Ever since first picking up the DVD for Terror Firmer and seeing the trailer for Parts of the Family, I was intrigued at what the film was all about.  The trailer, which is quickly paced and set to a blaring rock song, was full of what you'd expect from a Troma movie: a beautiful woman appearing topless, zombies, blood, and a cameo from Lloyd Kaufman.  I was anticipating it's release, since the trailer made it look quite appealing.  However, it was delayed until 2005, when I found out that Troma had decided to re-edit the film, a la Tales From The Crapper.  That's when I knew that looks were probably decieving.

In 2005, Troma released Parts of the Family on DVD, with the original cut of the movie and the Troma Team re-edit.  First up, we're going to look at the film's original version.

A bank robbery goes horribly wrong and bank robber Jason Goodis (Leo Franquet) finds himself running from the police.  He runs into a woman named Ella (played by the astonishingly beautiful Cecilla Bergqvist) coming from a dilapidated old house and takes her hostage inside the house, leading the police to call in negotiator Carl Resser (Lloyd Kaufman) to try and get him to let her go.  Goodis demands a large sum of money and transportation for Ella, but the tables are soon turned whenever he discovers that she was the old caretaker of the house and murdered the entire family who previously occupied the dwelling.  The murdered family also come back to life as zombies and they come back to kill everyone involved, except for Ella because she craves the ability to live forever as they do... or something like that.

Okay, give that trailer on the Terror Firmer disc a second look.  Now imagine those two minutes spread out over about 84 minutes of poor dialogue, painfully slow pacing, and an incomprehensible plot, and that's kind of what Parts of the Family is like.  The pacing is so slow that the minimal runtime makes you feel like you've been watching the film for hours.  The majority of the cast are lifeless and dull, except for Cecilla Bergqvist, who managed to pull out a good performance, when she wasn't screaming "NO!" repetitively. Of course, the fact that she's a beautiful piece of eye candy might be part of her great wonderful presence.  Leo Franquet screams "motherfucker" to no avail and can't seem to grasp the concept that he's not in a Tarantino picture.

But the worst part of the whole film is that the script makes no sense after the first hour.  I was able to look past the poor pacing, atrocious dialogue, and stifled acting, but when that sixty minute mark hit and zombies started appearing, I was left confused as to what the remainder of the film was supposed to achieve, other than poor attempts at atmospheric horror.  Here's a tip to director Leon Paul de Bruyn: long-running shots of a zombie standing in a hole in the floor with smoke coming from behind does not equal atmosphere, just bad pacing.  In fact, I was so confused that I applaud anyone who can make sense out of the final 24 minutes of Parts of the Family.

Parts of the Family is so badly executed that it's nearly painful to sit through the proceedings.  The film is so atrocious that I can't recommend it to anyone.  Any film where the cameraman's shadow appears just as much as the actors shows the signs of a film that did not deserve to be made... or watched in this case.