The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

When there’s no more room in the sewers, the rats will walk the Earth. Or so might run the honest tagline of Mulberry Street (aka Zombie Virus on Mulberry Street), one of the selections for the 2007 edition of After Dark’s Horror Fest.

The story focuses on the tenants of a Manhattan apartment building that are about to lose their apartments to make way for upscale development. Before that happens, there’s an unfortunate outbreak that turns people into zombie-like rat mutants. Together, the tenants must face the zombies. Er, rats. Whatever. In other words, it’s a basic zombie siege film, with a rodent twist.

At first the creatures look and act like zombies; later they go all ratty (elongated faces, big incisors, pointy ears) but still love biting the shit out of everyone. It’s a weird twist, and while I appreciate the desire to do something different, it comes off as being different solely for the sake of difference — there’s no real effect on the story, tone or even look of the movie except for the rat makeup near the end.

It’s a symptom of the film’s real issue, which is lack of focus. Weird subplots never get resolved and odd character notes go nowhere. The intent may have been to add depth, but the result is to simply distract from the heart of the film. Despite those issues, it’s a decently paced and quirky, if unremarkable, zombie movie that just ends up feeling a little muddle-headed.

Mulberry Street/US/2006/

Lots of zombies. No guns. No problem. That’s the basic premise of Roger Ma’s The Zombie Combat Manual, an in-depth analysis of the tools, techniques and concerns inherent in facing the living dead mano-a-corpso.

Presented in the same faux-nonfiction style as Max Brooks’s wildly popular Zombie Survival Guide with a much more specific focus, th ZCM offers 300 pages of detailed instruction on every aspect of combat with the undead. The books starts with a couple of brief chapters on the zombies themselves, quickly outlining the type of zombie we’re talking about by outlining people’s misconceptions about them, their anatomy and a catalog of their strengths and weaknesses. In summary, these are very like the aggregate ideal picture most fans have of zombies — slow moving, killable only by destroying the brain, completely mindless and highly contagious, spreadable by bite or scratch. In other words, nearly identical (with a few specific changes/details) to Brooks’s conception, or to the zombies found in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie for that matter.

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In 1974, two of film’s greatest movements — Blaxploitation and zombies — combined to form Sugar Hill, one of the most unjustly forgotten movies in film history. It’s the story of a woman (Marki Bey as Diana “Sugar” Hill) who turns to voodoo to get revenge on the powerful mobsters who murdered her boyfriend. With an army of chrome-eyed, cobweb-festooned zombies commanded by voodoo god Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley), Bey dons a funky jumpsuit and takes out the mobsters in inventively horrible ways. The incredibly loud clothing, unique creature design and stylish camera work result in one of the most visually stunning entries in zombie film history.

In an interesting and rarely used twist, this movie really played up the voodoo angle, utilizing not just zombies but voodoo dolls and rituals, a voodoo-drum heavy soundtrack and a starring role for voodoo god/spirit Baron Samedi. The zombie design is unique — and awesome — as well. The cobwebs, blank expressions and weird, silver eyes were both cool and creepy. I’m actually somewhat surprised no one has used that look since. It’s very effective.

Okay, the plot is paper thin, the acting is generally mediocre with occasional flashes of scenery-chewing insanity and it’s non-PC to the point of being embarrassing to modern sensibilities. But you don’t go to a Blaxploitation/zombie film looking for deep plot, deft characterization or a message — you go for jive talking, corpse raising, and ass kicking, and it delivers all of that in abundance.

Sugar Hill/US/1974

Parts of this review originally appeared in my initial reaction piece when I viewed it as part of the 2009 Zombie Movie Marathon Month and in a piece I wrote for Westword.

Philip Nutman was writing zombie apocalypse novels before zombie apocalypse novels were cool. These days, it seems like we get a new one once a week or so, but back in 1993 when he published Wet Work, they were pretty scarce on the ground. The book is held up as an exemplar of the “splatterpunk” movement, meaning it’s gore-drenched and relatively depraved. If you like your zombie fiction that way, then by all means, dive right in.

When comet Saracen unexpectedly shows up in a remarkably close orbit, it’s bad news for life as we know it. Some unknown radiation from the comet has a couple of nasty effects — effects no one notices until it’s too late. First, it raises the dead. Second, it thoroughly fucks the immune system of nearly everyone it touches, turning even common infections into deadly killers. That’s a nearly unbeatable combo and in no time at all, it’s hell on Earth in the form of a full-blown zombie apocalypse.

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As I mentioned in this week’s feature, Pontypool is a movie that stretches and tests the boundaries of what can or can’t be considered a zombie. It’s set in a radio station in the small town of Pontypool in rural Canada on a particularly cold and snowy day. Strange reports of rioting and bizarre behavior start pouring in to the radio station. For a town where the typical crime consists of public drunkenness and maybe the odd domestic disturbance, this is obviously a very strange day. It’s about to get a lot stranger.

It’s hard to talk about the rest of the film without getting a little spoilery. if you are extraordinarily sensitive to spoilers, haven’t yet seen the film and have managed to somehow avoid any of the other spoilers out there online (the main plot point is “spoiled” everywhere, from the ads to the back of the box to every interview and probably every review out there) STOP READING. I’ll spoil the review and tell you I thought the film is excellent and a must-see — you can come back and read the rest when you’ve seen it.
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The pre-Romero history of zombie film is a litter of dull, sleepy films studded with the occasional gem. Revolt of the Zombies is not one of the gems. Revolt is the second zombie film from White Zombie director Victor Halperin but it lacks even that film’s somewhat dated charms and plays like a third rate ripoff of it. Clearly Halperin was out of ideas and hoping to capitalize on his previous success (he even “borrowed” the effect of superimposing Bela Lugosi’s eyes over certain scenes, despite the fact Lugosi is not in this movie).

Supposedly, Revolt is the tale of an expedition to discover the source of a zombie-creating agent to make an army of zombie super soldiers. There is one cool early scene of a horde of Cambodian zombie soldiers getting shot at and not dying or even reacting. Neat! In reality, the rest is a turgid, melodramatic love story about a guy, the girl he loves, and his best friend. Who she loves, naturally. Blech. Anyway, the guy who loves the girl learns the zombie secret and uses it to … try to get the girl. Really?

He controls everyone around him but the girl, creating a massive zombie army. And uh, does nothing with it. Then he realizes she will never love him, he releases his zombies (they aren’t dead, just hypnotized into a mindless, obedient state) and they turn on him. The end. Lame. Next time, more zombie army, less retarded love story, please.

Revolt of the Zombies/US/1936

That's a zombie climbing on the ceiling. Because apparently, zombies do that.

There is so much wrong with the 2008 Day of the Dead remake it is hard to know where to start. For one thing, it has nothing to do with the 1985 George A. Romero film apart from a couple of similar character names and some really fucking stupid references. For another, it’s horribly written and poorly acted. But the biggest problem might just be the spider zombies.

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The pre-WWII potboiler King of the Zombies is more spy movie with zombies as a plot device than zombie movie, and it’s a dull, plodding spy movie at that. Two men and their faithful, comedy-relief black servant (I mention his race because it’s a constant theme in the movie) crash land on an island somewhere in the Bahamas. There they find a Nazi (not identified as such, but not hard to decipher) scientist who’s using voodoo to raise a zombie army and interrogate a captured admiral. A lot of not very much happens, the black servant (played by Mantan Moreland) does a lot of icky playing to broad stereotypes, some “zombies” shuffle around not very menacingly, the scientist gets caught and killed, the end.

I’m not one to hew to political correctness, but the way blacks are presented in this movie is hard to ignore. I know it was a different time, but it’s a very “gee, aren’t uppity negroes just hilarious! And isn’t it even more hilarious when they get put in their place!” kind of thing. It essentially takes over most of the movie, making it into a grotesque, anachronistic race-relations slapstick. Moreland seems a decent, perhaps even gifted actor, but he’s given a shitty row to hoe, here.

The bottom line is, this isn’t much of a zombie movie. The zombies are just stiff-shouldered black guys who don’t do anything. Pass on this one unless you’re determined to thoroughly explore the history of zombie film.

King of the Zombies/US/1941

Note: King of Zombies has entered the public domain, so if you’re curious, you can watch or download it from the Internet Archive.

In Awaken the Dead, a priest with a dark past teams up with a shut-in prostitute (the daughter of the man he worked for in said dark past) during a citywide zombie infestation. Together, they rescue survivors, kill zombies and eventually uncover the secret behind the zombie outbreak.

Sound promising? Perhaps, in its small way. But the execution here was so flawed that any promise of the premise was quickly squandered. For starters, the whole thing was shot in the ugliest, blurriest, shittiest style I have ever seen. At least 90 percent of it used this horrible faux sepia tone effect. As a result, it was often difficult to tell what was going on. I couldn’t tell you if most of the zombie makeup and effects were good, because I could barely see them. The zombies did seem inconsistent — some had a sort of a demonic visage, others just looked like people with bloody faces.

The story was flimsy, but not terrible. The writing was frustratingly inconsistent: fairly solid at one minute, ridiculous the next. Same with the direction. The acting was actually decent, at least in the case of the leads (the priest, the prostitute and a Jehovah’s Witness they pick up early on). It was nothing special, but higher than usual quality for a film of this caliber.

All told, Awaken the Dead is entirely forgettable and not really worth your time. Its few positive points are outweighed by the terrible look, inconsistent execution and general dullness.

Awaken the Dead/US/2007

When discussing the zombie films of George A. Romero, the 1982 anthology horror entry Creepshow is often overlooked. That’s probably because it offers a very different take on Romero’s signature creature — two of them, actually. The film offers five short stories wrapped in a sixth used mostly as a framing device. Two of these, or a third of the film, are devoted to the walking dead.

The first of the two, and the first proper story segment after the intro/framing device of the kid who loves horror comics, is called “Father’s Day.” It’s a very basic and somewhat slow-starting revenge tale about an overbearing, obnoxious and downright evil father that returns from the grave to kill and eat cake. He seeks revenge on not only the angry daughter that killed him in revenge for him killing her boyfriend, but also on his descendants who he sees as money-grubbing parasites. And, as mentioned, to eat cake — it’s his birthday, see? It does take a while to get going but it’s worth it for both the awesome, moldering zombie that arises from the grave and the slasher-esque kills once he returns.

The father zombie’s head is almost denuded of flesh, maggots and worms squirm in his eye sockets, dirt is encrusted all over him. When he speaks, his voice is grating and rough, like dirt is clogging his throat and his voice box is eroded to almost nothing. He’s pretty much just awesome, and true to the comic-book vision of the film. He strangles one victim, drops a tombstone on one and, best of all, twists another’s head all the way off then serves it as his “cake.”

The second zombie vignette, “Something to Tide You Over,” is the third episode of the film. It’s also one of the best over all, second only to perhaps “The Crate.” In this one, Ted Danson’s character and his girlfriend suffer the wrath of a psychotic Leslie Nielsen, who’s married to Danson’s girlfriend. To punish his straying wife and her lover, he buries them both neck-deep in the sand and lets the tide drown them, filming the whole thing for his video collection. To punish him, they return as waterlogged zombies and return the favor, burying him on the same beach to suffer the same fate.

The waterlogged zombies of this entry look incredible. They have puckered, mottled grey-white and greenish black visages with seaweed hanging from their hair. The use of lighting in this entry is noteworthy as well, as Romero uses bright, primary colored spots that invoke both a comic-book flavor and recall the lighting and colors of Suspiria. There’s also a clever nod to his primary zombie work, when Nielsen’s character shoots one of the zombies in the head and they barely react apart from the trickle of greenish-black ichor that emerges. It seems to be his way of saying, “We’re not at the mall anymore, folks.”

The rest of the episodes contain no zombies but are generally entertaining, especially “The Crate” which concerns a weird monster hibernating in a long-lost crate (and more revenge, naturally). The second episode, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” is silly yet still effectively invokes some of the same themes of isolation and self-loathing/fearing transformation into the Other that is one of the centerpieces of the “Dead” films. The final episode, “They’re Creeping Up On You” about paranoia, self-isolation and a really bad case of roaches is probably the weakest and an unfortunate choice to end on. Finally, the framing story is worth a mention — it has no zombies, but it does have a little voodoo, so it ties in nicely with the origins of the zombie.

While it doesn’t hold the same importance in zombie history as Romero’s primary zombie canon, it’s not a film to be overlooked. It’s entertaining and reveals some of Romero’s early influences (i.e. horror comics) and shows his usual skill at blending dark themes with humor, this time with an emphasis on the humor. Personally, it’s also noteworthy as it was  definitely my first Romero movie and almost certainly my first zombie film (I may have seen parts of Phantasm before this, but definitely not the whole thing). It was a childhood favorite and a film I watched many, many times on cable. It’s aged remarkably well and is worth seeing — or seeing again — for zombie fans seeking a bit of contrast and insight into the mind of the zombie master.

Creepshow/US/1982