Bracing Myself Through The Bizarre 'Stiff Odds' [Zombie Chronicles Review]

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:03]Hey everyone, and welcome back to Millennial Trash, where I'm doing the worst thing I could possibly do and watch nothing but Millennial Trash all month. This is the third episode in a series and final episode in a series where I'm taking a look at this monstrosity of an 18-pound box set, Zombie Chronicles.

[00:00:24]And we've already covered the first two films in this set, those being Swamp Zombie and The Forever Dead. So, if you haven't seen these two reviews, I recommend going and checking those out before watching this one as I will be referring back to those films and there's going to be a little comparison and summing up of the whole box set at the end. So, you know, it'll keep you in the loop with all that. This episode, however, we're going to be taking a look at Stiff Odds. So, let's have a look.

[00:00:51]Stiff Odds is a 2004 comedy horror directed by somebody called Caleb Allen.

[00:00:59]Uh this is the only thing that they've ever directed or they've worked on a few other bits here and there, but this is the only thing that they've ever directed [music] properly.

[00:01:06]Uh looks like they got the whole family involved as well as we've not only got Caleb Allen, but we've got Allison Allen, we've got Carl Allen, and we've got Colin Allen. So, yeah, I'm guessing some sort of family affair going on with this one.

[00:01:20]Uh the cast is interesting. There's there's no names that you'll recognize straight off the bat.

[00:01:27]But, some people in this have gone on to work on bigger things.

[00:01:31]Colin Allen, we'll start with, ended up working uh as like I think an extra or supporting artist in Three Guys, Equalizer 2, and the Dexter reboot series. Then we've got a few other names in this, Jason [music] Yates, who went on to do stuff for EastEnders and Corrie.

[00:01:49]Uh then there's Tony Sklensky, don't know if I'm saying that right, who was a second AD on um Don't Look Up, the 2019 Little Women, and Black Panther 2.

[00:02:00]Pretty big films there. And then there's Corey Pearson who was in art and production for Avengers and Thor.

[00:02:06]So, yeah, these names, you're not going to know these people are, but they started out here and went on to do these much bigger things within Hollywood, which is quite interesting. This one definitely looks like the wackiest and weirdest of the bunch. No idea what to expect from this.

[00:02:23]Well, let's have a look. Let's crack on and see what Stiff Arse is all about.

[00:02:27]Spoilers ahead.

[00:02:34]After another terrible company logo, making three for three with these films, we are in the afterlife with two slackers who are watching TV. They get a call from their landlord saying that they're getting evicted cuz they have no money. When on the TV comes an advert for a bet. The bet is on two gangs. Who will live and who will die? Apparently, it's customary in the afterlife to bet on the living, to bet who's going to die next. And this one apparently is going to pay big. Bet your dead [ __ ] house so you can try your luck with the next.

[00:03:06]Who will live AND WHO WILL DIE? WE then meet some of our main characters, two teenage goth punk kids who are hanging out in a graveyard with a Ouija board.

[00:03:18]We have Sheba and then we have Pongo who is also possessed apparently by a demon called Aimée. Although, it never really goes too much into that.

[00:03:29]So, they're hanging out, they're doing the Ouija board, when suddenly this happens.

[00:03:35]Now, I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing here and I couldn't quite make out what was happening. It was all It took me a minute to figure it out. So, apparently what we're seeing in this bit is this red guy is a demon called Bert. So, he's sort of the main demon for this story. So, what he's doing here is he's possessed these two teens and he gets them to exhume three bodies and drive off with them.

[00:04:05]>> [music] >> The teens vomit and they're back to normal, but they realize that they accidentally dropped one of the coffins during the drive. One of the coffins in the back of the car moves around, so they open it up and inside is one of the members of Korn. But seriously, this is one of the main zombies called Ivan. He steals the teens' car and drives off.

[00:04:28]The other zombie in the back gets out.

[00:04:30]They're called Lucy and they realize that they're missing one of their friends. So, they try to look for her and she's called Sam.

[00:04:38]How's it going? What the [ __ ] bro?

[00:04:41]Oh, please do excuse me. [ __ ] So, we see that Sam was ditched in the woods and we see Ivan and Lucy driving around talking bollocks. We also learn at this point that Lucy has like a twin fetus inside of them and that's come back alive as well. That's also a zombie. This that will come back up later though. I'm only mentioning that because it does come back in at some point later.

[00:05:03]We then cut over to the teens who decide to get in this really weird taxi.

[00:05:08]They're driving off and Sam jumps on the back. She then jumps off the taxi, jumps onto another car, attacks the woman who was driving the car, steals the car and runs over the woman's head.

[00:05:18]>> But now I have these these lobster hands.

[00:05:22]But guess what? I I tricked him. I got the rubber bands off. All right, it's time to learn what is actually going on here as we get a bit of a monologue from Bert. So, Bert is basically death.

[00:05:34]And it's not as glamorous as he thought it was going to be and it's a lot of paperwork and boring stuff, apparently.

[00:05:40]So, he's stuck doing admin most of the time and it doesn't pay. But apparently, the afterlife has currency in it. So, to make money, he is a bookie on the side and he does these bets on who's going to live and who's going to die. So, there was this big bet on these two gangs. One of one of the gangs is basically the zombies who we've met before.

[00:06:02]The bet was so bad for Bert that he ended up losing a ton of money. So, what he's done is is he's gone behind everyone's back and he shouldn't be doing this apparently, but he's raised them from the dead so they're not technically dead.

[00:06:16]And he wants them to kill the other gang by midnight that night cuz then that will change the outcome of the bet and he'll win all his money back.

[00:06:25]Pretty sure that's what's going on anyway. Hello. My name is Bert and I'm the reaper. That's right. Death. The zombies all meet up finally and they try and kill the teens. Then they change their mind and instead they all go out for dinner. They all sit around chatting and we learn that the zombies are aware that what's happened shouldn't have happened and is bad. They shouldn't have been resurrected and we learn that if they get caught for this, the zombies will go to a place called the after afterlife, which is apparently a scary place, and Bert will be deveined. Do me a favor and kill me now? No.

[00:07:04]Back in the afterlife, when we're back with the two guys that we started the film with, they're pretty pissed cuz they can't find Bert anywhere and they want the money. So, they think something's up and they go to a demon called Molly and tell her everything basically. Frankly, we think that's a crock of [ __ ] The zombies head over to the thugs and kill them, but they didn't quite make it in time cuz one of them died after midnight, meaning that Bert still lost all that money. Molly appears in front of Bert and has a big go at him, but they decide to come to an agreement, that being on a new bet. The new bet is that the zombies have to kill the teens within 12 hours. Oh, [ __ ] dog.

[00:07:45][ __ ] The zombies find the teens. They kill Sheba. Sheba wakes up in the afterlife and finds Burt pretty quickly just walking down the road. And she deveins him.

[00:07:59]>> [screaming] >> The zombies are about to kill Pongo when Sheba reemerges with Burt's powers. She doesn't quite know how to use them, though. So, she just sort of ends up rolling around with the zombies in the graveyard for a while. She's also accidentally left all the doors to the afterlife open, so all the dead are escaping. Oh, and at some point they rip the fetus out of Lucy and start chucking that about.

[00:08:30]The teens win the fight, but Molly's having none of this, and so she zaps them, and they disappear.

[00:08:36]Cut to sometime later, and the teens and the zombies are hanging out together in the after afterlife, which is just a very bland existence, by the looks of it. They talk about reincarnation, and they realize that if you die in the after afterlife, you get reincarnated.

[00:08:56]Then they decide that that's probably better than hanging out in the after afterlife, so they all head off to jump off a building. And that's where the film ends.

[00:09:06]This film was very, very fun, and very Melanie trash. I really enjoyed myself with this film. What it essentially boils down to, I guess, is a bunch of theater kids. They've gathered together, and they're just [ __ ] about being weird and loud in a graveyard over summer. And there's something very endearing about the whole thing.

[00:09:33]You know, the the characters are cartoons, basically. They're cartoon characters. They're over-the-top and crazy. They're loud and obnoxious.

[00:09:42]And the styles are so early 2000s, you know, they're all all and the hairdos and the costumes. Love it. So fun to watch. They've all got that sort of angsty dark humor from the early 2000s as well. I I was grinning throughout this whole thing, basically. And it even got a few genuine laughs out of me. Not where I'm laughing at it, but the joke that they've written in was actually funny, which is crazy for these sorts of millennial trash films. Usually, I'm just laughing at the bad acting or the bad special effects. And there was a little bit of that in this, don't get me wrong. But the writing wasn't awful for once. No, yeah, there's there's a lot there's a lot to enjoy about this film.

[00:10:26]>> There's like nothing's going on because I WANT THAT [ __ ] MONEY. BUT HEY, HEY, HEY, I'M NOT A complete [ __ ] scumbag.

[00:10:31]I'm like a regular person except for being big and red and veiny like a penis or a fetus. The gore's pretty commendable here. We don't get loads, but what we do get isn't too bad. It's charming. The deveining section was particularly good. Do a lot of deveining.

[00:10:48]And it's just charming, you know, you you can tell it's done on a budget, but they tried. There's a bit towards the end where one of them gets decapitated and it's very cheap but very weird-looking as well. I just yeah, made me smile quite a lot watching it. It was a lot of fun. Um the zombie makeup is a little lacking, you know, it's just a little bit of gray face paint. Um but it's made up for by the characters because obviously the zombies they're not just brainless eating machines.

[00:11:19]They are people still. They've got personalities and uh yeah, it made up for the lack of sort of like rotting and gore detailing and stuff on the zombie designs. Cuz you just enjoy watching these characters dick about. I did really like Bert's design as well, red and veiny and stuff.

[00:11:38]No, yeah, a lot of fun.

[00:11:48]The editing and filters and effects and stuff like that. Man, oh man, this is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about Maloney trash. This is an excellent example of how over the top and crazy some of these filters can be.

[00:12:07]There is so much weird stuff going on.

[00:12:10]Sometimes it works.

[00:12:11]Sometimes it really doesn't and pretty much all the time it's incredibly jarring. We get grain filters, we get weird inverse colors, we get green screen done badly, but we then we get green screen done well. We get weird quick edits and camera whips and all this stuff's been packed in. And honestly, I spent a big chunk of my film with my mouth just agape staring at trying to figure out what the hell I was seeing and it's what you want in a Maloney trash film.

[00:12:48]Open the casket.

[00:12:51]It's not the most well put together film by any means, but it's definitely better than Swamp Zombie and the Forever Dead.

[00:12:58]Um it's in 4 by 3. So, it fills a lot more of the screen than the other two films do, so you can actually see what's going on a bit more. And it's serviceable in a lot of parts, you know, you can just make out what's going on.

[00:13:10]Again, the sound's not great and again it's a little low quality here and there. There were a few glitches in this one that I noticed as well, but it it definitely felt like more of a finished film than the other two. More of a tight film anyway. It's only 82 minutes and it don't [ __ ] about. It knows what it wants to do and it does it. There's not too many characters like the other two.

[00:13:31]It's There's not long boring stretches of nothing. If anything actually, I wasn't bored during this. It's just constant sounds and weird visuals and stuff happening. It just throws everything that it wants to do at you constantly for 82 minutes and then it stops.

[00:13:48]And that's what I want sometimes, you know?

[00:13:50]Because it's not trying to build suspense because it wouldn't be able to pull it off. It knows its capabilities, I guess, and it's quite commendable that it works to its strengths.

[00:14:00]Honestly, I had so much fun watching this. I really enjoyed myself. What more can I say about it? Let's move on.

[00:14:10]And let's look at the case on this one then. This is the case that made me want to bother talking about the box art of these because just look at it. It's horrendous. Very badly photoshopped Bert holding dice. His face looks projected on. It's like that face from Inland Empire, which if you know you know. I'm not going to show it here.

[00:14:31]Bert looks nothing like this in the film.

[00:14:34]But at the same time, it's one of those images where I just can't really look away from it. It's kind of mesmerizing.

[00:14:41]Then there's this quote on the bottom here that I need to mention. Now, Eraserhead is my favorite film. Never heard of Eraserhead though with a space between. Sounds like some sort of knock-off. But seriously though, I think Eraserhead might be a little stretch for this film. Eraserhead is a slow and thoughtful nightmare where this is campy and manic. If I'm going to compare this to like greatness, I'd say it's more like a John Waters film mixed with Tetsuo: The Iron Man made for 100 pound. Although the Rob Zombie comparison is a little more apt than Eraserhead.

[00:15:16]The back is just as garish. Loads going on. It's very of its time though. The write-up's fine. Very colloquial and silly. Fits the tone of the film. This is the cover that convinced me to buy this box set in CEX. I pulled out the DVDs and I had a look at what we'd got, and I saw this and I was like, "I need to review this. I need to talk about this online."

[00:15:36]And we again get the Zombie Chronicles limited logo at the beginning again, which makes all three.

[00:15:43]Not much to say on it, just well, I'd bring it up.

[00:15:48]So, to sum this one up then, I really enjoyed myself with it. Uh it's campy, it's fun, it's over-the-top, it's weird, it's so early 2000s, and I think I'm going to go on record here and say that this is it might be the best, it's definitely one of the best, it might be the best though, millennial trash films that I have ever sat and watched. And I will definitely be revisiting this again in the future. I could see people maybe finding this a little cringey potentially, cuz it is just a bunch of theater kids mugging to camera for 82 minutes.

[00:16:23]But, I ended up finding it endearing because the writing was good and the effects were good enough. And it just kept its pace. It wasn't just a static shot of theater kids mugging to camera.

[00:16:33]It was doing a little more with its time, and I like that. I'd say that this would make a very good movie night. I think you'd have a lot of fun in a group setting with this one.

[00:16:43]And to be honest, I think you could enjoy this on your own as well, maybe if you're a fan of zero budget schlock or millennial trash, then I reckon you might get something from this. Now, this print, as I said earlier, it's in 4x3 and it's probably the best one of the three, but it's not without its flaws. It had a glitch that was pretty noticeable, and the there's something weird happening with the music in this.

[00:17:07]It like stutters.

[00:17:09]There's like little breaks in it where it's stuttering. And when it's playing a song loudly, or louder than the dialogue, it it feels like the film's about to break it off. It feels like you're going to eject the disc from the PlayStation.

[00:17:22]It's going to be in like two pieces.

[00:17:24][music] Feels unstable, I guess. And I don't know if that's just the print or if the disc's a little funny. The disc looks fine though. Um this was the cleanest one of the three to be honest. But yeah, I don't know. It's It's not great.

[00:17:37]But the film itself is and I would say track this down if you can find it. Well worth a watch. Very entertaining.

[00:17:45]But before we finish, let's sum up the whole box set, shall we?

[00:17:51]So, we've now watched all the films in the Zombie Chronicles box set. And honestly, it was saved by that last film for me. I was not enjoying myself really until that last film. Let's do a little ranking of the films, shall we? People like a ranking. So, right at the bottom, Forever Dead, I think.

[00:18:11]Just a little too dull for my liking.

[00:18:14]Generic and dull.

[00:18:16]Then it's Swamp Zombies, which again is very dull, but it was saved by some of the action.

[00:18:22]And then at the top, way at the top, leagues above the others in my opinion, is Stiff Odds, which is just wacky, fun, over-the-top craziness.

[00:18:31]And a a joy to watch. A lot of fun to watch. So yeah, those were the three films. Very different takes on uh on the zombie film.

[00:18:40]You know, Forever Dead is kind of a Night of the Living Dead style, bit more traditional, I guess.

[00:18:45]Swamp Zombies is uh kind of boring, but it's got it's it's got an action side to it, you know?

[00:18:51]And then Stiff Odds is the comedy angle, you know? And all that different aspect ratio as well, which is really weird. Um yeah, the the qualities on the discs were quite consistent in that they're quite low quality. They know All of them had glitches. The sound was bad on all of them. I'd probably compare them to sort of like hardcore, maybe. They definitely had that sort of feel where it's [music] very budgetary. There's nothing extra on any of these discs, either. Interactive menu, scene selection, and trailer. And that's actually a lot on all three of them. So, there's nothing cool hiding on the disc or anything like that. It's just the films and a trailer for each one of them.

[00:19:28]So, yeah. That is The Zombie Chronicles Box Set. Was it worth 18 pound?

[00:19:35]Absolutely not. Absolutely not. 6 pound a disc is a little steep, you know. I I'd expect to pick up films of this quality at three for a pound in a charity shop, you know. 18 pound No, I feel like I didn't get my money's worth.

[00:19:50]>> [laughter] >> Not at all.

[00:19:52]Um and with that, I want to thank the members and patrons because without you donating to the channel and supporting my I wouldn't be able to buy ridiculous things like this to [music] make videos on. So, thank you so much for that. It really does mean a lot because this is what is fun about me making these videos. It's finding these ridiculous things in CEX. They may be overpriced, but why are they overpriced? And looking into them and watching all this stupid stuff and making videos for you to enjoy. So, thank you very much for your support. If you're interested in supporting me, there's a link to Patreon on screen. And for members, it's just over on my YouTube channel. There's a couple tiers, and there's plenty of different perks from as low as a pound a month as well.

[00:20:33]And if you're not in a position to do that, then maybe check out some of my other videos that I've done in the past.

[00:20:39]Uh I've done like the entire uh hardcore collection. I've done the entire the Scream Time, the current Shameless Blu-ray collection, all sorts of things like that. And that helps the channel as well, you know, watching those videos back. Get a little bit from that, and that really does help me buy this sort of crap to review for you guys. [music] So, thanks again for watching. Thank you very much. This isn't the end of Mail Any Trash just yet, though. We still have three more episodes to go So, I'll catch you in those videos. Thanks again for watching. See you later.