The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

I’ve already written about my feelings toward and experiences with Return of the Living Dead pretty thoroughly (missed it? read it here), and I intend to write a proper review and some discussion about its place in zombie movie history at some point, so I will keep this brief. I scheduled it for viewing this year because my daughter had never seen it and it filled  a need for a classic on the schedule. There are certainly some issues with it (pacing is a bit off in spots, some of the zombie makeup is little more than mud smeared on stuntmen’s faces, some inconsistent treatment of the zombifying agent 2,4,5-Trioxin) but hey, it’s a freaking punk-rock/zombie comedy that single-handedly introduced the notion of zombies craving brains into the zombie mythos. It’s genuinely funny and even has some subtleties stirred in amongst the slapstick stupidity. And it features possibly the most iconic zombie in all filmdom in the Tarman (only Bub from Day of the Dead comes close, in my opinion).

Oh, and gratuitous nudity lovers? A young, lovely and luscious Linnea Quigley runs around for about a third of the movie stark naked. There’s a tiny shot of it to your left (sorry, those reading this at work, but it’s only 150 pixels wide and only shows a bit of side boob and side ass, cover it with your hand if the boss comes by).  Her assets are a significant part of the movie’s appeal.

Tomorrow night is the Stephen King adaptation Pet Sematary. In HD, no less. I was going to say I haven’t seen this one in a while, but I was thinking about it and I’m not sure I have ever watched it all the way through. I won’t be able to say that this time tomorrow.

I may have spoken too soon. Maybe silly romantic melodrama is the theme of the marathon. This movie makes it five of six movies that contain that sudsy element. Zombie Honeymoon was reminiscent of the plodding, emo, “thinking man’s” zombie movie I, Zombie, only more briskly paced. Our lead gets attacked and turned to a zombie on his honeymoon, spends the rest of the film killing and feeling kinda bad about it. But not that bad. His wife, who kind of looks like a poor man’s Maggie Gyllenhaal and is topless briefly, helps him deal with it — which mostly means covering it up. It struck me as goofy and forgettable, but not altogether unpleasant. I suspect this one could have been better as an old-style movie, with more focus on the romantic melodrama (not that there wasn’t plenty) and less on the unimpressive gore.

Tomorrow I’m watching the timeless 1985 classic Return of the Living Dead with my daughter. That should be fun.

Marcel Marceau, the world's greatest mime, playing a zombie master and pedophile? Sold!

A while back, I praised the queer zombie film Otto for simply being completely original in the zombie milieu. By the same token, I have to tip my hat to Shanks. The world’s greatest mime playing a naive puppeteer who becomes a zombie master? And he’s also in love with a thirteen-year-old girl, who thinks he’s just swell? And it’s all presented as some sort of whimsical fairy tale, until a gang of bikers randomly appear and rape and murder his Lolita girlfriend and are murdered in turn by his zombies? How was this not a hit?

If you aren’t sold yet, there’s an appearance by a young Don Calfa, who’s also appeared in the zombie classics Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town and Return of the Living Dead (his greatest role, where he played  a Nazi mortician). Still not convinced? How about a guy pecked to death by a zombie chicken? Again, how was this not a hit?

Admittedly, it is deadly slow and wholly nonsensical, not to mention a little disturbing (was borderline pedophilia really that acceptable in 1974?), but I can’t help but make a place for it amongst the movies recommended for the fact of their batshit insanity.

This year’s theme is turning out to be “whacko” which I am down with. Tomorrow night is Zombie Honeymoon. In case you missed it (I see people Googling for it) I am posting the complete list after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Was it really just Monday that Left 4 Dead 2 was announced? It hardly seems possible, given how may times I have already posted something about it. Well, the flood has yet to slow, as today there are a bunch of gameplay videos and developer walkthroughs out. Since Dread Central has gone to all the trouble of embedding them on a single page, I am just going to direct you to their post if you want to see more video. (Dread Central)

Got a PSP? Enjoy games like Pikmin and Overlord? The you’ll be into Undead Knights, a zombie game with similar gameplay coming to Sony’s portable system. The trailer, which features no gameplay footage, looks cool and is embedded after the break. There are some gameplay clips and more details at Destructoid. (Destructoid)

I think  it has to be the tenth one I’ve seen, but there’s another new poster for the “she-zombies meet men behaving badly” film Doghouse, which will finally be out June 12 in the UK. (Dread Central)

No dailies for the zombie-movie marathon over the weekend (yes, I know that technically means they aren’t dailies at all), but you will get a triple sized dose on Monday, covering Shanks, Zombie Honeymoon and Return of the Living Dead. Have a good weekend, zombie fans! Edit: I’ve changed my mind. I am going to do brief dailies over the weekend. Check back tomorrow morning for thoughts on Shanks, or catch up Monday on all three! I didn’t change my mind about that last bit, though. I still want you to have a good weekend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ooh, boy. The best thing about Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things is definitely the name. The second best part is Alan Ormsby’s facial hair and the whole cast’s clothes — as ridiculous as today’s hipsters look, they have nothing on the hippies of the early ’70s. This movie spent almost an hour futzing around before finally delivering zombies, and the zombies were pretty sorry when they finally arrived. I did learn a few things: zombies are smarter than hippies; at least some zombies can sail a boat; jobs in the theater were really hard to come by in 1972 (Ormsby gets the others to go along with his grave-robbing/dead-raising shenanigans by threatening to fire them from his theater troupe). I actually think this could be remade into a decent movie, but Hollywood would rather remake movies that were decent the first time around into shit than remake something shitty into something decent. What’s up with that?

Tomorrow night, the William Castle/Marcel Marceau zombie/mime movie Shanks. And no, I am so not even kidding.

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.

Stan Yan, a great artist who does zombie caricatures and all around cool guy, has a nice write-up at Fangoria. Which reminds me — I have a fully transcribed interview I need to finish working into my own feature on the guy… (Fangoria)

My Little Zombie Ponies — every little girl should have one. (Street Anatomy)

If you are absolutely starved to know more about REC 2, there are three short clips available. I would have embedded them but they are utterly pointless — just a few seconds each of footage of a guy wandering around a dark, seemingly empty building (go here if you really want to see them). One thing I gather is that it looks like much or all of the movie will take place from a helmet-cam perspective, which is ind of a cool twist on this kind of first-person film making. (Bloody Disgusting)

As the collaborative project Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated marches ever closer to release, info continues to trickle out — today, the poster was released, and it’s quite a lovely one. (Fangoria)

After the break, we’ve got almost eight minutes of Left 4 Dead 2 footage, showing snippets of the new Charger boss, the incendiary ammo, the new submachine gun and shotgun and a bit of the new character dialog (including a very welcome Arrested Development reference). (Horror-Movies.ca) Read the rest of this entry »

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.

There’s a new trailer for REC 2, the sequel to Spanish first-person zombie thriller REC, and wow is it awesome. I could describe all the action for you, but then you’d just watch it anyway and go, “Yes. That is what he described.” It’s embedded after the break, so go watch it. (Bloody Disgusting)

The fine folks at Kotaku got their hands on a preview of Left 4 Dead 2 and have detailed impressions, including that there will be three new “boss infected,” the regular infected will be harder to kill and tidbits about the new weapons (you hold melee or ranged, not both) and setting (daytime). And more, so go check it out. Also on tap from the Kotaku kids is a look at two characters that didn’t make it into the game, which includes a tiny bit about the ones who did. (Kotaku)

PSP owners will be glad to know they are getting a Resident Evil game of their own and … well, that’s all for now. Word is it probably isn’t a port, but something new. Unless it isn’t. (Kotaku)

After the break, your REC 2 trailer awaits, along with a trailer for Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles… Read the rest of this entry »

Brigitte Lahaie: By far the best part of Grapes of Death

Night two of the second annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month brought us the mediocre Grapes of Death. Seems the French just can’t give good zombie. They can, however, give great hot French girl, as this film proves via the presence of Brigitte Lahaie. Wowza. Something special here, folks. And for the people who keep finding my website via variations on the search term “gratuitous nudity,” you’ll be glad to know that Grapes of Death is all about the gratuitous nudity — including a nice nude scene with Lahaie, which almost justifies this movie’s existence.

This film is basically a protracted chase scene broken up with gratuitous nudity and cheesy gore effects. Snore. Still, it’s arguably an important developmental zombie flick, and it is far better than director Jean Rollin’s other zombie flick, the execrable Zombie Lake. Still, it’s not good. I paired my mediocre French zombie flick with a mediocre French wine, so at least I got a decent buzz out of the deal. I’ll have a full review up in a few days (and a splitting headache tomorrow) most likely. Next up is our June 3 installment, I Walked with a Zombie, an American film, but directed by a French guy.

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.

It’s nearly a month old, the sound and music are sketchy and it looks pretty rough, but maybe, just maybe the teaser trailer for the new George A. Romero zombie film embedded after the break is real. The comments indicate it’s some kind of internal work-in-progress reel, and I think I recognize one of the actors from another Romero film (he’s known to like to re-use actors) so maybe this is real… It’s worth a look anyway, and you can do that after the break. (Thanks CG user demoniotto for the tip)

If you like your zombie movies extra-stupid and possibly offensive, you’re going to be thrilled to hear that Retardead comes out on DVD today. I’m pretty sure that title tells you all you need to know about this one. (Dread Central)

Yesterday, I posted my wish list for Left 4 Dead 2, then I saw this early preview of the game. Shit, looks like I am getting most of my wishes (incendiary ammo? sweet!) … but not all (although the new Charger boss looks plausible given the existing menagerie, and I can accept a Witch that walks around). And there’s some stuff I didn’t dream up that we’ll be getting, too, like dynamic weather. (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Fangoria has some screens and details from Dead Rising 2 and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. (Fangoria)

Zombie toy collectors will be thrilled with this upcoming limited-edition zombie figurine from FearWerx. They’ll be available first at the MonsterMania Convention in Hartford, Connecticut. (Dread Central)

Finally, the second annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month kicked off in fine fashion with Dead Set last night (review here). Starting tomorrow, I will be posting ZMMM Dailies, with the Zombie Movie Marathon Month tag, for easy tracking. Don’t forget that possibly authentic Romero trailer after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

The zombie apocalypse comes to reality TV in the BBC miniseries Dead Set. The premise is that the cast of reality show Big Brother, locked away in a house isolated from the outside world, are among the few survivors of a plague of flesh-eating zombies. They don’t even quite realize what is up – they think the producers are “testing” them – until one of the remaining crew gets into the house, followed shortly by one of the zombies. From there, the story follows a fairly predictable – or classic, if one prefers – curve as some are bit, a supply run is undertaken, more survivors make their way to the compound and finally, things unravel spectacularly.

Haters of speedy zombies might want to tune this one out – these bastards can move. The show gets credit, though, for not setting the characters into a situation where this speed would make escape impossible without cheap editing tricks as many fast-zombie films do. There are no scenes  where they’re surrounded … then cut, and they’re a few steps ahead all of the sudden, for example. The zombies look great, with creepy, white-irised eyes and lots of apparent wounds – everything from torn flesh to missing limbs.

The show uses a lot of cuts and angles to keep the gore from being too excessive for mainstream consumption but considering that this was on TV (pay TV, if I understand correctly, but still) the gore factor is remarkably high. It comparable, gore-wise, to something like Dexter in the U.S. – plenty of grue, but not so much as to classify it as a truly gory show for those that revel in such.

The creators clearly know and love their zombie lore. There’s at least one direct nod to each of George A. Romero’s first three zombie movies, including direct quotes from Night of the Living Dead (“They’re coming to get you Barbara”), parallel dialog from Dawn of the Dead (a character suggests the zombies are attracted to the studio where they’re holed up by some sort of “primitive intuition” and opines that the place used to be “like a church to them”) and a visual quote and parallel dialog from Day of the Dead where an obnoxious character gets torn apart by a mob of zombies while spouting curses at them the whole time. It’s not just Romero, either – at one point a character says another has “a face like a Manchester morgue” (clearly a reference to The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie).

They fail, however, at putting across a message as well as Romero or even Let Sleeping Corpses Lie – those films are admittedly heavy handed, but clear in what they have to say. Apart from the very obvious and zombie-film standard message inherent in the fact that it’s the failure to work together that causes nearly all of the problems for the survivors, this seems to be vaguely condescending toward and condemnatory of the reality-TV generation and surveillance state, but what the exact message is – if any – is unclear. It would have added depth to the proceedings if made a little clearer – or streamlined it if jettisoned all together. It’s also entirely possible that the difficulty in transmission stems from subtle but deep differences between British and American culture that leave me somewhat in the dark as to some of the targets here.

Despite that minor quibble, the writing, direction and acting are all up to the task – Jaime Winborn is particularly good as Kelly, and Andy Nyman turns in an impressive, scenery-chewing performance in the role of the bastard lead producer, Patrick. The only real complaint is the pacing is a bit off – things start off slow before catching stride, then drag a bit in the third and fourth episodes and seem a bit rushed in the fifth and final episode. Still, considering how well the creepiness, jump scares, drama and laughs all work overall, this is a minor issue. Falling short of greatness, Dead Set has to settle for being very good – but in a genre as heavily weighted to the terrible end of the scale as zombie film is, very good is high praise, indeed.

Dead Set/U.K./2008 – Made for TV