There's no better way to put it, other than the most obvious way possible: Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante just plain kicks ass. Gorehounds, if you're in a blue mood and you've sat through Evil Dead 2 and Dead Alive too many times to count and you're looking for something new to tickle your macabre funny bone and feed your lust for latex and stage blood, you need to pick up this dvd. You may think I'm crazy to put this film up with those two genre landmarks, but trust me on this one, the movie is that good.

Like those two films, the plot is simple -- three guys and a body bag are dropped into a town full of zombies by government agents. Just what these government agents hope to accomplish by this is never really explained in the film, but I let this slide because once the carnage kicked in (at a little before the ten minute mark) it doesn't let up and the gore gags fly fast and furious. Heads are severed with a hedge trimmer. Tendons in a severed arm are pulled to cause the arm to make a fist and punch its way through a hapless zombie.

Our three zombie fighters are Bill Johnson (played by one of the co-directors, Pablo Pares), the punnishly named computer expert Max Giggs (played by the other director, Hernan Saez), and a former pro-wrestler named John West (played by producer Berta Muniz), who comes complete with his own theme song and mythology. (There's a music video-esque scene in which the theme song is played that had me in stitches with its mile-a-minute gags and loopy dance number.) They have already been through one encounter with the undead (in the first film in what the filmmakers say is a planned trilogy, simply titled Plaga Zombie) and are none too thrilled to have to go through this shit again.

The filmmakers/actors are obviously fans of the genre (there's a music cue that is, no doubt, an homage to George Romero and a character named Plissken who shows up late in the film as a tip of the hat to that good ol' Kentucky boy John Carpenter) and their enthusiasm is evident in the film. It's revealed in the making of documentary included in this 2-disc set that at one point they weren't really thrilled with making the movie, so they stopped production, made another movie entirely, and then came back to finish the film when it felt fun to them again.

As I said, the film is light on plot but this Media Blasters release (on its Fangoria International label) is heavy with extras. For starters, the second disc contains a whole other film (the original Plaga Zombie) and each film has a commentary track and trailers, with some deleted scenes and bloopers included on disc one and a making-of featurette on disc two.

Plaga Zombie is as light on plot as its predecessor, and follows the adventures of the same three characters as they are trapped in a house full of zombies. Not quite as elaborate or imaginative as Zona Mutante, this is nevertheless an equally well made labor of love for the filmmakers, and it does actually answer some questions I had while watching the second film (which I watched first, because it was on disc one).

In a world where "animated menus" and "scene access" are counted as extras on bare-bones discs, it's kind of refreshing that the producers of this dvd included a whole other feature and don't make a big deal about it -- they could easily have called it something like "The Plaga Zombie Collection" and upped the price of the disc, but Media Blasters has instead decided to deliver something special for not much money (the set costs a measly $14.95 retail).

If you're looking for that next low-budget movie that announces the arrival of some real talent, look no further. Trust me on this one, these guys are going to have long careers churning out fun movies, and somewhere out there Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson are looking over their shoulders because the team at Farsa Productions, who created these films, are gaining on them ... let's just hope they can keep their vision intact when bigger bucks come their way.