The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

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

Director Gary Ugarek reports that Deadlands 2: Trapped has been acquired by Anthem Pictures. It may be coming to VOD (video on demand), since Anthem does that sort of thing. Presumably it will see a DVD release at some point as well. (Horror-Movies.ca)

The upcoming Wii zombies-in-space prequel game Dead Space: Extraction gets a preview from Kotaku. Short version: promising, but still needs some polish. (Kotaku)

Fine science fiction blog io9 has a thoughtful post up today asking the timeless (and slightly disturbing) question, can zombies be sexy? (io9)

After the break, you can view an insane bit of AutoTuned gimmick rap called “Zumbie” by Major Lazer. It’s about zombies, and probably NSFW.

Read the rest of this entry »

Considering June is almost upon us, I thought it was time I got serious about firming up this list. Here’s what I’ve settled on watching for sure:

Lucio Fulci’s Zombie
Nightmare City
Hell of the Living Dead
Zombie 3
Burial Ground: Nights of Terror
Versus
Tokyo Zombie
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Return of the Living Dead
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things
Dead Set
American Zombie
Mutant
I Walked with a Zombie
Messiah of Evil
Day X
Grapes of Death
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Pet Sematary

That’s nineteen, which is almost two-thirds of the month. There will definitely be three more Japanese zombie movies, which I’m inviting you all to vote for (poll at the bottom of the post and on the right sidebar). Leave me a comment or e-mail with suggestions on these. Here is the list of “maybes” I am still considering:

• They Came Back
• Dead and Breakfast
• Zombie Strippers
• The Stink of Flesh
• Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead
• Re-Animator
• Redneck Zombies
• Fido
• Evil
• Zombie Honeymoon
• Enter Zombie King
• Resident Evil
• Shanks
• Sugar Hill
• The Walking Dead
• The Fog

Also, if you have a blog, I invite you to join the Zombie Movie Marathon Month Film Club. It works like this: watch one or more of these movies this month (bonus points for watching them the same day as I do!). Write something about the movie on your blog, and link to my writing on the site from your post. E-mail me with the link. I link back to you! Fun! Easy! An excuse to watch a ton of zombie movies and maybe get a minor traffic boost!

Finally, I need a hand choosing which Japanese zombie movies to pick for my five days of Japanese zombies. No need to comment, just push a button. Never heard of any of these? That’s okay, you can pick them by title if you like. Or by art — the picture at the top of this post is for Onechanbara…

[poll id="2"]

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

Four brand-new clips of language-virus zombie flick Pontypool hit the Internet today. I’ve embedded one after the break, courtesy of Dread Central, and put links to the page with the other three. Can’t say much about them, because I haven’t watched them. See, I’m one of those weird, old-fashioned types that prefers to not spoil the best bits of a film before actually seeing it. But don’t let that stop you. If you can wait, it comes to VOD (video on demand) this Friday, making me wish I had cable TV. (Dread Central)

That sub-$100 budget zombie film Colin that’s been getting a bunch of buzz gets a bit more, with a brief story from Fangoria, including some words with the creator. And there’s a trailer, after the break. It looks intriguing, but cheap. Which I guess isn’t exactly shocking, is it? (Fangoria)

Live in Austin, Texas? Visiting June 13? If you answered “yes,” get thee to the Alamo Drafthouse for a special screening of Night of the Creeps, with director Fred Dekker and a bunch of the cast. The reunion will be filmed for the upcoming special edition DVD release, so you can point out your head’s silhouette to friends for years to come. Tickets go on sale tomorrow. (Fangoria)

Read the rest of this entry »

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

We’ve got another zombie apocalypse incoming! This one is called Autumn, and it’s a story about a plague that kills basically everybody in one very bad day. Then, in an even worse day for the survivors, the dead come back. It looks to be coming this fall (surprise, eh?), it has David Carradine and it sounds cool to me. Bloody Disgusting gets credit for spotting it and you can get more details and a trailer (unembeddable, sorry) at the official site. (Bloody Disgusting)

The upcoming issue of Rue Morgue has a piece on Dead Snow and a complementary piece on the fetid swamp that is the Nazi zombie subgenre, plus a piece about the Zombeatles and lots of other cool horror stuff. (Rue Morgue @ MySpace)

PopCap games are saying that the whimsical tower-defense zombie game Plants vs. Zombies (review coming as soon as I can stop playing long enough to write it!) is their best selling game ever. They’ve also got some more details on its origins. (Gamasutra)

It seems just a month ago I was reporting that Resident Evil 5 had sold 1.5 million copies (because it was), but today, Capcom bigwigs say that number is up to five million. Seems fishy, but who knows? In any case, RE5? It’s sold a lot. (Kotaku)

Look at that cover and read the title and you’ll know pretty much what you are getting with Dead Heist. It’s an exceptionally cheesy blacksploitation heist movie with some zombie-like creatures thrown in. And it has Big Daddy Kane as some sort of one-man anti-zombie army.  It’s a brain-dead b-movie action flick with a chewy, undead center, but hey, that can be fun. In it, a band of none-too-bright dudes rob a bank, get stuck inside and then the pseudo-zombies come. Then Big Daddy Kane comes to kill the zombies.

Those zombies seem lifted directly from the old Vincent Price chestnut The Last Man on Earth (itself an incredibly important film in the development of the zombie genre!), which is to say that they are sort of weird zombie/vampire hybrids. They only come out at night and they hunger for blood — which implies vampire — but they are dumb and they are many — which is more zombielike. Regardless, this isn’t the kind of movie that necessitates deep analysis. It is the kind of movie you can enjoy while drunk, or high or perhaps both. I think the highlight is the climactic fight. It is one of the worst choreographed fight scenes I have ever witnessed: so bad, it circled around to being good.

Dead Heist/USA/2007

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

News today? How about none, basically? Not that that’s why I haven’t posted. I was tied up with a paying job all day and didn’t have time, but as it turns out, it turned out to be pretty much a moot point, because there’s no real news to report! But because I love you (and zombies) I dug up a few nuggets…

Remember yesterday, when I gave you the early word on Colin, the under-$100 budgeted zombie flick from the zombie’s point of view? Well, CNN reads the blog apparently (or, just maybe they have their own source … I guess it’s possible) because they have a story about it today. Still no word about distribution or eventual release date. (CNN)

And … that’s it. But, here’s a link to a cool, on-going series of short-short stories set in a zombie-infested world. It’s written in a collaborative fashion (each story has one author, but they are clearly set in the same world, telling different parts of the story). It’s called Wrath of the Damned and I heartily recommend it.

Have a great weekend, and please let me know what I should watch for my movie marathon!

June is almost upon us and that means it is time for me to get serious about finishing the list of movies for the June Zombie Movie Marathon Month festival. I had hoped to have the entire list done by now but for a variety of reasons — scheduling conflicts, inability to confirm that movies will be available, indecision — I haven’t been able to do so. I have come up with a preliminary list of definite movies to watch (although not the when, for the most part), a couple of themes to explore and a handful of “maybes.” Now I am taking commentary from you fine readers. Help me decide!

My two themes are five days each of Italy and Japan. Italy has proven to be the easier of these, and comprises most of my “definite” list. Japan is a little trickier and I may put it to a vote next week (about time I used that poll for something, anyway). Apart from that there are a few seminal films that I have managed to not see yet and a few my daughter has managed to not see yet and those comprise the rest of what is definite.

Here’s what I have nailed down, some with commentary:

• Zombie (30th anniversary! I’m doing a free showing of this)
• Nightmare City
• Hell of the Living Dead
• Zombie 3 (Because Lucio Fulci worked on it briefly)
• Burial Grounds: Nights of Terror
• Versus
• Tokyo Zombie
• Plan 9 from Outer Space
• Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things
• Return of the Living Dead (daughter has never seen it!)

Here’s the stuff I am considering, but haven’t settled on:

• Dead Set (okay, it’s a TV miniseries, but still a moving picture show)
• American Zombie
• Mutant
• I Walked with a Zombie
• Messiah of Evil
• Night of the Living Dead (1990) (Haven’t seen this in years, like since it was fairly new)
• Pet Sematary (ditto)
• Onechanbara
• Grapes of Death
• Zombie Honeymoon

Okay, that’s where things stand at the moment. I’ve got ten nailed down, ten strong possibilities and a whole, long list of other stuff that I haven’t decided on. Comments and suggestions are welcome and encouraged.

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Stealing from the dead is never a hot idea, because as every reader of this site knows, sometimes they refuse to stay dead. Six crooks learn that the hard way in The Crypt (coming June 25), and you can get a taste of it with the trailer, embedded after the break. (Dread Central)

Cannes is generating a buzz for Colin, a microbudget (under $100 if the makers are to be believed!) zombie think piece told from the point of view of a zombie that’s trying to figure out what’s happened to him. It’s a brilliant idea that’s been tried, with limited success, a few times before. Hopefully more info (like a distributor and/or release date) will come out soon. (Times Online)

If you are a Boston resident, you can rest easy knowing your police department is firmly committed to giving you the truth if and when a zombie attack occurs. (Dumb as a Blog)

If you’ve never heard of Zombie Tales 2061, a unique zombie comic that tells of undead supremacy in the far future, your chance to catch up is nigh as a collection of the three short tales that make up the saga is coming this July. You can watch an interview with the writer (Oscar-nominated screenwriter Kim Krizan) and see a ten-page preview here. (Comic Book Resources)

The cover art for the September 25 release of Creepshow on BluRay has been revealed. And it is exactly the old cover art, which is fine. Also, no special features, which is bullshit since there are pre-existing special features that could be added and they are going to ask us to pony up a premium for the hi-def. Why do studios do this? (Dread Central)

In case you were wondering, there was nothing else posted today, just this news post. Fear not, there’s more stuff coming soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

A daily roundup of all the undead news that shambles into view… Got news tips? E-mail me at cory.casciato[AT]gmail.com.

Blend up psychedelia, sleazy exploitation, sexual deviance and zombies (of course) and you get something like the upcoming Someone’s Knocking on the Door. Quiet Earth has details, intriguing trailer is embedded after the jump (Quiet Earth).

The first stills for the political zombie comedy Zombies of Mass Destruction (which will screen at the Los Angeles Film Festival) have emerged. They look decent, and if you head over to Bloody Disgusting, you can see them. (Bloody Disgusting)

If you’ve somehow avoided playing Resident Evil in any of its myriad formats and want to rectify that in classic PSOne style on your PS3 or PSP, good news: It’s coming as a download. (Kotaku)

Swine flu has once again been linked to the zombie apocalypse, this time by preventing Dead Rising 2 from appearing at E3. See, the Japanese government is warning against international travel thanks to this swine flu business and Capcom is taking that seriously. Wimps. (Kotaku)

Finally, a way to combine crosswords and the obsessive love of zombie shooter Left 4 Dead — the official Left 4 Dead crossword. (Left 4 Dead Official Blog)

Barely news, but there’s a new Pontypool one-sheet out. (Bloody Disgusting)

After the jump, the gloriously fucked up and entirely NSFW trailer for Someone’s Knocking at the Door.

Read the rest of this entry »

The alternate/original title for Zombie Doom is Violent Shit 3: Infantry of Doom and it is infinitely more informative than the title it is marketed under. This movie is violent, it is shit and, although it certainly does have zombies, there aren’t enough to qualify for the name Zombie Doom.

This movie is the work of the infamous Andreas Schnaas, a low-budget, ultra-sleazy German schlockmeister. It’s shot on video, it features the worst dubbing I have ever seen (conceivably it’s more tolerable in the original German, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it is just as bad) and it is one of the more painful movies I have ever endured. The plot shipwrecks three guys on an island populated by an army of machete-wielding, zombie-breeding nuts. The army of crazies is led by an enormous fat man in a fur thong. There is a mad scientist. There are some kung fu masters fighting the nutjobs. And some ninjas fighting the kung fu guys. And a lot of other random shit. None of it is really explained, and it makes very little sense.

I suspect the plot was a last-second addition to give the ultra-cheap — yet still somehow disturbingly graphic — gore, the  brutally graphic rape/murder/necrophilia scene and the regular violent deaths something to stick to: story as an excuse for the fact that every frame of this movie is suffused with sleaze, to the point where you want to take a shower after watching it. The main takeaway from this for me was to avoid everything else Schnaas has ever done. I suggest you do the same.

Violent Shit 3: Infantry of Doom/Germany/1999