The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

There are pleasant surprises and unpleasant surprises and Dead of Night 9also known as Deathdream, among other names) was one of the pleasant ones. I have to admit, when I saw it was created by the team of writer Alan Ormsby and director Bob Clark, who also wrote/directed the execrable Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, my heart sank. All the more pleasant then when this turned out to be such a good film!

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A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the RSS feed to your reader for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

In a news item that should be titled “Return of the King,” George A. Romero answers ten questions from Time readers. No revelations here, but worth the five minutes it takes to read it. (Time)

This in-depth profile of Walking Dead creator/writer Robert Kirkman has a few good tidbits (and a few quasi spoilers for readers of the comic that aren’t caught up to the current issues). (USA Today)

If you’d like to catch REC 2 in a theater, this list of dates and locations where you can do that should help. (Fangoria)

Two images of Boris Kodjoe in Resident Evil: Afterlife, plus an interview with him about the film, are available. (Black Voices on Movies)

If you’re in New Orleans, consider taking in a performance of Zombie Town: A Documentary Play, a mockumentary play about a San Francisco theater troupe stuck in a small Texas town during a zombie apocalypse. It runs Thursdays through Saturdays, from July 1 to July 18. (BestofNewOrleans.com)

Folks, this movie is the stuff that Cinemax was made for. The Vineyard is cheap, tawdry and dumb, barely more than an excuse for lots of gratuitous nudity and sleaze and a little bit of gore (a very little bit, unfortunately).

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A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the RSS feed to your reader for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Get all the gory details on Greg Nicotero’s zombie and gore designs on The Walking Dead TV series. (AMCTV)

Here’s a long, in-depth look at The Walking Dead comic, which has apparently been nominated for an Eisner Award (like the Oscars, for comics). (Comic Attack)

Dead Rising 2 has been delayed from its August 31 (US)/September 3 (Europe) release date. It’s now coming tot he US September 28 and Europe October 1. (Kotaku)

There’s an English language trailer for Zombrex Dead Rising Sun movie based on the Dead Rising video game series and I have embedded it below for you. (Dread Central)

The producer of Resident Evil 5 will not be working on Resident Evil 6. Good news? Bad news? Who cares news? (Kotaku)

Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci (Transformers, Star Trek) are producing a live-action adaptation of Xombie, the animated/comic series about a zombie cop trying to save the remnants of humanity. Word is, they’ve picked out a writer and are working to get a deal done. (Bloody Disgusting)

If you’re in Seattle this weekend, perhaps you’d like to help them recapture the world record for most zombies in a zombie walk? (Zombie Command)

Well, it looks like the band Zombie Apocalypse NOW! is breaking up. Bummer. There aren’t enough zombie apocalypse bands as it is. (Kalamazoo Noise)

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Here we have another zombie cop movie. But this zombie cop is also a Maniac Cop! And by maniac cop, I mean a cop that kills people randomly, for no good reason. Well, he has a good reason to kill a few of them. The rest, not so much. See, maniac!

This movie is chock full of genre vets. Bruce Cambell, Tom Atkins, Richard Roundtree top the list, but there are others you can pick out if you have a sharp eye and a good memory for character actors. It’s directed by William Lustig, who also directed Uncle Sam (review here). Both that movie and this one are basically slasher movies with a zombie as the slasher. This one also mixes in some standard cop movie tropes as well.

It’s kind of hard to tell if the maniac cop is a zombie or not. They never use the word, but he can take multiple bullets without flinching, is cold, doesn’t have a heart beat and survives a serious impalement pretty easily. Sounds like a zombie to me.

I didn’t think much of this, but I definitely enjoyed it more than Uncle Sam. It wasn’t great, but it certainly wasn’t bad. And hell, it’s worth watching for the cast alone!

Just in time for Independence Day, Fashion Zombie presents this thoroughly patriotic zombie T, for everyone who ever wanted to say, “I love America and I love zombies and I really love zombie America.” Or, you know, whatever it is a corpsified version of the iconic Uncle Sam image says to you. What can I say, it’s the most holiday-themed/patriotic zombie shirt I could find.

It’s also cheap. It’s one of 6dollarshirts.com‘s titular $6 shirts.So you can own it for about the same cost as a burrito. Heck, at that price, maybe you can afford the rush shipping necessary to get it to you in time for the July 4 holiday! I’ve never owned a 6dollarshirt.com shirt, so I can’t speak to the quality. But hey, $6. You can find a larger version of the image below.

I’m attempting to assemble an all zombie-themed wardrobe. Fashion Zombie is my weekly post detailing the coolest zombie-themed clothes and accessories I can find. Check back every Monday for another look at the hottest zombie apparel.

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The world needed a buddy-cop zombie movie and it got Dead Heat. Now it thinks maybe it would like its money back, because Dead Heat is kind of a stinker.

It amazes me that movies like this get made. Someone read this script and said, “Yeah, that’ll do.” Someone auditioned Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams for the leads and went, “Yeah these are our guys! What amazing non-chemistry they have!” (Okay, they probably didn’t think that last part.) How does this happen?

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Even after a second viewing, I just don’t like Fido as much as almost everyone else seems to. I don’t dislike it. It’s certainly a well put together film. It looks good, the story is decent, the acting is all good or better … yet somehow, my reaction to it continues to be “meh.”

It seems a little shallow and a little scattershot — like, is it a black comedy, a boy-and-his-dog movie with zombies, a commentary on Cold War paranoia? It could be any or all of those, but it seems like it throws little bits of each of those and several other ideas/themes out, but never bothers to tie any of them together or resolve anything.

Paradoxically, if it were a little more shoddy, I might like it better, but as polished as it is, I just expected more from it. It felt a little like cotton candy — tasty while you’re eating it, but it leaves you feeling kind of hollow and empty afterward. Someone tell me, what am I not getting about this film? I will say it’s easy enough to watch that I would consider a third go-round if someone wants to explain what I am missing here…

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Bookmark the home page or add the RSS feed to your reader for your daily dose of walking dead. Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

The save system in Dead Rising 2 will be less annoying/punishing than the save system in the original. Thank god. That was one of my key changes that the sequel needed to make. (Kotaku)

The Dead Rising-inspired, Keiji Inafune-directed  film Zombrex Dead Rising Sun will be distributed for free via various VOD platforms! This is a price I can thoroughly get behind. (Kotaku)

Go on set for a Walking Dead report that’s all high praise and no actual info. That’s okay, we’re all in love with it already, anyway. (Fangoria)

Looking to get your zombie-themed Christmas story published and do a good deed? The Undead that Saved Christmas is an anthology of Xmas/holiday themed zombie stories whose proceeds got to charity and they are looking for authors! (Buy Zombie)

Get fit the zombie apocalypse way with Zombie Fit, a fitness regimen that draws from parkour to prepare you for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. (Chicago Tribune)

Finally, we’ve got a short trailer for the short film Cupcake: A Zombie Lesbian Musical embedded below for you. It’s a movie about two bigoted old ladies, a pair of love-struck lesbians and a chorus line of zombies. Mmmkay… (Buy Zombie)

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I can’t say I hated The Dead Pit. I definitely didn’t love it. Really, it was just a kind of goofy, forgettable, late-’80s throwaway that probably got played ad infinitum on Cinemax around 1991, thanks to some gratuitous nudity and a lot of the lead actress (that’s her on the right) running around in her underwear.

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