The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

Return of the Living Dead 3

Yesterday marked the halfway point of the fifth annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month, so it seemed like a good time to check in. For those of you who haven’t been reading since last time, ZMMM is my annual month-long zombie-a-day film fest: one zombie movie a day, every day, for an entire month. For those who have been reading a while, you may be wondering why the hell this is happening now, rather than in June as it has in years past. My reasons are twofold:

1) My wife has long petitioned for me to move the marathon to a fall/winter month, arguing (rightly) that we have too much going on in summer — camping, travel, friends visiting — to give up time every day in June to watch a zombie movie. This might have been reason enough but then something came along to seal the deal…

2) We had a baby May 29, two days before I would have ostensibly started the marathon. Let me tell you, having a newborn in the house makes it pretty hard to get something like this done. It’s been hard enough now, and she’s almost five month old! Bottom line is, June was out, so October is in! And let’s face it, October is a more fitting month anyway.

Okay, on to this year!

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Greetings, undead masses! Johnathon reporting in to unveil the latest episode of the Inevitable Zombie Podcast…

Now there are several different ways to get the Inevitable Zombie Podcast.

• You can subscribe by following our RSS feed. Just follow this link to get the feed.
• You can also now subscribe through iTunes. Just click here to make the podcast ipod friendly.
• Finally, you can just download the file directly from us by clicking here.
  

Episode 007 – Zombie Movie Marathon Month: Part 2

Hosts – Cory Casciato and Johnathon Brock

Run Time: 1 Hour 5 Minutes 42 Seconds

Show Notes

Week 2(and a half-ish) of Zombie Movie Marathon Month is complete, and we’re starting to feel the pull of the undead in our daily lives.

So come listen in to our reviews on the movies we’ve watched so far, and make sure to weigh in with any questions or comments for next weeks show.

One final note… This podcast isn’t too graphic, but it is labeled Not Safe For Work. We drop the f-bomb on more than one occasion and talk about some of the more graphic images of shows like The Walking Dead, as well as numerous other grotesque scenes from all forms of zombie media. Just a heads up for those of you listening at your work cubes—wear headphones.

Alright, that’s it, go listen to it and let us know what you think in the comments. Tell us what you’d like to see from us on future shows, make fun of my impressions, or ask some questions for next week’s show.

~Johnathon

Greetings, undead masses! Johnathon reporting in to unveil the latest episode triumphant return of the Inevitable Zombie Podcast…

Now there are several different ways to get the Inevitable Zombie Podcast.

• You can subscribe by following our RSS feed. Just follow this link to get the feed.
• You can also now subscribe through iTunes. Just click here to make the podcast ipod friendly.
• Finally, you can just download the file directly from us by clicking here.
  

Episode 006 – Zombie Movie Marathon Month: Part 1

Hosts – Cory Casciato and Johnathon Brock

Run Time: 0 Hour 44 Minutes 49 Seconds

Show Notes

WOO! We’re back baby! You guys asked for it and we’re delivering. Cory and I are currently well into Zombie Movie Marathon Month (2011) at this point and we’re loving every minute of it. So come listen in to our reviews on the movies we’ve watched so far, and make sure to weigh in with any questions or comments for next weeks show.

One final note… This podcast isn’t too graphic, but it is labeled Not Safe For Work. We drop the f-bomb on more than one occasion and talk about some of the more graphic images of shows like The Walking Dead, as well as numerous other grotesque scenes from all forms of zombie media. Just a heads up for those of you listening at your work cubes—wear headphones.

Alright, that’s it, go listen to it and let us know what you think in the comments. Tell us what you’d like to see from us on future shows, make fun of my impressions, or ask some questions for next week’s show.

~Johnathon

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since last year’s Zombie Movie Marathon month, but here we are, with June just days away. Due to a lack of time I had considered skipping the marathon this year, until I realized, that’s just crazy talk. So, as it has been the past three years, June will be a month of undead action: 30 days, 30 movies, countless undead. Let the rejoicing commence.

This year, my Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse co-pilot Johnathon Brock will be joining me. We’ll be watching the same movie, on the same days, sometime even at the same time (maybe). Instead of last year’s daily updates (definitely no time for that), we’ll be doing a once-a-week podcast wrap up of that week’s zombie films. We may also live blog or live tweet some of them, if there’s interest and we can work out the logistics.

We’re also forgoing the themes of the last two years, apart from a general theme of “Johnathon catches up on the classics,” since he’s somehow missed seeing a number of all-time greats (such as the original Dawn of the Dead—for shame, Johnathon, for shame). This will mean a lot of repeats from past years and other, non-marathon viewing times for me, but I’m down with that. A lot of these are, after all, classics, totally worth seeing again. And I’ll also be catching up on some recent stuff that I missed out on (such as Resident Evil: Afterlife—for shame, Cory, for shame). And we’ll be filling in the cracks with stuff that’s available on Netflix Instant Watch, stuff from my voluminous catalog, and stuff recommended by you, our faithful readers. After the break, you can find the list of this year’s movies, both those that we’ve settled on and those still in the “maybe” pile. And please, leave us a comment about what else we should watch this year.
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Look! A zombie!

There’s not a lot of reason to seek out the forgettable and forgotten zombie-alien invasion movie Invisible Invaders. Maybe if you were on a quest to see every movie John Carradine ever made? Or a quest like my own, to see every zombie movie ever made? Both would suffice, but in either case, put it near the end of your list — it sucks.

Its primary sin is it’s boring. A story about unstoppable aliens who can reanimate the dead should not be this dull. But if you tell that story largely via voiceover and stock footage, I guess it isn’t too surprising. The majority of the rest of the “action” takes place in a bunker, where four people argue, fight and “do science.” The result of their “science” is a goofy looking sonic raygun prop that can stop the aliens, thus saving the Earth. Also, two of them fall in love and the asshole guy dies.

Zombies? Yeah, there are zombies. They’re pretty incidental, though. The aliens occupy dead people in order to … uh … occupy dead people? Once they strangle a guy and they seem to cause some trouble elsewhere, but mostly they just stagger around looking vaguely creepy. I guess cinematic scares were hard to come by in the ’50s and maybe this was enough? Anyway, these are among the least interesting zombies ever. Even Plan 9 from Outer Space has them beat.

To reiterate: don’t watch this, it really isn’t worth your time.

Invisible Invaders/US/1959

This movie was viewed as part of my third annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month — read the initial Invisible Invaders reaction piece.

Once upon a time there was a porn star named Jamie Gillis. And that porn star went on to try his hand at acting in a zombie movie called Night of the Zombies (aka Gamma 693, Night of the Zombies 2 and probably a handful of other names). And since Gillis had the acting range and skill of a heavy, wooden plank, that movie was bad.

Oh, and it didn’t help that the story was nonsense, the writing was shit, the effects crappy, the pacing painfully slow and the sound and lighting totally deficient. So is there any reason — any reason at all — to see Gamma 693?

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Thirty days, thirty movies: done. It all ended last night with Cemetery Man. If you aren’t familiar with the movie, the quickest summary I can give is its Italian title Dellamorte Dellamore, which translates to Death Love. It is a movie about death and love, with lots of zombies. It’s also beautiful (visually and otherwise), funny and damn strange.

I really want to do an in-depth review/critique/analysis of this film in the near future, so I will keep my remarks here brief. First off, if you haven’t seen this movie, put it at the top of your must-see list. Even if you don’t love it (and I think most of you will) it is an important film, both within the zombiesphere and within the larger context of “important” films. Hell, even if you think it is dumb as fuck (and it’s possible, though wrong, to interpret it that way) there is a whole lot of the gorgeous Anna Falchi nude in it (I’ll put a non-revealing nude picture of her below, for those who are curious), and arguably it’s not even gratuitous nudity since it ties closely into the plot.

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There are pleasant surprises and unpleasant surprises and Dead of Night 9also known as Deathdream, among other names) was one of the pleasant ones. I have to admit, when I saw it was created by the team of writer Alan Ormsby and director Bob Clark, who also wrote/directed the execrable Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, my heart sank. All the more pleasant then when this turned out to be such a good film!

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Folks, this movie is the stuff that Cinemax was made for. The Vineyard is cheap, tawdry and dumb, barely more than an excuse for lots of gratuitous nudity and sleaze and a little bit of gore (a very little bit, unfortunately).

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Here we have another zombie cop movie. But this zombie cop is also a Maniac Cop! And by maniac cop, I mean a cop that kills people randomly, for no good reason. Well, he has a good reason to kill a few of them. The rest, not so much. See, maniac!

This movie is chock full of genre vets. Bruce Cambell, Tom Atkins, Richard Roundtree top the list, but there are others you can pick out if you have a sharp eye and a good memory for character actors. It’s directed by William Lustig, who also directed Uncle Sam (review here). Both that movie and this one are basically slasher movies with a zombie as the slasher. This one also mixes in some standard cop movie tropes as well.

It’s kind of hard to tell if the maniac cop is a zombie or not. They never use the word, but he can take multiple bullets without flinching, is cold, doesn’t have a heart beat and survives a serious impalement pretty easily. Sounds like a zombie to me.

I didn’t think much of this, but I definitely enjoyed it more than Uncle Sam. It wasn’t great, but it certainly wasn’t bad. And hell, it’s worth watching for the cast alone!