Automaton Transfusion

Plot

In the early 1970s, when everyone in America was worrying about what was going on in Vietnam, the United States Army was secretly developing a way to resurrect and control the dead. Their intention was to have the dead fight instead of the living, but the experiments were shut down when the reanimated corpses were unable to control their hunger for human flesh.

Thirty years later the army decides to reopen the project. Grover City, because of its remote location, would be the home of their main testing facilities. Without warning, the Grover City experiments go horribly wrong and the reanimated corpses go on a rampage, eating everyone in sight.

With the town overtaken by zombies, a group of High School seniors take it upon themselves to fight back and find a cure for the disease.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 50% of six surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 5.3/10. Brad Miska of Bloody Disgusting praised the film, giving it a 3½ out of 5, and closing his review with, "Even with its low budget flaws, Automaton Transfusion is the Holy Grail of true independent horror films. After sifting through buckets and buckets of pure sh-t, it's such a relief to finally get that slice of pie I've been longing for. Steven C. Miller will be a household name by the end of 2007, you just watch, Automaton Transfusion is only the beginning". In a review for DVD Verdict, Gordon Sullivan commended the gore and the ingenuity of the filmmakers considering their lack of money and time, but also criticized many aspects (such as the pacing, picture quality, and plot) of the film, and stated, "It feels like a video game: get the chainsaw power-up, go to the school gym, kill the zombies, get the serum. In a video game, this might be fun, but these characters aren't particularly well-drawn, so following them around a poorly-established town isn't very enjoyable". Dread Central's Steve Barton awarded a 2½ out of 5, and said, "Automaton Transfusion does a few things right, but sadly it gets most things wrong" and "I can't help but feel a bit queasy as the scent of missed opportunity permeates the air. I wanted to love this movie. I wanted this to be the next big thing. It just wasn't". Fellow Dread Central reviewer Joshua Siebalt gave Automaton Transfusion an even lower score of 1½, and called it an unimaginative "Hot Topic horror film" and "trainwreck" that consisted of almost nothing but one-dimensional characters "running and bleeding".