The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

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.

Author Carrie Ryan is doing a lot of press for her latest zombie novel, The Dead Tossed Waves. The latest interview covers her outlook on the series (that’s right, a third book is coming), her inspiration and lots more. (Publishers Weekly)

The director of Zomblies talks about inspiration, how to maximize a tiny budget and the importance of zombies evolving in this interview. (Zombie Command)

An intriguing essay on what zombies mean, a topic I plan to tackle myself sometime. (True/Slant)

Bostonites can go see some Pom Pom Zombies on stage this weekend. Toxic hot dogs turn a cheerleader into a zombie-making machine, chaos ensues. (A World on Fire)

Stay warm at night with a Resident Evil quilt. (Zombie Command)

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 makers of animated zombie movie A.D. are aiming to make the biggest, baddest-ass, most epic zombie movie of all time. Get ready to pee your pants with joy if they pull it off, and watch them speak about it in a video interview below in the meantime. (ETC)

Zombie and robots in comic book mayhem! It’s Zombies vs. Robots Adventure (that is a title that does not fuck around). More info and a preview here. (Bloody Disgusting)

Here’s an interview with Roxanna Manuel, one of the stars of ’80s direct-to-video zombie movie The Video Dead (review here). (Killer Film)

Are zombie movies racist? That’s what one doctoral candidate at University of California Santa Barbara claims in this article — and he’ll elaborate at a speaking event tonight if you’re in Santa Barbara and want to go. (Daily Nexus)

Need some tips for giving those zombies an ass-whupping? The Zombie Combat Manual, presumably the world’s first guide to hand-to-hand combat vs. the undead, has you covered. (A World on Fire)

When the zombie apocalypse comes, you will still be able to enjoy a nice beverage out of these zombie pint glasses. (Bread and Badger)

Read the rest of this entry »

Zombies of Mass Destruction does not skimp on the blood.

The tagline for Zombies of Mass Destruction is “A Political Zomedy” and that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about it. There are zombies. It is political, and a comedy. And it isn’t subtle — it telegraphs every one of its punches. But this is zombie film we’re talking here; subtlety is strictly optional.

The film is set in a small island town where an unfortunate zombie outbreak occurs. Caught up in this small-scale apocalypse are a young Iranian-American woman who’s abandoned her heritage to hang out with a cute rocker boy, her traditional father, her redneck neighbors, a gay couple trying to come out to a conservative parent, a fundamentalist preacher, the ultraconservative mayor and his liberal challenger. Do these sound a little stereotypical? They are, but again, it doesn’t matter all that much.

As the outbreak unfolds, things get worse and worse for the main characters as they face the prejudice and half-buried hostility of the small town stereotypes around them. Oh, and there are the zombies to deal with. And it’s mostly presented in that order — sociopolitical commentary first, zombie mayhem second. None of the political or social jabs are quiet or refined — this movie wears its politics on its sleeve and wields its commentary like a ten-pound hammer.

Arguably, this limits the audience. The degree to which you enjoy it is probably largely dependent on how much you agree with its positions. On the other hand, there’s plenty of splatter and broad phsyical comedy between the political jabs at post-9/11 America, so even a die-hard conservative could probably find something to enjoy here — supposing they didn’t walk out before they got to it.

Those points might sound like complaints, but really they are just observations. Ham-fisted sociopolitical commentary is endemic to the zombie genre and the stereotyped characters don’t really hurt the movie that much.  More of an issue is the generally weak acting. None of it is terrible, but it’s all a little dodgy. Add to that the fact that there’s very little chemistry between any of the actors and the results weigh the movie down a bit and keeps it from being as funny as it could be. It’s nothing terrible, but it is worth noting.

Apart from that the only real problem is that it all feels a little dated. If it had come in in 2003, this film’s political jabs would likely feel rapier sharp. In 2009, it’s a little out of step with the world. Not to say that the issues raised are not legitimate or aren’t still issues — it’s just that today, they’ve taken on different nuances that simply aren’t addressed here.

But make no mistake: there is plenty to enjoy. The zombies look good. There are some fine jokes and visual gags (weedwhacker vs. zombie, anyone?). The direction is good, things move along at a decent clip and the movie is well shot. It’s not amazing, but it’s a solid, well-executed movie. It may offer slight returns, but it’s still got enough to offer to put it in the top third of the genre’s offerings.

Zombies of Mass Destruction is showing as part of the Denver Film Festival. You can see it tonight, November 20 at 11:30 p.m. and tomorrow, November 21 at 10:30 p.m.

Zombies of Mass Destruction/US/2009

One of my good friends who shares some of my love for the walking dead and is far, far more educated than I am sent me a short piece by Jacques Derrida on zombies. Derrida is a fancy-pants French philosopher and the father of deconstruction (yeah, I have no idea either). Here’s his take on the zombie:

Zombies are cinematic inscriptions of the failure of the “life/death” opposition. They show where classificatory order breaks down: they mark the limits of order. Like all undecidables, zombies infect the oppositions grouped around them. These ought to establish stable, clear and permanent categories. But what happens to “white/black”, “master/servant” and “civilized/primitives” when white colonialists can also be the zombie slaves of black power? Can “white science/black magic” remain untroubled, if what sometimes works against a zombie is white magic, the Christian religion, the power of love or superior morality? How certain is the opposition “inside/outside”, if the zombie’s internal soul is extracted and an internal force becomes its inside? Is there any security in opposing “masculine” to “feminine” and “good” to “evil” when the zombie is desexualized and has no power of decision?

The zombie is therefore fascinating and also horrific. It poisons systems of order, and like all undecidables, ought to be returned to order. In zombie movies, this return to order is difficult. For a classic satisfying ending, the troubled element has to be removed, perhaps by killing it. But zombies are already dead (while alive) you can’t kill a zombie, you have to resolve it. It has to be “killed” categorically, by removing its undecidability. A magic agent or superior power will have to decide the zombie, returning it to one side of the opposition or the to the. It has to become a proper corpse or a true living being. There are other endings, less final. The zombie might be ineradicable, they might return. Perhaps undecideability is always with us. If not figured in the zombie, then something else: ghosts, golems or vampires, between life and death

Found in Introducing Derrida by Jeff Collins. See, even fancy smart dudes love zombies.

Even as an ardent, tireless fan of zombie cinema, I’ve never seen anything quite like Otto; or, Up With Dead People. Existing in some heretofore undiscovered common ground between the arthouse and the grindhouse, Otto is a tale of a young gay zombie in a cruel world that’s as dead in its own way as he is.

He wanders through a bleak, decayed city, adrift and lost, until he walks into a casting call for a zombie movie. As he becomes the lead in the director’s latest opus, he begins to recover memories of who he used to be, but it’s not clear that that’s a good thing. It’s not a film for everyone — even zombie lovers may have trouble sinking their teeth into this one’s flesh. The film moves at a zombie’s pace — slow, steady and nearly unvarying throughout. In its use of layers of meaning, film-within-a-film and other arty devices, it can be bewildering. In particular, it can often feel too self-consciously arty, but there’s also a sly sense of humor at work that disarms the pretentiousness to a large degree. There are a number of explicit but not hardcore gay zombie sex scenes — disturbing, perhaps, but no more so than the explicit torture-porn close-up of an eye being punctured in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, if viewed objectively. I’d go as far as saying the gay sex scenes are part of the genius of this film. Director Bruce LaBruce is clearly using zombies to reflect on society’s distaste for and hatred of homosexuality — he explicitly states as much, through the words of one of his characters as it is explained that the recent plague of gay zombies are the most hated zombies of all. I can only imagine a large percentage of zombie fans, the same ones who might revel in the explicit, ultra-realistic gore in some zombie movies, blanching and walking out of Otto at the sight of a few erect penises — much less the wound fucking scene.

He doesn’t only deal with homosexuality here. No, this film dives headlong into the long tradition of using the zombie to represent or reflect themes of alienation, anti-consumerism, persecution and loneliness. It’s unclear if Otto is really a member of the walking dead, or merely a confused youth reacting to the hostility and emptiness of his world by embracing death, and the fact that ultimately it doesn’t matter is part of why this film works. It’s not an easy film by any means, and I can’t say that it is one that everyone will enjoy, much less “get,” but for its originality in a genre that all too often settles for rehashing favored old tropes with slightly new  make-up I really think it’s worthwhile. Director Bruce LaBruce has concocted something both strange and satisfying here by creating a zombie movie that may disturb even the most hardcore zombie fans.

Parts of this review originaly appeared as a much shorter version in the Westword. You can find the original piece here.

I had the zombie dream last night, and that seems as good a reason as any to address it here on the site. See, I’ve been having variations on the same zombie dream on and off for close to fifteen years now. I’m fairly certain it started shortly after I saw Dawn of the Dead, which was shortly before I turned twenty. It’s something I’ve discovered is remarkably common among my male friends, especially (but not exclusively) those who are deeply interested in zombies. I’m sure there are women that have the zombie dream, too, I just don’t know any of them.

The dream is usually some variation of the apocalyptic zombie scenario. Zombies run amok everywhere, and I am left alone, or nearly alone, to battle the undead hordes. These dreams are not nightmares, not for me at least. To the contrary, I find them both fascinating for their symbolism and entertaining for their sheer zombie awesomeness. Indeed, I have no doubt that they have played a major part in my obsession with all things zombie. For whatever reason, my brain has latched on to the image of the shambling, animated dead as a vehicle for any number of subconscious desires, fears and impulses.

In the dream, I am always fighting valiantly and unceasingly against the living dead, but there is always the grim certainty, just as in most zombie fiction, that eventually I will fall and be consumed. In my own analysis, I’ve determined that the zombies frequently play the part of inexorable external forces working against me. For example, while I was in college, I would have the dream with some frequency around the time of finals. I have also had it at tax time, before a big project at work is due, etc. At other times, the zombies themselves aren’t necessarily the focus, but simply acting as a foil for other impulses — for example, the last time before this most current time I had the dream, the main anxiety in it was about not being able to reach my daughter, who was on the other side of town during a major zombie outbreak.  Not coincidentally, this was right after she went to stay with her grandparents for a while. In other words, like many a filmmaker working genre Z, the zombies were but symbols of something else.

On the other hand, I occasionally have it at a time when I simply am thinking a lot about zombies. Last night, for example, I was thinking about them right before bed and actually hoping I’d have the dream. I was also trying out melatonin to see if it would aid my intermittent insomnia, and I’ve heard it can contribute to vivid dreams. In any case, I love the zombie dream and I hope I keep having it — honestly, the one thing that’s a bummer about immersing myself in zombie media is it tends to reduce the frequency of how often I dream zombies. If anyone cares to share, I’d love to hear about others’ zombie dreams, including what you think it might mean to you.