel cryogenic container and frozen stiff for future study. It's later revealed that Dr. Miller's body was later donated to science in the study of Mad Cow Disease which he was suspected of having!***SPOILERS*** As it turned out in what brought the zombies back to life a jolt of electricity it's the opposite that put them back in their place, dead & buried, liquid nitrogen! With Vince Mary & Joe Davenport icing them into suspended animation with the some two dozen fire extinguishers available to them at the center. Mary Hampton later realized what a fool she was by working for the by then late and frozen Dr. Miller and being involved unknowingly in his crimes against humanity as well as,in trying to bring the dead back to life, nature. And she ends up making amends for what she did by marrying Vince Marlow who turned out to be the hero of this turkey of a movie! Happy Thanksgiving!

I became Jack Sunseri's attorney just before this movie's "Grand Opening" at Oakland"s very grand Grand Theater. So my first view of the picture was on the big screen, which has got to be a different experience than seeing it on video.I got a kick out of Troy's role which I think he did with tongue-in-cheek. Linda appeared not to be very into the picture.Some have complained about the Zombi's being wrapped in foil but that is how they were wrapped when they went into the freezer units.The idea was good and Jack should clean it up and try again if he is still in the game.Jack did a pilot for TV which was much better than "Teletubbies", staring Dana Plato and a very funny cast. It should have made it.

As to be expected, there's a pretty good reason why this film is so obscure and unknown in spite of dealing with the always-popular premise of zombies and starring the 80's B-movie queen Linda Blair, namely: it sucks! "The Chilling" is trying enormously hard – way too hard – to be a story with depth and factual background, whereas it should have just been a light-headed and gore-packed horror flick about frozen zombies. It takes an incredibly long time before anything remotely interesting or significant happens. There's a lot of drivel about cryogenics, which I learned in my physics class is the study of products and their behavior at extremely low temperatures. So naturally, in this film a bunch of people are studying the behavior of human corpses when deep frozen. Needless to say this is extremely boring, until two dim-witted night watchmen decide, during an electric power failure, that it's a good idea to put the metal-constructed cool cells outside at the heights of a thunderstorm. The coolers are struck by lightening, obviously, and the bodies spontaneously defrost and come to live to go on a murderous zombie rampage. "The Chilling" is a boring and surprisingly (for a late 80's effort, at least) gore-free horror film that doesn't even use up a quarter of its potential. All the painful attempts to build up an atmosphere of suspense and eeriness fail tremendously and I can't think of any reason why the zombie-attacks had to be so bloodless. Even in spite of the low budget available, they could have done better. The set pieces, make-up effects and costumes are pitiable. The research lab, for example, looks like a proper apartment flat whilst the zombies couldn't look less menacing with their green faces and foil-wrapped outfits. How Linda Blair managed to get involved yet again in such an embarrassing low-budgeted horror flick is a complete mystery. She's attracted to lousy B-movies like bees are to honey.