Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

Let's be realistic.

good film but with many flaws

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This viewer is sure most people would tend towards the latter judgment.After a priceless opening text that educates us a little on cryogenics (yet is ultimately tongue in cheek), we get into the story of the living dead inundating a cryogenics lab. A bad storm creates a power outage at the lab, and the head security guard (Dan 'Grizzly Adams' Haggerty) thinks he's doing the right thing by transporting the tubes containing the dearly departed into the open where it's cooler. However, lightning strikes the tubes, and reanimates the bodies. Add to this a subplot about the nefarious head of the facility (Troy Donahue) selling human organs on the black market, and one has the recipe for a clunky and dumb B picture.Now, this viewer loves B genre pictures, good and bad, but this requires more patience than usual to get through, as it just doesn't deliver much, and doesn't offer us much that we haven't seen before. That said, I think it can only be a *good* thing to see the shambling corpse of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Hey, any distinction is worth mentioning.Directors Jack A. Sunseri (also the producer) and Deland Nuse (also the cinematographer) do what little they can with their material, and create some fun little moments here and there on the valuable "so bad it's good" level. However, they're also stuck with some unbelievably amateurish and unconvincing acting in pretty much all of the supporting roles. Jack De Rieux as nice guy businessman Joseph Davenport Sr. is a particularly big offender. Ever perky, ever lovely Linda Blair (as the evil docs' assistant (Don't worry, she wasn't in on it!)), Donahue, and Haggerty gamely put on poker faces throughout, and it is nice to see Haggerty become something of a hero after his earlier mistake.Makeup effects are substandard, but who really would expect anything different from a regional production obviously done on a low, low budget?Unfortunately, all of this just isn't as much fun as it could and should be. If one is a fan of Blair, she definitely did some better things during this period. At least at the end we get updates on all of the major players, and it does close out the picture with some real humour.Four out of 10.

As to be expected, there's a pretty good reason why this film is so obscure and unknown in spite of dealing with the always-popular premise of zombies and starring the 80's B-movie queen Linda Blair, namely: it sucks! "The Chilling" is trying enormously hard – way too hard – to be a story with depth and factual background, whereas it should have just been a light-headed and gore-packed horror flick about frozen zombies. It takes an incredibly long time before anything remotely interesting or significant happens. There's a lot of drivel about cryogenics, which I learned in my physics class is the study of products and their behavior at extremely low temperatures. So naturally, in this film a bunch of people are studying the behavior of human corpses when deep frozen. Needless to say this is extremely boring, until two dim-witted night watchmen decide, during an electric power failure, that it's a good idea to put the metal-constructed cool cells outside at the heights of a thunderstorm. The coolers are struck by lightening, obviously, and the bodies spontaneously defrost and come to live to go on a murderous zombie rampage. "The Chilling" is a boring and surprisingly (for a late 80's effort, at least) gore-free horror film that doesn't even use up a quarter of its potential. All the painful attempts to build up an atmosphere of suspense and eeriness fail tremendously and I can't think of any reason why the zombie-attacks had to be so bloodless. Even in spite of the low budget available, they could have done better. The set pieces, make-up effects and costumes are pitiable. The research lab, for example, looks like a proper apartment flat whilst the zombies couldn't look less menacing with their green faces and foil-wrapped outfits. How Linda Blair managed to get involved yet again in such an embarrassing low-budgeted horror flick is a complete mystery. She's attracted to lousy B-movies like bees are to honey.

i have to admit something here, i watched this movie because im a big fan of linda blair,in all movies she had a big role within the story: exorcist,hell night,chained heat even that repossesed but this movie is BORING that you cant imagine thats "her".man her role are hardly recognizable.ok now lets talk about those mutants :the ppl behind this film should made their minds straight before scripting whether its a mutant movie or a zombie movie, some readers referring to them as zombies are they zombies ? NO because i didnt saw any of them walk slow and eat human flesh in any scene, ok are they mutants? NO because mutants dont look/act funny,and i saw one scene were a mutant tickling someone's back and have a quick conversation with him,according to this "horror" catagorized movie they are "crygenic corpses"who are wearing contaminated costumes and chasing or scaring linda blair and her BORING cast.what can i say guys,linda blair shouldnt be in this movie ,and its a shame her role was a waste of her time and ours too.i dont recommend this movie to linda blair fans,im sure they will be upset,i also dont recommend horror movie collectors to buy/rent this one,and to B-movie fans :you can watch it at your own decision

When I decided to try watching a movie about cryogenic zombies ("cryonoids"), I wasn't expecting a whole lot. That's exactly what I got, and then even less. Aside from a shortage of special effects (squibs?) and a severe lack of any acting talent, "The Chilling" also sports the absolute worst script I've ever seen made into a movie. I had to stop the tape numerous times during the first 45 minutes in order to repair the damage done to my intellect for witnessing such atrocious dialogue as there is found here.Furthermore, the collection of characters is so formulaic and one-dimensional it's ridiculous: the corrupt doctor; his assistant, played by Linda Blair (we know she's his "assistant" because he repeatedly refers to her by that title); the recently-widowed businessman with a heart of gold who develops a romantic interest with Blair's character; his criminal son; the Blair character's alcoholic, abusive, unemployed boyfriend, whom we are introduced to in the most contrived use of a flashback; and, of course, the rough, tough, bearded security guard who becomes the hero.Apparently, the preserving fluid which some cryogenics lab uses on its bodies is highly conductive, naturally resulting in disaster when all of the lab's containers end up outdoors in a remarkable sequence of events during a lightning storm (on Halloween night, no less). As for the zombies themselves, if you enjoy watching people in green latex masks walking around in aluminum foil suits, then "The Chilling" is the movie for you. The zombie action is very weak at its best; the zombies' primary killing method seems to be grabbing people by the shoulders and shaking them to death. The businessman and the security guard do most of the zombie fighting, including a highly suspenseful scene of re-freezing the undead with liquid nitrogen. Let me tell you, the steel mill scene in "T2" has got nothing on "The Chilling" in portraying an enemy getting frozen in his tracks like that.How Linda Blair ended up stuck in the middle of this piece of dreck is indeed a mystery. True, her career didn't exactly skyrocket during the 80s (sadly), but this movie is an embarrassment for her. The script doesn't even have the decency to put her to any good use. The most that her character is given to do is shriek out things like "Here they come", "Do something", "Hurry!". The only thing I can figure is that poor Linda was compensated for her work on this film in rations of food. The hero is played by Grizzly Adams himself, Dan Haggerty. In this picture, he faces stiff acting competition from his beard and the security dog, and he does his best to outperform them both.The only frightening part of "The Chilling" is the introduction which brings up the factual elements of cryogenics and suggests that "the film you are about to see could happen in your own community". As I was counting the number of times a few of the names are repeated in the closing credits, I was floored to suddenly see Lucasfilm get credited. Fortunately, it was only for the movie's sound production. 1/10.