Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers

AKA Attack Girls Swim Team vs the Undead

By my calculations this is the 98th zombie film fully covered in this blog, and as I approach my centenary – which will doubtless feature a worthy movie – it’s probably good to get some serious trash out-of-the-way.

While checking my post count it came to my attention that I have only featured one film since July 2009 which wasn’t in the ‘Norkless’ catagory, and thereby my decision was made. That decision was to watch a nork-filled exploitation zombie trashfest, and how could a film titled “Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers” not meet that criteria?

Well, nork-filled it sure is. And there are some zombies in there too (well, ‘infected’ actually). But does this count as exploitation trash, or has it actually veered off into Soft-Core Pornography territory? You might think that doesn’t really matter, nudity is nudity, and more of it can’t be bad, surely? Well I am not convinced.

Take for example the excellent ‘Zombie Lake’. This has far more nudity but wouldn’t necessarily be thought of as soft porn. The reason for this is that the nudity is of the ridiculous and un-erotic variety, where GRFoCS seems to exist purely for titillation. Instead of pouring a beer and laughing at the pointless nature of the nudity as with Zombie Lake, “Girls Rebel Force” instead drops you into the ‘why don’t I just stick on a REAL porn film instead?’ mood. I like my trashy horror fun and stupid, and my porn… Well, I never watch the stuff obviously, so I don’t know. It’s disgusting and exploits women and all that. Urgh. *Cough*.

Anyway, you get my point. So what else is there in this film, other than lesbian incest and lots of norks? Well there is a basic plot, believe it or not. A young lass ‘Aki’ is starting a new school and befriends one of the swim team girls. Perhaps coincidentally this is at the same time that a mysterious virus breaks out within the school, infecting everybody except the entire female swim team. It is up to this new girl and her buoyant pals to track down the cause and kick some arse.

Naturally, being a Japanese zombie movie the plot is far from as simple as this sounds. There are strange backstories for Aki involving kidnap and assassins, and double-crossing between the girls. It doesn’t help that the whole swim team actually get wiped out in their first actual fight, leaving just Aki and her pal to nude it up and occasionally fight the zombies together.

Overall it was a reasonably enjoyable affair, with some occasional gore, daft plot and a vaginal laser to keep the entertainment up. Plus there was all that nudity which I may have mentioned before. Think ‘Soft porn with zombies’, and not ‘zombie movie with nudity’ and you’ll be fine.

Gore Score C
Norks Score B+
Originality Score B
Overall Score C

 

The Vanguard

Wow, this is a proper exciting idea. Imagine a film with hundreds, nay thousands, of the undead roaming around a near deserted planet hunting for human flesh. Whatever buildings remain are crumbling, and wild animals roam free. there are huge explosions as the left-over power stations give way, and in among all this apocalypse a lone survivor hides out in a massive self-contained bunker with all the remaining technology around him helping him to keep alive and outwit the living dead.

Now take that lone guy out of this exciting scenario and dump him in an empty forest that suffers from an overabundance of lens filters. Replace his awesome bunker with a wooden barbed-wire fence tied to some trees. Substitute the cool explosions with some leaves. Next take the thousands of undead zombies and exchange them for a couple of blokes in white contact lenses and black pen scribbles on their faces. Finally, remove all the excitement and replace with a huge dollop of mind-numbing boredom. Yup, that’s The Vanguard.

What could have been an interesting take on the ‘Last Man on Earth’ scenario is diluted down to simply being 1 guy running around in the woods talking to himself, with the occasional bit of camera-trickery gore. (You will see the guy throw a wooden spear, then it will cut to a ‘zombie’ with this spear in him, or you’ll see him hitting an out-of-shot ‘zombie’ and some blood will spray into shot).

After about 20 minutes of this excitement with pretty-much no plot at all the fun doubles, when a second dude turns up and starts hanging out with the first guy! Ooh! Still nothing much happens apart from these 2 blokes running around in the woods.

Finally, the thrill factor is turned to maximum-overdrive levels when not 1, but 2 more people turn up! That’s 4 people running around in the woods!

There is a little bit of in-fighting (but not enough to get too excited about), then more of the ‘Last Man on Earth’ plot gets ripped off, and then the film ends.

My god, was this dull. There may have been a bit more going on towards the end than I remember, but I was so numb after the first hour that I pretty much lost interest all-together. I have sat through boring zombie films before, but nothing like this.

Gore Score D
Norks Score F
Originality Score D
Overall Score D-

 

Ooh, an Award!

Cheers to In It For The Kills for spreading the love and deciding that Devouring the Flesh of the Living should be awarded the spectacular Fantastically frightening blog award!

In It For The Kills: Horror Perspectives is both an intelligent and fantastically well-written blog, covering a huge range of amazing and kooky horror movies so it is surprising that she feels that the trashfest that is Devouring the Flesh of the Living deserves recognition. Perhaps it’s because this award has such a crackin’ pair of norks.

Anyway, as you’re here now please head on over and check her out. And after that go check the lady who started this whole award off, BJ-C at Day of the Woman. Browse around, surf the links, and hopefully find some fantastic blog sites that you’ll grow to love (almost as much as us here!)

 

Codename : Yin / Yang

So, what’s the cause of the Zombies here?

Virus
Chemical Spill
Voodoo
Government Experiment
Radiation
Sumatran Rat-Monkey ?

Yes, you’ve guessed it, it’s the ever reliable Government Scientific Experiments. However this time around we’re not just treated to a quick explanation of the cause before all the zombie carnage begins, in Codename:Yin\Yang the Scientific Experiments make up pretty much the whole film.

OK, that’s not entirely true. There are 2 areas to this film. We have the aforementioned Experiments sections set in a grotty medical building which looks like an old abandoned hospital or something, while alongside we get the scenes of 2 young lasses (Yin and Yang) as they wander through tunnels trying to get into this building to stop the scientists. They do fight some Zombies here and there too – and these are some impressive looking Zombies considering just how low-budget everything else in this film is – but basically that’s the whole film right there. Experiments, girls walking in tunnels, experiments, girls fighting zombies in tunnels, experiments….. blah blah blah.

There is some sort of eye-patch wearing Black Ops dude along for the ride too, who is on the side of the Scientists and is certainly the best part of this film, from an acting talent point of view at least. He’s there to find out what the status of the project is and to complain at the 2 scientists. At some point you know that the 2 girls and this dude will lock horns and start fighting, but that’s not until late in the film. Until then we have to put up with the whole tunnels, experiments, tunnels, experiments fiasco.

OK, the fights with the Zombies are OK, and there are a few decent gore moments there, but the rest of the whole shebang is just dull. Couple this with the two heroines, who are supposed to be gorgeous eye-candy – although they appear to be made of wood rather than candy judging by their acting abilities – but are no more than average looking. However the only Danish people I can think of are Niels Bohr, Lars Ulrich and Lars von-Trier, of which none are particularly easy on the eye so maybe that’s the case for everyone from Denmark.

what you end up with is a passable, if unoriginal and rather boring SOV zombie movie. A pity really, as I do like to see films that are so proud to be indie, but I do wish they’d come up with some decent ideas ever now and then.

Gore Score C+
Norks Score F
Originality Score C-
Overall Score D

 

SexyKiller

Trashy, something trashy. That’s what I’m looking for. Zombie films are either too serious or far too ‘comedic’ these days. Where is all that beautiful exploitation of old? Stupid gore, unnecessary nudity, nonsensical plot and daft looking zombies. What more could you possibly want in a movie?

Well annoyingly, SexyKiller doesn’t fulfil any of these requests – and worse – it’s barely even a zombie movie at all. Hell, after about an hour there wasn’t even a hint of even a small possibility of a brief minimal appearance of anything approaching the Undead. If it wasn’t for the fact that the University in the film was called the Jorge Romero Medical School I would have quite possibly turned this off and gone back to my shelf to find something else.

However, what it lacks in zombies it makes up for in ‘homages’ to every other movie under the sun. And by Homage, what I really mean is “let’s make a film with no plot of its own, we’ll just steal scenes and plot devices from any movie we can think of and then the viewer will just appreciate the nods to their favourite films and forget that there is nothing actually interesting or original at all in the movie”.

Some bird (the ‘Sexy Killer’ of the title) is a bit of a psycho murderer. Although rather than being the ’sexy’ you would think she’s actually a rather odd-looking annoying bint who spends her time chatting into the camera about what she’s doing. This woman kills people for no reason, while complaining about everything all the time. She meets a medical research dude and ‘hillariously’ confuses his business of trainee coroner for that of a serial killer. They then begin a romance, which seems to involve her having sex with him while she wears all her clothes (seriously, why put in sex scenes if you’re going to leave the lass covered up? Who cares about that?)

After all this hugely below-par serial killer aspect is played out the zombies turn up for the last 10 minutes or so. Apparently the coroner and pal have invented a machine which instead of reading the minds of the dead as planned actually brings them back to life as Zombies. These zombies then attack everyone until the films ends shortly after.

Overall it was annoying, uninteresting, mostly ungory unfunny crossover film, and the only nudity was a female changing room right at the beginning (albeit a particularly decent bit of unnecessary nudity).

It is neither a polished slasher pic, nor a decent zombie film. Seriously, just watch the films it steals from instead. Scream, Reanimator and even The Dead Pit (a film which also saved the zombies until the end but still managed to be interesting and creepy all the way through).

Gore Score D
Norks Score B-
Originality Score D
Overall Score D

 

Colin

Colin has been doing the rounds on the wordwide filmfest circuit for several years now, but has only recently received any serious distribution. Heck, the magazine I co-write for – RevenantMagazine.com – showed Colin at their yearly film festival back in 2008 (where it received high praise too, long before the current PR Hoopla I might add). So, critics seem to love it, and the zombie fans who have seen it before everyone else loved it too. How about the zombie fan who saw it when it actually got released, now that there is no cred to be gained from seeing a hyped film before it’s fully out in the wild? Well, that is the camp I fall into.

Low-budget zombie movies probably make up around 50% of the films from my blog, so it’s fair to say I have had a fair amount of exposure to both the excellent and the abominable no-cost undead films. But then does my opinion really matter? Well no, not really. But i’m going to give it anyway.

Colin is a fantastic low-budget movie which totally shows up just how poor the majority of other SOV zombie films really are. The direction is superb, there are some amazing camera shots that both look good and genuinely add to the story, and the actual plot has both originality and some real soul to it, especially considering that there is next to no dialogue in the entire film.

OK, we’ve had films from the point of view of the zombie before. Most notably a similar British movie I, Zombie. However, this is probably the first movie to follow the Revenant while he goes about his business as a real Zombie during the Z-War Apocalypse. We get glimpses of the few remaining humans racing past Colin during his seemingly aimless roaming of the streets, see zombies devouring the numerous corpses and even get to meet Colins’ living family members as they bump into their corpsified relative.

While the majority of the film seems to have very little plot whatsoever it soon becomes apparent that this really is not the case, and that Colin is actually a film about how thoroughly ingrained into our conscience the experiences we live through really are.

Sure, it’s not a perfect movie. For what seems like 5 minutes we get to see a girl stumbling around in a pitch-black cellar not really being able to see what is going on, and throughout the film the frenetic ’shaky camera’ effect when the action kicks in is so over-the-top that it just causes nausea and confusion rather than add to the atmosphere. But these issues can be overlooked by the fact that this film really does try to do something different, and totally succeeds. I was so engrossed that I didn’t realise until the end that there was no nudity whatsoever! Now that must be a good recommendation.

Gore Score C
Norks Score F
Originality Score A
Overall Score B+

 

Zombie Self-Defense Force

OK, it’s probably about time for some mental Japanese zombie horror. Having recently gone through a phase of watching Japan-o-gore movies, none of which were Zombie films (Meatball Machine, Machine Girl and the awesome Tokyo Gore Police) I felt it about time I dive into some Japanese Zombie gore, and this wierd little number fit the bill perfectly.

I shall start this review with some choice words summing up the film : cheap, gory, psycho zombie-baby, cyborg and a space octopus. Now, that’s gotta get your attention, surely. Space Octopus?

Opening up with some CGI so awful that my GF sat for about 1 minute of the film before heading straight to bed moaning that she’s never seen such cheap CGI in all her life – and I’m almost inclined to agree – ZSDF kicks into the live-action in a forest somewhere, and we meet a few pockets of nefarious weirdos all separately going about their business. Such business includes some drug addicted Yakuza burying one of their victims, a group of army types on a training exercise, a J-pop starlet on a photo shoot and a sleazy husband breaking up with his pregnant mistress.

All these parties see a crude CGI flying saucer flying overhead, which crash-land somewhere in the forest emitting a bizarre green-glow of radiation. Obviously this strange gas thing has the side effect of reanimating the dead, and the remaining people meet up while running from the undead and seek refuge in a local bed and breakfast place.

Holed up in this venue with the undead knocking at the windows and the humans slowly succumbing to the zombie virus we get treated to loads of excellent low-budget gore (the best kind of gore hands down), a fantastically mental zombie-baby going on the rampage and the transformation of one of the characters from confused human to badass robot-cyborg. And then there is the aforementioned Space Octopus. Yes, (s)he only gets a screen time of about 2 seconds but it was the highlight of this bizarre cheapo gorefest.

An original film? Well, not particularly. Cutting-edge effects? Certainly not. Plot, script and storyline? Hell no. But bizarre comedy and loads of gore? Why yes please.

Gore Score B+
Norks Score F
Originality Score C-
Overall Score B-

 

Wasting Away

Ah, the old ‘chemical experiments on recruits to create a new breed of super-soldiers’ plot. The current standard for zombie films. Can’t we kick off another Cold War or have a new Nuclear Arms Race or something? Anything just to get a new idea for reanimating the dead.

At least Wasting Away tries to do something reasonably original, that is by infecting the stars with zombism – via neon green zombie beer ice-cream no less – without their knowing. Yes, these 4 losers have become zombies and don’t even realise it. They see each-other as full-on normal chaps, but to everyone else they are the walking dead. This is done quite cleverly by showing the scenes of the main stars in colour, while whenever anyone else glances at them the film switches to black-and-white and we see them as they really are – veiny, shuffling members of the undead.

As unique as this sounds for a film it does present some problems. The first minor issue is that blood and gore looks a lot more exciting when it’s in colour. Secondly – and this is the main problem – having one unusual interesting idea is not really enough to base an entire movie on. Oh yes, it’s all good and fun the first couple of times the camera switches to Black and White and we see them transposed as zombies, but when that is the whole plot device and we have to sit through it again and again it just gets irritating. If they actually wrote a story around this idea then maybe it wouldn’t be so annoying. But there isn’t one. It’s just some crappy characters becoming unexpected zombies who spend half the film hanging out together not realising their condition, and the other half hanging out still not really doing anything but this time with an army private who has the same condition.

I guess they were trying to go for the ‘Return of the Living Dead’ comedy angle, but the film it really reminded me of was Idle Hands. And that’s a shame as I quite like that movie, but I don’t want to be reminded of this plotless borefest the next time I watch that.

OK, the acting is actually pretty good for a low budget film, there are a couple of genuinely funny moments, and having one unique idea is better than none, I suppose. But surely there needs to be something more to fill out a whole film? Hell, there’s not even any nudity or any real gore? Seriously, what’s the point of that?

Gore Score D
Norks Score F
Originality Score B
Overall Score D-

 

Zombieland

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

We’ve all have conversations about what we’d do if we were the last person alive, and although Zombie movies often present this situation nobody ever seems to take advantage of it. Sure, recently we’ve had Last of the Living where the guy do spend a while just kicking back, squatting in big mansions and raiding the nearby stores for cool CDs, but eventually it all goes pear-shaped as expected. Not so with Zombieland.

Making the most of the seemingly endless electricity and petrol (best not ask how these are still working) Tallahassee just kicks-ass, drives his big 4×4 searching for the last box of Twinkies (soft, yellow, delicious bastards) and beats Zombies over the head with whatever comes to hand. Columbus, however, is a geekly World of Warcraft fan who has survived by following his own series of rules, such as having good cardio (although how a skinny loser who survives on Golden Grahams and Mountain Dew has such good cardio is bizarre.)

Naturally there as some chicks involved, who do what women are good at : getting in the way of the fun, being annoying and not putting out for the guys! Sheesh.

Anyway, these 3 peeps get together, have some arguments, get to know each-other and start bonding (well, the film does have to be about something I suppose).

In amongst the thin plot are some great zombie movie moments. There is some of the best use of Slo-mo since Baywatch, some great zombie kills (death by banjo, rollercoaster, grand piano and even car door) as well as the accidental murder of a celeb. Sure, there could’ve done with some more zombies, and the ones that were there don’t really have the look of the undead about them (just the odd bruise and lots of bloody faces, no limbs hanging off or suchlike). However it is highly refreshing to watch such a gleefully enjoyable zombie movie, one that doesn’t restrict itself to a typical siege plot and especially one that doesn’t attempt to give a nonsense explanation to the zombie epidemic, it just gets on with it.

Gore Score B-
Norks Score D
Originality Score B-
Overall Score A

 

Series Of Bullets

Click to go to Series of Bullets!

At Devouring the Flesh of the Living it’s not only about Zombie movies.. Well, actually, here it is. However, there is more to life than just the living dead, and that is why I have started up a brand new sister-blog, Series Of Bullets.

At Series of Bullets, whole entire series of horror films will be covered without all the nonsense ‘review’ guff, but by simply breaking down the films and the whole series into simple bullet-points.

• How Many Death?
• Which Weapons?
• And importantly, is there any nudity?

Naturally, this won’t effect the zombie movie output over here at Devouring the Flesh of the Living, so you can still get your fix of new, classic and absolute tosh Undead horror, but when you fancy diving into a horror movie series or two, don’t forget to check out Series of Bullets.

The entire Friday the 13th Series is already up ready for viewing (yes, all 12 films!). Check out the below poster for how the films break down in one glorious chart!