Zombie Virus on Mulberry Street
Having arrived back from this years Glastonbury festival I needed to remember the details of the film I watched before I went away. Now, I don’t particularly have any desire to re-watch it to familiarise myself as it wasn’t all that decent or apparently memorable either. However, I reached a compromise and just stuck it on fast-forward to speed through the 80 minutes in about quarter of an hour. It reminded me of some of the decent aspects of the film, but sadly also the ending, which surprisingly I had forgotten about considering I could see it coming from a mile away during my first viewing.
Anyway, Zombie Virus on Mulberry Street – simply Mulberry Street outside of the UK – centres around an apartment-block in New York, home to around half a dozen standard residents and a caretaker who has unfortunately recently been bitten by a mysterious undead rodent. In possibly the greatest moment of the film we see this caretaker transforming into a mutant Rat-man, a not too dissimilar scene to Jeff Goldblums ‘The Fly’. He then tries to munch on any of the residents he comes across. There isn’t much escape for the locals as numerous ratzombies are roaming about the whole city, so they hole up in the apartment to fend for themselves.
Now, while not officially zombies the rat-creatures are for all intents and purposes members of the undead, who were brought about by infection spread from rats (possibly due to some weird experiment conducted on a pet rodent by a Mulberry Street resident). The makeup effect of these creatures is pretty decent for a low-budget film, and in particular I loved the hairy little ratty ears the infected display. There is also some mild gore on offer, mostly just blood effect here and there though.
Mulberry Street does invoke a quite impressive sense of claustrophobia and tension for quite a lot of the film, but where it falls down is when the action scenes kick in. Maybe it’s the filming style of theses moments but any sense of tension that was built up pre-action is just blown away whenever anything actually exciting happens. People get killed and attacked and there’s just no interest when it does happen, and appears quite amateurishly handled. It’s a pity really because there are some really good moments here, but when the plot actually kicks in the film is just dull.
Sadly, this film doesn’t compare to the awesome Ratman although the rat-creatures do bear a slight resemblance to the diminutive Nelson De La Rosa, albeit much taller.
Gore Score D
Norks Score F
Originality Score D
Overall Score D-
King of the Zombies
“If there’s one thing I wouldn’t want to be twice, zombies is both of them”
Ah, googly-eyed Mantan Moreland. A star from back in the day when there was no such thing as Racism. Playing the standard role of ‘Scared Servant’ in almost all of his films, he parts with tradition for King of the Zombies and takes on the roll of ‘Scared Servant’. His job here is apparently to accompany his employer and friend on a plane which crashes onto a graveyard on a miscellaneous Caribbean island, and to be scared of everything.
This Island is the property of Miklos Sangre (Bela Lugosi – sorry, some actor called Henry Victor doing his best Lugosi impression). Sangre is an Austrian who has fled to the Caribbean, and apparently uses this base to radio out to some unknown people who all speak German.
Mantan and his team crash land on this island in 1941 just before WWII breaks out (or rather slap bang in the middle of WWII for the rest of the world) and are taken to Sangre’s mansion to await rescue. Because Mantan is a Servant (ie Black) he is told he cannot take a bedroom in the mansion with his employers but has to sleep in the Kitchen with the other Servants, and it is here that he meets the Zombies. Although being Pre-Romero these Zombies don’t actually do much other than look creepy while they queue up for their rations.
Well, it turns out that Sangre is actually an evil Nazi and has kidnapped another plane crash victim from the US army and is trying to extract war information from him by turning him into a hypnotised zombie. Stumbling into this plot is old Moreland who gets zombified by Sangre (for a while), which means he too has to act creepy and eat his rations. (Eating rations is apparently all that Zombies did back in the 40’s.)
It’s not a bad little movie really, although the plot is thread-bare the enjoyment comes purely from Mantans’ jokes and ludicrous scared expressions. Everything else is pretty much just padding between Moorland’s scenes, but that’s no bad thing. It’s also of interest to see just how Black actors were cast and treated back then, which would be hugely offensive if released in modern times but is now just an interesting snapshot of an outmoded era of cinema.
Gore Score D
Norks Score F
Originality Score F
Overall Score C
Last of the Living
There are surprisingly few zombie movies where the undead call out for ‘braaiiins’, so when one comes along I’m all for it. The zombies in Last of the Living go one better by being particularly farty aswell – if there’s been one thing that the undead have been lacking in it’s flatulence.
Last of the Living is a high-art entry into the zombie canon, and follows three mates who have somehow inexplicably survived the zombie holocaust, despite being a bunch of lazy worthless bums. They have got the right idea though, as they have the run of their hometown to themselves and just move from vacant mansion to vacant mansion playing drums, watching the amazing ‘Great Bikini Workout’ DVD and listening to music. (Electricity is still working for some reason). Sadly this is all interrupted by their lack of food, so the boys tool up and head to town to loot some snacks, wading through the packs of undead.
One of the zombies they encounter happens to be one of the lads girlfriends, but unlike similar films he sensibly takes the opportunity to kill her off without any complaining, or even uttering the standard ‘but she’s my girlfriend…’ comment. (Bonus points for this!)
Anyway, in amongst all this shopping and house-moving they bump into a young lady who has developed a potential cure, and the bunch of lads decide to chaperon this lass to to the local hospital in order to perfect it. As is the way with Zombie films, trying to do some good doesn’t turn out that well and they’re swamped by the undead and fighting for their own survival when they could’ve been lazing about in some luxury apartment keeping to themselves.
This was a superb low-budget comedy zombie movie. The actors are clearly great mates and that relationship comes across superbly. The original soundtrack is impressive and coupled with the music video-style direction this is a great modern zombie comedy, and it’ll find a place alongside the Peter Jacksons’, Romeros’ and the Fulcis’ on my regular re-watch zombie shelf.
Gore Score C
Norks Score F
Originality Score C
Overall Score A
Zombiegeddon
At last, a decent Zombie Movie! After a few weeks of boring unoriginal zombie flicks I felt I needed a reboot so turned to Troma to help me out of the lull. Thankfully Zombiegeddon delivers the trash I have been craving, and more.
The plot of Zombiegeddon is just some insane nonsense about the Devil summoning up a bunch of zombies to wipe out the whole population, but it is basically just an excuse to get from set-piece to set-piece, with a bunch of b-movie celebrity cameos thrown in for good measure. We have Jesus Christ (Tom Savini) in bed with Brinke Stevens, Lloyd Kaufman as a cowardly caretaker and Linnea Quigley as a school principal. There is a zombie hunter who takes his son and his pet zombie-eating tiger out on patrol with him, some incredibly corrupt cops who just murder innocent people for kicks and a cop vs zombie kung-fu fight!
The highlights for me were Lloyd Kaufman’s homophobic janitor who mistakes the zombies for some homosexuals, and runs off to hide in a closet for the remainder of the film, as well as a scene where the 2 cops pull over a carload of boys using some very suspect interrogation techniques.
If it were to be judged on technical merit then it would fail abysmally. The quality of the filming here is pretty dire, with some bottom-drawer acting, terrible sound recording and laughably bad gore (seriously, I swear I saw the bucket come into view when a load of blood was spurted\thrown onto a wall), but none of this matters when you’re watching a who’s who of trashy horror complete with a zombie-eating tiger in it.
For extra laughs I highly recommend reading some of the user reviews on the IMDB site for this film. Seriously, some people just don’t get it.
Gore Score C
Norks Score B+
Originality Score C
Overall Score B+
Exhumed
Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)
So there I was, sat in a crummy hotel room in London on my own on the ‘lavish’ single bed with the TV’s On-Screen Program Guide covering up the whole picture so I can only hear the sound in the background. Oh well, why not get some wine in and watch the only DVD I have with me on my laptop. ‘Exhumed’. It turns out that I should have chosen to watch the static program guide instead, to be honest.
Exhumed is a turgid anthology of semi-zombie horror. 3 totally random episodes with nothing in common apart from a bizarre cobbled-together ending that pretends to tie the stories together. Firstly there is the dull story about some Japanese dude and a monk wandering in a forest looking for some artifact that can bring the dead back to life. Luckily it’s all in Japanese which masks how bad the acting really is, but it was far from classic – The fight scenes and the looks into camera were pretty dire. There are a few zombies dotted around the forest who get killed off, but there are no scares or even any excitement.
Secondly is a strange black and white noir-style film, which features some of the most appalling acting I have ever seen. It follows the adventure of some private detective lass who joins a seedy club to investigate a missing persons case, I believe. However I spent most of this section of the film with my jaw on the floor amazed at just how terrible the performances actually were while knocking back the wine that I missed out on most of the excitement, if there was any. Seriously, it was like watching a children’s school play rehearsal.
Long after my interest had faded into nothingness came the 3rd in the anthology. It seems to be set in the future with some vampires and werewolves fighting about something-or-other. This is the episode with some actual gore, but it was so amateur in it’s execution and I was so bored at this time that I couldn’t care less about any of it. Even when the chainsaw is brought out to slice up some fake body-parts I was thinking of turning this abomination off. However I stuck it out and was mildly amused when the vampire : werewolf lesbian scene kicked off, but it wasn’t enough keep me entertained and I turned the film off and curled up in the small hotel bed.
I did watch most of the final scene the next day on my train home, but was so embarrased to be seen watching it in public that I switched it off and went surfing for porn instead.
Gore Score D
Norks Score C-
Originality Score D
Overall Score F
Undead Or Alive
Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)
I had to check once or twice that I didn’t already own this movie, as it seems suspiciously similar to one of my previous films ‘The Quick and the Undead‘. It shares a similar looking sleeve design, a Western setting, a terrible pun title and was also a cheapo supermarket-shelf bought DVD, but no, this is a different movie. Whether or not it is any better is debatable though.
I have mentioned before how I loathe the Portmanteau ‘Zombedy’, but at least that was only used by writers as a shorthand description for a zombie-comedy. However, when films start to use that term in their own opening credits then I know that I’m not in for a good thing. It is particularly annoying when the comedy present is about as funny as it would be to wear cowboy-boots with the spurs on the inside. Maybe I can coin my own term of “Painfulny”, or ‘Painfully-Unfunny’, for that is more accurate. Never before have I watched a film that tries with every single word uttered to be amusing, but fails so miserably it almost becomes unbearable after the first 10 minutes.
It’s not just the script that is disgraceful, but the comedy set-pieces too. A guy gets invited into a lake with a young lass, so cue the Benny-Hill sped up footage as he undresses! A zombie gets his foot stuck in a bucket and then stands on a rake which whacks him in the face! The heroes end up in a dark basement so to be able to see they light a match, only to hilariously discover there are loads of Dynamite barrels down here! Wow, it’s like Elmer Fudd humour here.
Anyway, the plot. Well a cowboy has somehow been infected with Geronimo’s white-man curse which caused him to turn zombie and eat his family. He gets locked up by the Sherriff, but managed to bite a few people in the process. The two heroes of the film have just escaped from this jail and the Sherriff and co try to track them down but get infected before even leaving town. The rest of the film follows these zombie sheriffs chasing the two heroes across the plains as they try to get somewhere or other. Oh yes, there’s a private-schooled Native American woman along for the ride too.
Without the painful comedy this would have just been a rubbish zombie movie, but the humour is so bad that it drags the whole film down by several notches. There is some potential here – a zombie sheriff who can track by smell and never slows, never stops until he catches his prey could be a genuinely unnerving movie – but that’s not how it pans out here. It’s just utterly painful from start to finish. The gore is mostly rubbish (when someone does get bitten the camera flashes and cuts so much that you barely see anything), the soundtrack is cheesy beyond belief (and not in a good way – we’re talking heartfelt ballads here) and it’s all just irritating. Maybe we’ll get a good zombie western sometime, but judging by this effort it’s probably a long way off.
Gore Score C
Norks Score D
Originality Score D
Overall Score D-
Choking Hazard
Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)
I can count the number of Czech films I’ve ever seen on the fingers of one stumpy fingerless hand. Well that would equate to zero, whereas actually I mean one. This film to be precise. Naturally this makes it both the best and the worst Czech film I’ve ever seen, and in the grand scale of zombie movies this rates somewhere… in the middle.
A bunch of students shack up in a mostly abandoned hotel to discuss the meaning of life. Bizarrely a Porn Star / Jehovah’s Witness dude rocks on up at the motel by accident and gets wrapped up in all the metaphysical discussions, although I don’t recall him ever discussing how he can be both a Porn star and a Jehovah Witness at the same time. But hey, at least he seems passionate about both lifestyles.
Anyway, the film is not particularly scary, there is not much gore, and the nudity is also below par. So what’s left? Well the actual story, direction and plot are actually pretty decent. There are plenty of unusual scenes going on here – such as the electroshock zombie dance – which is as ludicrous as it is entertaining. In fact the whole film is like that. It’s pretty bizarre, nothing makes much sense, but it’s quite enjoyable none-the-less. Nobody involved seems too bothered that Zombies have started attacking everyone, there are no reasons given for this outbreak, and nobody is remotely concerned about what will happen after this whole hotel zombie affair has ended.
Also I seem to have missed out on the philosophical viewpoints in this film, probably because I watched the (Czech language subtitled in English) film late at night and had a fair few glasses of wine inside me, but apparently the point is that the Religious get their heads bashed in while the Nihilists get to copulate with numerous ladies while filming it on portable cameras. Well, that seems fair enough. There were other worldviews on offer but I guess they weren’t as memorable. I did like the zombie with a massive saucepan on his head that had a smiley face drawn on the front, but I don’t know what that means. Probably something to do with Communism.
Gore Score C
Norks Score D
Originality Score D
Overall Score C
Night of the Living Dead
I suppose it wouldn’t be a zombie film blog without reviewing the original flesh eater movie, which is surprisingly the last Romero film to make it onto this site. Internet blogs and movie history books are littered with reviews of this film, ranging from it’s impact on the horror scene to the social, political and racial overtones it contains, and it would be pointless to take the same course when summing it up here.
So how do I discuss this film? Well, the reason I had for watching it was because I am still fighting a losing battle to convince the girlfriend that Zombie films are all awesome. I – perhaps unwisely – introduced her to the genre with Troma’s Redneck Zombies, with unsurprisingly failed to win her over. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue also missed the mark, and even Braindead – a film so outstanding that it should be mailed out to children at birth – couldn’t convince her. Sure, she enjoyed Shaun of the Dead although that was for the comedy really, and 28 Days / Weeks Later also gets a tick in her box, but as we all know there aren’t any zombies in those films. No, the only minor success I have had is with another Romero zombie movie, the superb Day of the Dead, which got the review of ‘alright’. Sigh. How about I go back to the drawing board and start with the film that converted many many people to the love of Zombies – George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
So, how did this film go down? Well, she hated the characters of Barbra and Cooper, but that’s how everyone feels. However she didn’t laugh out loud when Ben punches Babs in the face even though it’s the best part of the film. She also got annoyed that Ben didn’t just wave his hands around shouting that he’s human at the end instead of just standing there and getting shot. Maybe she’s got a point there. Also, she was adamant before watching the film that there would never be a black & white horror film that would scare her and she stuck by that statement, never cowering behind a cushion or other such standard girlie actions.
Anyway, we all know how this films goes, but it was interesting to show it to someone who has never seen it before. And her verdict? It was ‘Passable’. Hmm, maybe I’ll try out Return of the Living Dead next time, surely she’ll love that one?
Gore Score C-
Norks Score F
Originality Score B+
Overall Score A
Shadow : Dead Riot
Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)
Zombies and Prisons have produced some reasonably decent films in the past. Well, I say ‘reasonably decent’ meaning that ‘Zombie Death House’ and ‘Dead Men Walking’ were not as poor as I had expected. Surely these films could only have been improved by changing the location to a women’s prison? And how about chucking in a famous horror actor as lead zombie?
Well, the women’s prison angle works just as expected, meaning lots of pointless shower scenes and chicks with obvious stick-on tattoos fighting and moaning. It’s a pity that none of them are particularly easy on the eye, particularly the butch muscly woman ‘Mondo’ who seems to have modelled herself on Dennis Rodman. Mmm, Attractive! Still, none of them are particularly modest and have no qualms wandering into camera shot with their norks on display, and so the first hour of the film is a pretty good laugh, although light on the actual horror.
After about an hour we get introduced to the star zombie – Tony Todd of Candyman fame – who is resurrected when one of the prisoners accidently gives birth over the spot where he was buried (although he had died due to spectacular exploding, so I’m not quite sure what was left of him to bury. Anyway…) Candyman brings back a bunch of his zombie mates and they start to terrorise the prisoners while he hunts down the female ‘Solitare’ for a reason that doesn’t make any sense. He killed her Mum apparently, and that forged a connection of some sort with the child. OK then.
One of the great things about undead movies is that the Zombies themselves are never really the stars, they just represent a generic ‘bad’ that the heroes have to overcome. Introducing a main zombie personality takes the focus away from the struggle against the zombies and focuses it onto a specific character, meaning that it might as well be a standard serial killer type movie, which is all this really is albeit with a dumb supernatural twist. Chuck in some terrible acting, cheap fight choreography and a nonsense (even by zombie movie standard) plot and what do you get? Well aside from the copious full frontal nudity, not very much.
Gore Score D
Norks Score A-
Originality Score D
Overall Score D
The Serpent And The Rainbow
Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)
Wow, a zombie movie more-or-less based on a true story? Made by a famous director? Featuring a famous and ubiqutious lead star? Oh yes, there are no toxic-waste spewing, brain-chomping undead rotters in this 1980’s flick. Hot on the heels of the awesome ‘Spaceballs’, Bill Pulman kicks off his 3-random-films-every-single-year-from-then-until-eternity career with this Haiti set real life voodoo exploration.
Having been attacked, drugged by a creepy voodoo Bokor and then stalked by jaguars in Haiti just after the opening credits, Bill Pulman returns to the US only to be told that he has to head back to the country to root out some mystic death-faking (ie zombie) drug that could be used by the American government for some reason. (Probably for misguided and unexplained military purposes, as is the way in zombie movies.)
Anyway, old Bill turns up over in Haiti and starts hanging out with some doctor lass who he surprisingly takes a liking too, even going so far as boning her under a waterfall. However, being the only white dude in the country he attracts suspicion from the local government and they take it upon themselves to attack, drug and then provide him a (slightly unwanted) scrotal body piercing service. Still, at least it was free, eh?
Thankfully he manages to get up and about the place following this incident, and goes about his task of trying to find this magic zombie anaesthetic while still getting his end away with the doctor chick and hallucinating quite a bit on a daily basis. He still gets chased around by the evil baddies though, it’d be boring if the just let him go and forgot about him.
The Serpent And The Rainbow was a really enjoyable affair. While a decent thriller in its own right, it’s also good to see a film that truly goes back to the roots of zombie culture, which this film does better than any film I’ve ever seen that’s not in black & white. Educational, bloody, and a great ‘zombie rising from the grave to grab Bill Pullmans crotch’ scene. What else could you wish for? (Well ok yes, there are even Norks in this too).
Gore Score C
Norks Score D
Originality Score B
Overall Score B
