Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!
The movie Fido tanked at the box office in 2006, and I think there’s a specific reason for it that has nothing to do with the actual quality of the film. The problem is that Fido is a spoof of a type of movie that is no longer made. This is a zombie film, which puts it firmly in the horror camp, but much more than that, this is a parody of Lassie movies, just with a zombie instead of a collie. The kid in this is even named Timmy.
Fido takes place in an alternate timeline in what looks like the 1950s. Because of space radiation, the dead come back to life as flesh-eating ghouls, which caused a worldwide war against the undead. The radiation still plagues the planet, and the newly dead also return as zombies unless they are quickly cremated or decapitated. Many people, though, are neither decapitated nor cremated—they are collared and become zombie servants tasked with menial jobs. All of this is controlled by a company called ZomCon, which also maintains fences around town, keeping folks safe from the zombie-infested wild zones.
Timmy Robinson (K’Sun Ray) lives with his mother Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss) and father Bill (Dylan Baker) in the town of Willard. Timmy is mostly friendless, like his father, who is zombie-phobic and obsessed with funerals. New neighbors move in, and it turns out that the head of the household, Jonathan Bottoms (Henry Czerny), is a hero from the zombie war and also a higher up at ZomCon. Wanting to fit in more with the neighbors, Helen is convinced to purchase a zombie servant, who Timmy dubs Fido (Billy Connolly).
Of course there are going to be problems. Fido is going to have his collar malfunction, which is going to cause a small zombie uprising in Willard. Eventually, this is going to get back to getting Timmy and Fido in trouble, but not until we’re going to get a moment where Fido again slips his restraints and kills a couple of Timmy’s bullies. This sets up the sequence that most clearly identifies Fido as a throw-back to Lassie. Timmy is tied to a tree and will soon be harassed and attacked by the zombified versions of his bullies, so Fido, with his collar malfunctioning, needs to fetch Helen to save Timmy. It has everything except Helen guessing that Timmy has fallen down a well.
Fido does a lot right. It wants to fit itself in the middle of that 1950s vibe, something that the Fallout television show has duplicated extremely well. There is a sort of “Aw shucks” mentality to this; the film looks like it was made on the sets of Pleasantville, and that’s clearly intentional. We’re supposed to accept that this is essentially what replaced the Cold War in this reality, a zombie future rather than a nuclear one.
Fido presents us with a world that is inherently dangerous—cities are surrounded by gangs of zombies and protected only by chain link fences and the fact that everyone is armed (and kids learn to shoot rifles in school out of necessity). Despite this, there is a whimsey to the film, and a feeling that everyone we like, for the most part, is going to make it to the other side of the movie intact. Oh, it’s a zombie film, so there’s going to be some carnage. You can’t really do a zombie movie without the entrails at some point. But just like we know that Timmy in the Lassie movies is going to survive even though he’s trapped under a fallen tree during the forest fire, we know that Timmy and Fido are going to be pals forever, or for at least as long as Timmy is alive.
It also gives us fun touches of characterization and eccentricity that pulls the whole thing together. Timmy doesn’t really have a lot in common with his completely detached father. Meanwhile, new classmate Cindy Bottoms (Alexia Fast) doesn’t think much of her pipe-smoking, war hero father, either. Neighbor Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) has a zombie named Tammy who is clearly more a girlfriend than a servant. According to him, he got a collar on her the moment she had an aneurysm in the grocery store, preserving her as much as he could (and he has the bite marks to prove that she’s the real thing).
It’s hard not to enjoy this. This is Leave it to Beaver run through a zombie lens, or My Three Zombies, or perhaps Zombie Knows Best. It has the same vibe as a film like Parents, or like a more overtly horror version of the aforementioned Fallout show. If there’s a downside here, it’s that a film that is clearly a comedy has few laugh-out-loud moments. Oh, it’s funny in a lot of ways, but the humor is much more sardonic, the kind of thing you smirk at while nodding knowingly.
I enjoyed this about as much as I hoped I would.
Why to watch Fido: This is top-tier parody.
Why not to watch: If you don’t like zombie movies, there’s not a lot here for you.
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