The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

The worst zombie movie I’ve ever seen has got to be Zombie Night, and that’s really saying something. I mean, I have a totally different set of standards as to what is acceptable when it comes to zombie movies versus “regular” movies. It never even came close to watchable and the 93 minute run time was easily the longest hour and a half of my life. Seriously, I have had dental surgery that was more fun.

This is a movie that epitomizes fail in every possible way. The acting would make a bad high-school play look fucking awesome. The effects and makeup were just terrible. Stunt work? When a zombie “attacked” it basically touched its victim who then immediately fell down. Even the sound design was laughable — for the wet chewing/smacking noises of a zombie feast, they appear to have recorded something splashing around in a tub, for example.  As far as I could tell, there was no script whatsoever and the direction matched the level of the writing (i.e. it was nonexistent). Production values? None — it appears to have been shot on location in a semi-abandoned office park and there is clearly visible traffic in the background of one scene, despite the supposed apocalypse. Plot? I guess there was one — something about World War III, and chemical weapons as a causative agent for zombies. There are some people and they find some other people and then there’s the bad guy that keeps screwing everything up and then rejoining the group…

It was just a big, hot mess that made no sense at all. Shoddily imagined, horribly executed and all-around painful to experience.  Do not misunderstand — this is not a so-bad-it’s-good type movie. This genuinely stunk, bad. I had to go all MST3k on it to make it to the end. That was kind of fun, admittedly, but there are better movies even for that purpose.

The best part is there are not one, but two sequels to this. The mind boggles.

Seems that the this morning’s video game discovery has sparked a trend (well, I guess you need three for a trend). I found a link to House of the Dead‘s movie poster generator this morning. If you aren’t familiar with House of the Dead, it is a crappy light-gun zombie shooter. It was also spun off into a supposedly terrible Uwe Boll movie, which I have never seen. I’ve never been a fan of light-gun games in general or this franchise in particular so there’s not much else I can say about the actual game.

They’re making a Wii version of it, and they made this fun little movie poster generator to promote the thing. I seriously doubt I will ever play the game, but the poster maker is a great way to not work for an hour or so. I came across this on Final Girl’s blog (one of the best horror bloggers out there, if you aren’t already reading her) and she’s running some sort of contest, so if you get really inspired, send her your masterpiece. Above, you see my creation. Although I despise the movie Zombie Lake, I’ve always thought zombies from a lake held promise, so that’s the direction I took.

It never fails. On any given day where I don’t have time to do my usual surfing, some kind of big news breaks. Yesterday, apparently Dead Rising 2 was announced and the sweet, sweet trailer above was released. I am immensely excited about this. The original Dead Rising is one of my favorite games ever and one of the all-time classic zombie video games. And unlike movies, sequels are frequently better than the original titles in the world of video games. If that’s the case, this will be my game of the year in whatever year it comes out. I will officially start salivating now…

Apart from the merest whiff of filmmaking competence and a few nice sets of boobies, the horror comedy Brain Dead really has very little to offer. The plot throws two escaped convicts, a couple of hikers, a televangelist and his pretty little assistant together to face some alien parasitic brain eaters. It steals liberally from both Night of the Creeps and Slither (which itself had to have been influenced by Night of the Creeps) but doesn’t do much with what it takes. There’s some completely insane violence (strangely, more from one of the cons than any zombie), a laughable upskirt gross-out effect and, as mentioned, some nice boobs. Unfortunately, all the boob shots come in the first twenty minutes, never to return. That makes the remaining 70+ minutes nearly unbearably dull. The terrible acting doesn’t help things.

Mash up Lucio Fulci’s Zombie with Tombs of the Blind Dead and then mix in a healthy dose of incest, a dwarf, gratuitous sex, sweet ‘70s ‘staches, lots of mutilation and some seriously whacked out space music. That’s Burial Ground: Nights of Terror. It’s not particularly original or well made, but it earns some serious points for batshit insanity. The plot sees a group of six friends (and one “kid” who is played by a dwarf – that’s him in the picture, fucking weird) visiting their professor friend in a secluded manor. Unfortunately, the prof has accidentally awakened the dead in an ancient crypt on the property. Friends arrive, crypt opens, mayhem ensues. Plenty of nudity in this one and lots of gore and violence, especially against women (the Italians always seem to lean that way…). Some of the gore is well done, some not so much. If you like zombie movies enough to be reading this it’s worth seeing, though, without a doubt.

Return of the Living Dead 2 is a bad sequel, inferior in every way to the original. The two leads from the first movie return, as different characters fulfilling the same purpose. Here they are much less sympathetic – they’re grave robbers as well as morons. The army loses a canister and two bullies open it with a couple of random button pushes (awesome security, army guys!), and the zombies take down the suburban neighborhood. It’s paced and structured much more like a traditional horror movie than the apocalyptic zombie mayhem of the first, complete with a resolution that sees the heroes kill the supposedly unkillable (in the first movie) zombies with surprising ease – it turns out electricity is their downfall.

The humor is dumbed down from the first. The gore and makeup isn’t as good, though it is still impressive in spots. The writing is worse, and so is the acting. Director Ken Wiederhorn is terrible. Some irritating continuity gaps test the patience of fans of the original. You get the picture? I will say that the pacing is a bit tighter, but it still drags because the movie sucks. At least the zombies move more slowly and shambley than in the first, which, for my taste, is slightly superior.

The film Return of the Living Dead is largely responsible for what has become a lifelong obsession with zombie movies. My history with the film starts way back in 1985, the year it was released, when I was but a wee boy of twelve years old. The movie was being advertised heavily and the commercials, some of which featured the notorious tar zombie and his “BRAINS!” catchphrase, simply terrified me. I distinctly remember one night, staying in a cheap hotel in California, where I was convinced that zombie would break through the flimsy door of my room and attack my brothers and me before my dad, in the room next door, could do anything about it. I didn’t sleep much that night, and, no doubt due to my terrified vigilance, the tar zombie never came for us.

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Today is George A. Romero’s birthday, and what more fitting day to launch what is destined to be the greatest zombie blog ever conceived and executed by man? No need to answer, that is a rhetorical question. Stay tuned for everything zombie related you could ever ask for.

In the meantime, happy birthday to you, Mr. Romero. Your films have been changing the world for the last forty years and I hope you get forty more, even though you’d look like one of your more decrepit zombies by that point. Thanks for everything!