The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

Quick! How many Oscar-winning zombie movies can you name that star two Oscar-winning actresses? Just the one, I’m thinking: Death Becomes Her. The Oscar it won was for special effects. Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep are the Oscar-winning star actresses and it also has Bruce Willis and Isabella Rossellini for good measure.

Now, this is a very different take on zombie, but they are verifiably reanimated dead people. As a matter of fact, there’s a scene in the hospital where a doctor is taking the vital signs of Streep’s character that is eerily similar to the paramedics checking out the two main idiots in Return of the Living Dead. No brain eating here, though. Just uber-bitchy diva behavior.

The deal is two women who hate each other both get this fancy youth-revitalizing magic potion that makes you live forever, except there’s a catch. If you die, you don’t die. Your heart stops, your temperature drops and you stop healing, but you continue on as the living dead. That plot is used to deliver a slapsticky comedy about the pursuit of beauty and youth in Hollywood. It’s pretty shallow but very well put together and fairly entertaining, albeit probably not what most zombie lovers are looking for.

My usually zombie-hating fiancée watched this one with me. She’s a big fan, actually (apparently it was one of her favorite movies in high school). Also, I should note this is one of the worst DVD transfers ever. Not only it is a chopped, pan-and-scan aspect ration, it’s also grainy, muddy and ugly. Awful.

Again, circumstances (watching with my SO, in this case) dictated skipping the short. But no worries, I have plenty of shorts to come.

If REC 2 proved anything, it’s that co-directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza were not one-hit wonders. It is awesome. It picks up right where REC leaves off, goes into some far-out, unexpected territory and delivers an experience that’s similar in pace and intensity to the original while retaining a wholly original character.

That being said, zombie purists that were a little uneasy with some elements of REC will be off the bus within twenty minutes. The cause of the zombie plague revealed at the end of REC plays a huge part in the story here. And if you haven’t seen the first, stop here and go watch it. Beyond the jump I’ll be spoiling some elements of the first movie’s story in discussing the second. The rest of you, follow me…

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Last night’s enterprise was the murky, confusing and thoroughly ridiculous Night of the Zombies. It goes by a few other names, including Gamma 693, Night of the Wehrmacht Zombies and Night of the Zombies II. I’ve mentioned before that there seems to be an inverse relationship between the number of names a movie goes under and its quality. That applies here.

Oh, it’s also a Nazi zombie movie, a genre which seems to be cursed (of the many, many Nazi zombie movies in existence, only one is any good) and it stars a porn star in a non-porn acting role. So, yeah. Pretty much a terrible movie.

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Around this time last year, Colin was generating a huge buzz at Cannes as the sub-$100 budget zombie movie. While that budget is questionable (sure, they might have only spent that out of pocket but what about the cameras, editing equipment, etc?) it is clearly a very low budget affair. More importantly, it actually justifies at least some degree of the hype that surrounded it. This is micro budget zombie movie making done right.

The basic story follows a dude from shortly after he gets bit. We watch him turn, then wander around some English city once he does, getting into zombie mishaps. They’re very Romero-like zombie mishaps — very slow, messed up and pretty stupid, yet possibly retaining a minor spark of who and what they were.

Speaking of Romero, fans will be reminded of Bub from Day of the Dead and certain elements of the just-released Survival of the Dead‘s plot as well. This is a relatively sympathetic portrait of the zombie, as far as one can be sympathetic to an ambulatory corpse trying to eat you. It also draws stylistic influence from 28 Days Later to some degree (musically in particular, but also in the depiction of the zombies as feral and animal-like) and at times it plays out almost like a zombie version of Richard Linklater’s Slacker.

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What better way to start off a zombie movie marathon than the movie that transformed zombies from a second-rate movie monster to the greatest creature of all time? None. None better way, I say. So I did.

What to say about NotLD? It’s almost certainly literally all been said before. I’ve probably seen it six or eight times, perhaps a few more. It’s enjoyable every time. I find something new or find my focus shifted every time I watch it. I noticed the music a lot, in part because I’ve been listening intermittently to Tonight of the Living Dead by 400 Lonely Things, which is an ambient work based on transformations of the original audio. The film’s score is a weird mix of classical, almost old-fashioned, film music and weird, electronic sounds (theremin? organ run through a delay effect? anyone know?). There are also some odd sound design decisions, such as the bizarre echo effect on the scream when Karen Cooper is killed. But it all works, which is part of the genius of the film.

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June has arrived and with it, Zombie Movie Marathon Month 3.0! I’m kicking things off tonight with Night of the Living Dead and a short film to be determined. The additional 29 feature films can be found below. I’ll determine which short films I watch each night in a random manner.

Starting tomorrow, you’ll see daily reaction pieces on the previous evening’s viewing. These aren’t full reviews (although sometimes they come close) but just a quick reaction from em to what I have just seen. For June, these reaction pieces, the daily news roundup and Fashion Zombie will be all you see. I won’t have time to work on much else, but the usual schedule will return in July. Remember, if you are doing any zombie movie marathoning and blogging/Tweeting/Facebooking about it, let me know so I can link to you and share the joy. And you can always find all the ZMMM coverage via the dedicated Zombie Movie Marathon Month tag.

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It’s hard to believe, but the third annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month starts in less than a week. Easier to believe is that the planning is coming down to the last possible minute. That’s just how I roll, there’s no avoiding it. That being the case, there’s still plenty of time for you all to weigh in with some suggestions. Below the break, I’ll explain what this years themes are, give you the preliminary list of movies I’m considering and solicit your input on the which should stay, which should go and what I should add. If you are currently asking yourself ‘Zombie movie mara-what now?” then read the ZMMM 3.0 Intro post, which includes complete lists of what was watched in years one and two.

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Hark! The third annual Zombie Movie Marathon Month approaches! June is just a few short weeks away and that means it’s almost time for my annual thirty-day, thirty-film zombie marathon. If you’re not familiar with the tradition, you can read last year’s introductory post, orlast year’s wrap up post or even the whole batch of posts tagged with Zombie Movie Marathon Month to get up to speed. Or just keep reading this and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what is going on by the end.

Seeing as how the initial ZMMM was more or less responsible for the birth of this site, it’s kind of a big deal to me. But what does it mean to you?

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In 1974, two of film’s greatest movements — Blaxploitation and zombies — combined to form Sugar Hill, one of the most unjustly forgotten movies in film history. It’s the story of a woman (Marki Bey as Diana “Sugar” Hill) who turns to voodoo to get revenge on the powerful mobsters who murdered her boyfriend. With an army of chrome-eyed, cobweb-festooned zombies commanded by voodoo god Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley), Bey dons a funky jumpsuit and takes out the mobsters in inventively horrible ways. The incredibly loud clothing, unique creature design and stylish camera work result in one of the most visually stunning entries in zombie film history.

In an interesting and rarely used twist, this movie really played up the voodoo angle, utilizing not just zombies but voodoo dolls and rituals, a voodoo-drum heavy soundtrack and a starring role for voodoo god/spirit Baron Samedi. The zombie design is unique — and awesome — as well. The cobwebs, blank expressions and weird, silver eyes were both cool and creepy. I’m actually somewhat surprised no one has used that look since. It’s very effective.

Okay, the plot is paper thin, the acting is generally mediocre with occasional flashes of scenery-chewing insanity and it’s non-PC to the point of being embarrassing to modern sensibilities. But you don’t go to a Blaxploitation/zombie film looking for deep plot, deft characterization or a message — you go for jive talking, corpse raising, and ass kicking, and it delivers all of that in abundance.

Sugar Hill/US/1974

Parts of this review originally appeared in my initial reaction piece when I viewed it as part of the 2009 Zombie Movie Marathon Month and in a piece I wrote for Westword.

These days, the Romero-inspired vision of flesh-eating zombies is so ingrained as the de facto blueprint for the living dead that it’s hard to remember that anything of substance came before. Yet before he came along and changed the game forever with the now-classic 1968 feature Night of the Living Dead, zombies already had a rich, 35+ year history at the movies. Admittedly, most of those films were, to put it mildly, forgettable. There are a few worthwhile films to be found in the first three and half decades of zombiedom, though. Here’s a guide to five of them that are worth the time to track down, in order from least worthwhile to most.

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