Ralf Hess

Ralf Hess made a bit of a name for himself with Zombie '90: Extreme Pestilence, a 1991 cult flick that’s honestly about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. The movie’s got all the charm of those low-budget, VHS-era horror gems—think cheap gore, over-the-top acting, and dialogue that sounds like it was written by someone who just discovered what zombies are. The plot? Buckle up. After a chemical leak (because of course it’s a chemical leak), a wave of the dead start shuffling around, and it’s up to a couple of unlikely heroes—a surgeon and a random dude with a gun—to try and survive the onslaught. The story doesn’t waste time on nuance. You get brains, guts, wild zombie effects, and a weird sense of humor that’s either intentional or a happy accident. Hess, somehow, leans into the madness, making everything bigger, messier, and way more ridiculous than you’d expect. There’s a kind of punk rock energy to the whole thing. The pacing’s all over the place, the soundtrack is pure B-movie cheese, and the “special effects” are mostly buckets of red paint and rubber limbs. But that’s exactly what fans love about it. Zombie '90 doesn’t pretend to be high art—it’s just here to deliver unfiltered, gleeful chaos, and Ralf Hess is right at the center of the madness.