DVD Review: Evil In The Time Of Heroes

Evil In The Time Of Heroes is an unusual and mostly entertaining and enjoyable take on the zombie tale, with its own style and humor. It starts in the deep past – ancient Greece, in fact – showing that it was never safe to sit around a campfire outside the city walls at night. The movie then brings us to the present, introducing us to Argyris, who is impaled on a pipe when we meet him. He doesn’t let that stop him from providing a bit of narration, letting us know about a few other survivors that he’s met. The film drops us right into the action, as those survivors run from the zombies. Soon they are trapped in a stadium, with zombies closing in on them from all sides. Rather than a long fight sequence, we get a title card that reads, “Ten minutes later,” and we see the four of them, now covered in blood, emerging from the building. One of them says, “Yeah, that was a brilliant idea.” Wonderful! Obviously, this film has a sense of humor, which should be immediately apparent, what with that bit of narration from a corpse and all. And even though the film skips a potentially violent fight sequence, don’t worry, as there is plenty of blood, and even a headless body bumping into a fence. And shit, that’s just the first ten minutes.

Zombies are not the only danger our heroes have to face. Someone shoots out one of the tires of their vehicle, because, hey, after the zombie apocalypse, law and order go out the window, and some people are just assholes no matter what the situation. (Isn’t that right, Donald Trump? Yeah, you know you’re an asshole.) And unlike many zombie films, it is discovered that the zombie troubles are limited to just Greece. So it is decided that Athens will be bombed with chemical weapons to wipe out the problem before it can spread, suddenly putting our heroes in still greater danger.

The movie travels back and forth in time a bit, with some brief flashbacks to the beginning of the zombie problem, as well as flashes to the time of the opening scene. And a mysterious figure from that time reappears in the present, a man with seemingly magical powers (played by Billy Zane). He isn’t the only one with unexplained powers, as Argyris, as we learn, is capable of returning from the dead.

There are lots of quirky details, like a guy pausing to straighten a photograph on the wall before letting the survivors back into their hideout. The film certainly has its own style. Sure, some shots are poorly lit, like a fight sequence on a rooftop, and there are moments when the film loses me for a bit, like when Lieutenant Vakirtzis and Olga go to confront the people who were shooting at them and then suddenly are gazing up at the stars. What happened? And the film gets a bit goofy toward the end. But still it’s an enjoyable and original take on the zombie subgenre of horror, and I am happy to be along for the ride.

Evil In The Time Of Heroes was released on DVD on October 24, 2017 through Doppelganger Releasing (Music Box Films). It is presented in its original Greek with English subtitles. The DVD includes two special features – the original battlefield storyboards and the film’s theatrical trailer.