the plot: In rural Pennsylvania, a hapless farmer disturbs a grave with a Satanic curse placed on it. Out of that grave rises a ferocious zombie (Hinzman), who proceeds to snack on some nearby college kids and local townsfolk. The zombie plague spreads across the county and not even a posse of surly gunmen can fully contain the undead horde.

why it’s not so good: When the packaging for a movie bills its writer/director/star/producer/editor/etc. as “that monster from ‘Night of the Living Dead,’” you know you’re in trouble. Considering the cinematic pile that “FleshEater” turned out to be, “Night” should have been Hinzman’s first and last job in the horror industry. Somehow, he persisted and managed to pull together some equipment and a cast of local yokels for “FleshEater,” a zombie movie for those who find tractor pulls a bit too sophisticated. It’s a bad time all around, but not bad enough to be laughable. Once Hinzman literally chews through a quarter of the cast in the first half hour, you’ll be left wondering where else the movie can go. The answer is not very far. Hinzman and his zombie friends munch on a second, third and, finally, a fourth cast, with each group of characters more irrelevant than the last. One teenage couple manages to survive throughout the whole movie, but apart from the fact that the boyfriend looks like Sylvester Stallone’s third cousin, they’re so generic and forgettable that even Hinzman loses track of them until the film’s climax. While Hinzman can’t tell a story, write dialogue, act or direct worth a damn, he at least knows two important things about horror flicks: when all else fails, pile on the boobs and gore. Hinzman doesn’t skimp here and it’s actually sort of impressive that his cache as “that zombie from ‘Night of the Living Dead’” helped him find a half-dozen chicks in rural Pennsylvania to get naked. Also impressive are the special effects. There are ripped out hearts, shambling half-eaten corpses and some decent gunshot wounds. The blood and the boobs are the only high points of the movie, and even at a lean 90 minutes, those moments are too few and far between for even the most patient viewer.

why you should own it: For your sake and the sake of those you love, don’t buy “FleshEater.” But if some misguided friend (or, more likely, a vindictive enemy) hands you a copy, at least check out the bonus features on Shriek Show’s DVD. There’s the obligatory retrospective making-of feature, in which Hinzman reveals that he got his (dubious) start behind the camera filling in for Romero on the set of “The Crazies.” But best of all is the hilariously chintzy commercial for a local Pennsylvania pizza chain that riffs on “Night.” It’s about the same level of quality as “FleshEater,” but at only 30 seconds in length, it’s a far superior piece of filmmaking.