SGM Month of Halloween Horror Movie for October 2

"Fido" (2006)

Themes: Zombies; stranger in a strange land.
Synopsis (from the back of the box): Timmy Robinson's best friend in the whole wide world is a six-foot-tall rotting zombie named Fido. But when Fido eats the next-door neighbor, Mom and Dad hit the roof, and Timmy has to go to the ends of the earth to keep Fido a part of the family. A boy-and-his-dog movie for grown-ups, "Fido" will rip your heart out.

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Huh; hard to believe that's Billy Connolly - Billy MacGregor of "Head of the Class" - under the "Fido" makeup. He plays Fido with a very careful sympathy; I'd even wager that this is one of the finest silent portrayals of the new millennium.

The setting is small-town America in the 1950's, with all its cheesy pastel houses and golly-gee-whiz mentality about the world around us. Timmy is actually the only "modern" character, with his mistrust of the government and his incessant questions when an authority figure offers cursory explanations of events and circumstances.

The characters also conspire to bring "Fido" to amazing life, in how they round ofut the background. Dylan Baker - who played Doc Connors in the "Spider-man" films - is choice as Timmy's dad, who also happens to have a "zombie phobia." Carrie Anne Moss is unrecognizable in her collection of floral print dresses and '50s hairdo. But most intriguing is Mr. Theopolis, with his hot (for a zombie) maid; his subtle approach and interactions with his neighbors suggests that he may engage in some pretty impure interactions with his zombie girl.

Certain scenes stand out as snapshots of how life changes after something cataclysmic like a zombie outbreak. One scene showed kids at school going out for "field science," which merely amounted to shooting zombie targets while singing, "In the brain, not the chest/ Headshots are the very best." Can't beat that.

Rating: 2 3/4 count; it almost does the job.