Ticked-Off Zombie Girls: Two Texas Indies Hit DVD

Today is an excellent day for renting a Texas-filmed movie and kicking back at home to watch it. Of course, being Texans, this means we naturally all jump out of our pickup trucks (with gun racks), stride into our oversized ranch houses, barbecue an entire side of beef for a snack, kick off our cowboy boots and switch off the football game to watch a good old Western. Right?

Two movies out on DVD today are a great example that Texans and Texas filmmaking are not like that: Zombie Girl: The Movie, a documentary about a teenage girl in Austin who shoots a feature-length horror movie; and Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives, a mock-exploitation film about Dallas showgirls in trouble. We're a long way from Giant and J.R. Ewing.

I saw Zombie Girl at Fantastic Fest 2008, with the filmmakers, subjects, and just about everyone involved in the film hanging out somewhere in the theater. The documentary, shot in 2005, is about 12-year-old Emily Hagins. She writes a script for a zombie movie, Pathogen, and is determined to make it into a movie. Her parents -- particularly her mom, Megan -- support her all the way. In fact, Megan is the unsung hero of this documentary.

Extras on the Zombie Girl: The Movie DVD include interviews, the Q&A from the Pathogen premiere and a second feature-length film -- Pathogen. Austinites will notice familiar landmarks in a few scenes, like the Crestview Minimax.

Zombie Girl won the "Spirit of Slamdance" award at Slamdance 2009. Emily Hagins is now in her senior year of high school and is working on her third feature, My Sucky Teen Romance. She'll be at Austin Comic Con on Sunday showing off some of the footage from the new film.

I saw Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives more recently -- at aGLIFF earlier this year. I have to say this was the film I anticipated the most in this year's aGLIFF lineup. The movie is controversial because in many circles, "trannies" is considered a slur. In addition, some people were unhappy at the idea of watching transgendered women as victims of violence in an exploitation flick -- although director Israel Luna calls it "transploitation." GLAAD protested the movie when it played at Tribeca Film Festival. At aGLIFF, the festival hosted a post-screening discussion panel so people could talk about many of these issues with the filmmaker.

Issues aside, Ticked-Off Trannies is better at pretending to be an old-style exploitation film than Grindhouse was, in many ways, perhaps because it really did have a low budget and wasn't pretending. The "missing reel" conceit also works much better here. It's not going to win any Oscars (although the Academy really should check out the costume design) but it's a fun movie if you don't mind violence. The title really says it all: A group of transgendered women who perform in a Dallas club are the target of some angry young men, one of whom was "fooled" about what the main character has under her skirts. After a harrowing, intense scene in a warehouse, the transvestites are ready for revenge.

I'm looking forward to the DVD because I hear that the extras are lots of fun. The Ticked-Off Trannies DVD includes a commentary track with Luna and stars Krystal Summers and Willam Belli; the "missing reel" from Chapter 4: The Red Pen (the movie is divided into chapters); the usual blooper reel and behind-the-scenes featurette; and something called "The Nacho and Chuey Show," which intrigues me.

So throw away your Texas stereotypes this week and check out the DVDs of Zombie Girl: The Movie and Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives. (I don't think they'd work as a double-feature, though.)