Nightlife of the Living Dead

ZomBlog Review: "Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead"

2011-10-20T22:49:00.002-04:00

“Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead”
2008
U.S.
Stars: Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham, Allyson Sereboff, Robin L. Watkins, Joshua Olatunde, Caleb Emerson, , Rose Ghavami and Khalid Rivera
Writers: Gabriel Friedman, Daniel Bova, and Lloyd Kaufman
Dir: Lloyd Kaufman
83 minutes

Let’s just be honest with each other: If you are not familiar with Troma Films, you would lose any trivia game with a semblance of movie-geek trivia against me.
Troma studios have been unleashing tasteless independent classics such as “The Toxic Avenger,” “Class of Nuke ‘Em High” “Troma’s War” and countless others (which will, and have, appeared in this blog before) since way before 1983.
While lacking in a true, based-in-lore, zombie story, Troma does what it does best with “Poultrygeist” — Gut the mainstream.
Warning: If you are offended by redneck, religious, gay/lesbian insults or racial slurs/stereotypes, anti-Semitic jokes, or anything else that would offend absolutely anyone who is too uptight for the human race, just click out of here. Go to youtube and watch cute cat videos. If you have a sense of humor, read on.
So maybe you have seen “Fast Food Nation” or read the book. If you bought into it, you might be a moron (kidding…maybe…maybe not).
Look, we all know that eating fast-food is bad. We don’t need it pounded into our faces, right? We’re smart, right?
Apparently, Troma realized we are morons and decided to take it to the next level.
“Poultrygeist” starts out like many would not expect: A young go-getter, Arbie, is attempting to have sex with his high-school girlfriend, Wendy, (see? They are so subtle over at Troma) while the inhabitants of an Indian graveyard revolt against the thought that their once-peaceful resting place will soon become the site of a new Chicken Bunker — well, the revolt is more of a finger-in-the-ass, and Arbie and Wendy flee.
Fast-forward, and Arbie has done little with his life. He comes home from college, hungry for a job and finds his once-girlfriend, Wendy, joining in a protest against the new Chicken Bunker Restaurant — led by her newfound-college-lesbian-friend, who is heading the protest group called C.L.A.M. — College Lesbians Against Mega-Conglomerates.
In a musical fit of rage (yes, this film is a musical), Arbie decides to piss-off his one-time love by becoming an employee of the Chicken Bunker.
Folks, this is just the first 15 minutes.
What follows is this in a nutshell: A Muslim fry-cook figures out the “chickens have declared Jihad,” on the restaurant, Sloppy Jose’s talk to people, all the while violently spastic food-poisoning body transformation, fake lesbian make-out scenes, many more catchy dance numbers, riffs on films ranging from “Night of the Living Dead” to “Aliens” to “Assault on Precinct 13” take place. In a word, “BatshitCrazy.” But, later, the film hits it stride, welcoming a buttload of pissed-off chicken-faced zombies, who then begin to feast on the clientele. And bloody, gory, insane scenes ensue.
And, despite my open-mind and desire to rise above the apes, I can’t help but chuckle a shitload throughout this grotesque-fest of inappropriate humor.
If you want to offend absolutely everyone you know, show them “Poultrygeist.” If you lose friends, they weren’t friends to begin with.

Romero Rules Followed: Well, this time around, spoiled/rotten/(possessed?) eggs cause the outbreak, and nothing really applies here.
Gore factor: Bonkers. Blood flies more than a Sam Raimi test shoot.
Zombies or Wannabees? First-ever TIE
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine
Additional comments: I could never call this P.O.S. a classic, but, you know what? It is damn fun, too much fun for a movie with an IQ level of 50. Sometimes, it is great to just shut off the brain and have fun. This is fun, and not for the thoughtful.
— ROB

ZomBlog Review: "Zombieland"

2011-10-03T10:48:00.003-04:00

“Zombieland”
2009
U.S.
Stars: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Writers: Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick
Dir: Ruben Fleischer
88 minutes

First and foremost, thanks for coming back. There was a (too-long) hiatus for this blog, but I plan to have at least two updates a week beginning with this week. As a promise, I will at least have one update per week, plus Twitter updates.
So, how better to re-launch the blog than to review a modern classic?
For the layperson who happened to miss this gem on initial release and henceforth online, on Blu-Ray, DVD or streaming/on-demand, stop reading this right now, and go watch it. I’ll wait. And you will thank me.
For those who know others uninitiated to the zombie-genre, this is how you bring them in: Show them “Zombieland.”
It has it all: great writing, great comedy, one of the best cameos ever in a film ever, superfluous gore, a simple story, and a cast of actors perfect for the film.
Jesse “Social Network” Eisenberg stars as the perfect, reclusive nerd who one day wakes up and finds himself thrust into an entire world filled with fast-moving gut-munchers. In order to survive, he writes a set of his own rules for survival (for the likeminded dorks, I have the ones listed in the film in order below), many of which are demonstrated repeatedly throughout the film. The hapless, goofy nerd meets up with testosterone-personified in “Tallahassee,” the name given to Harrelson’s character which is derived from Tallahassee’s ultimate destination (Tallahassee, upon picking up the young nerd, firmly states “No names,” as to not get unnecessarily attached to a stranger). The nerd then claims his name as “Columbus Ohio.”
Harrelson is clearly having a blast in this role, channeling his character Mickey Knox from “Natural Born Killers,” and putting a perfect deadpan comedic spin on the tough-as-nails character and making the blood-thirsty killer into a gleeful zombie-killing Twinkie-lover. Harrelson just chews-up nearly every scene he is in.
Columbus, wary of stepping outside of his rules, seems happy to have human contact and aids Tallahassee in his on-the-road quest for the golden Hostess treats, wherein they meet a cunning set of sisters, Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin). Despite several back-stabbing moments, the girls become part of the fold, with Wichita becoming a love interest for Columbus, and Little Rock standing in for…let’s just say, a hole in Tallahassee’s life.
The sisters reveal they are heading to an amusement park, which they heard is zombie-free, Pacific Playland (a place where Little Rock can be a kid again), and the girls con the men into tagging along. As they head out of Texas and into California, a whole lot of hijinks, zombie killing, and the murder of Hollywood-royalty occurs.
And all of it is played for laughs, accompanied with extreme gore.

Romero Rules Followed: A handful, but these suckers are fast. But, for the most part, they are followed.
Gore factor: Extreme.
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies; I can’t keep the fast-movers out of the category.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: Just watch and enjoy. Oh, also, here are Columbus’s rules (the ones noted in the film):
Rule #1: Cardio
Rule #2: Double-tap
Rule #3: Beware of bathrooms
Rule #4: Seatbelts
Rule #7: Travel light
Rule #17: Don’t be a hero
Rule #18: Limber up
Rule #22: When in doubt, know your way out
Rule #31: Check the back seat
Rule #32: Enjoy the little things

— ROB
Follow the blog on twitter: @zom_blog

Zombie or Wannabe: The Stuff in "The Stuff"

2011-07-28T21:43:00.004-04:00

“The Stuff”

1985

U.S.

Stars: Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris, Paul Sorvino, Scott Bloom, Danny Aiello

Writer: Larry Cohen

Dir: Larry Cohen

93 minutes

There are many a film that date the 1980s as the time of indulgence, trends, and paranoia. Few capture it as well as “The Stuff.”

That is a bold statement, to be sure, but watch it. A new creamy, yogurt/ice cream dessert phenomenon has been drilled into the American culture, a dessert that seems to bubble out of the ground, have no calories, increase energy, and satisfy appetites. It is the Coca-Cola. It is Pepsi. It is a new titan on the market.

And there are ice cream and dessert companies who are fearing the new taste sensation will put them out of business, considering the new sensation, The Stuff, surpassed any FDA or any other food/government regulations, and is being distributed at will by a company.

Enter David “Mo” Rutherford (in a brilliant and having balls-out-fun performance by genre favorite Moriarty), an industrial espionage expert hired by the dessert companies to figure out how The Stuff is made and marketed and how they could compete with it. With his pretend dumb drawl, Mo asks his shady employers, “Do you know why they call me ‘Mo’? Because when I ask for something, I always want ‘Mo.’”

Yup, it’s the ’80s.

Switch to a young boy, Jason, whose midnight snack craving led him to see The Stuff “move” in his family’s refrigerator. Jason embarks on a skeptical and ultimately destructive attitude toward America’s “new taste sensation,” including attacking a grocery display, drawing Mo’s attention.

While Mo romances/influences the advertising director of The Stuff, Jason’s family ostracizes him, demanding he start to enjoy The Stuff, which they have begun eating exclusively. Jason attempts a rather humorous rouse to escape his family, meeting up at the right time with Mo, prompting Jason to explain his reasoning for puking in Mo’s car: “I just had to eat shaving cream!”

“Well, everyone has to … eat shaving cream once in their life,” Mo quips.

Oh, did I mention what seems to happen with hardcore Stuff eaters (later referred to as “Stuffies”)?

Starting with the mouth, The Stuff eats the head, the brain, and, ultimately the innards. And, during that time, it controls and consumes the consumer (subtle, right?). Mo and Jason meet up with Chocolate Chip Charlie (another hilarious turn by Morris, of a boatload of TV fame, including classic SNL), an industrialist also interested in how The Stuff has put him out of business.

When the crew meets up with Col. Spears (Sorvino), the movie takes, and embraces, the campy turn it had been speeding toward the entire time. And drives home the Reagan-era 1980s Cold War paranoia, the expense of consumerism, the price of excess, and the hopelessness of the American public to fight against corporate power.

So, bottom line: Why is this sucker here on the zomblog?

“The Stuff” expands, deftly, on what Romero introduced with “Dawn of the Dead.” In fact, Cohen’s take on the subject better encapsulated the pulse of the era. And it pains me to say that. Romero foreshadowed with “This is where we are heading.”; Cohen said “You know, you suckers, you were warned and didn’t care. And you still don’t, you sheep.”

Sadly, “The Stuff” has never been given its due. It is hardly a horror film, save for the few shots of mostly bloodless gore. It is satire first and foremost and handled better than Mr. Romero did in “Dawn.” While both directors were heavy-handed in their delivery, Cohen’s message was a sledge-hammer compared to Romero’s tack-hammer.

Zombies are of a collective mind: they all do what has been told to them via instinct: Eat and reproduce. By eating/biting us they create more of their kind.

Are we so different?

— ROB

On the wane, oversaturated, or on the rise?

2011-07-22T14:03:00.003-04:00

The zombie popularity dilemma and the under appreciation of the undead

Q: “How many Vietnam veterans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
A: “YOU DON’T KNOW MAN, YOU WEREN’T THERE!”
A joke in poor taste, but if you chuckled a little, you’re my kind of person.
If you love the zombies, you probably have a bit of wit about you.
I can look back now on the scattered wastelands of the past 10 years and nod with a smirk, “F-ing A, my zombies had their day.”
From Romero coming back into the game, to one of the stars of “Zombieland” starring in an Oscar-winning film, to countless books, low- and big-budget films and remakes of classics suddenly becoming en vogue, one would think I am a happy camper who thinks, “Finally, the shamblers get their due.”
To a point, I am.
As I approach the meh age of 34, I look back at my childhood far more than I should. I wax nostalgic for a lot of media I once loved only to see it ruined, either by a lot of meddling (George Lucas), retreading (how many post-apocalyptic movies can we take?), and “gritty reboots” or “gritty remakes” (making something more gory is not always better, Hollywood).
Now that a pack of those who are about 10 to 15 years younger than I are clamoring for the recognition of discovering the undead hordes as their Holy Grail, I find myself more often annoyed than proud.
Why?
Call me a curmudgeon all you like, but I think it really is a matter of appreciating the groundwork that was laid prior to the discovery of something grand.
No one visits Egypt without the intention of visiting the pyramids. Yet, one truly has a far greater appreciation for them once they understand how much back-breaking work, scores of people, and limited technology of the time made those things rise from the sand and withstand time. Yeah, they are cool to look at and watch Michael Bay blow up, but, really, understanding that there is a structure, thousands of years old, settled in the middle of a desert, withstanding the test of time, weather, and human curiosity. That, considering mankind’s ability to find more efficient ways to destroy than to create, is beyond amazing.
That is a far-fetched metaphor, to be sure. Simple gut-muncher films are in no way on par with the creation of one the world’s greatest wonders.
But, as I see more and more zombie (and often sort-of) related zombie lore come out, I get upset when my zombies get tweaked, played with, or underappreciated. I’ve addressed the greatest debate before. I’ve tossed Romero’s salad shamelessly here over and over again.
Yet, I know more people who have seen the latest “Dawn of the Dead” and never knew it was a remake than those who actually knew it was.
I’ve met others who find shamblers boring and unthreatening.
I’ve met those who think zombies are kind of like vampires, but just dumb.
And I’ve met people who think “Twilight” needed to add zombies to make it even cooler. Why not? That series fucked the vampire and werewolf mythos in the eyesockets. Why not just go ahead and screw up zombies as well? (And, if Stephanie Meyer did fuck with zombies, don’t tell me. I just don’t want to know).
So, what is my point, you ask?
Have zombies had too good of a run as of late? They seem to be literal rock stars.
That is of which I am afraid. I grew up with these suckers. I’ve attempted several times through this blog to convert the new, to train their eyes on the old, to appreciate the pyramids built by Romero and Fulci, which have been assaulted or accented by modern sandstorms of idiocy or brilliance, and sprinkled with chaotic spice throughout the past 50 years.
Yet, I find myself digging my heels in, falling on deaf ears, and arguing with those who “weren’t there” when zombies really hit the scene. Hey, do the math: neither was I. But, like most people set in the ways of what they like, I “was there, man.” I grew up in the initial thick of it.
Lately, it appears there is an author, a director, a screenwriter, or a hack by any other name who seems to have the very basic idea of zombies in their head. Zombies suddenly blew up in the mid-2000s and have proceeded to “atomic bomb” the world with the success of “The Walking Dead” and others such as “28 Days Later.”
Yeah, I should be happy. I almost feel indifferent.
I guess I should be glad I am not a Bram Stoker turbo-fan. If I were, some snotty, hack, Mormon writer would be swinging from a tree right now.
Do yourself a favor if you enjoy modern zombies: explore their history. I have found myself immersed in a tome of zombie-lore recently, “Zombies: Encounters with the Living Dead,” by John Skipp, exploring the works of writers I love (Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman) and those I have never heard of (Leonid Andreyev, W.B. Seabrook) and I am loving it. Even this curmudgeon is enjoying old works featuring zombies. And if I can go back and find new pyramids, so can you.
Not everything new shines with the brilliance of found gold. But when you do find that nugget…
Oh, and speaking of new, follow this blog on twitter @zom_blog. I welcome friendly/aggressive banter/debate. And, should you be bored and need a recommendation for a good/awful zombie flick, tweet me there.
— Rob Perry

ZomBlog Review: "City of the Living Dead"

2011-07-08T14:52:00.004-04:00

“City of the Living Dead”
1980
Italy
Stars: Christopher George, Katrina MacColl, Carlo De Mejo, Giovanni Radice
Writers: Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti
Dir: Lucio Fulci
93 minutes

Leave it to Lucio Fulci to deliver a classic, top-five-of-all-time entry into not only the horror, but zombie canon as well, with “Zombie,” and follow it up with this film reviewed here and then his arguable masterpiece, “The Beyond.”
It is tough for me to jump right into this one as greedily as I did with “Zombie” or “The Beyond.” I fondly remember visiting those old video stores in the early 1980s and seeing the bastardized, MPAA-gutted, white box with ominous zombie skull beckoning me to watch “The Gates of Hell” (the ominous zombie skull strangely resembled the absolute suckfest “Hell of the Living Dead” box art, or vice versa; either way, someone should get their balls kicked in for confusing my developing brain with a suckfest and a mindfuck).
“City of the Living Dead” is not purely a zombie film, although it has rotting pussheads aplenty. It is a mash-up of ghosts, demons, and our beloved shamblers tossed into a blender of doomed prophecy, religion, witchcraft, the supernatural, and blow-up dolls.
Yeah, it’s all over the place.
Yet, it follows a very linear plotline that is surprisingly easy to follow.
The sleepy town of Dunwich is completely screwed now that a priest has hung himself and set in motion the opening of the gates of hell. During a séance hundreds of miles away in New York, Mary (MacColl) drops dead at a vision of the impending doom of Dunwich and the twisting-in-the-wind priest.
Naturally, journalist Peter (George) investigates the strange death-by-séance, and, like any journalist worth their salt, hangs around a graveyard just long enough to hear Mary screaming and clawing her way out of her grave — alive and having only been temporarily comatose due to the séance.
Still with me? Good.
Together, Peter and Mary decide to investigate the ominous visions Mary saw in her séance vision. They head to Dunwich, where, as the viewer already knows, shit has just gotten real-real.
Strange windstorms are rushing in. Random minor earthquakes shatter mirrors and destroy cinderblock foundations. Oh, and a girl, who imagines (maybe?) seeing the dead priest suddenly “evacuates” her abdomen. That is to say, “Guts, yer outta here, via my mouth.”
Yup, a woman graphically vomits up her entire digestive system.
And, the paranoid townsfolk decide the strange happenings are the doings of local weirdo, and pervert, Bob (Radice); the townsfolk must have seen “Cannibal Ferox” and just assumed he was up to no good … I think about three people just got that joke.
Anyways, Bob is (sadly) hunted down, drilled about the strange events about town, and, well, Bob can’t be blamed anymore after his brief interrogation.
As Peter and Mary (Paul was nowhere to be found) continue their investigation, they learn the priest’s suicide set off a series of events that will cause the gates of hell to open, on All Saints Day, less than three days from now. Suddenly, it becomes a race against time, a shower of maggots, disappearing and reappearing undead to figure out how to prevent the Biblical/Book of Enoch predicted apocalypse.
Damn, this is a fun horror film.

Romero Rules Followed: Fulci gave the rules the finger with this one.
Gore factor: Girl puking up her guts? Check. Table-drill through the head? Check. Lots of Fulci-designed gore? Double check.
Zombies or Wannabees? It’s a toughie, but, too many liberties are taken here. Wannabees abound.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic, as a gore/horrorfest.
Additional comments: I know I had a little fun with this one. Hell, watch the movie: It is fun. Fulci was having a blast. “The Beyond” was taken a tad more seriously. “The House by the Cemetery” was even more serious (it’ll be up here soon, no worries). In my worthlessly expert opinion, Fulci wanted to branch out from the Romero formula and inject a little variety into the zombie genre (by 1980, nearly 20 knock-offs of “Dawn of the Dead” had been unleashed around the world, each more terrible than the last; yet, “Zombie” landed firmly on its feet as an unofficial, and highly-regarded in horrordom, sequel to “Dawn,” six years prior to Romero’s “Day of the Dead”). Yes, Fulci threw some religious hodge-podge and new-age bullshit into the mix, but he made up for a lot of the “what the fuck is going on” with solid performances from stalwarts George and MacColl and “holy-shit, did-you-see-that?” sequences of graphic gore.
I’m not a huge gorehound. But, if I was, I think I would covet Fulci’s films above several others to get my fix.
The final verdict: It’s not canon, but it is a very, very fun flick to enjoy and just watch unfold.

— ROB

ZomBlog Review: "Masters of Horror: Homecoming"

2011-06-24T13:44:00.002-04:00

“Masters of Horror: Homecoming”
2009
U.S.
Stars: John Tenney, Thea Gill, Robert Picardo
Writer: Based on the short story “Death & Suffrage” by Dale Bailey; Teleplay by Sam Hamm
Dir: Joe Dante
58 minutes

I really wished the “Masters of Horror” series had a group of executives with balls backing it up. It gave a group of directors, mostly known in horror circles, a chance to take the “Tales From The Crypt,” “Outer Limits,” “Twilight Zone” approach to risqué material. Of all of the episodes of the two, short-lived seasons, I had a handful of favorites: Takashi Miike’s “Imprint,” “Don Coscarelli’s “An Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,” among others, and, absolutely Joe Dante’s “Homecoming.”
Before you think me a hippie, elitist, liberal, soldier-hater, enemy sympathizer, etc., I purely looked at this (at first) as an entertaining take on the zombie mythos — what if zombies came back and had a purpose, other than to eradicate the “living disease?”
What if they happened to be soldiers of a current war conflict? What about soldiers of conflicts decades ago? What if all they wanted to do was express one of the most valued rights and expressions of democracy: To vote.
That, as a concept, is fascinating.
Put it in the hands of Joe “Gremlins” Dante, you have a few chances at making fun of the establishment.
For you young bloods, Dante skewered the consumer culture of the 1980s (without many of rich and privileged even realizing it) right in the middle of the craze with “Gremlins” in 1985 (take a look at that film with that idea in mind).
So, to take on “Homecoming,” written to address the current, heavy issue of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Dante churned out an hour of something that should have drawn a shitload of debatable heat.
So, here it is: A war is going on. A sitting president is facing massive ridicule regarding an ongoing war, a war that is increasingly becoming unpopular. When David Murch (Tenney), a pundit for the sitting president, makes an off-the-cuff wish on a cable news show for his dead brother, killed in (or around) Vietnam, and other dead veterans to return and tell the world how proud they were to die for their country, the dead veterans begin to arrive at polling places. While an Ann Coulter-clone (Gill) attempts to capitalize on the pundit’s call, the president’s re-election team soon learns the dead veterans might not be too happy to have gone to war “for a lie.” After they “speak” at the polls, the dead drop dead, but, for the sitting president, it may be the end of the line, unless his pundit and the newly-groomed talking-head can find a way to spin the exit polls, demonize the dead voters, and make it all palatable to the American public — all in an effort to win re-election.
But, you can’t keep a good soldier down, especially an American one.
Romero Rules Followed: None; these zombies arise simply to have a purpose, and they have no need for eating humans. In fact, the only violence they display is if their honor is questioned (great scene).
Gore factor: Moderate
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies, but in a very different category.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: I really, really enjoyed “Homecoming,” but I could not enjoy it as much as I think I should have. For one, I know a few vets from the current war. They are not exactly a fan of thinking they went and fought for nothing. And, sadly, the scars of how Vietnam veterans were treated are still mending. I would feel more comfortable in praising “Homecoming” if some honest servicemen/women could watch it, without reservation, and tell me “I have no regrets for what I was sent to do.”
I would be an incredible asshole to even think I could predict/give an opinion as to how any veteran of any war/conflict would/should react should they survive/be killed in battle.
While “Homecoming” was an over-the-top parody/political commentary that (slightly) flinches at really driving the point home, I enjoyed it, and would encourage everyone, conservative, liberal, green, anarchist, hippie, etc. to watch it, put aside your personal ideals, and then, only then, decide how you feel about “Homecoming.”
I can’t.

— ROB

ZomBlog Review: 'Zombie'

2011-06-09T13:25:00.003-04:00

“Zombie”
1979
Italy
Stars: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCullough, Richard Johnson, Al Clives, Auretta Gay, Stephania D’Amario, Olga Karlatos
Writer: Elisa Briganti
Dir: Lucio Fulci
91 minutes

Where, oh where, do I begin with this one? Aside from poor English dubbing, this could possibly the best zombie film aside from “Night of the Living Dead.” Yes, that is a bold statement. And I will stand by it without flinching.
Lucio Fulci, may he rest with the (currently) peacefully sleeping dead, saw the sensation brought about by George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead.” Dario Argento, famed giallo maestro of Italy, made a “European Cut” of Romero’s “Dawn” and unleashed it upon Europe and most of the rest of the non-U.S.A. world. It was simply titled “Zombi.”
Fulci felt Italy needed to answer. So, unofficially, he made this tiny film, known in Italy and most of Europe as “Zombi 2.”
While I will go down swinging saying that Romero’s “Dawn” is a superior film overall, Fulci made a far superior zombie film here.
Yes, I just wrote that.
“Zombie” kept simple what us gorehound and zombie fans wanted: basic plot, extreme zombie carnage, likeable characters, and, for the most part, Romero’s rules were left intact. And, he added some visual touches and startling, burn-into-your-brain moments that only Fulci could deliver.
I’m already praising this gem without telling the noobs what it entails. So, for the unfamiliar…
The film opens with a handgun firing a single shot into a rising white sheet, wrapped in rope, in the form of a person. An off-screen voice says, “The boat can leave now. Tell the crew.”
So begins “Zombie.” Said boat seems to have wandered (maybe?) off course and wound up in the New York harbor. As the harbor patrol investigates, they encounter a rather portly man with a taste for neck flesh. As one of the officers empties his gun into the chubster, the fat man falls into the water…
Cut to a “newspaper newsroom,” where ace reporter Peter West (McCullough, an great yet oft-overlooked British character actor) is given an assignment to look into the strange adrift vessel (an assignment he gets from an obvious Italian-speaking Fulci himself). Upon checking out the dock, West encounters Ann (Farrow), from whom he learns the boat belonged to her father. Her father had left for the island of Matool (somewhere in the Caribbean, the best we can tell) and he lost touch with his daughter, aside from a note they find aboard. West and Ann set sail to Matool, aboard a boat chartered by “American” explorers of the deep, Susan and Brian (who are dubbed, at times poorly).
It is shortly after this rendezvous that one of the films first iconic moments occurs: Zombie Vs. Shark. Yes: ZOMBIE VS. SHARK. Susan decides to take an impromptu SCUBA dive and finds herself confronted by both a member of the undead and a member of one of cinema’s other unrelenting predators. I won’t spoil that encounter any further other than to say, again, ZOMBIE VS. SHARK.
Our pleasant protagonists arrive at Matool, the boat suffering a bit of damage from the ZOMBIE VS. SHARK incident earlier. Meanwhile, we are introduced to Dr. Menard (Johnson) and his fed-up-to-her-gills-with-his-obsession-with-the-dead wife, Olga (Karlatos). Menard is trying to figure out why the natives of Matool suspect voodoo in bringing some of the recently deceased back to life, while his gorgeous-eyed wife simply wants to get away from it all (her eyes…her gorgeous, green eyes…so often focused on…sigh).
We learn Menard is simply not willing to walk away from trying to figure out a scientific explanation to the recently dead returning to life (sidenote: the voodoo concept has been derided by some critics of this film. I am sure I am not the first to mention it was prominently brought up as a theory by Ken Foree in “Dawn of the Dead,” leading to a very famous catchphrase from that film).
As our travelers from the U.S.A. meet up with Menard, they learn the fate of Ann’s father, and Menard asks the travelers to check on his wife, whom, after a heated (and abusive argument) had been left home alone without a watchful eye over her (oh, if only she had a watchful eye).
If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll get that sad attempt at a joke later.
Upon finding Menard’s wife dispatched, the team attempts to reach the hospital and crashes along the way, conveniently into what appears to be a graveyard left by Spanish conquistadors. And, here, yet another iconic (one of about 16 in this film) moment occurs. Can’t spoil that sucker either, but you’ll know it when it happens.
The survivors haul ass back to the hospital with Menard and then wage a standoff the likes Romero wished he could have staged at the Monroeville Mall. Tons of fire, Molotov cocktails, gunfire, blood splatters, surprises, and carnage ensues. But, it doesn’t end there. But there is where it ends here.

Romero Rules Followed: Slow, shifty, shambling, rotting messes of undead meat. Get bit, get dead. Yup, zombies.
Gore factor: One of the goriest of all zombie films.
Zombies or Wannabees? Are you kidding? You fricken better have zombies if you are bold enough to name the film “Zombie.”
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Concrete, unshakable, inarguable classic.
Additional comments: Want to introduce someone into the realm of the zombies? Look no further than this one. And, look, I know, there is a generation gap where if the mouths don’t match the words (it’s called dubbing, jerks), viewers will scream “this sucks!” If they scream that, they are not worth being your friends. Embrace this Italian-made jewel for what it is — a classic zombie entry, and one of the finest films the late, great Fulci ever made. And one of the best horror films ever made.

— ROB

ZomBlog Review: Part 2 of "The Walking Dead"

2011-06-02T14:52:00.004-04:00

“The Walking Dead”
Season One, Episodes 4-6
2010
U.S.
Stars: Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Steven Yuen, Jeffrey DeMunn, Emma Bell, Iron E Singleton, Michael Rooker, and Noah Emmerich

Writers: Robert Kirkman, Glenn Mazzara, Adam Fiero, Frank Darabont
Directors: Johan Renck, Ernest R. Dickerson, Guy Ferland

It has been some time since the zombies have shown their sharp teeth on this tiny little blog. Both of your humble reviewers have been incredibly busy with, uh, real-life stuff. But, as we know, zombies never truly die. So, here we are; a return to the living dead with part 2 of a review of “The Walking Dead” season 1…

“Vatos”:
Rick has led a few of the survivors into the city to retrieve both Merle and the bag of weapons he dropped earlier. Upon arriving in the city, and discovering Merle found a way to his own escape, the focus shifts to the bag of guns. While executing a plan to grab the guns, Glenn is kidnapped by a gang of Hispanic thugs, while Daryl captures one of the “thugs’” own. After a brazen plan by Rick, the real noble purpose of “The Vatos” gang is revealed. Meanwhile, back at the camp, Jim is losing his mind, digging hole after hole atop a sun-baked hill, scaring the crap out of everyone, ultimately causing Shane to take action and settle him down. Rick and his crew learn their return vehicle has been taken, and as they race back to camp, they hear screams — screams of those at the camp, realizing they have just have been ambushed by the dead. Just in time, Rick and his newly armed troop arrive at the camp, taking out the remnants of the walking dead. At the same moment, everyone is beginning to realize the cost of the ambush, including a minor character.

“Wildfire”:
The zombie attack has subsided, and the camp is cleaning up the bodies, both of the former living and the walking dead. During the disposal of the bodies, Andrea keeps watch over her severely bitten sister, awaiting for her inevitable reanimation, and Jim is discovered to have been bitten by the infected during the attack. A recurring theme appears in the series — again: Daryl needs to be stopped multiple times from killing a living being. Jim is quarantined to Dale’s camper, while Rick begins devising a plan to head to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta as a last-ditch effort to rescue Jim and the camp — and find an answer — from/about the plague. After forming alliances with his wife and his estranged friend Shane, Rick convinces (almost) everyone to mount a caravan to the CDC. Along the way, Jim decides his place to die is alone in the woods, and, after too much debate, the caravan decides to leave him on the side of the road. Meanwhile, the audience is treated to a glimpse into the life of Dr. Jenner, a seemingly alone scientist who has settled into a daily routine of trying to find a cure for the plague … as well as seeing a tragic mistake that may have set Jenner back years. As the caravan reaches the CDC, night has landed and, aside from Rick, the caravan members are growing weary of the prediction that the CDC is the last place to go. While the undead converge on the caravan as it arrives at the CDC, Rick pleads to a watchful eye…and it seems to answer.

“TC-19”:
The episode begins with a plot-filler — Shane at the hospital with Rick, still in a coma. Shane witnesses the slaughter of both patients and the undead by the military while he tries to rescue Rick from his hospital bed. Ultimately, Shane flees.
Flash to the present, and the survivors are underground, getting drunk on wine, eating a hearty meal, while their host, Jenner, sits off to the side, quiet and slightly amused. As the guests begin to question their gracious host, they learn that the plague has no hope of a cure, and the best chance for survival donated herself to the cause. In a brilliantly filmed scene, the protagonists see what the infection does, how it changes a once normal person into a flesh-finding beast, and, ultimately, the only known cure for the undead. While Mrs. Grimes and Shane (drunkenly) fight off feelings for each other, Jenner’s acceptance of humanity’s fate is soon revealed. And the countdown to survival begins, with some deciding if life on the outside is worth a chance, or if incineration is a better option.

Romero Rules Followed: I saw a few quick little bastards in the zombie hordes, but these are, almost to a “T,” Romero zombies.
Gore factor: It grew in later episodes, especially the camp attack.
Zombies or Wannabees? Absolute zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: I can’t help but admit I was royally disappointed by the first two episodes of this series. I waited until it was all over (the whole six episodes) until I dived in. It has a few pitfalls (the most zombie-fueled episode came near the end, and the overly-emotional, although nearly touching, zombie transformation was dragged out far too long [not to mention foreshadowing was fist-pounded at the beginning of said episode], and Jenner was too interesting of a character to not have been introduced earlier; the writers could have decided to introduce him in the same way (a sprinkle of his diaries at the end of each episode would have added a tad bit of mystery and intrigue into his character, rather than simply shoe-horning him into the last two episodes — but that’s just me).
I cannot say “The Walking Dead” sucked. I simply expected more. Once again, I admit I have not delved into the graphic novels as of yet, but seeing numerous Facebook/Twitter/emails about it, I really expected a new generation’s “Night of the Living Dead.” “The Walking Dead,” as a TV series, doesn’t even come close. It has some great moments, but some moments are (majorly) overshadowed by some issues I cannot ignore (How did Rick have all the answers at the beginning, seemingly holding it all together, and suddenly forget how to form a logical thought by the end of the season? He looked completely lost by the end. And, please, if women are going to survive the apocalypse, they should not cry so much. Seriously. I think any woman who could survive a zombie apocalypse would not sit around crying all the time. Cut back on that, please. For some reason, I prefer to think of women as strong, not crying sissies).
All in all, these are minor complaints. “The Walking Dead” had a lot of high points. Despite my hurtful slings and arrows, we really were given a set of characters to which we could relate. We were given top-notch zombies (great work, KNB EFX; I have admired you since my youth). We were given a zombie story that felt mostly real. We were given characters and (some) situations we could relate. Not shabby for a basic cable channel. I now divert my focus onto the graphic novel (which, certainly will wind up here for praise/slaughter).
And, yes, without reservation, I gave this one a “Classic” rating. I’m not entirely stupid.

— ROB PERRY

ZomBlog Review: Part 1 of "The Walking Dead"

2011-03-28T21:32:00.004-04:00

“The Walking Dead”
Season One, Episodes 1-3
2010
U.S.
Stars: Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Steven Yuen, Jeffrey DeMunn, Emma Bell, IronE Singleton, Michael Rooker,
Writer: Frank Darabont, Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore
Director: Frank Darabont, Michelle Maxwell MacLaren , Gwyneth Horder-Payten

When Andrew and I started this blog, we knew this behemoth was on the horizon. And I cannot count the thirty or so inquiries asking if we knew about/had heard of/were going to review “The Walking Dead.”
With all honesty, we do not know everything about zombies or everything about zombie films/fiction. I know the most (probably). But, combined, we know a load. There was no way in zombie-infested hell that “The Walking Dead” could have lumbered below our radar. That being said, the comics DID fly under my radar (long, boring nerdy story). So, for the sake of argument, I will be examining the televised version of “The Walking Dead,” and nothing about the comic book series (for now).
So, here we go.
SPOILERS FOLLOW; DO NOT READ FUTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FIRST THREE EPISODES:

“Days Gone By”:
Rick Grimes (Lincoln), an injured deputy sheriff, awakens in a hospital from a coma to find everyone and everything is gone. In a desperate attempt to find his (nearly) estranged wife and child, he hauls ass home in his hospital gown to find a few peculiar pedestrians along the way and ultimately a father and son team of survivors who fill him in that, should he get bit, he will develop an uncontrollable fever, a fever that will kill him dead and later cause a return from death. They know — because the wife/mother of the Jones boys seems to return nightly to the house they have landed as a hideout; Mama comes home and wants to reunite, while father, eventually armed with a high-powered rifle, just can’t bring himself to blow mama’s brains out. Deputy Grimes heads toward Atlanta, Georgia, on horseback, hoping that the news of a heavily-fortified shelter are true. Rumors are unfounded. Rick finds his only shelter from a horde of the hungry undead is an abandoned Army tank. And from there, a friendly voice may be able to save him…

“Guts”:
Rick finds his savior is a smart-ass but fleet-of-foot Asian, Glenn, who guides him into a department store in the middle of besieged Atlanta. From there, Rick learns many others have survived the …well… hordes of the undead. The survivors he meets, he learns, are scavengers, looking for supplies, and, thanks to his boomy hello, are now drawing the attention of the surrounding undead, blocking their return to a camp in the middle of the Georgia wilderness. Speaking of the camp, the audience learns not only is Grimes’ wife and child are alive, but she is wantonly accepting the attention of his former police partner, Shane (which is fairly graphically represented in the opening credits). But, back to Rick, who has found himself inside a department store in the middle of Atlanta, realizing he has stranded the group of scavengers by firing off a full clip of bullets while hauling ass to cover. And he doesn’t get much help from a racist redneck, Merle Dickson (Rooker, aka Henry Lee Lucas; so glad to see you, sir). Upon meeting the scavengers, realizing their plight at the hands of now attentive zombies, Rick and Glenn devise a plan to transport the survivors inside a delivery truck — ultimately deciding the safest way to get to the truck is by walking through the horde of zombies using “creative camouflage.”

“Tell It To The Frogs”:
Upon reuniting with his family at a camp in the woods, Rick decides that leaving behind an incredible redneck/racist in Atlanta — handcuffed to a rooftop, mind you — might be against his moral code. After a brief discussion between the other scavengers and a difficult “Spartacus” like moment with the chained-man’s younger brother at the camp, Rick decides to take three men back to Atlanta to rescue Merle — and pick up a bag of guns he siphoned from the sheriff’s station but bailed on after seeking refuge in the tank. While all seems hunky-dory with his wife (Wayne Callies), her “I thought my husband was dead” replacement, Shane, is finding it difficult to see that Rick has rejoined his family and finds a way to still keep involved in the Grimes family dynamic. Rick, in the meantime, leads the team of four to Atlanta to rescue Merle, ultimately realizing they may be too late for a rescue.

Analysis: I know I am not the first person to point out that “anal” is the first part of “analysis,” which is probably why I wanted to find so many issues with “The Walking Dead” upon first viewing. Look, the show’s pilot showed balls with the first scene showing Rick blast the brains out of a little zombified child. That takes guts for a basic-cable channel to introduce a new show to a wide audience in that way (especially if the audience has only heard that the show featured zombies, and knew absolutely nothing else about it). Darabont is probably the reason that two out of three adapted Stephen King stories have reached dynamic critical (and Academy Award-nominated) acclaim. “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile” are phenomenal films, faithfully adapted from the source material. Darabont seems to understand the importance of strong character development in a drama/horror (he wrote the screenplay to “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3,” the collective fan-favorite of the series [Sidenote: Hey, Andrew, where are the Academy Award-nominated writers from the ‘Friday the 13th’ series? Hello? Hello?]).
Darabont gets it. Or so I thought.
My biggest problem with the first three episodes is Mrs. Grimes and her quick dismissal of Shane upon learning Rick is still alive. It is nearly glossed over in a few lines of dialogue and, considering the introduction of Shane and his relationship with Rick in the first episode, it remains a tense element, but how it is handled in the third episode seems almost an afterthought (yeah, Shane beats a misogynist’s face in after being told to stay away, but still). Really, the “our relationship is over” talk is less than a minute of screentime. And, am I alone in thinking Lori Grimes might be a colossal bitch? She certainly was portrayed that way. I don’t want to sound like a soap opera watching house-frau, but the relationship with Shane/Rick and Lori is a glaring plot issue (which I had assumed would be addressed in more detail later).
Another issue? The blatant “I’ve seen this before” moments. You’ve read this blog before, right? Seen a guy wake up in a hospital after a zombie apocalypse with no idea it is happening? You might remember “28 Days Later.” Seen bodies of the slain undead wrapped and tied up in white sheets? You might have seen Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie.” Seen a group of people trapped in a department store? You might have seen “Dawn of the Dead.” Seen a sympathetic halved corpse? Yup, you saw her give detailed plot exposition in “The Return of the Living Dead.” Seen people shuffle through a horde of the undead by pretending to be one of them? “Shaun of the Dead” made it damn funny.
OK, I am picking nits. The real problems I have with the first season of “The Walking Dead” show up later.
So, after my curmudgeonly remarks, let me give the first three episodes the praise they indeed deserve.
First off, the pilot gets the audience sucked in right away. The zombie effects are top-notch (go figure, Greg Nicotero of the KNB Effects company is a producer). The acting is suitable for a cable-network show (although I seriously doubt any Emmy award nominations are headed hereto forth). But, again, it’s a drama series with zombies. If you are a zombie fan, you’ve suffered through many an atrocious attempt at acting. “The Walking Dead” succeeds on many levels of marrying heady-social issues with an undead apocalypse (Rick murdering [rescuing?] the aforementioned halved-corpse-lady in the park is a rather bizarre, yet touching, moment).
So, down to brass tacks…

Romero Rules Followed: I saw a few quick little bastards in the zombie hordes, but these are, almost to a “T,” Romero zombies…at this point.
Gore factor: Fairly mild, save for a couple feasting moments and the dismemberment-of-zombie-for-camouflage sequence.
Zombies or Wannabees? Absolute zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: I’ll save this spot for the final review of season 1.
— ROB

Gaming the System

2011-03-24T20:03:00.002-04:00

Onechanbara: Samurai Bikini Squad
Dir. Yohei Fukuda
2008
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a katana-wielding Japanese chick dressed in a bikini, feather boa and cowboy hat; Pinky Tuscadero’s slutty Asian twin; and a fat, bumbling bit of so-called comic relief go trekking through the zompocalyptic wasteland in search of revenge for the most clichéd of reasons. The multifarious problems with Onechanbara: Samurai Bikini Squad, adapted from the hack and slash video games of the same name, are painfully apparent 15 minutes in when a promising zombie-slashing sequence grinds to a halt for a solid five minutes of uninterrupted, shoe-horned exposition. After that you know the whole plot and how this will inevitably end. The next hour is just shuffling lethargically toward the inevitable confrontation with the madman behind the zombie outbreak, his murderous minion and a horde of undead brain-munchers sporting identical hooded ponchos. Along the way, all of the trials are telegraphed well in advance and dealt with so perfunctorily that not even the cast has any investment in this flick. Because of that, none of the ham-fisted attempts to strike a dramatic, emotional beat ever ring true.

Zombology: Some time in the near future Sugita, a madman researcher at the D3 Corp. (producers of the game in an Easter egg) has figured out how to revive the dead. Predictably, the dead turn into virus-spreading shambling corpses. Undeterred by a world slowly depopulated by his creations, Sugita keeps working on his formula, needing only the blood of the heroine's family line (why? who knows?). While that all seems to comport with the Romero Rules, St. George would probably look askance at bullet proof kung fu zombies.

Though Onechanbara continues Japan’s tradition of women in swimwear facing off with the living dead, it is, put simply, not a good movie. It doesn’t even work as an 85 minute commercial for a game that debuted on the PS2 seven years ago. In fact, Onechanbara highlights the difference between gaming and watching movies. The lack of coherent plot and appreciable characterization (at one point we’re told the titular bikini-clad samurai can no longer emote after the death of her father) can be glossed over when you’re button mashing your way through a horde of pixilated zombies. In a movie, it’s just piss-poor filmmaking and a tedious waste of time. For proving Uwe Boll hasn’t cornered the market on half-assed video game adaptations, Onechanbara: Samurai Bikini Squad sucks its way to a 71 percent on the Hell of the Living Dead scale.

ZomBlog Review: "Frankenhooker"

2011-03-22T15:35:00.004-04:00

“Frankenhooker”
1990
U.S.
Stars: James Lorinz, Patty Mullen, Charlotte Helmkamp, Louise Lasser, Jennifer Delora
Writer: Robert Martin and Frank Henenlotter
Dir: Frank Henenlotter
85 minutes

It is not often I can watch a movie I know is crap and still recommend it. Just about everything Frank Henenlotter has directed could be called a crappy film — but they each have just enough of the right elements to make them tolerable and, dare I say, fun.
I have been beaten down over and over again for loving “Brain Damage.” I have taken a lot of guff for enjoying “Basket Case.” And I’ve been kicked in the teeth for praising this terrible gem.
And, yes, it is bad — but so bad it is good.
I keep looking back at the past two months of reviews on this site and think, “The few readers/subscribers we have must check this blog and think to themselves, ‘When in the fuck are they going to talk about zombies again?’ ”
I promise, this is simply housecleaning.
I am a Facebook-rat. I admit, I get lonely and sometimes virtually reach-out to like-minded horror fans. I get about four to ten suggestions a month of, “Hey, have you checked this out?” Sometimes I simply say, “Yes, we reviewed it, here is the link, enjoy!” Other times I say, “Hmm, that might actually be interesting.”
Here is one of those latter instances.
I own “Frankenhooker” on DVD. I should be ashamed. I’m not. After Andrew did such respectable job examining the Frankenstein-undead/zombie inspiration, I pretty much disregarded anything Frankie-like.
But, you know, when an entire film is dedicated to an undead hooker, exploding crack-heads, and features a pre-porn career Heather Hunter, I have to dive in and argue it needs to appear here, even if it is only loosely married to zombie-lore.
“Frankenhooker” is itself a cult classic, something you would have expected to see Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear hosting on USA “Up All Night” in the early ’90s. I am sure it was featured at one point.
After gifting a self-propelled lawnmower to his fiancée’s father, which promptly runs over his hilariously “plump” lady, Jeffrey Franken (Lorinz), a nerdy and awkward inventor, sets his mind to bring back to life his severed bride. After Elizabeth Shelley’s (Mullen) accidental pre-nuptial death-by-lawn-utensil, Franken collects the salvageable pieces, including her head, and stores them in an icebox full of bubbling, electrified purple Kool-Aid. In the meantime, he goes searching for possible body parts, including using his life’s savings to rent a room full of New York hookers from a muscle-bound pimp in order to shop for the perfect parts. But when they discover he brought along his secret “re-agent,” a sparkling basketball-sized crystal of what they dub “super-crack,” all bets — and heads — are off. After a hilarious display of exploding hookers, Franken gathers up what he can salvage from Hookershima, and sets to rebuild his fiancée from the ’sploded parts. And, well, when he gets his girl back together, she greets him with a slew of the most familiar movie hooker pick-up lines — “Wanna date? Wanna go out? Got any money?” — with hilarious, robotic delivery. I must apologize, my friends, but when the newly minted Elizabeth shows up, and shows all her “quirks,” I can’t help but smile.
Oh, and Jeffrey must find a way to deal with/confine his new creation, even if she is going around New Your City and making Johns explode everywhere (no, that is not a euphemism.).
Beating “Bride of Re-Animator” by a couple months, and trailing the original premise of “Frankenstein” by nearly 60 years, “Frankenhooker” expands on the idea of collecting multiple body parts, each of those parts having an individual trait carried over from whence it came, and the composite of those parts struggling to find a collective identity. That might seem a bit heady and existential, but, nah, not for this movie. Henenlotter doesn’t go for deep meanings. He went for cheap laughs. And I was a sucker for them then and remain so now.
Looking back, it seems the “Frankenstein” grave had somewhat of a small robbery around 1990, with the Jeff Fahey/Brad Dourif starrer “Body Parts” also coming out around the same time and only a few short years later the Kenneth Branaugh/Robert DeNiro “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (which, I, um, also kinda like). “Frankenhooker” is laughs first, gore second, and story third. It hangs together with loose stitches, but, hell, you weren’t expecting “The Godfather” with that title, were you?

Romero Rules Followed: Uh, none
Gore factor: Surprisingly little despite the amount of exploding bodies involved.
Zombies or Wannabees? The ending is open for argument, but, overall, wannabees.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine (on the overall cult-status scale, it is a classic)
Additional comments: Look, “Frankenhooker” is a guilty pleasure. I’m sorry. But, meet me back here next week for part one of an exhaustive analysis of Season 1 of “The Walking Dead.”
And, oh yeah, might have had an issue or two with that one...
— ROB

ZomBlog Review: "Dawn of the Mummy"

2011-03-15T21:29:00.003-04:00

“Dawn of the Mummy”
1981
Italy/U.S.
Stars: Brenda King, Barry Sattels, George Peck
Writer: Daria Price, Ronald Dobrin, and Frank Agrama
Dir: Frank Agrama
97 minutes

I think I stumbled onto a new zombie influence not yet discussed on this blog: Mummies.
And damn my eyes for not stumbling onto it with the Boris Karloff/Universal Studios classic, “The Mummy,” rather than this sad sack of an attempt at filmmaking.
Full disclosure: I remember looking at the TV schedule as a young, impressionable boy and seeing the option of spending a Sunday afternoon filled with “Wide World of Sports” or going deep into the channels and watching an afternoon of horror films on the local graveyard of borderline public domain fodder, Channel 50 in Washington, D.C. DC-50 is now a radio station owned by the CW/Paramount network (if I am assuming correctly) and is actually broadcasting original programming.
But it wasn’t always so. And so (getting past my swim in “Lake Me” for a moment), my nimble fingers click-click-clicked the channel dial to see one of my first introductions into flesh-eating undead.
Well, special effects didn’t really need to be that impressive for a child in the early 1980s. Nor did plot, dialogue, character development, and editing.
Holy shit, what a difference 25 years make.
The fact that I could remember the name “Dawn of the Mummy” nearly 25 years later would make one think “Damn, this must have been good to have left such an impression.”
For all the wrong reasons, it did. I had remembered the final 10 minutes of the film in great detail, where a fairly nimble group of undead mummies raid a wedding party to start helping themselves to the main course: the wedding patrons. The black-faced/grue-dripping/gauze-wrapped fiends did an impressive job at ripping guts and gore from the guests and promptly consuming them (again, it was impressive then; it’s just OK now).
Yes, I remembered the “pay-off.” I think even at a horror/gore hungry 8-years-old, I must have found some other way to occupy my attention span, probably with He-Man or G.I. Joe toys, rather than to have sat with my undivided attention at the first 80-plus minutes of this terrible, boring, disjointed romp. And, instead of boring you with the usual, long-winded detail I tend to plop down on this blog, I will simply give a few bullet points.
• A photographer and a group of models are sent to Cairo to do a photo shoot for, what a terrible voiceover tells the audience, is a very important client for a magazine; So, one would think they would wind up shooting at the pyramids. Nope. This photographer decides to shoot in the middle of a desert that could have been in the Mojave, or a back-lot at a studio for all one could tell. And, yeah, the film was actually shot in Cairo and shows the cast driving around the majestic pyramids. Opportunity (or filming permit) missed.
• An American “grave robber” and his bumbling, stereotyped Arabic assistants have invaded the tomb of well-known savage mummy, but can’t find his treasure. They overact the shit out of every scene they are in, and, for absolutely no reason, agree to allow the photographer and his crew to take over the tomb they had invaded to finish their photoshoot. Still with me?
• The heat of the lamps used to light the terribly choreographed photoshoot take several days to (Melt? Burn? Annoy?) awaken the mummy. The mummy (a name I would write here, but it is said no less than 15 different ways throughout the film) gets up, gets pissed, somehow raises his henchmen (who were buried with him in the tomb) out of the middle of the fricken desert at the suggestion of a crazy woman. Confused yet? I just attempted to describe the first 20 minutes.
This movie is a mess all over. My counterpart really needs to review this one. Aside from (overt) racism and stock footage montages, this movie might heavily compete with “Hell of the Living Dead” as the worst attempt at zombie/undead filmmaking I have yet seen.
That said, the SFX people did not do too shabby a job with the gut-munching end. I’m only referring to the glimpses and long shots of the feasting. The entire climax is also a mess, and a hurried one at that.

Romero Rules Followed: I could almost see some Romero influence. The mummies do not run, they are clearly dead, they eat the living, and they can be beaten down with blows/shots to the head. But, ultimately, not zombies.
Gore factor: Not much at all until the last 10 minutes.
Zombies or Wannabees? I’ll have to say very, very close to zombies. But, ultimately, no.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Waste of time, unless the MST3K guys have a commentary track and you have plenty of mind-altering substances on hand. Copious amounts of beer or Old Crow bourbon would be fitting.
Additional comments: I really think the director realized he had made a total piece of garbage once he hit the editing room. The excessive use of post-production voiceovers to attempt to fill in plotholes and dialogue miscues is a glaring problem that cannot be ignored. Who knows. The DVD copy I have does include a commentary. There might be a day where I attempt to sit through this again (if I want to really torture myself/punish myself for some transgression) and listen to the director either defend or destroy this film, Tommy Wiseau style. I can’t subject myself to it anytime soon, though. Remember, loyal readers, we do this so you don’t have to.

— ROB

Zombie or Wannabe: Jason Voorhees

2011-03-10T09:06:00.003-05:00

Rob and I are cinematically simpatico to a frightening degree for two 30-something heterosexual guys in committed relationships, but where we draw our respective battelines is at our preferred ’80s slasher cheezfests. While Rob mumbles excuses for the continued existence of the unfunny/unscary tedium that is the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, I could be found camping out at Crystal Lake.
Jason Voorhees is pretty much everything I ask for in a murderous cinematic maniac: yes, there’s a back story, but fortunately it’s not that important and takes a backseat to an endless parade of nubile camp counselors blundering blindly into machetes and spear guns after smoking a bowl and boinking a coed. Jason himself is an implacable force of bloodthirsty nature. There’s no bad one liners, no monologuing while the survivor girl comes up with a brilliant plan and he’s been resurrected more times than Aerosmith’s career.
And it’s that resurrection that leads me to ponder whether Mr. Voorhees should be invited to the zombie family reunion. So I turned my attention to Jason Lives, the sixth film in the Friday the 13th franchise, Jason’s fourth starring turn and the first appearance of the undead murderer that’s become ingrained in popular culture.

The case for: Things start off promisingly putridly enough as series staple Tommy Jarvis digs up Jason’s body to prove to himself the slasher is actually dead. The be-webbed, maggoty remains of Mssr. Voorhees pass the Fulci test gracefully. Jason’s reanimation, his first run as the undead and not just a backwoods retard with a bag on his head, comes courtesy of a bolt of lightning in cinematic Frankenstein fashion (the town general store is also named Karloff’s for extra Frankenstein-iness). We’ve previously dubbed Ol’ Frank a key root in the zombie family tree but decided he just doesn’t make the cut on his own. Jason's first shuffling steps out of the grave are certainly zombie worthy, but fairly quickly he's back to his traditional implacable stride as he mows through his victims. Speaking of the victims, Jason Voorhees is even smart enough to chop the phone lines to the camp when he comes a-callin’, which actually speaks to his zombie bona fides. Remember, Romero’s rambling dead were also smart enough to cripple the phones in Night of the Living Dead. But that does raise a question about ….

The case against: Jason is far more comfortable with tools than I generally expect from my undead assassins: the signature machete, a belt full of knives and even chucking an arrow. And pausing fresh from the grave to don his signature hockey mask is more sartorial acumen than any zombie has a right to claim. While Jason shrugs off bullet wounds like his zombie kin, a point blank shot to the head—a sovereign remedy for zombies—doesn’t halt him either, which is a serious breach of the Romero Rules. His prudish disapproval of promiscuous sex and recreational drug use also represents more moralizing than a zombie’s festering brain can handle.

The verdict: Not a zombie by reason of utility. Jason’s just too handy with his … umm … hands to take a place among the living dead. While writers continue to find flimsy excuses to dredge his carcass from the bottom of Crystal Lake for another killing spree and the accompanying box office receipts, Jason exhibits none of the botched science experiment/viral outbreak symptoms we’ve come to expect from a canon zombie. Combined with his intelligence, skill with weapons and single mindedness, Mama Voorhees’ little boy just doesn’t make the cut.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Unfunny

2011-03-03T20:11:00.002-05:00

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead
Dir. Jordan Galland
2009
The only zombie to be found in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead is the shambling corpse that was once Ralph Macchio’s career. Now you may think it cruel to mock a man who’s life peaked 25 years ago and has since been auctioned off for vanity projects for Will Smith’s spawn, but watching a slumming former teen start waddle his Kennedy bloated visage through this incoherent, bloodless vampire farce is pretty much indicative of the world of suck we’re about to enter.
Vampires are not zombies. I wish Netflix knew the difference before I bumped this mislabeled shitfest up to the top of my queue on a lark. You owe me 82 excruciating minutes, Netflix!
Sad sack Julian (seriously, can I get a comedy/horror lead who isn’t a total loser?) is an unemployed 20-something theater director living in a back room at his doctor father’s office after breaking up with Anna (Devon Aoki, the model best known as the sword wielding Miho from Sin City).
Anna has moved on to possible mobster/failed business man/Ghost of Jersey Shore Yet to Come Macchio. Julian’s post-Anna life is a string of one night stands and moping with actor sidekick Vince. That all changes when Theo Horatio hires Julian to direct his avant garde production of Hamlet … with vampires. Soon Julian’s cast Vince as the dour Dane, Anna gets drafted as Ophelia and Theo starts eyeballing her pearly white neck.

~~Zombology~~Vampirology: The thoroughly incoherent plot revolves around Horatio and Hamlet (yes The Horatio and The Hamlet) who have somehow been transformed into vampires for reasons that involve the Holy Grail. I swear I was paying attention, taking notes even, but I have no idea what this movie is about. Vampire Horatio (who can walk in the sunlight, favors pancake makeup and detests garlic) has apparently spent the last 800 or so years putting on various vampiric productions of Hamlet and lunching on the cast – but the not the director. For some vague reason vampire law prevents him from noshing on the director until after the curtain falls. Unfortunately, that means Julian survives the bulk of the movie.

This movie is so awful it challenges my resolve as the ZomBlog’s self-designated Bad Cop.
Right from the title cards that break up sequences – Job Interview With a Vampire, Breakfast is Tiffany, Grave New World – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern just tries too damn hard and doesn’t deliver on either the gore or the giggles. In fact, this is the literary equivalent of Family Guy: instead of actual jokes, it just keeps tossing out endless cultural allusions and hoping those will distract you from the lack of humor, character or discernible plot. Given that damn near everybody in Hamlet dies in the end, I at least hoped the director would assuage our misery and off the entire cast horrifically, but alas and alack, most of these whiny fuckers survive. The movie never deviates an iota from the romcom template and you know exactly how this piece of shit will end. And vampires be-damned, it’s not bloodily. Imagine Twilight as written by Seth MacFarlane. This sucks 86 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "Dead and Buried"

2011-02-28T09:40:00.004-05:00

“Dead and Buried”
1981
U.S.
Stars: James Farentino, Melody Anderson, and Jack Albertson
Writer: Screenplay by Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon
Dir: Gary A. Sherman
94 minutes

Nothing pleases me more than to stumble onto something others had discovered and hailed as a classic before it wound up in my hands. While I must say at the outset that I knew this was not exactly zombie fodder, its reputation demanded I take a look.

And I am glad I did.

“Dead and Buried” is what I would call a great episode of “The Twilight Zone.” It plays out very much like that. The film opens with a photographer on a secluded beach (passing by a sign welcoming him to “Potter’s Bluff — A New Way of Living”), and finding a more than willing and attractive subject in a young blonde. Within a few moments, he is beset upon by a horde of old men and women, even the blonde herself. He’s strung up, tied to a pole, and burned alive. Later, a tow truck driver (Freddy fricken’ Krueger himself Robert Englund, prior to his “V” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” days) and Sheriff Dan Gillis (Farentino) examine a car wreck, where, they find none other than the torched photographer — very much alive and screaming.

The sheriff suspects that things are not what they seem and begins investigating the accident involving the out-of-towner, inquiring with the local coroner, Dobbs (a splendid performance by Albertson, who won an Oscar in 1968 for “The Subject Was Roses” but was probably better known as Grandpa Joe in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” or "The Man" in "Chico and The Man" TV series; his last big screen performance was this film). Albertson’s performance is low-key but incredibly charismatic and stands out above the others (even though all are very solid).

As the film moves forward, the audience starts noticing that some people appeared to have died — but are now walking around and working in the town as other people in different occupations.

As the sheriff delves deeper into a few other mysterious out-of-towner deaths, the secret of Potter’s Bluff is revealed and the film ends with a nice twist — not one that you don’t see coming, but a very satisfying one all the same.

Romero Rules Followed: None at all

Gore factor: Moderate, despite some real attempts

Zombies or Wannabees? Wannabees

Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic, but not in the zombie sense

Additional comments: While the film featured a lot of great performances (and included some early effects work by Stan Winston) and is a satisfying horror film, it does not belong in the zombie canon. It is closely married to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” And, it holds its own in that vein. I mean, come on, it was made by the same team that unleashed “Alien” onto the world, and later “The Return of the Living Dead.” It’s worth a look. Just don’t look for flesh-eating zombies.

— ROB

Dick Move

2011-02-24T18:30:00.002-05:00

We here at the Zomblog will applaud and giggle through just about any form of dismemberment and disembowelment you can name, chowing down on a big plate of marinara in the process. That’s just the kinda guys we are. Sensitivity is not our strong point. But there’s one go-to gore move to which we feel compelled to object: dick biting. We understand it’s a time honored horror tradition as old as The Last House on the Left and as recent as the horrifying *shudder* Teeth. But now we have zombies turning on our sensitive nethers and this must stop, we say. Zombies are supposed to be our friends. Not cool, zombies.
He are four flicks that will have you grabbing your crotch in terror.

Deadgirl
If you’re about to get all mouth-rapey with a naked, chained up zombie sex slave, would it hurt you to make nice just a little? I’m not saying roses and poetry, but maybe a kind word or two. Compliment her red, enraged, zombified eyes. Dead chicks like that. Whatever you do, don’t tell her “C’mon, baby, it’s alright. It’s not gonna bite you.” That’s just an invitation to have your johnson gobbled. And not in a good way.

Zombie Strippers
Zombie Strippers’ central tenet seems to be that no matter how putrid and rotting the chick, there is some dude who is hard up enough to toddle off to the back room with a wad of twenties for a private dance from her. It’s not enough that the undead pole jockeys are munching on the clientele, but they start the feast with a cocktail weiner.

Yoroi: Samurai Zombie
In Yoroi, it’s not actually the zombies that commit the unthinkable. So allow me to offer all the murderous psychopaths of the world a word of advice. If the lovely hostage you just took suddenly stops quivering in terror and suddenly starts loving you up, keep it in your pants before it ends up twitching on the floor. Seriously, your creepy charisma just doesn’t work like that.

Tokyo Gore Police
In a world where genetically engineered criminals are roaming the streets in bloody rampages, maybe it’s not a great idea to hit up the S&M body modding club. But should the curiosity be irresistible, Mr. Yakuza Man, like with the Zombie Strippers, stay out of the back room. Nothing good came come from the back room. Deep down you know that already. Once the creepy lady with the crocodile jaws for legs bites off your wanger, it’s a little late to reconsider your life choices.

ZomBlog Review: "Day By Day Armageddon"

2011-02-21T10:15:00.003-05:00

“Day By Day Armageddon”
2007
U.S.
Permuted Press/Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books
Writer: J.L. Bourne
300 pages

First-person narratives have a distinct rule: Find a voice and stick with it.

While I did enjoy J.L. Bourne’s first foray into the undead, I could not help but find myself taken in and out of the book by the lack of a distinct voice.

The book is meant to be a first-person journal written by a Texas Navy pilot (test pilot? Ensign?) who decides to stay barricaded in his home as news of a growing undead apocalypse unfolds. He goes through the steps any wise hunkered-down survivalist would go through: he steals MREs (meals ready-to-eat) from his Naval base, ensures plenty of clean water, ammo, and weaponry is in his basement, along with loads of batteries, etc. He luckily has a stone wall built around his home, allowing for a natural perimeter from the undead. He knows enough about military and CB radio communication to allow him to listen in as events unfold — the dead are coming back to life, the police are unable to dispatch the menace, and the government has now stepped in to manage the threat. As the impending military response looms, our unnamed narrator learns a neighbor across the way — who, luckily, happens to be an engineer — is still alive. After several days of communicating news back and forth (with Morse code and low-rent walkie-talkies, of course), the neighbor, John, and the narrator decide to haul arse to an airfield, abscond with a small plane, fill it with as much supplies and equipment as it will hold, and head to a less populated area, just in time to avoid a nuclear bomb drop.

The journal skips from day to day as the narrator and his new found friend (and a dog) head from location to location, in search of a place to escape the apocalypse, including an island. Along their way, they encounter a family — father, mother and daughter — and a lone young woman, all of whom the narrator decides to rescue from a horde of zombies, risking his life, and increasing his responsibility. The survivors eventually make their way to an underground bunker, where, finally, the story really begins to move. And, sadly, abruptly ends.

As mentioned above, the challenge with telling a story from a first-person perspective is the difficulty in finding a voice. A writer who decides to use this device must have a solid grasp on how his/her character conveys the story. A writer cannot go from commenting on how bad a writer they are (as the narrator admits a few entries into the journal) to describing events in very, very vivid detail — detail that could be only described as “overwriting” in some cases (if I was writing a journal describing my zombie-killing quests, I would not vividly describe killing one zombie on one page and simply say ‘I got rid of them’ on another), and an incestual connection to the source material in others (Bourne almost made me understand the start-up/pre-flight procedure of a Cessna at one point; he also gave a hell of a lot of detail in military protocol in dealing with a disaster scenario).

Romero Rules Followed: The undead here follow all the rules. No runners, but some seem to move a little faster than others, an insinuation that the nuclear fallout may have preserved the recently undead. The only way to dispatch them is to destroy the brain, or set them aflame.

Gore factor: Yeah, again, here is where the description becomes too much. Based on the journal-writer’s description, there is gore-aplenty.

Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies

Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine

Additional comments: Bourne’s writings were recommended to me by a man I interviewed, a one Chad Dukes, a man I highly respect when it comes to modern zombie lore, so, I sought out Mr. Bourne’s works. Dukes cited Bourne’s attention to real-world military detail. Bourne’s attention to detail in this aspect is something I can’t turn a blind eye to, even though I wouldn’t have a clue if he was accurate. I have to take the man at his prose (he does work in Washington, D.C., with the Department of Homeland Security, so he has a big leg up on me). While I have been fairly critical of Bourne’s first outing, I fully acknowledge I know “Armageddon” began as a blog and became a novel, a novel with sequential follow-ups. I plan to delve into the sequels, and they may appear here.

Hopefully Bourne’s narrator will find an identity.

— ROB

Dead Head

2011-02-18T19:13:00.002-05:00

Deadgirl
Dirs. Marcel Sarmiento, Gadi Harel
2008
For all the on-screen dismemberment and mayhem I have imbibed in my life, very few films have ever really gotten under my skin in a creeptastic kind of way: watching The Exorcist at 12, the infamous rape scene in Irreversible, and large swaths of Antichrist. I’m not yet sure how I feel about Deadgirl, but I may have to add it to the list for its relentlessly amoral portrayal of horny male teens without a conscience.
JT, Ricky and Wheeler are just good American teens whose hobbies include truancy, cadging beers from indifferent, absentee parents and brutally raping zombie sex slaves.
Wait, what?
OK, so only JT and Wheeler decide to get down with the dead while Ricky has some rudimentary moral qualms about the whole set up that lead him to abstain, but Deadgirl does not mince screen time before the teens delve balls-first into unbridled depravity. While the film boasts a couple of classic jump cuts that actually manage to startle and some unsettling sound work, the real squick factor comes from the character development. Deadgirl keeps its lens squarely on childhood friends JT and Ricky as they delve the depths of their own morality.

Zombology: Skipping school after fire drill, Ricky and JT go wandering through the local abandoned “nuthouse” (where the lights are still on, I might observe). Down in the building’s creepy bowels, the delinquent duo find a naked girl chained to a table behind a door that must have rusted shut years before. What at first seems to be corpse, turns out to be a breathing, living (?) woman. How the friends react will ultimately sunder their friendship and force them to confront their own sketchy morals. JT immediately gets all rapey (dragging in Wheeler) while Ricky’s ill-defined sense of right is more conflicted. From a zombie standpoint, this is a fairly classic fare: get bitten, become a zombie. But the zombies are really a backdrop to the horror only teen males can conjure.

Though she’s naked and worldless for the entire film, Emily Spain as the titular girl manages to evoke an astonishing amount of pathos, imbuing her zombie with a festering core of humanity amid the gut munching. A few ill-timed comedic digressions aside, this is a film that is relentless in its pessimism and nihilistic view of humanity. Even Ricky, whose conflicted loyalty to his childhood friends and his fumbling attraction to the wholesome girl next door, comes closest to wearing a white hat in this movie, makes choices that are ultimately less than honorable and ultimately very human. As is JT’s desire to carve out a space in the Deadgirl’s dungeon where he exert some control over an indifferent world where he sees no future for himself. Deadgirl is not an easy film. It’s not a slight horror romp. It’s a film that asks some uncomfortable question and leaves you with unsatisfying answers. Deadgirl sucks only 10 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "Grindhouse Presents Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror"

2011-02-14T22:25:00.005-05:00

“Grindhouse Presents Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror”
2007
U.S.
Stars: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton
Writer: Robert Rodriguez
Dir: Robert Rodriguez
105 minutes

For a better part of my developmental interest in filmmaking, I can honestly say Robert Rodriguez was a great part of it. “El Mariachi,” which was remade as “Desperado” in the U.S., was, for me, what I wanted to achieve with some of my other aspiring high-scholl-age film nerds — a low-budget masterpiece which incorporated talent and was a tribute to greater films we loved.
And “Planet Terror” is exactly what it was designed to be: a loving tribute to terrible, yet memorable, and often cult-status films.
This one has it all: A barely coherent plot, terribly developed characters, “explicit” sex, ultra-gore, fantastic-violence, absurd stunts, absurd action sequences, absurd dialogue, backstories that barely go anywhere, convenient plot points, etc., etc.
But when all of it is done on purpose, and with total self-awareness, therein you have the making of a true, working tribute, and, by way of default, a modern (near) zombie classic.
Cherry Darling (McGowan) is tired of living the life of not a stripper, but of a “go-go-go” girl. She now wants to be a “stand-up comedian,” and on her way from quitting her job, hooks up with an old flame at a barbecue shack owned by the ever lovable Jeff Fahey (I’m sorry, but seeing him in the awful yet groundbreaking “Lawnmower Man” and later in the very amusing “Body Parts” I became a fan of the Fahey). Wrey (Freddie Rodriguez) provides the purposely testosterone-filled foil to McGowan’s dumb but tough without Teflon definition of a “strong-but-vulnerable” woman — a perfect 1970s-era portrayal of women.
Oh, yeah. There is a side story featuring Bruce Willis as an inferred Army Special Forces general, whom has made a deal with an arms dealer, hoping to score a huge amount of toxin which keeps him and his men from turning into face-melting zombies.
And, another side plot: a nurse, whom may or may not be a lesbian is looking to leave her “crazy” doctor husband (Shelton and Brolin, respectively), and is seeing her and her husband’s hospital emergency room fill with increasing numbers of puss-spewing infected people.
Another side plot, still: Biehn (“The Terminator,” “Aliens,” “The Abyss,” “Rampage”) is a sheriff whom, for some reason never explained (purposely) has “stuck his neck out” over and over for Wrey, while trying to learn about his brother’s (Fahey) barbecue recipe. But, as the shit (and the goo-infected zombies) hit the fan, Sheriff Hicks (sorry) reveals Wrey’s true identity as…um… a badass? And, um, Wrey gives Cherry (REEL MISSING) the very leg to stand on to achieve the greatness he always knew she had.

Romero Rules Followed: Very liberally followed; They are feasting on the living, but seem to be killed just as if they were living (including copious bullet-wounds and knife slashes). And they melt. So, about 50/50.
Gore factor: Extreme, and it needs to be that way.
Zombies or Wannabees? I edge toward zombies, but the argument as simple “monsters” can be made…But I say zombies.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: “Planet Terror: is simply fun. Shut-the-brain-off fun. You can’t take it seriously. So, don’t. Just embrace it. Suck it up.

— ROB

Feed My Frankenstein

2011-02-10T19:22:00.004-05:00

We here Zomblog International HQ made the official determination that while Frankenstein’s monster is a clear antecedent to the zombie uprising, Ol’ Frank just doesn’t make the cut himself. It’s no insult, we’re just sayin’ more brain munching would have helped. Japan, land of all things thoroughly awesome, has adopted Frankenstein as the central metaphor for a rack of films that also fall just short of true zombie g(l)ory. Here are three reanimated and bloody features that swipe from Mary Shelley’s playbook.

RoboGeisha
Dir. Noboru Iguchi
2009
Yoshie is the ugly duckling younger sister of a local geisha and constant butt of her abuse. The beatings have left her with a substantial case of barely contained rage and the ability to rip phonebooks in half with her bare hands. The corrupt local munitions company plays on the sibling rivalry to recruit Yoshie into their coterie of highly trained geisha assassins, whose bodies have been largely roboticized and sent out into the world to kill off political rivals. That is until a collection of local activists convince Yoshie her bosses aren’t who they seem. Subsequent absurdities include acidic breast milk, Gatling tits, shuriken spewing sphincters and a giant robot castle dancing the robot. That and a shitload of CGI gore.

Full Metal Yakuza
Dir. Takashi Miike
1997
Kensuke is not a very good yakuza. In fact, his pathetic incompetence sees him summarily gunned down early on in this Frankenstein by way of RoboCop mashup from Takashi Miike, the enfant terrible of 1990s Japanese cinema. Left to be harvested for his organs, Kensuke is revived by a local mad scientist who turns him into a metallicized kill-borg with a robowang that puts Tetsuo the Ironman to shame. Unfortunately, true to the Frankenstein mold, Kensuke spends most of the flick pondering his miserable, unnatural existence rather than wreaking bloody vengeance on the gangsters who left his ass for dead.

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl
Dirs. Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu
2009
Frankenstein’s Monster and Count Dracula have squared off in many a moldy screen oldie. This 90 minute trip through the fine art of arterial spray posits the good count as a shy, sun adverse transfer student to a Japanese high school who squares off with a reanimated posse of mean girls. Yes it’s about a boy. He’s so dreamy. Yoshihiro Nishimura, who directed Tokyo Gore Police and contributed blood ‘n’ guts to RoboGeisha, co-chaired this gory, gory outing. But if you want to appreciate the Raimi-style bloody humor, you’re also gonna have to subject yourself to the Japanese attempt at racial humor. Japanese girls in blackface. With giant lips. And bones in their noses. And lip plates. Chanting songs about Obama. *sigh* This one is for the dedicated only.

ZomBlog Review: "Dawn of the Dead" (2004)

2011-02-02T22:18:00.003-05:00

“Dawn of the Dead”
2004
U.S.
Stars: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber and Mehki Phifer
Writer: James Gunn
Dir: Zack Snyder
110 minutes (Director’s Cut)

Filmmaking 101 is now in session. It is late in the semester and we are going to discuss the rules of remaking a classic.
First, select a classic, critically-hailed film.
Second, strip it of almost nearly every element that made it a classic.
Third, update characters and situations for the modern audience.
Fourth, focus on what some people found as the sensational factor of the former and ramp it up by 10.
Fifth, pour in more characters and completely compromise the original story.

If you attended a class in college, and these were the notes you scribbled down, not only should you fail outright, but your professor should be beaten to death with his own bag of weed.
Look, I understand this was Zack Snyder’s first film for a big studio. But, for fuck’s sake, if I ever was given a chance to make a film, it certainly would not be in my best interest to remake a highly-revered classic. So, from pre-production to finished product, Snyder had the odds against him.
I will say this about the 2004 “Dawn:” It is entertaining. If I was an ignorant member of the audience, I could see the appeal. It is fast, it gets to the point, there is very little character development, there is a lot of gore, the plot moves along as fast as the fucking undead, and, if my brain is shut down, it could be fun.

But, my fellow droogies, this is “Dawn of the FUCKING Dead.” I grew up lauding Romero’s original as the definitive zombie film, a film that kept in touch with it’s 1970s “talk back at the audience films.” The 1970s were a spectacular era in film. It brought us “Taxi Driver,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now!,” “Alien,” “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” “Rocky,” “Deep Throat,” etc. I could go on for hours.
With the exception of “Deep Throat,” (and an argument can be made there, easily), the 1970s produced films that punched the audience in the face with a message about the sign of the times. The original “Dawn” was far less subtle than its decade’s brethren, but the message was there: Consumerism will be the death of us all.
And, thank you, George, the 1980s proved you a prophet.
However, when you get around to making a modern version of a classic, which indeed had a message, the most irresponsible thing a filmmaker can do is to ignore that completely. There is absolutely no message in the 2004 “Dawn,” other than rednecks are dicks, black people are badass policemen or gang members, guys with long hair own gun shops and have great aim, blondes are either tough or screw a lot, and dogs are never zombie food.

So, here we go. Polley (I loved her in “I, Monster”) plays Ana, a nurse finishing up her shift. She comes home, says hello to a neighbor girl, and then has shower sex with her husband. She wakes up to a very zombiefied little girl rampaging her bedroom, killing and reanimating her husband, and barely escaping as long camera shots, POV camera shots, cameras mounted on vehicle shots, aerial shots, etc. etc., etc., show the audience that all hell is breaking loose. She meets up with Deputy Rhames, whom, really, plays the role with the same one-note he did as Marcellus Wallace in “Pulp Fiction.” He’s big. He’s black. He’s not going skiing.
They wind up finding Mehki Phifer and his pregnant girlfriend, and a Best Buy salesman (Weber) near a shopping mall, where they all decide to secure and wait for help.
The shopping mall and boredom with zombies are about the only parallels this remake has with the former.
However, the remake is not without merits. Polley and Rhames do pretty decent with what they are given, with Rhames taking over Ken Foree’s calm but confident role in the original (Foree shows up and delivers his classic line) and Polley taking over the role of Gaylen Ross. The long-distance rooftop friendship between Rhames and his gun store pal, Andy, had a good premise until a stupid plot point ruined it.
The other characters? Well, there is the kinda smart guy who reveals he was a salesman at Best Buy (again, Weber) and seems to be the smartest guy in the room most of the time. To me, he is a plot device; he moves the key points along, keeps the plot in order, and has very little to offer until the very end.
Once arriving at the mall, the crew of five meet up with three redneck security guards with attitudes and guns (?) and a struggle for power ensues.
And, yeah, later some other people who decided the mall is a good place to go show up. Whatever.

Damn it, this film is a tonal/total mess. It switches back and forth between serious zombie fare and tiny comedic pauses. Yes, pauses, like when you are at Thanksgiving dinner and a great-grandparent makes a racist joke. You feel uneasy, you chuckle just to get past the moment, and then can’t wait to get away from the table. I have argued with my blog counterpart about a key moment in the film (SPOILER ALERT, DO NOT READ FURTHER!) involving the issues of a zombie offspring. I thought it was a cheap attempt at shock; he thinks it should have been explored further. Regardless, the storyline picks elements from Romero’s original — zombies and a mall — and lavishes gore, pointless characters (although an appearance by Matt “Max Headroom” Frewer and now “Modern Family” dad doofus Phil Dunphy [Ty Burrell] were welcome for the few seconds of screen time they had).
I don’t hate this remake. I just don’t like it that much and will not be returning calls.

Romero Rules Followed: Should I even address this? The fuckers run like crackheads aiming for a fix and hardly have a moment to actually feast. *Sigh* They are undead and follow most Romero rules.
Gore factor: A lot, but mostly zombie extermination.
Zombies or Wannabees? The running undead. Again, *sigh* zombies.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine. That’s all I can say.
Additional comments: Had this film been anything other than a remake of the original, I might have been kinder to it. The writer, Gunn, made his name with the Troma Team release of "Redneck Zombies," filmed a stone's throw from where I live in Charles County, Md., but I cannot excuse his lack of reverence. I can’t be kind when you take a classic film, throw it in a van, rape it, make it eat worms, beat it, and then smack it around for good measure. Note to filmmakers: We have seen so much fricken gore, it is not shocking anymore. Making a film more graphic and giving us cardboard actors will not make a better film. Give us people we can relate to/care about. We can watch a clip show of gory scenes and forget it. Give us a three-minute scene of solid dialogue and bad ass characters, and we will adore it. Do you doubt that formula works? See my last post…

— ROB

ZomBlog Review: "Shaun of the Dead"

2011-02-01T14:42:00.002-05:00

“Shaun of the Dead”
2004
U.K.
Stars: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton
Writers: Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Dir: Edgar Wright
100 minutes

I just can’t do it. I can’t. To attempt this right now would be a disservice. I’ll come back when I sort my life out…

Crap. Nothing has changed … But neither did anything for the hero of this great horror-comedy gem for which I have been badgered about since the inception of this tiny blog. For so many lovers of “Shaun of the Dead,” I have met just as many detractors.
“It’s too funny; zombie movies should not be that funny.”
“I guess it is funny. It had a moment or two where I laughed, but I thought it was too boring.”
“It was just an excuse to reference better movies.”
For a film I now feel is beloved and embraced in zombie-lore, I thought it prudent to point out not everyone loved it. The first time I watched it, I have to admit, I was laughing and shaking my head rather than embracing the not-so-subtle Romero/Tarantino/zombie film etc., references.
And, from me, to the detractors, I have a week-old litter box you can lick.
Of course, the film opens with some drinking, creative swearing, flatulent humor, and obvious horror film references (Shaun works for Foree Electronics, mentioning co-worker Ash is a bit under the weather), which, at first, took this nerd out of the movie. It later sent me giggling like a moron while at the same time embracing it as the love-letter it is to classic zombie lore.
You know the story by now. Zombies break-out. Lines are drawn. And everyone winds up going to the Winchester to have a pint and wait it all out.
Well, not quite.
Shaun is a resolute screw-up. His relationship with his girlfriend Liz is about to end, he adores his Mum (whom calls him “Pickle”) but often forgets about her, and his best friend, Ed, might be holding him back from doing anything with his life worthwhile. Liz’s friends think Shaun is a loser, and one of them might have designs on making sure Liz leaves Shaun so that he might have a chance at her.
Shaun thinks he is still in college, where playing “Timecrisis II” every night, getting drunk and listening to “electro” with flatulent Ed are the highlights of his day. Doldrums, routine, and familiarity rule his life. At the chance he might lose the cute blonde woman of his dreams amid a zombie uprising, Shaun finally kicks into action, with the aid of his leeching friend, a fat, potheaded louse who not only finds humor in the zombie invasion, but also suggests probable armaments, inopportune photo-ops, that a trophy gun over a bar is loaded, and that dogs can look up.
Some of the more hilarious moments of this film take place before the zombies show up. For me, the drunken scene in the Winchester with music from “Phantasm” pinging in the background as Ed describes the former lives of patrons is a huge highlight; the out of doors drunken mixmaster session with a zombie down the street is also great; the switching of television stations to piecemeal together reports mimicking “Dawn” and “Night” dialogue was rather amusing; but, anyone who has seen the film has to remember the record collection moment. Our heroes did not wax nostalgic, but rather spun the hits their own way. And we all laughed. Hardly 30 seconds would pass before something else had me laughing. Zombie movies should not be this much fun, but “Shaun” is.

Romero Rules Followed: Every single one from the original trilogy is followed.
Gore factor: For a comedy about zombies, the gore factor is plenty, but not excessive, just enough to get red on you.
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: 10 out of 10 classic
Additional comments: “Shaun” is one of the most quotable, enjoyable, unhinge-your-jaw laughing films you will ever see while watching zombies lumber about. It is a life-long ambition made to fruition by perfect comic timing, embracing of the source material, British influence, a solid cast; and I know too many people, whom I respect, who disregarded it as, “OK.”
You are forgiven, Mum. Liz has your flowers. I will be over later to kill Phillip. We’ll have a pint and wait for this all to blow over.

— ROB

Go Ninja;Go Ninja; Go Ninja, Go

2011-01-27T17:48:00.004-05:00

Ninjas vs. Zombies
Dir. Justin Timpane
2008
A quick sampling of Ninjas vs. Zombies' execrable dialogue is pretty illustrative sampling of what’s holding this no budget farce back. To wit:
—“So we’re ripping off lines now?”
—“It’s an homage.”
Director Justine Timpane and crew set out to make the zombie flick Kevin Smith never got around to making in this bloodless attempt at a farce that substitutes references to Ninja Turtles and The Evil Dead, motifs borrowed from The Incredibles and tired nerd arguments about Star Wars vs. Star Trek and why Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sucked for character, plot or other narrative niceties.
All of that rhetorical circlejerking would have been excusable if Ninjas vs. Zombies lived up to the very simple premise it set for itself: ninjas kicking zombie ass. But it didn’t, so I was forced to dwell on the portly martial artists, community theater acting, lack of quality gore and Troma-quality production values. What we’re left with is yet another Shaunnabe about a trio of un/under-employed slackers rising to the occasion with the aid of magic when a friend sets off zompocalypse in a vain attempt to conduct a séance with his dead brother.

Zombology: Local comic book clerk Randall gets the undead uprising on a roll when he uses his family’s book of magic to raise his brother Eric from the dead. It's the same book of magic that killed his brother, so he really wasn’t thinking this thing through very well. Eric comes back all evil and with the ability to suck out people’s souls, leaving them mindless zombie minions to do his bidding. And with all that cosmic power at his fingertips, his bidding is getting back together with his ex, Lily, who has moved on to bald, unemployed cartoonist wannabe Cole. Cole’s universe is pretty much limited to doodling, getting dumped by Lily and hanging out with loser friends Kyle (a portly pizza delivery guy) and Fitz (an unemployed, married musician) until Randall’s book of magic gives them ninja abilities to fight back against the zombie plague.

It’s pretty fitting the climax of Ninjas vs. Zombies takes place in a movie theater because that’s just a reminder of the better movies this rips off and that you could be watching instead. A low budget doesn’t shouldn’t be a fatal obstacle to brash young filmmakers. Ryuhei Kitamura worked over much the same territory in the brilliant Versus. In fact, go watch Versus and forget Ninjas vs. Zombies even exists. Bad acting, spotty plotting, groan-inducing humor and backyard wrestling style combat sequences doom Ninjas vs. Zombies to a woeful 67 on the Hell of the Living Dead meter of moral failings.
Again, let me quote the film itself: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard – ninjas vs. zombies.” I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think I could bear to sit through the sequel, Ninjas vs. Vampires.

The Way of the Samurai

2011-01-20T17:33:00.003-05:00

Yoroi: Samurai Zombie
Dir. Tak Sakaguchi
2008
A spiritual, if not exactly literal, sequel to the almighty Versus, Yoroi finds that film’s star, Tak Sakaguchi, hovering behind the camera to direct a script by Ryuhei Kitamura that once again delves into the themes of reincarnation and revenge, the ambiguity between good and evil, the violence endemic to certain locations and human sacrifice. Oh and zombies. Lots and lots of really pissed off zombies… that happen to be undead, angry samurai.
Unlike Hollywood, which feels the need to cater to the stupidest among us by explaining every detail to (un)death, Samurai Zombie doesn’t bother naming its characters or delving into detailed backstories. Instead, it just hints and teases what brought the nuclear family of four, a pair of gun toting criminal lovers, a murderous psychopath and a pair of bored cops to the fenced off, abandoned town shrouded in evil. But in the haunted burial ground of samurai murdered centuries before, they will meet their bloody fate in a way that suggests a connection between them that spans several lifetimes.

Zombology: The zombie hordes are unleashed by the family father whose wife and children are being held captive by the criminals after they were carjacked on a country drive. Stranded in the wilderness by a flat tire, the criminals force the father to go find help, warning him the living dead are walking the woods (how they came by that valuable sliver of information, we never find out). Wandering into the samurai burial ground while looking for help, the father inexplicably slashes his own throat, begging the undead warriors to protect his family. Turns out, the samurai zombies have a whole ’nother agenda and nobody – not even children – will be exempt from their murderous wrath. This is a film where anyone can die at any time and the traditional horror film rules of survival are bloodily violated.

Yoroi succeeds by making the most of a limited budget to tell a compelling story amid the geysers of corpuscles and Evil Dead style slapstick. It manages to add depth and humanity to even the most repulsive of its characters and tacks on a flashback twist ending that will force you to reassess just who were the protagonists who were the villains. While it’s not as kinetic and exuberant as Versus, Yoroi is quietly compelling in its own way. It walks away with an exemplary 3 percent on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of shit.

ZomBlog Review: "Junk"

2011-01-17T11:42:00.002-05:00

“Junk”
2000
Japan
Stars: Nobuyuki Asano, Shu Ehara, Tate Gouta, Yuji Kisamoto, Miwa, Natsuki Ozawa, Kaori Shimamura, Koutarou Tanaka, Deborah Joy Vinall
Writer: Atsushi Muroga
Dir: Atsushi Muroga
83 minutes

Sometimes, a low budget and ambition make a good film.
In the case of “Junk,” the love of the films it tips it hat to, a low budget, and attention to tiny details make for a film that should not work under other circumstances. The detailed selection of plot points, actors, and respectful execution of film references make it work particularly well.
The film begins with a handful of jewelry-heisters meeting up with well-armed yakuza — yakuza that could have been labeled as the low-rent “Reservoir Dogs.” After a botched money exchange, “Junk” launches the zombies on both the thieves and yakuza, and begins a cinematic win for this Japanese take on zombies.
I have watched “Junk” on many occasions prior to this blog. I have recommended the flick to many a pal, with the response always the same: “Why the hell would I watch a film called ‘Junk’?”
The film is ironically named, unless you own the Unearthed Films’ transfer DVD. While so many parts look pristine, there are others that look like they were taken from a worn-out VHS tape. The DVD version I own is labeled “UNCUT.” I only hope the terrible-looking scenes were due to archival elements to make the film “uncut” rather than a lazy transfer.
I digress…
“Junk” is really a Japanese homage to “Re-Animator,” “Return of the Living Dead,” and “Zombie.” The whole film takes place in a former nuclear/military facility. The yakuza and the thieves play a game of cat and mouse through the facility after a neon-green re-agent (an obvious nod to “Re-Animator) creates a super-zombie (the beautiful Miwa, who remains naked most of the film); then guts are torn out, sheet-and-rope-bound zombies rise, zombies lumber from one place in the facility to the next, and plenty of gory, humorous, yelling, and explosive moments ensue.

Romero Rules Followed: Since this is a film made prior to “Land of the Dead,” the “smart-zombie” rule does not apply. Therefore, it follows almost every Romero-rule.
Gore factor: Plenty of gore here, mostly excessive gun-fu related, but also zombie-carnage.
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: The subplot involving a scientist and the “Queen Zombie” are melodramatic and serve no purpose, but are a weak attempt to actually give a “serious side” to this homage. The storyline helps to introduce English-speaking characters, but doesn’t do much to move the film along. I could have done without it. Overall though, “Junk” is a solid zombie-fest.

— ROB

The Satanic Versus

2011-01-13T20:33:00.003-05:00

Versus
Ryuhei Kitamura
2000
Not even I can stomach sitting through shitty zombie movies week in and week out for your amusement, so it is with much pleasure I know turn my loving attention to Ryuhei Kitamura’s low budget masterpiece Versus. If all you know of Kitamura is his muddled take on The Midnight Meat Train, first, I apologize for the two hours of your life you’ll never get back, and second, hie thee until thine local movie emporium or foreign flick kiosk in ye olde shopping mall to snatch up this convoluted good-versus-evil gem which proves boundless exuberance, some clever filmmaking and a bevy of sly conspirators can turn out a film that runs circles around most bloated Hollywood extravaganzas.
Versus posits there are 666 portals to the netherworld scattered throughout the universe, which those with the mystical know-how can exploit for world dominating powers if someone from the right bloodline is sacrificed. Echoing Japan’s infamous suicide forest of Aokigahara, portal number 444 just happens to be where the unnamed protagonist (martial artist, actor and director Tak Sakaguchi), an escaped convict, and his chain gang friend meet up with local yakuza for reasons that are never really explained and would only get in the way of the over-caffeinated imbroglio that ensues.
Versus is the ultimate blend of kung fu, gun fu, sword fu, yakuza fu, zombie fu and bad one liner fu set to a cheez-metal soundtrack, Matrix mocking attire and an irrepressible sense of fun. The plot is almost negligible (including a subplot about a hilariously boastful cop and his partner looking for the escapees that goes absolutely nowhere) but that’s hardly a criticism.

Zombology: In addition to being a portal to the netherworld, the forest, known as the Forest of Resurrection, is also a zombie-haunted landscape where the dead come shambling back to life. While we certainly get a bellyful of traditional zombies, the dead yakuza (who get mowed down in the first 10 minutes) also return from the grave as super-spry mystical zombie-fu warriors who get all chop-socky on our trenchcoated hero.

Standing the notions of good versus evil on its head, Versus manages to slyly to tie together an opening flashback sequence and a flash forward ending in a way that makes you rethink everything that happens in the film, subverting our notions of protagonist and antagonist in the process. This is a film that is an absolute 0 on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of suckitude. In fact, to even mention that wretched pile of festering crap in the same paragraph is an insult of Kitamura’s technical and narrative mastery. Versus is an unabashedly enjoyable film that knows exactly what it wants to be and hits every grace note with panache.

ZomBlog Review: "The Zombie Survival Guide"

2011-01-12T22:45:00.005-05:00

“The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead”
2003
U.S.
Writer: Max Brooks
255 pages

I know I am a few days late in posting this, but listen to me: Get supplies, store them; grab the guns, load them; know the area, patrol it.
Any dabbler into zombie lore has been approached and has an answer to the “What would you do?” question when it comes to a zombie apocalypse.
Me? I would high-tail it to Andrews Air Force Base in lovely Suitland, Md., where the presidential Air Force One goes from engagement to engagement on a fairly weekly basis. Hell, if the security there is sound enough to protect a president, then it would be great for an outsider, right?

Fuck, no.

I would be shot at the gates in the event of a zombie uprising.
Author Max Brooks spent a whole lot of time researching real-life scenarios, realistic situations, terrains, weaponry and various other contributing factors in putting together his fantastically interesting, if not overly-researched, “The Zombie Survival Guide” back in 2003.
When Brooks put this modern-day “Anarchist’s Cookbook” together, zombies were not yet en vogue. Brooks splashed a great mortar-hole into zombie-lore with “World War Z” and started kicking rules into brains with this guide which tells the reader — if you take the subject matter as realistic (um, look, zombies are going to rise up; it is just a matter of when) — how to prepare for every possible encounter, on every possible terrain, with every possible weapon (crossbows are nice, but reloading takes too long [sorry to my fellow close-range fans; I will be a machete and sawed-off shotgun person, myself), then this is a must-have guide to surviving what could be the end of mankind as we know it [yes, this was a shallow attempt to shatter Andrew’s long-ass bracketed/parentheses laden entry a few months ago].
Brooks succinctly examines every detail, even those that laymen might forget (dangers of terrain, the possibilities of sleep-deprived paranoia, having not one but several escape plans, the weight of supplies, etc.). He concludes the book with several “documented” scenarios of undead attacks throughout recorded history, some based on actual historic events, others based on nothing more than spirited imagination. As a nice little touch, he includes an appendix where the modern-day survivor might keep a journal and checklist for supplies.
While I admit I was not a fan of the repetitious parts, there were many moments where I had an, “Oh, wow, I never thought about that” moment. Again, for anyone to take what we write on this blog too seriously is a waste. We know zombies are a non-threat (today). We are unafraid of zombies rising up and taking over the world (at this moment). Those stinking rot-gutted, slow-moving slack-jaws are of no concern to me (until I close my eyes and live the apocalyptic showdown night after tedious night).

I might be kidding.

Romero Rules Followed: Brooks loves the slow-moving, bite-spreads-disease zombies. And, the known method for killing the suckers is a brain-blast. All are followed.

Gore factor: Very descriptive in how the undead are dispatched, but if this were a high-school how-to-guide, it would easily be PG-13. So, fairly low.

Zombies or Wannabees? Absolute Zombies (I need to patent that vodka drink)

Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic.

Additional comments: Look, if someone can spend as much time as Brooks did in researching a fictitious scenario as how one could survive an undead uprising, you know it will be an entertaining read. And it is, at times. Sadly, his attention to details detract from the actual fun at points. I still love the book and chuckle at certain points (his entries about idiots hauling tons of supplies across a waterway always makes me smile). Oh, and not to draw too much attention to myself or the blog, but THIS IS ENTRY NUMBER 50, SUCKERS! In all seriousness, we thank you for caring as much as you do for our endeavor. We appreciate your attention to our mistakes, details, and that you just come along for the ride. At least I do.

Andrew appreciates nothing.

— ROB

The Police Farce

2011-01-06T20:56:00.004-05:00

Tokyo Gore Police
Dir. Yoshihiro Nishimura
2008
Why must Japan always make us feel inadequate? Even when it comes to the quality of our zombie ass kickin’ women? All America has farted out in the last decade as been Milla Jovovich’s Alice from the retarded Resident Evil (which we had to steal from Nippon anyway) and its increasingly retarded-er sequels. Japan, on the other hand, come correct with Eiha Shiina (of Audition fame) as Ruka, the katana wielding heroine of the intestine-soaked Tokyo Gore Police. And I bet Shiina didn’t have to fuck the director to get the part either.
The lovely Ruka, as a member of a specialized privatized police force, employs said katana to hunt down “engineers,” bio-engineered serial killers whose bodies sprout all manner of interesting weapon appendages – chainsaw arms, gun eyes, crocodile jaw legs – when injured.
It’s like the two St. Davids, Lynch and Cronenberg, giving guided tours of choice S&M haunts in Tokyo’s seedy Kabukicho district complete with complementary lectures on our post-singularity body-modding future.

Zombology: OK, so I’m cheating a bit again. The engineers don’t necessarily qualify as true zombies, but the gore factor and body count are elevated enough to earn them a hall pass to the zombie compound. You see, the mysterious Key Man has been running around town implanting unsuspecting people with key shaped tumors that turn them into engineers, setting them loose to terrorize the populace. Only Ruka and her coworkers at the Tokyo Police Corporation – which wouldn’t happen to have some mysterious connection to the Key Man, do you think? – to keep the peace with an arsenal of neo-samurai armor and extreme violence.

Taken individually, each kill is either hilariously perverse or grotesquely bloody, including one nifty visual call back to the classic Lady Snowblood flicks. However, as a whole, Tokyo Gore Police’s meandering plot just never coheres. But the film just darts from one fucked up set piece and crackpot character to the next. Against all that absurdity, Shiina’s straight faced performance keeps the whole affair from collapsing into unsalvageable stupidity. Tokyo Gore Police only sucks 19 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

Running Vs. Shambling: The Endless Debate

2011-01-03T21:55:00.003-05:00

I used to jump into arguments with reckless abandon every time someone would spurt the words “‘28 Days Later’ is so awesome … those zombies were actually frightening!”
The running versus shambling/shuffling/slow zombie debate may never reach a satisfactory end.
But, if you know me, or have read this blog for the past several months, you know I have opinions.
Lots of them.
I am taking myself into a deep, dark cavern in order to examine this topic, which I will not be able to fully address in a single post. What I hope will happen is this post will spurn a heated debate.
As my counterpart has done with his reviews, he has made a case for and case against zombies or wannabes while kicking the crap back into the flicks he has suffered through. On several occasions, I have relented on the debate: “The Return of the Living Dead” and the aforementioned “28 Days Later” are two of my all-time favorites when it comes to not only zombies, but horror films overall. And the fricken undead/rage victims in both run like madmen.
Yet, despite my hatred for running undead, I enjoy them to the fullest.
For what reason? Great directing, a solid script, characters I give a rat’s ass about, a purposely fast-paced storytelling angle, and limited directorial masturbation — and by that last statement, I mean the directors of both films kept the film moving along while not boring the audience with incessant details, shoehorning stupid plot points into the narrative, and bogging the whole movie down.
While praising those two films, I think my real hatred for running zombies came with the remake of “Dawn of the Dead,” which has yet to be reviewed on this site, but it will get its due.
I despised that remake. Absolutely despised it. On second viewing, I thought it was alright. On the third viewing, I hated it again.
Yes, your humble reviewer watched that fucking thing THREE TIMES to decide my ultimate decision on it. And, the biggest problem I had with it boiled down at the base level to the fricken running undead. Make no mistake, I have enormous problems with the film, with plot holes large enough to drive a ridiculous RV through, terrible acting, a moronic attempt at a sympathetic “rooftop buddy” for Ving Rhames, zombie baby, etc.
But. The. Fricken. Running. Zombies. Not only running, but the fuckers are so mobile, agile, and smart they pose a nearly supernatural/super-powered threat in the film.
OK, I get that slow zombies seem dumb to modern audiences. “You can just run past them, el oh el! Dum zombees! Twilight roolez!” (posted on twitter by some dipshit teenage girl with a tramp-stamp, nose ring and emotional/self-image issues … allegedly).
But the slow, creeping-up-on-you impact of a horde was always the frightening point up until “Return of the Living Dead” made those suckers run (and, arguably, there are several lesser known films that beat ROTLD to the punch, including a yet to be reviewed Andrew-bashing-hall-of-famer).
The zombies in the gold-standard “Night of the Living Dead” nearly literally showed up one at a time. One was enough of a threat; 50 were a nightmare. And even slow-moving, they managed to kill seven people in less than eight hours. People, mind you, who were armed, watching television updates, getting a good idea of what they were up against. The original “Dawn” upped the ante with two trained SWAT team members. And one of them was dispatched by the slow munchers. As was a dimbulb member of the group. Trained marksman and pilot both get killed by making human mistakes. Fast or slow, the shuffler zombies/rage victims/running pussheads capitalize on human error. Human error. Nothing more. In my book, it is worse to be killed by an enemy that you, on paper, should be able to outrun, outgun, and outsmart, than to be chased down and defeated by a group of superhuman maniacs.
So, discuss amongst yourselves, run vs. walk; there is not a cohesive point to be made with this post. This is simply to provoke the discussion. I will tackle that argument with teeth in future posts. To be continued…

— ROB

ZomBlog Review: "Return of the Living Dead Part II"

2010-12-28T21:27:00.005-05:00

“Return of the Living Dead Part II”
1988
U.S.
Stars: James Karen, Thom Mathews, Dana Ashbrook, Marsha Dietlein, Philip Bruns, Michael Kenworthy
Writer: Ken Wiederhorn
Dir: Ken Wiederhorn
89 minutes

The sacred rule of any sequel is, in my book, to continue the story, respect the original, stick to what worked in the former, and, if possible, improve on the original.
Like many ’80s films, the sequel to “Return of the Living Dead” fell victim to a terrible plot device: a kid is smarter than anyone else in the damn film.
For criminy. The base-film had all the elements that actually worked: characters the audience cared about, actual funny moments, plenty of gore, and plenty of zombies, all while keeping it at an R-rated adult level. Yes, I admit some of the characters were supposed to be deadbeat, lazy, punk-rocking teens, but they were still close to being adults.
The sequel, however, decided to up the ante with the comedic elements of the former and it falls flat. While the budget seems to have been slightly elevated, the fun of the first film takes a backseat to ghetto-talking disembodied heads, sight gags, spandex, hair-gel and a little dipshit I wished would have been devoured in the first few moments I laid eyes on him.
Again, the 1980s suffered a plague of movies where children were the heroes and more intelligent than any military member facing the Cold War, understood computers better than fogeys, and always survived any peril facing them. I remember being a child during the time, wishing death on certain child characters and envying others.
I never envied this wad, Jesse Wilson, played by Kenworthy.What begins as a continuation of the first film quickly spirals into typical ’80s film. A kid is being bullied, his older sister wants to get laid, the town loser wants to lay her, there are a couple of comic relief characters (James Karen and Thom Mathews nearly identically reprise their roles from the first film), and the military is inept.
Jesse and his two bullying brats inadvertently burst one of the infamous Trioxin containers — which happens to have fallen out of a military truck — containing reanimating gas and a zombie corpse, unleashing both contents into a cemetery and into the town.
Yeah, there are some moments that are amusing (“Michael Jackson” makes an appearance late in the film), but the clichés bog this movie down and make it tedious and a by-the-numbers bore-fest. A scene in a hospital is the sole reason for the film dodging a PG-13 rating. It would have sailed through the ratings board these days. PG-13 horror is rarely worth your time. Or mine.

Romero Rules Followed: For the most part, they are all followed. However, the reanimation process mostly takes place due to the gas spurted from a drum. So, in this case, about 90%.
Gore factor: Mostly moderate until a pivotal hospital scene. Which was cool. And a strong point.
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Waste of time
Additional comments: Andrew and I have been at odds over the quality film “Return of the Living Dead.” I absolutely embrace it, while he just says it is a big bucket of “OK.” I can point to this sequel (which includes cameos by Forrest J. Ackerman, founder of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” and Mitch “Shocker/”X-Files” Pileggi) as an example of when a superior idea gets warped and raped. So much promise, so little to show for it.
And I hope Andrew attacks Part III before I do.

— ROB

In the Jungle, the Quiet Jungle, the Leopard Women Suck Tonight

2010-12-23T15:31:00.004-05:00

The Night of the Sorcerers
Dir. Amando de Ossorio
1973
What the fuck was it with Africa and low budget Euro-sh(l)ockers in the 1970s? It’s like setting a film in Africa was fair game to just let every abhorrent, normally repressed racial stereotype about black people run rampant on celluloid. Granted, our Old World relations never really had to deal with the history of slavery and racial integration in quite the same way we did here in the U.S. of A, but even they should have paused at some point when filming a chiseled-chin white dude mowing down a horde of primitive black folks in grass skirts to ponder the racial implications. Films like The Night of the Sorcerers are enough to make The Birth of Nation look like a paragon of progressive racial tolerance.
Amando “Blind Dead” de Ossorio gets straight to the white women being menaced by leering black guys within the opening scenes of this 1973 zombie-voodoo-vampire-sexploitation failure. It seems 11 local magicians like to string up white women, rip their clothes off via bullwhip and decapitate them in order to turn them into vampiric “leopard women” who romp around the jungle in hilarious slow motion decked out in dime store vampire fangs and laughably lame animal print bikinis … for some reason. It’s kinda vague. Luckily a handful of British soldiers in khakis and natty pith helmets put a stop to that … at least for 60 years when a bunch of do-gooder endangered species researchers happen to drift across the forbidden altar.

Zombology: The Limeys may have smoked the local magicians, but thanks to voodoo their zombified bodies keep on trucking, just waiting for a new sacrifice to find its way to their altar to revive their manslaughtering ways. With the help of the blood-drinking leopard women, the magicians, who emerge from their stony cairns each night – and apparently neatly bury themselves again each morning – lure the braless free spirits accompanying the researchers to the altar one at a time to add them to their collection of pasty white servants.

Inverting the classic Scooby-Doo plot, the men immediately dismiss any talk of living dead sorcerers as a hoax to scare them away from their research only to later confront the zombified reality. Though they’re central to the film, the women in The Night of the Sorcerers have no personality development beyond casual nudity and insane jealously of each other. Though there’s decapitations galore, the film falls short on both gore and suspense. De Ossorio has never been a deft hand with pacing, and The Night of the Sorcerers lags even at 80 minutes. Racially insensitive, riding a ridiculous plot conceit and poorly executed, The Night of the Sorcerers sucks 92 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead"

2010-12-20T16:48:00.003-05:00

“George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead”
2007
U.S.
Stars: Michelle Morgan, Josh Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Lalonde, Joe Dinicol, Philip Riccio, Chris Violette, Tatiana Maslany
Writer: George Romero
Dir: George Romero
96 minutes
George once again wants to warn us about the dangers technology and progress pose to us. And he hit it well in the very middle of this film… but he dropped the ball at the beginning and end.Uncle George decided to jump into the first-person camera angles with “Diary of the Dead,” and attempted to do it better than others. Since “Cloverfield” had already become a huge hit, as well as the terrible “The Blair Witch Project,” Romero was too many years too late to be inventive. The beginning of the film is tough to make it through. A handful of college students are awkwardly stumbling through a “senior project,” where a group of students are in the woods filming a short horror film. Their director, Jason Creed (Close) refuses to stop filming as his players hear radio and TV reports of an undead uprising — including many of the same 1968 TV and radio reports from the original “Night of the Living Dead.”
That is where the film lost me. Any audience member who has logged time with the Romero zombies is instantly taken out of this film and realizes this film is supposed to take place at the same time as “Night of the Living Dead.” Yet, the protagonists have cameras, the Internet, and more access to and knowledge of technology than Barbara, Ben, and Johnny.
WTF, George? Do not do a reboot of a classic, just continue the story. I mean, you could not have done any worse than “Land of the Dead.” Could you?
George steamrolls ahead with a “documentary” effect, making Debra, (Morgan) the girlfriend of the primary filmmaker, narrate certain parts and tell the audience early on that she “added music for effect” and completed the film because the student director would have wanted it that way, a terrible attempt at foreshadowing. Also, Romero seems to have jumped into stereotypes for his film rather than breaking the barriers: the “brothers” talk ghetto, the college students say “dude” a lot, and the “filmmaker” has to complete each and every shot, no matter the fate of his friends. Again, the attempt at realism smacks the audience awake and out of it.
The pseudo-documentary effect never works. In fact, weak performances distract from the desired effect. There are some great moments, however. A sequence involving a deaf Amish farmer and the dissolving head of an infiltrating zombie are highlights to a rather by-the-numbers and frustrating film.

Romero Rules Followed: Many references are made to Romero zombies, including an early-on joke about how the dead “shamble” rather than run. All of Romero’s rules are followed here.
Gore factor: Fairly high, and, on two occasions, inventive.
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine
Additional comments: Some highlights feature Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro in radio reports; with King as an overzealous preacher screaming for penance and Del Toro commenting on immigration woes. I see what George was going for: If there was an apocalyptic outbreak, more people would sit on their asses and watch from their TVs or online, rather than react. However, the edict that mankind is more detached than ever has already been driven home. We get it. George Carlin told us that the more we are connected, the more we communicate less. I understand that Romero wanted to demonize bloggers, the media and the Internet in general as a land of misinformation and escapism. He might have slammed it home without the documentary-style gimmick and better actors.
He also should have not attempted to reboot his franchise in the modern era. Stupid, stupid move.
— ROB

Fine Young Cannibal

2010-12-16T18:44:00.002-05:00

Cannibal Holocaust
Dir. Antonio Margheriti (credited as Anthony M. Dawson)
1980
Cannibals are the like honor students of the zombie world. They’ve cleverly figured out you can dispense with that whole tedious bit about dying and matriculate straight on to the flesh eating stage. It’s like skipping a grade.
After pulling war buddies Tommy Thompson and Charlie Bukowksi (That’s right, Charles Bukowski in a cannibal movie) out of a Vietcong prison where they were chowing down on BBQed human flesh, Captain Norman Hopper (a pre-A Nightmare on Elm Street John Saxon) is just trying to piece his life together, repressing the wartime flash backs with a cocktail of pills while his psychiatrist openly schemes to swipe his wife and neighborhood vamp Mary tries to ply her wiles on an aged target.
But once Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice of City of the Living Dead) gets his “first leave out of the booby hatch” and goes mano a handgun with with the police, it triggers the old cannibalistic cravings. Soon Norman and his cannibalistic sidekicks are tooling around town in a stolen van with a flesh hungry nurse riding shotgun like a cannibal A-Team as they try to stay one step ahead of the cops.

Zombology: I’m cheating a bit here as no living dead are involved. However, Vietnam vets Norman, Charlie and Tommy picked up a funny bug while serving overseas. Suddenly a long neck or a bared thigh gets the munchies brewing. While Norman has been able to repress his urges somehow, the impulses become overwhelming when Charles drifts back into his life. Now when teen tramp Mary comes slinking over from next door to flirt with the neighbor man, Norman’s got an urge to eat her…just not the way she wants. Like any good zombie-grade viral outbreak, the cannibal compulsion can be spread through a bite, and Charles seems to be sinking his bicuspids into bystanders left and right as he tussles with orderlies at the mental hospital or while getting arrested following a murderous shoot out with the cops.

There’s no reason this movie should work as well as it does, but it’s got its own sleazy charm as it squashes together First Blood and Dawn of the Dead. A sensitive portrayal of the stresses of Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD this ain’t, but neither was Rambo and that’s taken on a patina of respectability in the last 30 years. Saxon is all masculine posturing of the sort you could only get away with in the early ’80s and Radice, paired with blaxploitation vet Tony King as Tommy, projects a fevered verve for heavy caliber mayhem and femur carpaccio. The gore is well done and Margheriti has a deft hand at pacing the action set pieces and a sly eye for humor (Bukowski starts his rampage while watching George Peppard in From Hell to Victory). All told, Cannibal Apocalypse, a late entrant into the cannibal craze of the late ’70s, is only 27 percent as awful as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: “George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead”

2010-12-13T10:45:00.003-05:00

“George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead”
2005
U.S.
Stars: Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy and John Leguizamo
Writer: George Romero
Dir: George Romero
97 minutes

“Zombies, man. They creep me out.”
Let’s set the stage, shall we? It had been 20 years since Uncle George decided to revisit his creation — the living dead. 1985’s “Day of the Dead,” for most people, was the closing chapter of Romero’s trilogy of flesh-eating undead. In those 20 years, countless rip-offs, spoofs, and other varying incarnations of zombies have either graced the silver screen or squandered space on video rental store shelves (or tricked you into adding them into the Netflix queue, nowadays).
It was a glorious day when I went stumbling around the numerous geek-run movie websites back in 2004 and learned Romero was going to take on zombies once again — and this time on a larger scale, both monetarily and talent-wise. He would have big studio backing, a larger budget than he had ever been given, and could hire a handful of well-known (and even cult-status) actors.
“Finally,” 2004-Rob thought, “we will get a real apocalyptic zombie film.”
Well, sort of.
2005’s “Land of the Dead” was the result of several ideas and germs that never fully developed from “Day of the Dead.” Romero wanted to have an army of zombies, trained to take out other zombies in “Day.” He develops an army of zombies in “Land.” And, as with the original script for “Day,” the zombies in “Land” are much smarter than the headshot-fodder we’ve come to know. Led by a gas station owner/attendant, zombies in “Land” learn as they go. They’re tired of being slaughtered by the well-organized scavengers who come by now and again looting supplies to take back to Fiddler’s Green — a city surrounded by water where the poor and blue collar live on the streets while the privileged live in a swank mall/apartment complex, complete with all luxuries of the “old world.”
The organized scavengers, led by Riley (Baker) and Cholo (Leguizamo), travel around on motor bikes and a rolling fortress: Dead Reckoning, a massive $2 million armored mobile transport, fully equipped with .50 caliber machine guns, short-range missiles — and fireworks to, you know, put on a show for the zombies (seriously — zombies seem to like fireworks in this movie). After a raid on a nearby town for supplies, the zombies, led by a leader dubbed in the credits as “Big Daddy,” decide to follow the looters back to Fiddler’s Green and launch a primitive assault on the island city.
Much to the zombies’ advantage, Cholo and Riley have both called quits to their scavenger days, calling the last supply raid, the one where the zombies get the gumption to follow them, their final one. Riley has decided to take a gassed up car he purchased and head north into Canada, where there is nothing (he said it, not me — but it’s true). Cholo has decided he would take his earnings for taking care of Kaufman’s (Hopper) “garbage” (i.e. people he does not want in his little paradise). When Kaufman decides Cholo isn’t worthy to live among the wealthy, he casts him out, but not before Cholo takes Dead Reckoning and threatens to destroy Fiddler’s Green with a couple missiles. Riley is bribed by Kaufman to recover Dead Reckoning and stop Cholo.
Yup, pretty simple plot there. This would have been a Charles Bronson or Chuck Norris movie 20 years ago, sans zombies. But the zombies, and the threat that they are “evolving,” adds to what little drama there is to be had here. The real show-stopper with the zombies happens about halfway through with a horde of them realizing water is not a boundary. Those brief moments are pretty awesome to look at. And, of course, there are the numerous feasting scenes. Where Romero once used to hold back until the climax, he decided to inject some spurts prematurely all over this one, giving the special effects team free reign to come up with zombies eating and ripping people apart that had not been seen by audiences before.
While “aw, man, did you see that?” is sometimes fine by me, I wanted more with this outing. I wanted characters I cared about. While Asia Argento is very easy on the eyes, her constant battle with her Italian accent in delivering American dialogue was distracting. Riley’s friend Charlie (Joy) was amusing at times, but by 2005 I was tired of what I call the Giovanni Ribisi School of Acting: act mentally handicapped, garner audience sympathy. Yes, Riley seemed to be a great guy, but his desire just to head north and get away from it all never made me want to care if he lived or died, no matter how many minor plot elements were thrown in to make him appear as a “good guy.” Leguizamo just seemed to be around for a paycheck. So did Hopper.
So, Uncle George gets a big budget, some B-list talent, and free-reign … and he punted it. Now I know why Romero prefers to direct independently — he can’t contain himself.
Much like another George I’ve come to malign.

Romero Rules Followed: He created a couple new ones here, mainly the zombie learning curve. In this film, zombies evolved faster than apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” But, I’ve referenced zombies using tools before in a Romero film, so, for the sake of argument, these suckers are still in the Romero realm.
Gore factor: Goriest of the Romero flicks thus far, although I was not a fan at all of some of the CGI effects. Stay practical with my zombies.
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine
Additional comments: This is the first Romero film to call the undead “zombies,” while the preferred term in the film is “stenches.” While the “thinking zombie” aspect is a bit intriguing, it was much too much for this outing. It should have been slowly introduced over the next couple of films (yeah, Romero has been cranking them out as of late), which would have probably made this one slightly better and made the two that followed a bit more bearable. Instead, Uncle George is just all over the place. And he lost the one thing that made me care — well-developed characters.
I like caring about zombie films. I wish George did this time around.

— ROB

Zombie or Wannabe: Pod People

2010-12-09T20:16:00.002-05:00

Don Siegel’s 1956 B-movie masterpiece Invasion of the Body Snatchers is almost the perfect Rorschach blot of a film. You can make equally compelling cases that the film is either a parable of the feared Communist infiltration of the United States that strangled the country at the time or the mindless conformity being demanded of Red Baiters like Joe McCarthy and his assistant Robert Kennedy who saw political hay to be made from the national unease.
But I propose you could also read the film’s central conceit, that aliens are wiping out emotion and individuality, as a proto-zombie text. Sleep next to a pod and you wake up a pod person. But are you a zombie?

The case for: Twenty years before Romero sent zombies mindlessly shambling through the mall to send up consumerism, Siegel’s pod people were featureless imitations of humanity simply going through the motions of living without all the emotional messiness actually being a person entails. Like zombies, the pod person invasion spreads almost virally. One person will be converted and feel compelled to infect their friends and neighbors as the infection spreads exponentially through a small California town. Dr. Miles Bennell’s patients, who complained to him just days earlier that family members were impostors, suddenly laugh off their prior fears as they join the ranks of the pod people. As Miles, love thang Becky Driscoll, and their neighbors slowly piece together what is happening to their town, the zombie elements of the film come to the fore. The survivors get trapped in a web of paranoia, fearing any friend or family member could turn on them at any time, much like they would if they were the walking dead. Becky and Miles even spend a night holed up in his medical office waiting out the invasion, much like the cast of Night of the Living Dead boarding themselves in the farm house. Beating Shaun of the Dead by half a century, Miles and Becky even feign being emotionless pod people at one point to escape a dragnet of infected townsfolk.

The case against: Making the case for viewing Invasion of the Body Snatchers is hampered by the fact that the film is never clear on what exactly is happening with the pod people. Our plucky band of heroes find gigantic pea pods containing featureless, anthropomorphic slugs hidden in their basements and greenhouses, which slowly taking the characteristics of their psychic hosts as they sleep. At first, the film implies the pod people, having absorbed the human’s memories, will replace their doppelgangers. Which would seem to imply there would be a whole rack of murdered bodies stinking up the town. (Miles does suggest perhaps the humans’ bodies simply dissolve once they’ve been drained). However, violating its own rules, Becky later becomes a pod person without an actual pod in the vicinity, making it hard to determine whether she’s been zombified or murdered and replaced. More importantly, can you really make the case the pod people qualify as the living dead?

The verdict: While a pretty compelling case can be made that Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ cinematic DNA eventually trickled down through the zombie canon, all of the elements just aren’t there yet. The fact remains the pod people are not the reanimated dead in the conventional sense whether they’re mind stealing doppelgangers or murdering impostors. However, this is another transitional fossil, much like Frankenstein's monster, in the proud lineage we’ve come to love.

ZomBlog Review: "Creepshow"

2010-12-06T09:42:00.004-05:00

“Creepshow”
1982
U.S.
Stars: Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Fritz Weaver, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, Gaylen Ross, Stephen King, Carrie Nye, E.G. Marshall, Tom Atkins and Viveca Lindfors
Writer: Stephen King
Dir: George Romero
120 minutes

I wanted to take on George A. Romero’s second zombie trilogy, starting with “Land of the Dead,” but the death of Leslie Nielsen made my brain turn into another direction — toward comedy and a fun zombie debate.
Without argument, the collaboration of Romero and Stephen King is a moment where horror fans should take pause and celebrate. “Creepshow” is a great homage to both horror and comedy, and marks King’s funniest moments on screen (ignore his attempt at film directing; his appearance here is hilarious).
Anyone my age has seen or heard about “Creepshow” at some point. The film is a set of five stories with a horrific and slightly tongue-in-cheek-theme, all written by King, with a true EC Comics (think “Tales From the Crypt”) vibe.
The two stories I wish to focus on are “Father’s Day” and “Something to Tide You Over.”
The film kicks off with Tom Atkins screaming at his kid over reading a “crappy” comic book (“Creepshow,” drawn very much like the great EC Comics that drew a Congressional investigation), the film starts with Ed Harris attending an aristocratic affair, a bunch of uptight, rich assholes sharing their tale of how Aunt Bedelia killed her father as revenge for daddy killing her beau. Daddy simply wants his cake and returns from the grave looking for it. And, well, some people die in order for undead daddy to get it.
After a hilarious outing by King, you have Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, and Gaylen Ross, the heroine of “Dawn of the Dead,” stuck in a love triangle, with Nielsen playing a jealous rich husband, Danson the hunky boyfriend, and the ocean as the equalizer: by gunpoint, Nielsen forces Danson and Ross into the sand to await high-tide and ultimately their death. But, in this story, death is not an end, and jealous revenge is met with revenge from a watery grave.

Romero Rules Followed: Romero tossed out almost all rules for this foray into fun. He obviously was going more for camp than for zombie fare, and he allowed King to bend the rules.
Gore factor: The most gore takes place during a later story, “The Crate,” but the film has been famously censored and, if you know where to look, a nice workprint is available, complete with some extra Tom Savini make-up effects.
Zombies or Wannabees? In both stories mentioned, they are wannabees. However, the Father’s Day “cake” ratchets it up to closer to zombie-lore.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: While not a zombie great, it is a classic. Just not for this blog.
Additional comments: I’ve so loved this film for years. And I have yet to meet anyone who has seen it and not instantly mention King’s hilarious role as Jordy Verrell. Romero probably found his most well-directed film post-NOTLD with “Dawn,” but this is the one film casual horror fans can grasp without the zombies we love. I really, really wish these two titans would collaborate on a real zombie film. I have said it before here; the results could only be … interesting.

— ROB

That’s Not a Knife Gun. This is a Knife Gun.

2010-12-02T18:44:00.005-05:00

Undead
Dir. Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
2003
When a meteorite shower unleashes the zompocalypse on your ass, what are you gonna be packing? Some puny handgun? Maybe a shotgun or sub-automatic replica of an assault rifle you bought from that unhygienic man at the gun show? Get the fuck outta here with that weak ass shit, zombie food.
Australian fisherman and arms dealer Marion comes correct in the flick Undead, sporting a trio of heavy gauge shotguns wired together for maximum effect (later upgraded to a foursome for even more zombie ass kicking potential). It's just a shame that a weapon so bad ass doesn't get top billing in this surprisingly appealing flick.
And a quick word of advice: always listen to the guy hefting such a zombie-slaying contraption. Dude has already survived an attack by zombie trout. Yeah. Zombie. Fucking. Trout.
And that pretty much sums up this Down Under zomcom’s approach to undead fare. Less slapstick than something like Dead Alive or Evil Dead, Undead plays up the absurdity of being caught in a zombie outbreak as a pregnant girl and her boyfriend, a pair of dopey, incompetent cops, the local beauty queen (Miss Catch of the Day) and heavily armed fisherman Marion hole up to wait out the undead.
Their failure to just sit still and stay quiet, largely the fault of the aforementioned bumbling cops, drives their increasingly absurd efforts to escape.

Zombology: A meteorite shower rains down on the small Australian town of Berkeley, tainting the local water supply and the rain. Anyone who gets enough of an exposure gets all white eyed and hungry for brains. These muscular zombies also have the brawn to decapitate their prey with swipe or punch their way through skulls. So get the quadruple shotgun rig actually sounds like a solid investment, doesn't it? They’re also more verbal than your average zombie, moaning “brains” and “join us” in voices like a Gears of War boomer. And hey, you wouldn’t think these zombies have anything to do with the aliens that just erected a spiked wall all around the town do you?

Surprisingly, Undead was more diverting than I thought it would be despite occasionally recycling gags more than is healthy. The actors are engaging enough, the zombies appropriately grotesque and the humor is mercifully understated and unwinking. My wife, no zombie fan at all, picked it and giggled her head off the entire time. For that impressive feat, Undead only sucks 33 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "Chopper Chicks In Zombietown"

2010-11-29T09:48:00.004-05:00

“Chopper Chicks In Zombietown”
1989
U.S.
Stars: Jamie Rose, Catherine Carlen, Lycia Naff, Vicki Frederick, Kristinia Loggia, Martha Quinn, Don Calfa and Billy Bob Thornton Writer: Dan Hokins
Dir: Dan Hoskins
86 minutes

A gang of varyingly attractive girls on motorcycles ride into Zariah, a desert town. They look to get drunk, fight, and, more importantly, laid. Still waiting for the punchline?
Yeah, so was I.
For some reason, I own this low-budget flick. I think it was because Don Calfa, “Ernie” from “The Return of the Living Dead,” played a key role in the film as a mad mortician/entrepreneur, interested in exploiting the nearby mines by implanting “batteries” into the brains of the recently-dead in order to mine “goods” — which never are fully explained.
Then those pesky chicks on motorcycles rolled into town, thwarting all of that with their desire to screw, drink, and fight their way through nearly an hour and a half of excruciatingly bad dialogue, plot devices (a busload of smart-aleck blind orphans?) and … ugh, the most relatable and, arguably, the most attractive member of the bunch, Dede (Rose) seems to be married to (a pre-“Sling Blade” and therefore pre-fame) Billy Bob Thornton.
Yeah, even some of the ugliest leading men need to start somewhere, even if it is a Troma Team release.
While the film starts out with some promise of a fun, goofy, zombie flick (with the zombies showing up about five minutes in — way earlier than most other dreadful films), it falls apart about halfway through, with ham-fisted attempts at character development, too many lesbian/bull-dyke jokes, and Calfa being underused as slapstick relief at the wrong times. And then there are the zombies, which disappear for most of the film only to show up later for the “final battle scenes,” after having an early, amusing introduction (and having their own, annoying marching-theme song).
I really do not want to kick this one in the gaping ass, but sometimes you see an opportunity. This little, low-budgeted mess could have been a contender. It could have worked. It could have impressed even the most fickle of critics. Yet, it fails where it should have capitalized.

Romero Rules Followed: Minor cannibalistic scenes, headshots, the recently dead rise; but the rules followed here are on a very basic level: 2/5.
Gore factor: It has its moments, but moderate.
Zombies or Wannabees? Batteries do not a zombie make.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Waste of time, unless you enjoy camp over quality.
Additional comments: This little-engine-that-could fails to deliver. To see such talent at decent make-up and special effects wasted pains me. This movie, at times, looked bigger than it should have, seeing it was shot on film with amateurish but passable direction.

— ROB

Because Cannibal Holocaust Was Already Taken

2010-11-25T08:22:00.005-05:00

Zombie Holocaust
Dir. Marino Girolami
1980
Zombie Holocaust is one awesome zombie-taking-an-outboard-motor-to-the-grill scene bookended by 80 minutes of plot holes, non sequiturs and recycled story lines.
Produced by Fabrizio De Angelis, who gave us Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, as a quickie cash in sequel, this spaghetti shocker(aka Zombie 3 [but not this Zombie 3 (which sucked so hard Fulci quit halfway through, letting Bruno Mattei wear the funk of shame for the final product) [by the way, how long to do you think I can keep this embedded parenthesis thing going?]] and Dr. Butcher M.D.) reverse engineers that Fulcis plot (dragging Ian McCulloch along for another spin as a researcher). It starts in New York and works its way back to a zombie and cannibal infested island somewhere in the Pacific. Make that cannibal infested island where the odd zombie staggers around some 50 minutes into the film.
You see, expat Asians across America have suddenly gone all cannibal on their neighbors, including a hospital janitor who slinks around his workplace giallo style hacking off limbs and ripping out organs of patients to get his fix. The intrepid Dr. Peter Chandler (McCulloch) and part time anthropologist Lori Ridgeway(as well as a pair of fairly obvious zombie baits) trace the Asian offenders back to a cult living on the remote island of Keto, famed for its love of Manwiches made from real men. As luck would have it, Lori spent her childhood near the island though she shows no familiarity with its customs, culture, language and generally staggers around looking useless and baffled once they get there. Even after the tribe’s sacrificial knife, which Lori kept as a keepsake, was stolen from her apartment.
These idiots can’t get to the island to be devoured by cannibals soon enough, and De Angelis is a man smart enough to quickly deliver what his audience craves.

Zombology: When they finally fucking show up, again, nearly an hour into a movie called Zombie fucking Holocaust, these zombies are the byproduct of a mad scientist’s extracurricular experiments on the local island. Skulls get cracked open and brains are transplanted into dead bodies in order to…something. The movie’s not really clear on motivation here. These zombies are not carnivorous, either. That honor is reserved for the local cannibals. In fact, the shambling undead are smart enough to follow simple orders and use some basic tools.

This is the kind of film the Hell of the Living Dead scale was pretty much invented for. Both films just wallow in bigoted cultural fetishism and exploitation. With Hell, it was abused stock footage from Papua New Guinea while Zombie Holocaust forces a bunch of underpaid Asian extras to run around in leather thongs and pretend to eat people while the smug Europeans degrade them as backwards and primitive within earshot, not exactly endearing themselves to the locals. For its crimes against anthropology, train-sized plot holes (seriously, how did the stolen sacrificial knife make it back to the island and why does nobody seem to care when it shows up again?), absolutely incomprehensible climax and dearth of titular zombies actually holocausting anything, it sucks 53 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

Are You Getting It? Yeah Zombiegeddon It.

2010-11-18T09:35:00.002-05:00

Zombiegeddon
Chris Watson
2003
Handy rule of thumb for any flick: if Uwe Boll pops up in the beginning to warn you – even facetiously – that the movie you’re watching is piece of shit, take his word for it. That guy knows a horrible film when it drops a fresh Cleveland steamer on his face.
Troma’s Zombiegeddon is wretched even when grading on Troma’s depressed curve. I’m not expecting Lloyd Kaufman’s schlock factory to start toting around Oscars for cinematography, but there are large chunks of dialogue in Chris Watson’s film that are drowned out by cicadas. Shots inexplicably shift from night to day between takes. And in one scene, the entire crew is clearly reflected in the screen of a television. I’m just saying, at least pretend for our sakes that you’re trying to make something resembling an actual movie. And the boxed story narrative of local talk radio host Laura Reynolds relating the take of the zombie assault on Tromaville adds very little other than padding it out to the bare minimum for a feature film.
The least Watson could have done was fulfill the title’s promise because there’s definite dearth of ’geddon and almost as little zombie in this movie.

Zombology: According to Zombiegeddon’s obtuse mythology, Satan created zombies to wipe out the human race. The zombies look like ordinary people (probably more for budgetary reasons than narrative) and walk among us until the time comes for them to strike. Only those of God’s chosen bloodline have the wherewithal to end the uprising. Hopefully he shows up in time. I know. I found that needlessly complicated too. And zombies can do kung fu. And heave when winded. And can be choked out with a sleeper hold.

Like just about any Troma film, the best(?) part of Zombiegeddon is playing a game of spot the cameo. Tom Savini, playing a man who claims to be Jesus, has the brains to know better than to appear in such dreck. Joe Estevez, playing Satan’s favorite zombie sidekick and possibly gay lover, lacks the dignity to know any better. Christ, can Martin Sheen use some pull to help a brother out?
Because it scrimps on the zombie chills, we’re forced to endure Zombiegeddon’s futile attempts at sub-Killer Tomatoes levels of humor. Pretty much every joke boils down to: “Lulz ur ghey.” With the witty riposte: “Nuh uh, ur ghey-er.” The relentless homophobia largely comes from Cage and Jeff, two dirty cops who spend the bulk of the movie driving around Tromaville gunning down innocent bystanders rather than actually fighting crime or addressing the zombie outbreak that seems to center around the local junior college. But honestly, who really cares about the plot of a Troma film?
I can conceive of theoretical physicists who may have a perverse incentive to study Zombiegeddon’s inexplicable ability to make 75 minutes feel like two hours. But for everyone else, avoid like a zombie outbreak. This film is 96 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "World War Z"

2010-11-16T22:02:00.002-05:00

“World War Z”
By Max Brooks
2006
U.S.
Three Rivers Press
342 pages

This is the first book review for this blog (yes, we can read as well as watch). And, from my standpoint, this is a great introduction into zombie literature.
“World War Z” reads like a dossier, a documentary, and a well-written fan-fiction novel. Author Brooks captures all of the elements that zombie lovers have come to know and love: the apocalypse has happened, the undead are kicking and eating our asses, humankind seems powerless to stop it — and this is how the entire world responds.

Brooks takes the backseat as an author, assuming the role of a man seeking to interview the major players involved and report to all world governments the beginning, middle, and end of a worldwide zombie outbreak.

I spent the majority of my summer and fall months picking this book up, getting sucked in at some chapters, intrigued by others, and completely enthralled with others. The book jumps back and forth with the timeline of a war that took place over several years, over several continents and countries. Everyone from military strategists, to government advisors, to laymen, to religious figures are interviewed by the “author,” comprising a compelling read that I will not soon forget.

Among the standout moments of Brooks’ novel include a gripping tale of a Chinese submarine commander realizing that the best way of survival — and potential destruction at the hands of his own government — is becoming a deserter; a teenager in Japan who watched the apocalypse unfold over the Internet and suddenly realizing he not only was ill-equipped with intelligence to handle the war when it came to his door, but also that he had spent too many months staring at a computer screen that his lethargic form seemed to fight against him as he tried to survive; several accounts as to how modern military responses to the threat fell short (i.e. soldiers being trained to shoot for mass rather than the head, having to relearn on the fly how to destroy a force that upped its forces with every un-destroyed brain).

The novel, while completely based on the slow-moving zombies this blog has come to embrace as the triple-OG zombies, takes a few liberties with Uncle George’s rules, but very few.

It is a stretch to think about a real-life zombie apocalypse, but Brooks handles the subject matter and the story with respect, sound-research, and cultural understanding.

Romero Rules Followed: Practically all, but I will not ruin plot points with nitpicking

Gore factor: Well, deft description makes the mind an amusement park

Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies

Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic

Additional comments: I was expecting a terrible Tom Clancy-wannabe, but was pleasantly surprised. This is a sincere recommendation if you have had enough with terrible fiction writing as of late. Also, there have been rumors that a big studio was willing to make a film, casting Brad Pitt in a role...While that may be a scary prospect, read the book and then picture who Mr. Pitt would play...As the narrator, he is perfect casting.

— ROB

Zombie or Wannabe: Jack Goodman

2010-11-11T08:13:00.003-05:00

At first blush, An American Werewolf in London would seem to make for paltry zombie fare. You only have to read three words in before any literate soul would realize you’ve wandered into a whole ’nother supernatural critter’s turf. But I’m less interested in rehashing David Kessler’s lyncanthropic adventures abroad than I am in the fate of first victim and wisecracking spook Jack Goodman.
Grumbling Jack isn’t much enjoying his backpacking trip in Old Blighty as much as his phlegmatic companion. Jack’s cold, his bag’s covered in sheep shit and the locals are looking at him funny. His problems only get compounded 15 minutes into the 1981 flick when he’s eviscerated by a passing werewolf about whom the natives never saw fit to warn him.
And that’s when Jack’s troubles really begin because the curse of the werewolf means he’s doomed to wander limbo until the werewolf bloodline is extinguished. Meaning, he’d kindly appreciate it if David would off himself so he can shuffle off what’s left of his mortal coil.

The case against: Jack’s status is never quite made clear though he repeatedly refers to himself as undead. He may actually be more of a ghost than a zombie. No one else in the film sees Jack or the other victims who join him in haunting David. He’s also sassier than your average recently reanimated corpse. Pretty sure Romero wouldn’t abide a zombie that mouthed off more than it chomps flesh.

The case for: Unlike your average ghost, Jack continues to degrade as the picture moves along, which speaks in his favor as member in good standing of your local zombie union. As the climax closes in, he’s hardly more than a skeleton with bits of flesh clinging to his rotten noggin. Though nobody else seems to see Jack, he's shown interacting with the environment, which argues for him being something more substantial than your run of the mill spook or specter. And while he’s not a hands on kinda guy, Jack does want David dead. So that’s got to count for something, right?

The verdict: Forgive me for being a traditionalist, but I don’t want my zombies nagging me to death when they could be chewing limbs instead. Suitably putrid he may be, but Jack just doesn’t stack up.

ZomBlog Review: "Day of the Dead" (1985)

2010-11-10T09:35:00.006-05:00

“Day of the Dead”
1985
U.S.
Stars: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, Richard Liberty
Writer: George Romero
Dir: George Romero
101 minutes

The “Return of the Jedi” of George A. Romero’s first zombie trilogy, “Day of the Dead” was savaged upon initial release. Having been 8 years old at the time, I did not obviously see the film right away, but I sure as hell remember the teaser trailers on TV, with a ton of seemingly disembodied hands plunging through a cinderblock wall to grab a rather attractive woman.
That happens in the first moment of “Day.” It was a cheap attempt to scare the audience, but, at this point, we all know Uncle George was done trying to scare us. He wanted us to think and used a seemingly unstoppable foil to jumpstart our numb minds.
“Day” finds the human race nearly wiped out, with a handful of humans struggling to survive and stop the apocalypse above while hiding in an underground bunker. A sect of scientists — protected at the time by an increasingly paranoid and power-hungry military platoon — are losing time to figure out what causes the dead’s desire to look at the living as dinner, cure the plague, and return society to normal while continuing a search for survivors.
Many years have passed since Romero’s “Dawn.” While many critics were turned off by the numerous scenes of yelling and screaming protagonists, as a young viewer, I understood Romero’s vision: Humanity had reached its last thread of sanity. Desperation and animal instincts were ruling the survivors. Captain Rhoades (Pilato), serving as totalitarian dictator in his little kingdom, knows he has the opportunity and firepower to make every command a reality. He is the worst bully anyone could meet and Pilato, an inexperienced actor, does a fine job of making the audience hate him instantly. The audience can feel empathy for the non-military survivors: scientist Sarah (Cardille), helicopter pilot John (Alexander), and radio operator McDermott (Jarlath Conroy).
However, the most interesting and likable character is portrayed by Richard Liberty. As Dr. “Frankenstein” Logan, Liberty (who has sadly passed on) immediately engages the audience as not only a sympathetic doctor hell-bent on stopping the zombie virus, but also reversing it in a very unconventional way — creating zombie pets. His star pupil, “Bub,” phenomenally portrayed by Howard Sherman, expands Romero’s rules and humanizes the cannibalistic enemy, a risky turn for the director — a risk, which, in this instance, paid out in spades.
“Day,” again, leans heavily on its characters to further the story. One moment in the film, where John and Sarah wax philosophically about religion and Darwinism, stands out as a powerful, thought-provoking moment that would have seemed silly in other hands and films. Romero and the cast take that moment, and the moment in which it took place — Cold War America — and put a stamp on humanity that reads: “You are destroying us; maybe that isn't such a bad thing.”
While “Day” easily contains incredibly realistic zombie carnage, it also, in my book, contains the most realistic display of desperation since Romero’s “NOTLD” in its human characters. The audience certainly cares about some and absolutely wants to see others destroyed in the fastest and most painful way possible. And Uncle George delivers, again, this time ten-fold.
I may get my zombie expert card taken away for writing this, but I truly believe, along with “Night of the Living Dead,” “Day” really encapsulates a realistic reaction to a menace, and tops “Dawn” handily. Come on, take out the zombies and replace it with nuclear fallout, where a handful of survivors are trapped in an underground shelter, with some looking for other survivors and others simply looking to survive.
Now, tell me, which side would you fall on after three months?

Romero Rules Followed: New ones are created here with “thinking” zombies. But, George can make them up as he goes along as far as the OT* is concerned.
Gore factor: Over the top
Zombies or Wannabees? They are still slow, dead, and fleasheating. Zombies.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Positively a classic
Additional comments: I have taken a beating over the years defending this one, but I stand firm. Even such revered critics as Roger Ebert had to go back and review “Night of the Living Dead,” which he initially beat with a log. Many critics came back to “Day” and then “got it.” Ebert wrote, upon appreciating “Day,” that he hoped George would “stop while he was ahead.”
Sadly, as you will see, George, like another George, didn’t listen. If you hated this one, give it another glance with wide-open eyes and mind. I enjoy it even more each time I watch it.
*Original Trilogy
— ROB

ZomBlog Review: "Dawn of the Dead" (1979)

2010-11-09T11:40:00.006-05:00

“Dawn of the Dead”
1979
U.S.
Stars: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross
Writer: George A. Romero
Dir: George A. Romero
127 minutes (Director’s Theatrical Version); 139 minutes (Extended Version) 118 minutes (European Version)

Look above. Three different versions of the same film, which was released nearly two years after your humble bloggers were born. This movie must have been important to deserve such treatment.
Yes, Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” the loosely-connected sequel to his masterpiece “Night of the Living Dead” is, and always will be, a profound middle-finger to horror films of the day and even to modern day films of its nature.
“Dawn” was a landmark for a variety of reasons. It erupted at the right time and caused a decent amount of controversy, having been released without a rating (for the unschooled, if you released any film depicting scenes objectionable to “viewers,” the MPAA [the Motion Picture Association of America] would slap that film with an “X” rating back in the 1970s and early 1980s. Now, if you do not know what an “X” rating would infer to any film, you are too young to read this blog, let alone know what “X” rating means). Romero, still full of piss and vinegar as a young filmmaker, and having had some early battles with the ratings board on other films (see “Martin”), went back into “this is what I want to see so f*ck you” mode and released “Dawn” without a rating, knowing it would lead to distribution and theatrical release issues.
And he kicked the MPAA in the teeth.
“Dawn” still remains Romero’s biggest worldwide accomplishment, both critically and financially (don’t throw “Land of the Dead stats at me; adjust for inflation, first).
And it really deserves to be a major feat.
Romero predicted, deftly, the coming consumer-culture of the 1980s, where “more was better” and “those without could suck it.” Note: He began working on “Dawn” four years prior to that vision even becoming a glimpse of being fully-apparent.
The story of the film is very simple. Yes, my friends, this IS “the one in the mall.” Four diverse survivors — two of whom are members of a broadcast news station team, the other two members of a SWAT team — take refuge in a shopping mall (Monroeville Mall near Pittsburgh, Pa., for the unaware). They feel they have found the ultimate fortress, full of all the wares of the day, all the supplies they will ever need. But, what they realize is, even with the security they have gained — and the hundreds upon hundreds of zombies waiting outside — they are really trapped, unable to fully enjoy what some would consider the ultimate “creature comforts.”
While Romero’s message in this film may not have been nearly as subtle as “Night of the Living Dead,” he struck a nerve. Even though Romero intended this zombie outing to be a comedy, he made it a dark one; Romero, even during early production of the film, stated that “Dawn” was a comic-book telling of a zombie apocalypse. Keeping that in mind, modern audiences can appreciate that. From the first time I viewed the film, I said to myself, “Why does the f***ing blood look so fake?” “Why is this music so terrible?”
The Italian musical group Goblin, famous for scaring the diarrhea out of so many others by scoring films by maestro director Dario Argento (a little more on him a bit later), took Romero’s comedic take on the story, America’s indifference, and universal satire, and turned out what some would view, on the surface, as a soundtrack worthy of cat-vomit — and tweaked up the absurdity of “Dawn,” Romero’s prophetic vision, and muzak. The only time the soundtrack takes a serious turn is when the film takes a (somewhat) serious turn.
As aforementioned, the film has three, definitive and acknowledged versions. Romero claims the theatrically-released and unedited version from 1979 as his definitive “director’s cut.” I prefer the “extended cut,” which further delves into the characters, their motives, and their struggles at remaining sane while completely cut off from any and all human contact… until... well, watch it.
Now, the “European Version” was a version of the film supervised in editing by Dario Argento; and, I have to say, without reserve: “Argento, don’t ever fucking edit a film ever, ever again.”
For some reason, Argento decided that the most interesting elements of the film — the f***ing characters — needed to take a backseat to a few additional (slight) scenes of gore. The European Version, while slightly more gory, lacks the “oomph,” both politically and satirically that either of the other versions of “Dawn” encapsulated. Go back to “giallos,” Argento, and never, ever, try to edit an American classic again (In all fairness, Argento edited the film prior to its worldwide release — he simply should not have done it, even if he helped finance the film’s production).

Romero Rules Followed: It’s a Romero classic…all are followed and further defined.
Gore factor: This one goes to 11, again.
Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies all the way
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Definitive classic
Additional comments: This is the one film that scared the dogsh*t out of my mother, and further peaked my interest in horror films, not just zombie films. If you are a fan of zombies or zombie films, you owe it to yourself to see this one, not Zach Snyder’s abomination of a remake (Andrew, I am calling on you to tell everyone the reasons they need to watch THIS instead of THAT). And if you are a turbo-fan, buy Anchor Bay’s four-disc set that includes all three “recognized versions” of the film along with some eye-opening and incredible behind-the-scenes documentaries and commentaries with Romero, make-up man Tom Savini and many others. I cannot recommend this gem enough. Ignore the fallacies; embrace the genius.

— ROB

They’re an American Band Zombie

2010-11-04T20:09:00.002-04:00

American Zombie
Dir. Grace Lee
2007
American Zombie admirably tries to break out of the zombie film rut with its mockumentary look at the zombies living among us, glossing over the outbreak/apocalypse cliché to delve into how humans and zombies might be able to accommodate each other once the plague has plateaued and life develops some sense of normalcy. Using gay pride, civil rights and the homeless as metaphors for the perils of zombie acceptance, American Zombie trails a skater zombie with a dead end convenience store job and a zombie ’zine hobby, an undead florist with a penchant for string art and funeral bouquets, a zombie community organizer, and a vegan foodbank worker who doesn’t like to admit she’s the recently reanimated. It’s a clever set up, but the film’s tone gets horribly lost somewhere between wry, dead pan humor and the expected corpse rending carnage we expect, ultimately never really delivering on either.

Zombology: Once again our good friend the viral outbreak rears its infectious head. In American Zombie, you never know whether you’ve contracted the virus, which attacks the central nervous system, because it lays dormant until its host dies a violent death. Only then will the revenants, as officials call them, come back to life. There are three strains of zombisms at work. The ferals, who are the mindless monstrosities we’ve all come to love, hardly figure into the story. Low functioning zombies can hold down menial labor jobs and support themselves. The high functioning zombies, who look suspiciously like normal people in white pancake makeup and heavy eye shadow, take up most of the film, recounting their daily lives, hopes and dreams. And attend a mysterious, no humans allowed rave/art fest/hippy freakout in the desert called “Live Dead.” Hey, I wonder what’s happening there.

The film’s central conceit—a documentary about the quotidian lives of everyday zombies—actually works against the movie. If, as our faux documentarians intend, you make a movie about the boring lives of everyday zombies, you tend to end up with a boring film about people who work in convenience stores, collect cat figurines and make string art. As a fake documentary, American Zombie nails the pop sociology vibe of dumbed down History Channel specials. As a zombie film, it lacks tension, gore, and most importantly, brain chomping mayhem. Still, it’s only 37 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

They’re Coming to get You, Barbara (and Fuck Everything Up)

2010-10-28T18:41:00.011-04:00

If zombies had their equivalent of sacred texts, then George Romero’s low budget masterpiece Night of the Living Dead would be a key passage in that codex. Think of the better offerings of the Romero cannon as the zombie Pentateuch.
I cannot understate how important this movie was to me. There was a time in high school when I had no interest in movies. Hollywood dreck didn’t speak to me, and it wasn’t until a friend loaned me a battered VHS of Night of the Living Dead – which I promptly bootlegged and treasure to this day – that I ever had a clue that something like independent cinema even existed. Night of the Living Dead, along with Repo Man, turned me on to a world of filmmakers too bizarre to get day jobs in Tinsel Town. Those films, in turn, led me to Pi, Eraserhead and Tetsuo the Ironman when I was in college. An addiction was born.
And my appreciation for it has only increased after subjecting myself to the shitty remakes. Everyone who has taken a crack at the story in the last four decades, including gore maestro Tom Savini who directed a script penned and produced by Romero himself, has completely missed what made the original work: the characters.
I can’t remember where I first read it (it may be a Stephen King quote) but some wise person somewhere once said if you’re going to posit something supernatural in your story, everything else must be firmly grounded. And that’s what made the original Night of the Living Dead a masterpiece: while disbelief must be suspended to accept the reality of a zombie uprising, all of the characters act remarkably natural, reacting as you expect real people would to something that incomprehensible.
And that's exactly what the remakes get wrong.

They’re Coming to Get You, Barbara
Starting with everyone’s favorite hysteric, Barbara's complete collapse in the face of the horrific and impossible is perfectly understandable. Was the original Barbara a sexist stereotype in the face of the hyper-masculine survivors? Absolutely, but there’s still enough essential truth to Barbara’s character that she never stopped being sympathetic. Savini and Romero committed the greatest sin against this essential truth in the 1990 re make, taking the nearly cataleptic Barbara and trying to turn her into an Ellen Ripley whose every shot is a bullet between a zombie's eyes. Savini’s Barbara symbolically sheds her feminine dress and pumps in favor of work boots and men’s pants throughout the film, become more masculine, hefting weapons, barking orders and exacting her own bloody revenge on her fellow survivors at the end. Jeff Broadstreet’s abysmal 2006 3D remake played with the same dynamic, turning Barbara from a shrewish bitch henpecking Johnny to a zombie killing Amazon who stabs the undead in the head and betrays no emotion when her resurrected family is gunned down in front of her a few hours later. Lacking that emotional grounding from the original, both of the remakes squander Barbara’s potential because they haven't earned that emotional gravitas.

Ben, the Two of Us Need Look No More
Ben fares just as poorly. Broadstreet, eliding the subtle racial dynamic that added much needed subtext to Romero’s film, turns Ben into a motorcycle riding white kid who sells weed to pay his college tuition. Though Savini drafts Tony “Candyman” Todd into the role, he apparently told him to act out every blaxploitation stereotype as he gnaws his way through more scenery, dropping more pointless F-bombs than shambling revenants. Romero’s Ben was a man struggling to keep it all together. The antithesis of Barbara’s complete meltdown, Ben was mechanical, robotic, too shellshocked to allow himself to feel much of anything for fear of completely collapsing. Watching him reduced to a poor man’s Shaft or a sarcastic teen is a travesty.

Hangin' With Mr. Cooper
If there was a true villain to the original Night of the Living Dead, it wasn’t the zombies but Henry Cooper, the sweaty, chain smoking father hiding in the basement and opposing common sense at every turn. He’s all bluster and bravado, a caricature of a 1960s man who’s trying to maintain the illusion that he’s sure and firm and standing tall as a bastion of consistency and safety for his family. Reviled though he may be, I can’t help but feel sympathy for the guy. He's probably the most complex character in the film. He’s a stranger, lost in town and trying to keep it together for his wife and sick child, Karen. He’s a doomed man who doesn’t know his daughter is already dead but he’s determined to protect his family, fuck everyone else. The man’s a fount of pathos, but Savini slices away any nuance, metastasizing him into a featureless Jersey guido, shouting and belligerent, an obvious object of scorn and ridicule. Savini and Romero can’t even see fit to give the man an honest emotion when his zombie daughter is killed before his eyes.
Mr. Cooper and his family are an even more risible collection of freaks under Broadstreet’s ministrations. Rather than an out of towner futiley trying to do best by his family amid the horror, Mr. Cooper is a bumpkin local pot farmer whose (inexplicably biracial) daughter fulfills the sitcom role of the sarcastic kid and whose wife and farm hands are pot smoking cretins, little removed from the zombies, themselves, as they vegetate in front of the television. This Cooper is a bumbling failure whose brilliant decision to shoot the zombies through his window (at no point during the film does anybody board up a door or turn off a light) allows the zombies inside to attack the occupants. His daughter’s death and his inevitable suicide pact with his wife elicit no emotion because Broadstreet ignored what made the character work.

ZomBlog Tribute: "Night of the Living Dead"

2010-10-25T11:18:00.004-04:00

“Night of the Living Dead”
1968
U.S.
Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley
Writer: John Russo and George Romero
Dir: George Romero
96 minutes

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
In 1968, George A. Romero changed the horror film game once and for all. He wrote a solid script featuring creatures that were terrifying, assembled a cast of unknowns, and created a biting social commentary. “Night of the Living Dead” will, forever, remain one of the greatest horror films of all time.
Now, 42 years later, the creatures he created then are staples of pop culture. Romero has directed five sequels with varying degrees of critical and box office acclaim, and countless knockoffs have been spawned. Video games feature the cannibalistic undead, books dedicated to the subject are topping the New York Times Bestseller List, people around the world are assembling in massive gatherings to either r dance or shamble about city streets, and music groups are writing songs about them.
Yes, the living dead are more popular than ever, and it all began with one of the most iconic films — not just in the horror canon — ever made.
For those unfamiliar with the film (shame on you), the story begins with a brother and sister visiting their father’s grave in the countryside outside of Pittsburgh. Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbara (O’Dea) bicker back and forth, prompting Johnny to tease his sister as a strange man begins to approach them. After the man grabs and begins to claw at Barbara, Johnny fights with the man, ultimately winding up unconscious. Barbara flees from the attacker and runs into an apparently empty farmhouse. She is soon joined by another stranger, Ben, (Jones). This time, the new stranger fends off multiple more “attackers” and begins boarding up the house. Barbara, slipping into a catatonic state of shock, listens listlessly as Ben tells how the strange attackers are everywhere and no one knows what is really going on.
As time passes, Ben and Barbara learn they are not in the house alone, as two teenagers, Tom and his girlfriend Judy, and a set of parents — Harry and Helen Cooper, and their injured daughter, Karen, appear from the basement where they have hidden themselves from the attackers. Instantly, a power struggle between Ben and Harry ensues, each determined to control the situation and make the next decision for survival. While Harry appears to be driven to defend his family by staying in the basement, Ben makes it clear that he is in charge of the main floor — and the only gun in the house. While Ben measures each decision with logic and forward thinking, Harry’s reaction is to either flee from the house or barricade everyone in basement. The tension between the two men is at the center of the story as the refugees begin to learn what is going on through radio and television reports: the bodies of the recently dead have begun to rise from their graves and attack the living — in some cases, biting and devouring their victims.
As the numbers of the slow, lumbering undead begin to gather around the house, and make a couple attempts to gain entry, Ben and Tom lay out a strategy to take a pickup truck, drive to a gas pump outside of the home, fuel it up, pick up the refugees, and drive to the nearest shelter where the National Guard is sure to protect them.
The plan — fails terribly. Tom and Judy wind up becoming barbecue, and, for the first time on film, the undead decide to have a grand meal. Shot after shocking shot of human remains are seen either being carried around, fought over, or consumed by the undead.
The remaining survivors begin to become desperate and some take advantage of the horror and confusion, leading to the collapse of what little safety they had. A last attempt is made to survive — with middling results.
I have tried to be very spoiler-free with the plot synopsis here, but I almost feel I should talk about every, single, vital plot point in this 42-year-old gem. However, I realize there are still many people out in the world who have yet to experience it (although, if they are reading this blog, I really worry about them).
Also, I have refrained from using the term “zombie,” even though this is obviously what the “creatures” are in “NOTLD.” While the film never utters the Z word, instead calling them “ghouls” or “the recently dead,” the entire modern zombie phenomenon stems from this film. In fact, this blog holds all zombie lore to the standards and rules set forth by Romero in this film and his subsequent sequels.
What I did not mention earlier is something that has been up for much debate over the years. The character of Ben was played by Duane Jones, a black man. The year the film debuted was 1968, the same year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. While the film had wrapped prior to King’s death, the fact that the lead in this film was a strong black man absent of racial stereotypes of the day made a huge impact on the film’s initial and cult success. Romero has denied on several occasions that Jones’ casting was a conscious political statement, simply stating that Jones was the best actor for the part. Conscious or not, the fact that Jones portrayed the only competent, strong, resourceful, and brave role in the film made a bold statement in a tumultuous time during the civil rights movement.
While the film was made for pennies, with most of the cast and crew assuming multiple production roles, it has gone on to become a goldmine both critically and financially — even though Romero has nary made a penny back from the film due to being young and naïve, failing to copyright the film upon initial release, and allowing it to slip into public domain. While Romero has remained an independent filmmaker for the majority of his career, his greatest feat doesn’t even belong to him. Ouch.
I have watched “NOTLD” more times than any other film — ever. Romero caught lightning in a bottle with “NOTLD”: a solid concept, a strong story, credible characters, and a frightening enemy — us. While the undead provide the catalyst of the threat, the real threat is humanity, and how, in desperate situations, humanity tends to turn on itself, with the most primal instinct — self-preservation — taking over and destroying what would seem to be the ultimate goal: survival of the species.
The zombies take on a pack mentality, overpowering their prey through strength in numbers. And, while their prey would be stronger if they took on that pack mentality, humans in Romero’s world devolve into individuals.
The zombies will win.

— ROB

The Slowest Gun in the West (Part 2)

2010-10-21T19:31:00.004-04:00

Undead or Alive
Dir. Glasgow Phillips
2007
Saint George of Romero take my soul, but I never thought Corky fucking Romano would be the savior of the zombie Western. Yet I’m forced to grapple with that truth, which threatens to blast away my sanity like an impossible Lovecraftian horror. But there it is. I watched a Chris Kattan zombie flick. And I kinda liked it.
Hold me. I’m scared.
Undead or Alive is a slight, thoroughly disposable “zombedy” (their term, not mine) that I’ll probably never watch again, but did its job for 93 minutes. The near absence of a plot and some sketchy CGI arterial spray are propped up by the free flowing chemistry between cowboy buffoon Kattan and costars James Denton as an MIA soldier who’d rather study dentistry and Navi Rawat as the New York-raised niece of Geronimo. The often inane, generally anachronistic patter between the three has a comfortable vibe, and while the film will never be considered hilarious, their delivery and awareness of the film’s limitations is actually rather charming. Nerd cult comic Brian Posehn also takes an amusing turn as patient zero of the inevitable zombie outbreak that sends the trio heading for the hills, chased by the corrupt local sheriff and his red-eyed, flesh hungry posse.

Zombology: According to the movie’s lore, Apache warrior Geronimo cursed white men before his death, unleashing a zombie outbreak in the West. From there the movie abides takes a familiar turn. Being bitten results in imminent zombification. However, Undead or Alive does mangle the Romero rules to suit its own purposes. A headshot, the sovereign remedy for a zombie plague, is not up to snuff for our cowpokes. Only full decapitation will end the menace. Also, the zombies retain many of their skills from their previous lives. They walk, talk, ride horses, shoot guns and commit physical comedy with aplomb.

I loathe Chris Kattan so that Undead or Alive’s charms were able to overcome that animus speaks to its comedic gifts, slight though they may be at times. The willingness for the filmmakers to subvert the audience’s expectation of a traditional happy ending for a comedy film was also a bold choice. Appreciating it on its own terms, Undead or Alive is only 42 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "Re-Animator"

2010-10-18T21:47:00.005-04:00

“Re-Animator”
1985
U.S.
Stars: Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson and Jeffrey Combs
Writer: Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris and Stuart Gordon; Based on the story “Herbert West: Re-animator” by H.P. Lovecraft
Dir: Stuart Gordon
86 minutes

Herbert West is a strange little man. He is manipulative, argumentative, a chronic liar, asexual, and has criminal tendencies.
He’s also brilliant and has figured out a way to bring the dead back to life.
Having a reason to flee Sweden, where he claims he had nothing left to learn, West (Combs) arrives at Miskatonic University in Massachusetts (a staple of the Gordon-made Lovecraft movies and a handful of the writer’s stories), where he meets medical student, the overly passionate Dan Cain (Abbott). Cain, engaged to the dean’s daughter (Crampton) is a sure-fire star of his medical school — until West comes knocking, looking for a room to rent and the basement for laboratory space. Cain, desperate for cash and looking to further impress Dean Halsey, accepts West into his home, despite his girlfriend’s, Megan Halsey’s, protests.
Meanwhile, West attends school and immediately begins a war with the established and well-respected Dr. Hill (Gale, in a brilliant and brave performance), accusing Hill of stealing ideas from more intelligent physicians over the location of “the will in the brain,” where brain death occurs and if, after a matter of minutes, if the salvation of life is even possible. West argues brain death can be reversed, while Hill claims it ends after seven minutes. And, as the audience already knows, West has proven his theory — well, technically.
West has created a “re-agent,” a serum, once injected into a dead body, re-animates the victim. However, his results seem to be the same: the subject does come back to life — but they seem none too pleased about it, act like rage victims, and have gained the strength of five men.
As Hill’s obsession of Megan Halsey grows, as does his obsession over learning what West has discovered, ultimately attempting to steal West’s discovery and claim it as his own. Well, for fear of ruining this great, bloody mind-numbing feast, I will go no further.
“Re-Animator” remains one of my all-time horror film favorites. I first saw it by skipping out of class on an afternoon my freshman year of high school and hitting a video store with a pal (yes, mom, I did occasionally miss a few minutes of school). And, yes, we instantly loved it. And, while I have no idea where that guy is nowadays, I am sure he probably still talks this one up as much as I do. It is another example of where horror, gore, and dark comedy can perfectly overlap and entertain. “Re-Animator” is held up with a solid set of actors (Combs and Gale serving up great performances as outcast likeable jerk, and evil, sadistic, flawed-villain, respectively), a solid musical score (obviously ripping off and riffing on the famous Bernard Herrmann score for Hitchcock’s “Psycho”), and a good mix of furiously fast-paced sequences. And the ending is memorable as well.
Soooooo …

Romero Rules Followed: 2 out of 5
Gore factor: Bucketloads; still one of the more heavily-censored films of the 80s, but available completely uncut on DVD.
Zombies or Wannabees?: Damn it, it’s hard, but the monsters in this flick are the recently undead. Zombies it is, although not by traditional Romero means. This one falls more in line with “Frankenstein.”
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: Probably the only film you will ever see with a disembodied head giving … um … “head”…awkward and bizarre, but the moment it occurs is actually hilarious rather than terrifying. I may be sick in my head, but I still laugh when others cringe. And the question is also answered as to what happens when intestines live. There are two middling sequels to this flick. I recommend both for a variety of reasons, but the first is still a solid entry into the horror — and on a limited measure — into the zombie lexicon.

— ROB

The Slowest Gun in the West (Part 1)

2010-10-14T18:48:00.004-04:00

The Quick and the Undead
Dir. Gerald Nott
2006
The Quick and the Undead is a clever premise undone by a woefully subpar cast. Riding the recent wave of zombie Westerns, the film mashes together the familiar tropes of zombie films, post apocalyptic road movies, and Italian horse operas. It’s just a shame the zombies emote more than the movie’s stars.
Nearly a century after a viral outbreak has turned most of the American population into shuffling brain chompers, bounty hunters like protagonist Ryn Baskin roam the vacant countryside dressed like punk rock cowboys putting down the undead for a paycheck. Baskin goes chumming through vacant towns with a bucket of offal, waiting for the zombies to pounce on the bait.
A former colleague betrays Baskin to a rival bounty hunter, Blythe, and his crew of miscreants, who steal his bounty and leave him for dead, setting off the film’s tale of revenge. It’s just a shame that none of leads are the least bit engaging. Clint Glenn, our erstwhile hero, generally growls around a cigar, doing his worst Clint Eastwood impersonation while Parrish Randall, as Blythe, pretends he’s Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. All it does is remind you that you could be watching much better movies.

Zombology: While The Quick and the Undead offers up fairly familiar fare – a viral outbreak, reanimated corpses, lots of cannibalism – it cleverly fills in some overlooked details even if it doesn't employ them for any great narrative purpose. For example, the film sidesteps the acrimonious fast versus slow zombies debate that has rent the zombie community for decades by offering grades of zombies. The most recently reanimated still have some zip to their step, lunging and attacking in brief bursts of speed. The older, more putrid corpses tend to shuffle a little more slowly. Less cleverly, the film also features the protagonist sucking the infection out of his arm after he gets bit, spitting out the virus as though it were snake venom. I’m no biochemist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how viruses work.

A post-apocalyptic zombie Western could have been an entertaining romp, but The Quick and the Undead is fatally hobbled by awful writing, amateurish acting and general inconsistency. Baskin lays out his rules of zombie survival, such as always staying outside so you have an avenue of escape, but breaks just about every rule without explanation or consequence. This disappointing mish-mash of good ideas being poorly executed earns a 67 on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of rotten films.

ZomBlog Review: "The Return of the Living Dead"

2010-10-11T11:01:00.004-04:00

“The Return of the Living Dead”
1985
U.S.
Stars: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa
Story: Rudolph J. Ricci, John Russo and Russ Streiner
Screenplay: Dan O’Bannon
Dir: Dan O’Bannon
91 minutes

“Brrrrraaaaains!”
Sorry, such an easy go-to for this entry. And if you are familiar with that phrase, it may have been your first introduction to zombies.
You see, in 1985, a highly-publicized horror film hit the screens. The TV spot and trailer featured an incredibly detailed, tar-covered skeleton with huge eyes barking “More, brains!” at the audience.
Obviously, that movie was “The Return of the Living Dead,” one of the best examples of how a horror film can achieve greater heights by capitalizing on a decent cast, simplistic, traditional effects, and a well-written and executed script. “ROTLD” is one of my personal all-time favorites. The film, despite it’s age, has held up incredibly well, and, while many die-hard horror film fans have issues with comedy mixed with their gore, this film is the gold-standard in how to do it right, as comedy and horror may seem like the odd couple, but, in capable hands, can mix like peanut butter and chocolate.
“ROTLD” starts off suggesting the audience should take it seriously, claiming the film was based on true events. Teenager Freddy (Thom Matthews, who would later battle the first appearance of “zombie” Jason Voorhees in “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives” as Tommy Jarvis) is getting a tour of a medical supply building (Uneeda Medical Supplies), where he has just landed his first job. Frank (Karen) jokes with Freddy as they tour the facility on July 3, 1984; the boss, Bert (Gulager), has left to start his holiday weekend early. Frank decides to try and spook Freddy with a fantastic tale: That movie, “Night of the Living Dead” was based on a true incident.
As Frank explains, the military in the early 1960s used a chemical (trioxin) to spray on marijuana crops, and, while experimenting with it, they learned it had moderate reanimating effects on corpses, causing them to “jump around, as though they were alive,” Frank explains. According to Frank’s story, George Romero “stole” the idea and the military threatened to sue him if he told the true story, causing a young Romero to change his story around. Frank also tells Freddy that a couple of the containers holding the once reanimated corpses were shipped to Uneeda as a result of a “typical Army fuck-up.”
Frank takes Freddy into the basement, shows him the metal containers, and smacks the container holding one of the corpses, spewing a spray of the trioxin into Frank’s and Freddy’s faces, cueing the opening credits and a montage of what the trioxin can do.
Yes, all of what happened above happens in the film’s first seven minutes.
Cut to a serene scene several states away where a haggard military general comes home to his wife, checks into a computer console in his bedroom and then explains heatedly to his wife that they may never find the canisters they — the military — are actively searching.
The audience is introduced to Freddy’s friends, a group of jobless rag-tags that appear to be a mix of ’80s punk rocker, hipster and square (the square being Freddy’s seemingly token horror film virgin girlfriend, Tina). The group decides to party in the nearby cemetery, the appropriately named “Resurrection Cemetery,” to await the end of Freddy’s first shift at Uneeda. So, Tina, Trash, Suicide and the rest drink, play loud punkish music, strip and dance on graves (well, only Trash, played by scream queen Linnea Quigley) to pass the time.
Meanwhile, Frank and Freddy have called Bert back to work to survey the situation. Bert returns to find a container busted open, a cadaver screaming in the freezer, and Frank and Freddy getting increasingly more ill from the fumes they breathed. Thankfully, his mortician friend, Ernie (Get it? Bert and Ernie?) is next door working late in the morgue. And Ernie has access to a crematorium. So, chopping up the screaming cadaver (and a few other reanimated medical props) and burning them seem to be a way for Bert to save his business and contain the situation.
But, as the audience learned in the opening credit montage, those trioxin fumes have a way of escaping — and a convenient rainstorm brings those trioxin chemicals right back down to earth, and into the nearby cemetery, unleashing an assload of zombies from the grave.
Now, let’s discuss the zombies: They are fast, they talk, they are smart, and they only want brains. Well, there is a reason they only want brains. And I am not going to spoil this gem any further. Just go to Netflix and get it right now.
Just a couple notes before I wrap this one up: As I mentioned, the zombies run, and, yes, they move like track runners. They even trick their prey to bring their brains to them. So, my friends, I think the running-zombie debate should have begun 25 years ago, not in the last decade. Also, this film was written with the help of John Russo, a longtime Romero collaborator, and Dan O’Bannon, who is better known for his script for the stellar “Alien.” O’Bannon also shares directing duties with “ROTLD.”
If you are in the mood to be entertained, look no further than this excellent, funny and all out fun flick.

Romero Rules Followed: I give this one a pass for referencing Romero while making the zombies badass and fast; 4/5
Gore factor: Squirting arteries and munching brains are aplenty here.
Zombies or Wannabees? No hesitation: Zombies
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Top-10 of all time classic (I would even make a great argument for top five).
Additional comments: This movie still works as a blast of zombie-fueled entertainment. Plenty of gore, witty dialogue, great performances (James Karen and Don Calfa are particular stand-outs), and respect for source material make this a must have, not only to view, but to add to your collection and recommend to friends.
If you don’t enjoy this one, there is something wrong with your brains.

— ROB

Can You Dig It?

2010-10-07T18:33:00.003-04:00

Exhumed
Dir. Brian Clement
2003
If the hoary formulation, alternately attributed to both T.S. Elliot and Pablo Picasso, holds that good artists borrow and great artists steal, then writer and director Brian Clement has a fucking Oscar in his future because the best (for lesser values of “best”) moments from his three vignette zombie outing Exhumed were outright five fingered from much better films. This may, in fact, be the world’s worst attempt at Sweding better horror and adventure films.
The eventually interlinking stories, flung through time and space, revolve around the search for the “object,” an off screen MacGuffin that allegedly has the power the bring the dead to life (it’s here you should be flashing back to that glowing ball thing that linked the stories in the first Heavy Metal). So we see a samurai and monk wander the “Forest of Death” in the first segment, one looking for the object to raise an undead army to conquer feudal Japan for his lord and the other to keep the object from being wielded as a weapon in a segment that plays out like a LARPed version of Versus. Just typing that forces me to consider seppuku. It’s also heavily reliant on something that will become painfully obvious as the film drags monotonously on: Clement uses shadow and fog incessantly to cover up for the film’s pitiful zombie effects. But that's OK because the zombies run away from this pitiful film about halfway through, as well.
By the second segment, “Shadow of Tomorrow,” the shadows grow even longer and the dialogue becomes a faded Xerox of hardboiled Chandleresque patter in the wannabe film noir tale of a detective who stumbles on a case of grave robbing while looking for a client’s missing ex-wife. Eventually mad scientists and b-movie saucer people become involved and the ending scene, where said mad scientist opens up a box containing the MacGuffin, bears a passing resemblance to the ark opening from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But it was the final segment, “Last Rumble,” where my soul truly began to vomit out all that was good in the world and thoughts of genocide became a light-hearted distraction. It’s a … *heavy sigh* … tale of mod vampires on scooters versus greaser werewolves on Harleys against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic warzone where a human general hunts for the object to create an unstoppable army. If you ever asked yourself what Quadrophenia would have been like had it been scripted by Stephanie Meyer, first, you should be cock punched, and second, your question has been answered. Let’s put it this way: the inevitable vampire/werewolf alliance is sealed by a lesbian sex scene.

Zombology: The film’s zombies, prevalent in the first tale, eventually drift to the background, powerless against the accumulated, black hole suck of the mass of excrement being flung at the screen. It’s not even worth discussing.

For achieving the rare trifecta of just awful writing, amateur directing and overacting Al Pacino would call excessive, Exhumed is 97 percent as shitty as Hell of the Living Dead. If it had only devolved into questionable racial stereotypes and grossly abused stock footage, I may have had a new measuring stick for horrible films.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Romero Zombies (But Never Cared To Ask)

2010-10-04T10:34:00.004-04:00

Part 2 of an ongoing list of Romero rules

The gold-standard of the zombie film undoubtedly begins and ends with George A. Romero. I will argue (and win) with anyone who claims to believe the contrary. Romero set the stage with “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968. And, while there will always be the unending debate over “fast” or “slow” zombies, some rules have been carved into stone tablets, smashed against a mountain, and encased in a golden vessel, all thanks to George. Here are a few, and this time, I am expanding to include a nod to Romero’s sparsely-made sequels to NOTLD, the 1979 classic, “Dawn of the Dead” and the somewhat maligned, but loved by me, 1985’s “Day of the Dead”:

4) Destroy the brain, kill the zombie
This rule is one of the universal ones. It is simple: Aim for the head. Destroy the brain. The zombie flops dead instantly. In NOTLD, the principle is put forth in two ways. Ben uses a tire-iron to dismantle a particularly aware zombie who made his way into the farmhouse. The tire-iron is driven right through the skull. Later, Ben uses multiple bullets to disable the undead, despite hearing the television broadcasts informing the general public to destroy the brain. Hey, even heroes have their faults

5) Zombies have the ability to remember important things from their former life
When our four protagonists arrive at the best place for a stance against the undead — a shopping mall — in “Dawn of the Dead,” they find themselves with a great deal of company — zombies. Steve “Flyboy” muses that “this must have been an important place in their lives.” While Romero was making his not-so-subtle commentary on American consumerism, he also instated another rule: Zombies can hold onto deep-seeded memories, something else he later expanded on in “Day of the Dead” with Bub, the zombie pet. While the stumbling, bumbling undead may seem to only seek flesh, they also seek connection to… something…maybe a shopping mall…maybe to their atrocious prick of a parent (hence Harry’s demise in NOTLD).

6) One-on-one, you might have a chance; against a horde, you are screwed
Romero’s zombies, while slow, seem to add strength in numbers. While human protagonists are making epic mistakes, the zombies are gaining traction on the prize. In NOTLD, Ben makes a heroic stand at the farmhouse while sending young Tom and Judy to fuel the truck he barreled into the movie with. They screw it up and give the audience the very first feasting scene in any zombie film. While it seems cordial, tame and dated these days, it was beyond shocking back in 1968. In “Dawn,” Romero once again gives the audience and his protagonists a false sense of security: all the doors are locked, all the windows barred. What they don’t plan on is a group of bikers breaking through the initial barricade and all the zombies find a weak point to the protagonists hidden stronghold — and inevitably find a way to push through. While the zombies in “Dawn” had a bit of help, the zombies in NOTLD were focused and headed for the one opening they saw, like a football running back through a hole in the defense.
Romero zombies do not get tired. They will stick around until they see a hole in the defense. And they all seem to push through at once…hmmmm...

More rules to come. Chew on these for awhile...
-ROB

This Movie is All Wet

2010-09-30T19:16:00.003-04:00

Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. the Undead
Dir. Koji Kowano
2007
It tells you a lot when the longest sustained sequence in your 78 minute film is a 10 minute teen lesbian make out session with heavy handed hints of incest. Kinda makes the Luke and Leia kiss seem tame, doesn’t it? Hell, this makes Luke and Laura look like the fucking Seavers.
While I have no objection to an honest sexploitation film, 2007’s direct to video Japanese farce Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. the Undead (aka Undead Pool) can’t decide whether it cares more about the zombies than it does perpetuating the pinku eiga fetish of the Japanese school girl. Ultimately, the indecisiveness means it fails on both accounts.

Zombology: Boy, sure are a lot of people with the sniffles wandering the unnamed girls’ school. Better go to the office to get your shot from the creepy, masked doctor. What’s that? You feel even worse now? Ultimately, the shots render the teens brainless skull munchers while teachers, who got their own shot, become psychopathic, weapon wielding death machines. Luckily the chlorine in the swim teams’ pool has rendered a handful of girls immune. And one of the girls just happens to be a runaway teenage super agent trying to live a normal life.

When it bothers to pay attention to the zombies, Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. the Undead does quite a few things right despite its obvious budget constraints. A juggling zombie teacher decapitates students with rulers while the sexy seductress teacher plies a chainsaw to make an entrail boa to complete her ensemble. Limbs go flying amid geysers of plasma. It’s all done with that uniquely Japanese sense of exuberance and humor.
Then it all comes screeching to a halt about 30 minutes in as we delve into the murky past of new student Aki, a runaway secret agent with a mysterious birthmark over her left boob. Hey, so does her make out partner, Sayaka, who regales us with a post-coital tale of how she has a long lost twin somewhere in the world. The zombies almost completely disappear for half an hour as we get endless flashbacks to Aki’s past, including her abduction by a crazy doctor (hey, waitaminnute…) who trained her to be a killer as well as a sex toy who responds to flute music (don’t ask). I’m sure it’s all meant to be an updated take on the grindhouse style of exploitation films, but the digressions suck any momentum out of the film. Overall, it starts strong but the latter two thirds feel half assed, tacked on and thoroughly pointless.
For stitching together the barely twitching halves of two totally unrelated movies, Koji Kowano’s Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. the Undead earns a 50 percent on the Hell of the Living Dead shit scale.

ZomBlog Review: "28 Days Later"

2010-09-27T11:04:00.005-04:00

“28 Days Later”
2003
U.K.
Stars: Cillian Murphy, Naomi Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Megan Burns, and Brendan Gleeson
Writer: Alex Garland
Dir: Danny Boyle
113 minutes

So, here we are, at the one film, THE one film that really pinnacled the running/slow zombie debate. The film that made fanboys around the globe either jump up and down or crap themselves with the argument of “zombies don’t run!” or “running zombies rule!”
But, the one thing that all horror/zombie fans can agree on: this film kicks major ass on nearly every level.
And, knowing I am opening up myself to major criticism, the sequel also delivers on many, many levels and, in a handful of ways, surpasses the former.
So, let’s sink our teeth into this surprise.
“28 Days Later” is a film that should need no introduction; it’s director, also, should not demand an introduction, but, on the off chance you have never seen “Trainspotting” or “Slumdog Millionaire,” just know for sure that Danny Boyle received the greatest attention via this flick prior to his Oscar© win with “Slumdog.”
It’s a simple set-up and one that has been done several times before: A man wakes up in a hospital bed, completely alone, and tried to figure out where everyone went. What he later discovers is that the United Kingdom has been decimated by a plague, a rage virus that nearly instantly turns each infected person into a violent, fast-as-hell maniac with the only desire to rip apart or spread the virus by vomiting blood onto or biting a subject.
What I like about this film is that the “rage virus” begins the spread in the movie typical way: The virus is contained in a facility; a few hippies break in and try to free the experimental animals, having no clue what they are doing. And I have never, nor will I ever be, a fan of radical animal activists. So, I apologize in advance for smiling like a donkey when an infected monkey rips into one of the dumb ass activists and immediately makes the “activists” realize they just screwed up big-time.
Political statement aside, “28 Days Later” is a firm study in how mankind simply wants to survive and how, no matter the odds, mankind will find a way to do so.
Case in point: Our “coma” patient Jim awakens to find himself alone and immediately begins to search for humans.
And when he finds companions, Selena and Mark are not exactly what he was hoping to find. Selena and Mark have been surviving and battling the “infected” for nearly a month, and have figured out how the infection and the infected operate. And, while they may seem cutthroat to the audience, the audience quickly realizes survival is the only motivation they have.
Another case in point: Jim wants to visit his parents, and the three travel to his parents’ home, only to find they have committed suicide. With nightfall approaching, the trio agree to stay in the home. And the rage victims find them, moving at lightning speed, with frenetic camera-work and quick edits adding to the tension (according to IMDB.com, Boyle used a specific camera and filming technique to make the rage victims not only appear faster than human, but also to heighten the chaos; unfortunately, a lot of other lesser-talented filmmakers have warped the technique and ruined the frantic effect Boyle perfected and used for dramatic effect. Sad.). Anyways, the brutal attack takes place in Jim’s home, wherein he is hardly effective. And, in a moment which will forever live in my mind, Selena sees Mark has been injured. Before he can even explain the injury, Selena marches over and hacks him into pieces. No choice, no humanity; Brutality at its core.
Selena and the thankful Jim continue to travel Britain’s barren landscape and discover a father and daughter whom have somehow survived the infestation and join up with them, hoping to meet the source of a radio message that promises not only a cure but protection: an Army, fully-loaded and ready for whatever danger they face.
Parts of the message may or may not be true. If you are one of the few to have not seen this gem, I do not want to ruin the outcome. But, I will say this: the instinctual nature of mankind to figure out how to survive despite all odds is the key factor in this film. It makes it flow. It drives it. That is the story, zombies or rage victims be damned.
And here, this is the hardest part for me…

Romero Rules Followed: The “rage victims” fall to an unruly virus, die, and are reborn…They have the instinctive need to infect their prey; while they are not looking for food, they are searching for recruits, an instinctive need for any zombie.
Gore factor: Over the top, including a rather gore-less eye-gouging that will forever haunt my brain.
Zombies or Wannabees?: F*ck it. Boyle argued convincingly that each generation has it’s own version of a zombie, and this hyper, over-the-top running crazed-out version was the modern version. Reading all of his arguments, I have to give in: They are zombies.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Absolute modern classic
Additional comments: I hope, really, really hope I take a lot of heat for this one. I have railed for a long time that if it ran, it wasn’t dead. A revisit to some of my favorites, including “The Return of the Living Dead,” helped change my tune. This film is a great introduction to the mythos, but I encourage those who loved this one to go back and review the classics. *Hint, some are here on this very blog…And if they are not, they will be. Andrew and I work moderately hard to put up new recommendations each week. You are more than welcome to ask us why, where, and when our true favorites will appear.
We have real plans for all of them.
“Do you think they saw us this time?”
— ROB

A Grave Mistake

2010-09-23T19:13:00.004-04:00

Graveyard of Horror
Dir. Michael Skaife
1971
To call Gaveyard of Horror (aka The Butcher of Binbrook) a traditional zombie flick would be a stretch beyond Gumby’s famed elasticity. While there’s certainly a genetically mutated, vaguely undeady … thing… at the center of Michael Skaife’s 1971 exercise in failure, Graveyard of Horror is actually structured more like Italy’s giallo films of the 1970s with the mystery of the monsterized thing at its center.
Which basically means any discussion of its zombie qualities is going to be inherently spoilerish (but they put the goddamned monster on the cover), so forewarned is forearmed and all that. Not that I’d ever recommend you inflict this maundering hash of a film on yourself, anyway.
Michael Sherrington is just your average harmonica playing douche who was so wrapped up in his business that he happened to be out of town when his wife and baby died during childbirth. Hell, the family had enough time to bury the poor lady (the kid never seems to get mentioned) and for the grave to smooth over before Mike comes gallivanting back into town to dispute the official version of his wife’s death. Not that the film ever really gives us a satisfactory reason for his doubt other than the necessity of the plot – or why he digs her *gasp* empty grave up while wearing Jim Morrison’s leather pants.
So the film zig-zags through time with several flashbacks as Michael goes about town grilling the assorted bizarre locals with grating, horrible harp flourishes drowning out every supposedly shocking revelation he learns. Oh yeah, his brother, Robert, the local lord, has also gone missing. Michael doesn’t seem all that worried – and neither does his family – since it doesn’t even come up until halfway through the film. Turns out Robert is some local science muckety-muck who’s been performing experiments on himself, which leads us to…

Zombology: The mysterious throbbing patch of dirt in the local cemetery that be-masked locals have been feeding with IV bottles. As I’m sure you’ve figured out just reading this, Robert had been performing experiments on himself as part of his research into the transmutation of human cells. Seems Robert thought it would be a bright idea to turn himself into a zombified-crocodile-Frankenstein-monster thing that has to be kept buried and fed via tube or he breaks out and goes on a flesh eating rampage because his new existence involves “transitory moments of savage behavior requiring human flesh.” And that’s what passes for an explanation in this painful exercise in shock-free tedium.

It says a lot about a film when the best thing you can say about it is it sets up a protagonist and then pulls a To Live and Die in L.A. and seemingly bumps him off halfway through, shifting perspective to the locals as they begin to slowly mill about asking questions about the supposed body count (all off screen). But even that sort of cinematic legerdemain cannot rescue this zombie farce. And for that it earns a 77 percent on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of shitty filmmaking.

ZomBlog Interview: Chad Dukes, D.C. radio personality, zombie fan

2010-09-20T09:44:00.005-04:00

This is a very, very special entry for me.
Like the subject of this interview, I spent many of my formative years listening to his inspirations: The Greaseman, Don and Mike, Howard Stern, and, more recently, Opie and Anthony.
And he is living his dream. He has (and now does again) hosted his own rather successful radio show, Big O and Dukes, and I currently spend my weekday afternoons listening to him and former Redskin LaVar Arrington on the LaVar Arrington Show with Chad Dukes.
Chad Dukes is more to me than just simple radio host. Anyone who knows me knows I have had a virtual man-crush on Chad for a variety of reasons. He is open, honest, and, on the couple occasions I have met him, a humble and appreciative guy, happy to have the job he does and loving of his fans.
One night, listening to one of his many radio shows (Red Ring of Death radio, which has triumphantly returned), I heard him talk about zombies in video games and popular culture. I called in and flubbed my answer, on-air, as to why zombies are suddenly popular in our current culture (I have that podcast, and, if enough people want to hear me fuck up a chance to explain why zombies are popular, I will post it).
Anyhow, Chad recently readily agreed to do an interview for this skimpy blog. I did not have to beg, plead, stalk, or harass him. In fact, when I first talked to him, he said, “Absolutely, that is one of my favorite subjects.”
And, hell, it should be. He actually fought the undead hand-to-hand himself: The Main Event Mafia Vs. The Undead World Order

Anyways, enough ass-kissing. I present to you an interview I conducted with Chad a few months back. Feel free to leave your responses below and, always, please check out Chad on 106.7 The Fan, http://www.thefukerton.com/, and, in the reincarnation of the funniest/most entertaining show on the interwebs, bigoanddukes.com. I promise you, there is no way in hell you will be disappointed.

I have written about my own ideas as to why zombies are so appealing to the mass audience, men and women both, but I know I haven’t even scratched the surface. Why do you think, after more than 40 years since the modern zombie concept was conceived with “Night of the Living Dead,” are the undead flesheaters more popular than ever?

“I think it's because most people don't think they could kill a vampire or a werewolf or an alien. Most anyone could cave a zombie’s head in. Also, zombies are us. They are people. They can be your friends & family members. There is something very human about that.”

Where and how did you first realize you had become a fan of zombies?

“I honestly don't remember the first one. The one that left the most impact on me was '28 Weeks Later.' I hate people that quibble over fast/slow zombies. If it it’s trying to eat me and it can’t talk, it’s a zombie. “Weeks” was so much more intense than 'Days' and I LOVED '28 Days.' [I] think it’s an underrated sequel.”

What is the first zombie film you sat down and watched are were enthralled with?

“I have always enjoyed zombies and discussing how to survive them. My interest in them was rekindled when the Nazi zombie mode of 'Call of Duty' emerged. It was around the same time I saw 'Dead Snow.' The concept of an undead army of Nazis is very appealing to me.”

What do you attribute to the popularity of the “Nazi Zombie” phenomenon? Why Nazi zombies?

“Ha. Funny. I already addressed this without seeing this question. Nazis are comically, over-the-top evil. It is difficult to imagine they actually existed. They were this vast, swarming menace that nearly ruined the world. Sounds similar to a zombie outbreak. You have the greatest villain in reality coupled with the greatest in fiction. [It’s a] match made in heaven.”

As an avid gamer, you have played many a first-person shooter and several zombie-themed games, ranging from Resident Evil to Plants Vs. Zombies. What do you prefer and why?

“I love ‘Plants Vs. Zombies.’ Zombies really seem to lend themselves to a tower defense. I just wish people would stop fucking with the creatures themselves. Zombies are already pretty flawless as an antagonist. We don't need giant zombie dogs and shit like in “Resident Evil.” I would love to see the people at Treyarch tackle a Nazi Zombie full scale FPS [First-Person Shooter]. They seem to really get the concept.”

You have interviewed a handful of authors that have jumped into the zombie genre, authors whom have found a certain level of success. Recently, it has been announced that “World War Z” will be made into a film, possibly starring Brad Pitt, along with the announcement that the comics “The Walking Dead” are currently being shot to become a show on cable. With this great news for zombie fans, what bothers you about Hollywood? Also, having talked to the authors, why do you think the zombie-themed books have become so elevated in a genre that was once a small niche?

“Most of the books are shit. The reason for this is zombie fans will buy most anything that is characterized as a zombie novel. I started the Zombie Book Club and have learned the hard way. I really enjoy J.L. Bourne's books because he looks at the genre as a soldier, not as a fanboy. It makes for a very believable read.”

Have you gone back to check out movies before your time that feature zombies? If so, what would you recommend and what would you tell zombie-fans to stay the hell away from?

“I have not done my due diligence here. Dated gore really turns me off. I have a hard time suspending my disbelief when the blood looks unrealistic. It's why I have so much respect for the movie 'The Thing.' It’s 30 years old and manages to look better than most of the shitty CGI saturated crap that pollutes our theaters.”

This is the first interview for the blog, and, I am sure, if I Facebooked the hell out of Chad, he would agree to further explore the phenomena further. Please do check out his endeavors, linked above. And, if you are a Redskins fan in the D.C. area, as I am, enjoy your drive home with the radio set to 106.7.

I am an Astro Creep

2010-09-16T15:59:00.002-04:00

The Astro-Zombies
Ted V. Mikels
1968
Is there anything a less-swizzled-than-usual John Carradine’s Dr. DeMarco can’t do with the field of “astro-science?” Who is surprised to learn a field that combines organs grown in fish tanks, synthetic hearts and brainwave communication somehow leads to murderous zombies?
Low-budget, low-brow, low-entertainment brain drill The Astro-Zombies is short on both zombies and astro. However, it is larded with endless shots of people fiddling with beeping and booping electronic equipment, grim-faced Cold War discussions of loyalty, a pointless digression to a burlesque show and an absolutely incomprehensible plot full of Mexican gangsters, Soviet spies and a federal investigator who I’m convinced is a long lost Kennedy brother. All of whom are after DeMarco and his zombie-making ability for reasons never really explained. And what about those zombies?

Zombology: Oh, they’re laughably bad. Just a guy in coveralls, work gloves and a crappy rubber mask probably purchased from your 1960s analogue of Spencer’s Gifts. They’re the byproduct of DeMarco’s (and his obligatory mute hunchback sidekick’s) experiments in artificial organ growth as he spouts the kind of “sciency” sounding bullshit you’d expect from a ’50s saucer film. The astro-zombies are responsible for a six month string of “mutilation murders” that the feds are only now beginning to investigate. While DeMarco insists he’s trying to make “morally pure” zombies, the only brain available at the time was from a murderous psychopath, which leads to predictably homicidal results.

I have a hypothesis this film may have been the threshold moment of the feminist movement because it’s gleefully misogynistic. Our Kennedy brother, when he’s not playing drinking games on the taxpayer dime, is free with his hands around the ladies in the lab. Apparently, the astro-zombies, also, can only attack a woman when she’s in the proper stage of dishabille. During one attack, the zombie takes the time to pointlessly rip open the woman’s top before harvesting her organs. Another woman, used as bait in an unsuccessful trap, is only attacked after she goes home and strips down to her slip. Otherwise incomprehensible, unenjoyable and woefully lacking in zombie action, The Astro-Zombies is a movie just begging for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. And for that reason The Astro-Zombies sucks 83 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

Zombie or Wannabe: Stephen King's "Pet Sematary"

2010-09-13T09:25:00.005-04:00

“Pet Sematary”
1989
U.S.
Stars: Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Fred Gwynne
Writer: Stephen King, based upon his novel
Dir: Mary Lambert
102 minutes

For a horror writer who has had no less than 20 stories or novels adapted to the screen, Stephen King has yet to really tackle the zombie phenomenon. And I really wish he would.
George A. Romero and Stephen have collaborated on celluloid on at least two solid entries into the horror canon — “Creepshow” and ’Salem’s Lot” — and, should the two titans ever collaborate on a full zombie project, I will be first in line.
Anyone familiar with King’s book must be scratching their heads and wondering why this film is having a mention here. Quite simply, it is the premise: Bury X dead thing here, it will return by morning.
The story is King’s answer to the eternal questions: If you had the ability to continue life, would you? And, should you?
Of course, in King’s world, nothing is without a price.
The story follows the happily and aptly named family, the Creeds, whom have moved to a New England town in order for Louis Creed to begin a life as a small-town doctor. His two perfect children, Ellie, his toddler, Gage, and his wife Rachel, are brought along in toe — as is the family cat, Church, named after the great British orator Winston Churchill.
It’s the prefect life for the family save for the unforgiving passage of big rig trucks on the two-lane road in front of their idyllic home — and the foreboding path elderly but kind neighbor Jud Crandall (Gwynne), their welcoming friend from across the street, calls a “good story.”
The family takes a hike with Jud and learn where the path leads — to the end of many a pet’s life, a “Sematary” where “the dead speak” via their headstones, a place where broken-hearted children have buried their family pets, hoping for their eternal rest.
After a fatal accident causes Church to land frozen to Jud’s ground, Louis, worried about the heartache his daughter is about to suffer, inquires Jud about another path he noticed leading away from the “Sematary.” Jud, feeling empathy and guilt having also suffered the death of a pet during his childhood, sees Louis’ dilemma: explain death to his very young daughter, or give Church, and Ellie, a second chance at companionship. You see, the path past the Pet Sematary leads to an ancient Indian burial ground with powers no one quite understands fully. But, one detail is fully understood: what is buried there dead returns and they may not be too pleased to be there — or even the same coming out as they went in.
He buries Church in the sour ground, and the cat returns. And Church is not too pleased about it.
“Sometimes dead is better,” Jud muses, passing sage knowledge to Louis later.
From that moment of Church’s return from the grave, and the appearance of the film’s only other sympathetic adult character (other than Jud), a ghost-guardian angel named Pascow, King’s story is a downward spiral into madness. Louis and the family suffer an incredible loss at the sake of the freeway — their precious son, Gage, is rundown by a tanker truck and killed. The loss brings Louis to his crossroads: Does he try to bring back his son and pretend it never happened? Or does he move on, dealing with a distraught wife, a doubly-battered daughter (whom has noticed Church is certainly not the same), and a violently disapproving father-in-law? He makes the obvious decision to return Gage to the living, despite Jud’s insistence that he not even think about it, let alone do it ( through some rather disturbing flashback images from Jud’s youth, wherein someone did indeed return from the sour ground — and he was returned with more problems than simply being mad about resurrection).
To say too much more would be a spoiler. Despite having been made during a time when King-based films had yet to reach the great standard they enjoyed in the mid ’90s with “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” this is one of the exceptions of adaptation. The film was not treated as a cash-in. It was made cheaply, but when it lacked in effects and stunts, it leaned heavily on King’s human story, where every, single King story shines. No one in the horror genre writing during the 80s or 90s, and, I argue, even now, can capture the true horror of being human as King does. Even in his lesser works, there is still something a reader can connect with. And, parent or not, the loss of a delicate, defenseless child has to hit home with anyone with a pulse.
So, approaching the bottom-line: Is this a zombie film or a wannabe?
Cons: Hordes of the undead are not present here. There is no plague, infection, radiation or any other factor other than “Indian burial ground” driving the dead out of their graves. And, once the dead return, both human and animal, they retain certain characteristics of their pre-deceased selves.
Pros: The film features the undead, resurrected, and, at one point, one of the undead enjoying the flesh of a warm-blooded human. In fact, one of the resurrected seems to like burying body parts under his father’s home. Do the undead get full and save leftovers? I see a marketing opportunity should the inevitable zombie apocalypse occur: Rob’s Rinds will put Andrew’s Afterthoughts out of business.

Romero Rules Followed: 2/5. They are dead. They walk. They occasionally eat flesh. But they talk and simply seem deemed on destroying the ones responsible for bringing them back. Loss of points granted for cringe-inducing use of a scalpel.
Gore factor: Moderate for the most part, save for a comeuppance of an unfortunate man.
Zombies or Wannabees? Overall, wannabees
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine
Additional comments: For a film based on one of King’s finest works, and having been made 21 years ago, it holds up remarkably well. Also, take in one of King’s stamps of approval for the film — he appears as a priest in a lead up to one of the film’s more memorable scenes.
And Zelda still scares the crap out of me. Damn it.

— ROB

It’s a Dead Dead Dead Dead Pit

2010-09-09T18:56:00.004-04:00

The Dead Pit
Dir. Brett Leonard
1989
I get the whole willful suspension of disbelief thing because The Dead Pit is a movie about a mad scientist making zombies out of the corpses of mental patients. I do. But there are so many points in this film that hinge on the staff of the State Institution for the Mentally Ill making colossally bad judgment calls it becomes laughable. Like the orderlies who shove a mental patient into a maximum security room without bothering to confiscate that iron bar he’s carrying. Or the fact that male and female patients are kept on the same floor in unlocked rooms and allowed to roam the halls unescorted at night. Or that the hospital director finds a human organ on his breakfast tray and waves it off like it’s an everyday occurrence.
In fact, the bad decisions begin immediately with a 20-years-ago prologue in which the hospital director finds his chief brain surgeon, Colin Ramzi (“I’ve done life; now I’m doing death!”), in an unauthorized basement lab performing questionable experiments on the bodies of patients. Rather than alert the authorities, the hospital director (played by Jeremy Slate, who grumbles like a cut rate Peter Graves) decides to simply shoot the surgeon and wall the lab up himself.
And everything’s hunky dory for a couple decades until a mysterious amnesia patient named Jane Doe, who has a penchant for wandering the halls late at night in bikini underwear and midriff tops, is checked in just as an earthquake unseals Ramzi’s secret lab.

Zombology: Though they take their sweet ass time showing up, the zombies of The Dead Pit, created by Ramzi who’s become a glowing eyed, clawed monstrosity, himself, during his 20 years of undeadishness, are pretty standard genre fare. Gray faced and glistening like slugs, the zombies come eventually come climbing out of the titular pit to overrun the hospital grounds with much cracking of skulls. Though bodies are not consumed, the undead do fetishistically crack open the noggins of their victims and tote around their brains for reasons nobody bothers to explain. The zombies are also unfailingly polite. Though they’re pounding at the hospital director’s door at one point, they genteelly step back to allow him to rattle off 10 minutes of dramatically appropriate exposition uninterrupted.

There are a lot of cool perspective shots salted through the film, but that can’t excuse some of the ridiculous plot contrivances and some really shoddy model work late in the film that simply haven’t aged well. Also, the plot twists are painfully obvious (you don’t think there could be some sort of relationship between Jane Doe and Dr. Ramzi, do you?)
And for that, The Dead Pit sucks 45 percent as bad as Hell of the Living Dead.

ZomBlog Review: "I Was a Teenage Zombie"

2010-09-07T15:05:00.004-04:00

“I Was a Teenage Zombie”
1987
U.S.
Stars: Michael Rubin, Ignacio F. Iquino (as Steve McCoy), George Seminara, Cassie Madden
Writer: James Aviles Martin, Steve McCoy, George Seminara
Dir: John Elias Michalakis
91 minutes

“Hewn head-halves and ripped faces make for a rollicking comedy. Not for the faint of heart.”
I remember reading those words printed in the “Video Unlimited” flyer we received from the “mom and pop” type retailer my family frequented in old Rockville, Md. Someone in that store wrote up tiny, encapsulated reviews, and, almost always, they were positive. Ah, my first experiences in a capitalistic society almost always come back to my video store experiences.
It happens, folks. Most of what you will read from your humble reviewer harkens back to those archaic days before Netflix, or even Cockblocker Video (or, as my counterpart, Andrew, calls them Lackluster Video).
So, having read that snippet as a young impressionable boy, I saw, “hewn head-halves” and “not for the faint of heart” and I pushed my chips all in. I had to see this UNRATED flick.
My poor mother did not know what unrated meant. And, as we sat in the family room after having rented this sucker, my father, surprisingly in toe, she regretted not knowing almost immediately. Not for the mature content (which, later, she may have), but for the lack of a polished production that beset us.
I had yet to be old enough to view “The Toxic Avenger” on my own. I had not seen a single low-budgeted film and had nothing with which to compare “Teenage Zombie.” So, my palette was clean.
For better or worse, I gobbled this sucker up, and will, upon consecutive, more age-appropriate viewings, continue to do so.
It may not have the Troma Film stamp of approval, but it should. “I Was a Teenage Zombie” is a love letter to like-named films of the 1950s (“I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein,” etc.). It even takes place mostly in a soda-jerk restaurant, one character is dressed as Steve McQueen on his worst day and the eyeglasses-wearing characters are not going to get the girl anytime soon (well, one almost does…prior to heavy-breathing zombie-rape).
Meet Dan Wake (Rubin), along with his best, and slightly-chubby pal, Gordy, and his pals Chuckie, Rosencrantz, and, (the rather chubby and overall comic relief) Lieberman.
The chums are looking forward to the “big dance” at their high school, and the only thing that is missing is … “marajahoobie.” And, all the time, Dan is trying to court the lovely and (almost) aptly named Cindy Faithful, the token blonde, buxom girl-next-door. And he has some success to some degree, and had just seemed to catch her interest until some zombie staggers onto the scene and ruins it all.
Gordy fatefully learns that Mussolini (“or as my friends call me ‘Moose’”), in debt to a big-time mob boss, is the only guy in a dry town to be carrying any weight. Gordy collects cash from his buddies and buys what turns out to be chemically-sprayed joints that are more worthless than Phillies Blunts sans weed. And when The Bird (a comically overacting, leather jacket-wearing, bouffant-sporting “bad ass” that reminds me more of a teen Christopher Walken rather than Steve McQueen) learns the boys have been ripped-off, he demands they find some way to get their money back. Gordy attempts to ask Moose for the money back, and gets his chubby arse kicked.
Oh, by the way, a nuclear power plant in nearby New Jersey has suffered a meltdown, and former plant worker, “Lloyd Kaufman,” is quoted in radio broadcasts as to the severity of the meltdown before he tragically falls into a vat of nuclear waste (wink, wink, nudge, nudge to Troma fans).
After Gordy shows up bloody and beaten, the teens, led by the tough-talking The Bird, plan to exact revenge and get their money back. They ambush Moose in a park and, in a series of scenes that “The Three Stooges” would have tipped their hats to, the kids corner Moose, and Dan Wake makes a home-run hit with a bat (complete with color commentary and uniform), knocking Moose unconscious, leaving them with a moral dilemma: the fucker might wake up. So, they dump him into the river…and, being Jersey, even without a nuclear meltdown, dumping a body into a river could never be a good idea.
They learn a few weeks later that Moose, having been reanimated as a result of the nuclear waste leaking into the river, is a walking, talking, strong-as-hell zombie who wants to destroy everything and everyone in his path. The teenagers set up a nearly identical ambush on Moose — this time failing, as Moose dodges Dan’s stellar swing, and winds up breaking Dan’s neck.
Dan Wake will later appear at his own wake…Bazinga.
Rosencrantz and Gordy realize Moose is not what he once was, connect the dots, and decide if a reanimated Moose is a bad ass, a reanimated Dan Wake, with all of his athletic abilities, must make for a perfect hero to take out Moose.
Naturally, they decide to raid Dan’s funeral, steal his body, and throw it into the river, reanimating a very confused Dan. Once he is told who he is, what he is, and what he is needed to do, Dan is forced to live in the soda-jerk stand’s basement and hide from everything he loved — or was at least trying to get a piece of (not in the zombie sense…ZING!), including Ms. Faithful.
Cue the sad violin music and the film’s attempt (although obviously an insincere attempt) at a tragic love story, which, thankfully, only gives slight motivation for Dan to do what he was reanimated to do and not to pursue zombie secks…
Which, um, does happen in this film. Moose does take a horny teenage girl, throw her on the hood of a car and proceed to zombie f*** her. And, friends, even though it was done for laughs, the “wishbone” climax is still disturbing to this day.
Overall, “I Was a Teenage Zombie” is more of an homage to the 1950s “teen” subgenre rather than an ode to zombie film lore. So….

Romero Rules Followed: No biting, no flesh eating (other than a single tongue gorging) and all the “zombies” talk. 2.0 on the scale, admitting they were at least dead once and killing the brain kills them.
Gore factor: Plenty and well done considering the budget, although some gore scenes were obviously done for gags rather than gross-out.
Zombies or Wannabees? Teeter-totter, but wannabe.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Fine
Additional comments: This is simply a fun, goofy, have a few beers or tokes type of film. All involved obviously had a great time doing it, and, give it to them, they created a film in the 1980s that could be confused easily with a 1950s schlock-fest.

— ROB

Zombie or Wannabe: Frankenstein’s Monster

2010-09-02T18:45:00.004-04:00

Were I to ask you about Frankenstein’s monster, most of you would probably begin rambling about green-skinned, bolt-necked monstrosities in orthopedic shoes played by English character actors in black and white films. As embodied by Boris Karloff – a lumbering, violent collection of spare body parts prone to bouts of grunting rage – Frankenstein’s monster would certainly seem to carry a strand of DNA that would later culminate in the modern zombie asthetic. The story in some form has been a screen staple for 80 years that is the image cemented indelibly in popular consciousness, but as originally conceived, Frankenstein is not the tale of white-coated mad scientists with hunchbacked servants and a conveniently lightning-adjacent castles. It’s far more gothic. And far more emo.
I’m a primary sources kinda motherfucker, so before judging whether the monster deserves a wing in the Zombie Hall of Fame I pored through Mary Shelley’s epistolary novel for the first time in more than a decade. Written in 1818 by a 19 year old Mary Shelley as the result of a gothic horror story-telling contest one drunken, stormy night with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the mad, bad and dangerous to know Lord Byron, it’s the tale of Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss chemistry prodigy, who at 22 – an age when most modern students are only performing experiments with grain alcohol and the clap – is playing god and usurping the very secrets of life and death, stitching dissected corpse parts back together for his science fair project. No Igor, no lightning, Vic just gets all Lego with body parts in a spare room of the apartment he rents with murderously disastrous results.

The case for: From the moment the monster’s yellowed eyes silently pop open – sorry, no shouts of “It’s alive!” or lightning involved – Frankenstein is essentially a proto-zombie meditation on the ethics of transcending then-current human barriers of knowledge about the universe. Advance it 200 years, drop it in a military compound where an experiment is bound to end poorly, and we’re in fairly familiar territory here. In fact, the monster’s birth scene would make for a killer first zombie encounter in your next student film:

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!—Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but the luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.

One of the most interesting insights I gleaned is how Frankenstein manages to subvert a cliché that would not take root for another century and a half. Where pretty much every zombie story ever told has come down to a band of survivors fighting off overwhelming waves of organ hungry grave escapees, in Shelley’s tale it’s the monster that’s outnumbered and hunted by a superior force of vengeful humans bent on its destruction.

The case against: Though admittedly zombies, particularly as we conceive of them, were completely unknown to Shelley, she turns to other undead folkloric traditions to encapsulate the terror Victor feels in response to his creation. Such as in a scene after the monster murders his creator’s youngest brother:

I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me.

Later, the monster is described as “in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy.
Also, it can’t be ignored that most canonical zombies are not as much of a whiney emo bitch as Frankenstein’s monster, who spends the bulk of the book loudly lamenting – yes, the monster can speak and even read – how, like, nobody totally gets him and he just doesn’t have any friends. That’s right, Frankenstein and his wrathful creation spend the better part of 200 pages trying to prove they’re more miserable and unloved and friendless than each other. If heartagram tattoos and anime haircuts had been known at the start of the 19th Century, you know damn well they’d be sporting them.
Compounding the problem, the monster teaches himself to read after unearthing a conveniently symbolic trove of books that consists of Paradise Lost (leading to a serious fallen angel-identification crisis), Plutarch’s Lives and Goerthe’s suicide encomium The Sorrows of Young Werther, sending him into paroxysms of self-loathing at great length.
In fact, the crux of conflict between the monster and his creator is the demand that Frankenstein build a lady monster to keep him company. Frankenstein’s reanimated abomination is far more interested in procreating his own species than bringing down the wrath of overflowing hell upon an actively hostile humanity.

The verdict: Not a zombie by reason of antiquity. No knock on Shelley’s sci-fi/horror/emo classic, but Frankenstein just exists in a different philosophical and cultural continuum. However, you do have to give it a nod of a squared off head for inspiring a series of films that would trickle down through the centuries, ultimately influencing the zombies we love today.

ZomBlog Review: "Night of the Creeps"

2010-08-30T10:53:00.005-04:00

“Night of the Creeps”
1986
USA
Stars: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow, and Tom Atkins
Writer: Fred Dekker
Dir: Fred Dekker
90 minutes

“Thrill me.”
Let’s take a trip back in time, shall we? The year was 1986. It was an OK year for horror films, if the “Friday the 13th” franchise hitting its ridiculous stage and the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise really hitting its “jokey Freddy” stage tickled your fancy.
But, I peg 1986 as a death-knell for the end of decent zombie flicks (until the recent resurgence).
But not for lack of trying, that is for certain.
The early ’80s saw a few attempts, and some great successes, at continuing the genre (“The Return of the Living Dead” being the superb example), but Romero’s vastly underrated and critically-panned box office attempt with “Day of the Dead” in ’85 may have sent the zombie nation into hibernation. If the master had failed, was it all over?
Hell no; we had yet to be thrilled.
Despite his involvement with the horrid “Halloween 3,” Tom Atkins deserves your admiration. He has been involved with a plethora of horror fare (and other Hollywood landmarks such as “Lethal Weapon”) that will go down as classic. And he is, genuinely, thankful to have even a smidgeon of a fan base. After you read this review, or decide to view this film, say thank you to Tom. He is the real star and he earned it.
“Night of the Creeps” made me a “fanAtkins.”
Go ahead. Giggle. Point and stare. When your tears of laughter have subsided, rent — better yet, buy — “Night of the Creeps.”
This is not your standard zombie fare.
It is so much better.
The story begins in 1959 on the campus of Corman University (horror fans, stay tuned. This is the first of many references to genre greats). The “big dance” is coming up and the “hottest girl on campus” has found a new beau to take her to “lover’s lane” for some heavy petting. Unlucky for them, an axe-wielding maniac has just escaped from the insane asylum some 4 miles away. Young beat cop Ray CAMERON (later to become Det. Ray Cameron and embodied in Atkins) discovers the young lovers (the “hottest girl” was his at one time) parked at lover’s lane and warns them to go home.
Well, it wouldn’t be a horror film without the new dumb boyfriend of hot girl wanting to investigate the strange meteor that crashed nearby would it? (Did I forget to mention the stout aliens that open the film? Or that one rogue alien sent a strange silver cylinder to Earth? Oops).
Well, new hunky boyfriend investigates the meteor and swallows more than he can chew: you see, the beings from above are long and slug/leech-like in size and have incredible speed. They jump into each host via the biggest orifice: the mouth. From there, we learn they move in and take their baggage to the front desk — the brain.
And, right before the image of alien slugs forcing their ways into the most unpleasant of money shots leaves our thoughts, little miss “hottest girl on campus” meets with an axe to the head, thanks to the escaped killer aforementioned on the radio.
That is one hell of a start for a movie. What was described above happened in less than 10 minutes of the film’s opening. Space creatures? Axe murderers? College campus? Teen lust? Where the hell are the zombies?
Oh, my friends, they show up in good time.
Flash forward to 1986. Pledge row. Chris Romero (Lively) and J.C. “James Carpenter” Hooper are looking to become popular at Corman University by joining a fraternity. Cue the obvious outcast-nerd theme so popular with the ’80s “insert name here” films. The difference here is that Fred Dekker knows he has grasped one of the greatest and overbearing of ’80s clichés and exploits the hell out of it, with care and a wink …. And gigantic nards (anyone my age knows, or should know Dekker, from his more successful venture “The Monster Squad”).
Chris sees his personal vision of beauty across the way, Cindy Cronenberg (Whitlow), and focuses all of his energy on winning her heart. But, to introduce another recycled ’80s cliché, she is dating the “most awesome pretty boy jock on campus,” the “Bradster” as demonstrated by his vanity license plate. Bradster also happens to be the president of the coolest frat on campus. Naturally, Chris sees joining the frat as his only way to enter Cindy’s creaky mausoleum (sorry, had to). Bradster prompts Chris and his crippled sarcastic sidekick J.C. to prop up a corpse on a sorority’s lawn to scare the jeebus out of them. Chris and J.C. find a cryogenically frozen corpse in a (convenient) campus laboratory, awaken the corpse of the aforementioned “new dumb boyfriend” from the 1950s, and all hell, and the leech-like creeps, begins to break loose. Heads burst. Zombie boyfriends spew creeps with little notice. And heads roll.
What follows is an epic alien/zombie/splatter/slapstick-fest unlike anything I have seen since “Versus” mixed kung-fu theater with zombies and comedy. This beat “Shaun of the Dead” to the “ZomCom” by a full 12 years. And, in the same way that “Shaun” paid homage to the zombie genre, “Creeps” does it to nearly every single subgenre of horror. And Atkins is the incredibly flawed and loved policeman. Any man who answers a phone with “Thrill me!” has my vote for bad ass. Atkins exudes bad ass. If you do not feel his epicness, stop following this blog now, or ask Andrew why I am a moron.
I reviewed Peter Jackson’s “Braindead” (Dead-Alive) early on for this blog. And while I love that zombie film, I know “Creeps” influenced it a great deal, up to, and including, the lawnmower vs. zombie scene. And the flamethrower. And the entire assault on the sorority house, and Mr. Atkins taking on the Creeps head-to-head (giggle) in the sorority basement (please, check this film out and see if you laughed like I did when a vapid sorority girl asked for basement storage space).
They just do not make films like this anymore. While I can praise “Shaun of the Dead” with no regrets, I know this film made “Shaun” possible and plausible.
If you watch this film and hate it, please, tell me I am wrong.
And, should you decide to take that avenue, then you better fucking “Thrill me.”

Romero Rules Followed: Nearly all, except flesh-munching.
Gore factor: It goes to 11, even being an ’80s flick.
Zombies or Wannabees? I edge toward zombies. Alien brain-eating beings turning assholes into greater assholes appeal to me.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic
Additional comments: If you do not embrace this film, I will hate you. Pure and simple. And your mom works tricks on the docks. She screams like banshees.

— ROB

Pall Dancers

2010-08-26T13:34:00.004-04:00

Zombie Strippers
2008
Dir. Jay Lee
I don’t have my copy of the Zombie Field Guide at hand at the moment, but I can’t recall a chapter detailing how zombism leads to extraordinary stripping ability in women. But alas and alack, that’s the plot of Zombie Strippers, an execrable waste of 90 minutes that could have worked if the writers didn’t think camp was an excuse for truly horrible writing.
Hell, I can pretty well imagine how the pitch for this barely polished turd went.
Jay Lee: What do fanboys love? Zombies! And Robert Englund. And b(.)(.)bs. And Jenna Jameson. And Jenna Jameson’s b(.)(.)bs.
Cigar chomping fatcat producer: Have a few mil to make a shitty movie.
*snorts line of blow off George Lucas’ ass before releasing Star Wars in theaters again with additional 15 frames of new footage filmed with James Cameron’s Avatar cameras*
The sad part is all of this could have worked. Instead we get this unwatchable coprolite that actually features worse acting than the films that powered Ms. Jameson’s original rise to prominence.
Zombie Strippers is the tale of a zombie outbreak at a sleazy strip club run by a pervy, germaphobic Freddy Kreuger that conveniently shares a common alleyway with a s00per s33kr1t military base where they’re doing research on a “chemovirus” to provide zombie soldiers for George Bush’s endless series of wars. Things, predictably, get out of hand.
Zombology: While the chemovirus turns men into drooling, flesh eating monsters, it turns women into drooling, fleshing eating monsters who can work a stripper pole the way Eddie van Halen works a fretboard. A woman in a white lab coat said it, so it must be true. The undead dancers become all the rage in town until they start munching down on the clientele post-lap dance. (Dammit people, you’ve been warned about the Champagne Room.) It does raise an interesting philosophical point: just how putrid does a zombie woman have to be before some guy will find her un-hittable?

What Robert Englund is doing in this film, I can’t fathom. His turn as a strip club owner makes you long for his more subtle and nuanced performance from the later Nightmare on Elm Street films (aka "funny" Freddy). But what’s most maddening about Zombie Strippers is the wildly inconsistent effects throughout. The zombie makeup and a few the set pieces – including a pair of head ripping scenes – are well done, but then it shovels on truly awful CGI. Like early Sega Genesis seen from the rear view mirror of a PS3 bad. That just compounds all of the other problems: casting, script, direction (or the suspicious absense of all three).
As much as I really wanted to score this piece of shit a 1(.)(.)on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of craptacularity just for giggles, I have to admit that some of the effects shots are smile-inducing and the zombie makeup is fairly decent for the budget. Grading the suck on a curve, Zombie Strippers bumps and grinds its way to an 85 instead.

ZomBlog Review: "The Beyond"

2010-08-23T19:52:00.009-04:00

“The Beyond”

1981

Italian

Stars: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Sarah Keller

Writer: Story by Dardano Sacchetti; Screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti, GiorgioMariuzzo, Lucio Fulci

Dir: Lucio Fulci

99 minutes

When I sat down to write this review, I began by listening to a rare CD recording of the film’s haunting musical soundtrack. And I glanced over the Grindhouse Releasing booklet, lobby cards, and the spectacular tin casing that surrounds it (Limited Edition No. 725 out of 20,000).

Before I even viewed this film, I knew it was important. I watched it for the first time nearly 11 years ago, after purchasing the splendid Grindhouse Releasing collector’s orgasm of DVD material (trivia point: Sage Stallone, son of the great Sylvester Stallone, created this production company to collect the best prints, stories, details, interviews, and memorabilia to be associated with a handful of great gorefests and to give them the attention and respect they deserve).

After sitting down to view the film, I was blown away to say the least.

[Full disclosure: My fellow blogger and I have a long-going feud pitting Italian film maestros Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci against each other. As I have grown older, and discovered more of Fulci’s films, I have veered towards Fulci as the master of the Italian horror cinema. But, I dig my heels in at this: Argento rules giallo. I digress…]

“The Beyond” is simply perfect horror filmmaking. The story is set up quickly and deftly. The characters are not entirely cookie-cutter (well, save for Joe the Plumber), and the zombies do not appear until far, far, FAR into the narrative. It is a slow burn and the film is better for it.

“The Beyond” begins in 1927 Louisiana. A sepia-toned group of vigilantes burst into a hotel room, brutally chain-whip, and then crucify a man, Schweick, who has been painting an innocuous visage of oblivion. The vigilantes accuse the artist of witchcraft, while he warns them that the very building they are in — a hotel on the bayou — was built over one of the seven gateways to hell, and that only he can save them.

They kill him anyway.

After a caustic attack via cement, the men bury him behind a wall in the hotel basement.

Fast-forward to present-day 1981, and Liza is looking to get the old hotel, which she inherited from some obscure family member, up to standards to open. Liza (MacColl) is desperate to open the hotel, employing a seemingly dimwitted, but concerned, host and a single maid. After a painter takes an unexpected tumble from a scaffold, Liza begins to realize there are far more troubling things at play in the hotel. An unoccupied room buzzes the front desk for attention. She meets a very blind, and very foreboding, soothsayer, Emily. While Emily appears to be blind, the audience knows she has seen something more horrifying, leaving her in her handicapped state — a prophetic text titled “Eibon” is missing, and without it, all Emily can do is warn of the terrors to come, all the while Dr. John McCabe (Warbeck) aids Liza in figuring out the mystery, and the curse, of the hotel.

Bring in Joe the Plumber…Literally, that is his credited name. Joe lumbers his way into the flooded hotel basement only to meet zombie Schweick, whom, after many years of being crucified behind walls, is eager to spread out his revenge, starting with Joe’s face (and, later, a morgue-full of corpses). The film jumps from place to place, each offering a glimpse into what Fulci envisioned — what would hell look like?

Cue a whirlwind of “what the hell is going on here?” moments. Cannibalistic spiders, a face being melted away by acid, Warbeck using a six-shot revolver improperly, a German shepherd Vs. Zombie scene, a zombie child — and lots of exploding heads.

I must stop before I give away the “WHOA!” ending.

Lucio Fulci seriously delivered on a more cerebral with “The Beyond.” Which will make it even harder to give another Fulci classic, “Zombie,” it’s proper due. But I’ll make it work.

Romero Rules Followed: 5 out of 5; There is flesh-eating, brain-blasting, lumbering undead, etc. All the rules are followed here.

Gore factor: It was one of Britain’s famous “Video Nasties.” What do you think?

Zombies or Wannabees? Zombies are plentiful… Near the freakin’ end, sadly

Classic, fine, or waste of time: Absolute classic.

Additional comments: I can find many faults with this film, but the majority is limited to cheap effects and vanilla script-writing. The story as a whole is fairly solid. The characters are likable. The ending makes up for a great deal of the film’s flaws. Fulci had already made a stone-cold classic with “Zombie” (look for it here, soon). He went for a more heady, existential direction with “The Beyond” and met with a great deal of success.

— ROB

Like a Virgin, Haunted for the Very First Time

2010-08-19T18:39:00.004-04:00

A Virgin Among the Living Dead
1973
Dir. Jesus Franco
Title 15, Chapter 2, Subchapter 1, Section 52 of the U.S. Code expressly prohibits businesses from engaging in deceptive or false advertising. Though I think the statute of limitations is probably a little long in the tooth to be throwing the book at Jesus Franco for French stinker A Virgin Among the Living Dead (aka Christine, Princess of Eroticism), which, title aside, features nary a zombie (and just as little eroticism). A few restrained hints of possible lesbian vampirism and one thoroughly useless ghost are the closest you’re going to come to “living dead” in this 75 minute assault on your higher thinking functions.
Hell, given our babbling protagonist’s hobbies include sleeping nude, skinny dipping and parading around in front of strangers in her sheer panties, I’m just gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that “virgin” thing as well. Aspersions aside, Christine, the titular virgin, is a naïf just blown into some rundown French town to hear the reading of the will of a father she never knew. Showing up the family chateau, which every villager assures her has been vacant for generations, Christine stumbles wide-eyed (and usually nude) through encounters with the various, irritating denizens of the house who act less like the Addamses and more like John Waters rejects. Weird Uncle Howard just bangs away at the organ, blind Linda compulsively paints crosses in blood and offers cryptic warnings while the family’s mute manservant just leers around pervertedly. How does Christina react? She just nods and smiles at every violations of mores that any other rational person would take as signs to move into the nearest Motel 6. Things get creepy, dead animals get placed in her bed and the family eventually tries to get all Rosemary’s Baby on Christina. It’s painfully by the numbers and horrifically zombie-free.

Zombology: Not a goddamned thing. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. The zombie is a lie. While Christine wanders aimlessly on a scene of lesbian vampirism (which she seems to just disregard the next time she runs across the participants) and her ghostly, blood dribbling father makes an ineffectual stab and warning her off, there is no “living dead” to be had. Zippo.

Like a lot of Jesus Franco films, A Virgin Among the Living Dead features startlingly amateur cinematography at times – particularly during the halting zooms and pull backs – mixed with tableaux that suggest Franco may have had a glimmer of talent in his otherwise hackish repertoire. But more importantly, NO FUCKING ZOMBIES.
This suckfest proudly earned its perfect score on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of hellacious awfulness.

ZomBlog Review: "The Last Man on Earth"

2010-08-16T10:29:00.003-04:00

“The Last Man on Earth”
1964
U.S.
Stars: Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Emma Danieli
Writers: Logan Swanson and William F. Leicester, based on the novel “I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson
Dir: Sidney Salkow
87 minutes

I love me some Vincent Price. Yes, indeed I do.
As many others in my age bracket, we first heard his velvet voice ending the final moments of Michael Jackson’s “Thiller.” And, to many, that was one of the creepiest things we had heard by the time we were 6 years old.
I can remember spending Saturday afternoons trolling the TV’s six stations after my Saturday morning cartoons had ended, searching for any glimpse of a horror film on either the then-syndication dump known now as Fox or the recently revamped WB Network (DC-20, to my age-equivalent compadres).
There I stumbled upon many a film featuring either Vincent Price or the legendary Christopher Lee. And, yes, I stayed glued to the TV right through commercials.
It was about four years after I had been introduced to “Night of the Living Dead” (which I saw half of during a special televised week of horror films coinciding with Halloween) that I first heard the story, “I Am Legend.” During a sixth-grade camp retreat with my teachers from Earle B. Wood Middle School in Montgomery County, my then science teacher, Mr. Wydro, decided to entertain after lights-out my cabin of 16 young boys with the tale of Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend,” only he told the audio-book version of “The Last Man on Earth.”
Despite that week being an awful, terrible time in my memory, that then-chilling story always stuck with me. So, when I was older and saw a bargain-bin copy of the Vincent Price-starring classic, I have to admit I got weak-kneed and excited.
By now, you all know the story. For clearly unknown reasons, a scientist is holed-up in his home, avoiding a plague of nighttime visitors, searching during the day for any signs of survivors to a tragedy that has left him entirely alone on Earth.
While Romero cites this story/film as his greatest inspiration for “Night of the Living Dead” (whoa, he made “NOTLD” four years after “Last Man” … I heard the “Last Man” story four years after I first saw “NOTLD”…my…mind…is…blown), there are clearly some differences. The “undead” are vampiric in nature, sleeping during the day, warded off by garlic, and terrified of their reflections. Oh, and they talk, taunting Robert Morgan (Price) at night, ordering him out of his fortified home. Some of the dead — having been friends or coworkers of Morgan three years prior to the “plague” occurring — batter the home with planks of wood or rocks, making the sunset unpleasant for the tortured hero in this tale.
He spends his days torching the dead, sending out broadcasts to a deaf ear, and replenishing his stock of wooden stakes or garlic. The audience realizes early on Morgan has his routine set in stone and it is mundane, tortured, boring, and verging on insanity. Yet, he treks on, looking for any semblance of life as he once knew it. And when he eventually finds it, the true horror unfolds.
George Romero has famously touted this film, and its book-form, as his inspiration for “Night of the Living Dead.” Anyone who views this will see the obvious parallels. This is why this film is so hard for your humble reviewer to quantify and sandwich into a precise judgmental system. It has many merits for a zombie film. It has many merits to be called a post-apocalyptic masterpiece. It has many merits to be called a study in the psychology of the loneliness of mankind and the desire to have contact of any form, voice or touch preferred. The last 20 minutes of the film still are the best representation of Matheson’s original message: mankind is the real monster. The Will Smith-starring “I Am Legend” had a grand opportunity to better tell the tale Matheson envisioned, but studio pressure and a spineless director allowed a shitty ending to be tacked onto the film where the original ending would have wrapped it up perfectly. Check it out on DVD or Blu-Ray with the original ending. If you are a right-thinking human, you will agree.
So…

Romero Rules Followed: Romero based several of his rules on this film. This is tough, but 3/5.
Gore factor: Non-existent, but sometimes what is not seen is better.
Zombies or Wannabees? Damn close, but wannabees.
Classic, fine, or waste of time: Classic, for the simple fact it inspired the heralded Romero zombie classic.
Additional comments: If I viewed this as simply a vampire film, it would still be far more enjoyable than anything Stephanie Meyer envisioned while garbed in her magic underwear. As a post-apocalyptic film, it is even more enjoyable. As a loose influence to “Night of the Living Dead,” I can soak in the subtle references the former gave to the latter.

— ROB