Devouring the flesh of the living

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

So, it’s the day before Grand Theft Auto 4 is released which means it’s probably best I get this review up now. My horror film geek hat has to come off to make room for the XBox one, if only for a week or so.

The Dead Pit doesn’t really start off particularly impressively, or with much originality. A crazed doctor in a mental hospital is murdering patients and performing bizarre brain experiments on them in the hospital basement. What he’s trying to achieve isn’t fully explained, except that ‘The Brain is a Parasite’ and is a barrier to freeing the mind, apparently. Ah, so filling dead peoples heads with formaldehyde and dumping the bodies in a pit is the way to go then.

Anyway, after this mad surgeon has been killed off by another doctor the story cuts to 20 years later. A new patient with amnesia is admitted who suffers from flashbacks and nightmares – strangely involving being tied up in a shower and hosed down with water by a nurse until all her clothes fall off – I know we’ve all had that one.

From here onward it plays out like a creepy ghost story, at least for most of the film. The amnesiac woman sees visions of the murdered doctor around the hospital that nobody else notices, the dribbly mental patients wander around and act as bog standard cliche mental patients do, and hospital residents go missing all the time without the police ever becoming involved.

Of course, it turns out the amnesiac woman wasn’t totally mad at all. There is a ghostly zombie doctor murdering patients again, and this time he’s somehow managed to bring them all back to life to go on murderous brain gathering rampages.

It’s actually quite nicely filmed, with the nighttime shots filled with ghostly luminous colours, and the gore effects, when they actually get going, are also pretty decent. Faces melt with holy water (the only way to kill these zombies apparently), brains get ripped out and fondled (although never eaten) and the Zombie Surgeon prods around in unwilling victims skulls with needles. Overall it’s a reasonably creepy little number but the shuffling zombies took far too long to make an appearance, which is a shame as they’re proper zombies too – rotting, shuffling along and searching for Brains! What more would you want from the undead?

Gore Score C+
Norks Score C
Overall Score C

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

It has taken me a few days to get around to writing up this film due to an extensive weekend of Guitar Hero which consequently screwed up my wrist. Still, it’s an ace game so well worth the 2 day pain it caused. It’s quite a relief to chill out and watch a piece of nonsense 80’s trash to help recover from such a workout.

The Video Dead is a relatively obscure little film nowadays, and one that I still don’t think has had a full DVD release. This is a pity as it’s considerably better than many zombie films that followed it. Well, that is assuming that decent scripting, acting, editing and direction are not required as a measure of quality. What is of class here though is the story, which is thoroughly enjoyable and pretty original by zombie standards, although still utter nonsense.

It centres around a television which is apparently possessed by some sort of unexplained psychic phenomenon, causing it to constantly show the film ‘Zombie Blood Nightmare’ on an infinite loop. Should this TV be switched on (sometimes all of it’s own accord) the zombies from this film escape into the real world to get involved in all sort of comedy escapades. Completely unsurprisingly this television turns up in an old dudes house who accidentally releases the zombies and gets the movie underway.

There follows scenes of zombies trying on women’s hairpieces, zombies hiding in washing machines, zombies sitting around for dinner together and zombies giggling to themselves about how funny all their japes are. Oh yes, not forgetting zombies murdering every human they come across in long drawn out death scenes. It is down to a man from Texas with a Chainsaw and a local kid with a bow and arrow (yeah, nice weapon choice dude) to save the day and track down these Zombies. These 2 guys head off into the nearby woods armed with their weapons as well as some mirrors (zombies hate their reflections apparently, as memorably discovered by Vincent Price in ‘The Last Man on Earth’) to set a trap for the undead to wander into. However this is possibly the least intelligent trap in movie history, as it consists of hanging the kid from a tree as bait while the Texan goes off for a nap. Obviously this all ends badly for our stupid heroes, and the zombies head off to the local kids house to visit his (masonry-block jawed) sister, who promptly invites them in for a dinner party. As you do.

The Zombies themselves are pretty impressive looking, and some of the gore scenes are nicely done (zombie innards contain live rats, apparently). If you can overlook the terrible acting and dodgy filming it’s actually an enjoyable and unusual addition to the zombie film catalog. However, it does seem to be misleading in it’s title – there was no ‘Video’ anywhere to be seen in this film. Oh well, ‘The Black and White Television Dead’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Gore Score C
Norks Score D
Overall Score C

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

For the first time in a long while, (perhaps even the first time ever) I sat down to watch a Zombie film that belongs to my Flatmate and not me.  Sure, I saw this film months ago at the cinema but I never got around to picking it up for my own collection.  I guess that my desire to find zombie films at paltry prices through eBay and other *cough* miscellaneous legitimate sources *cough* means that the thought of paying around £15 for an easily available DVD just doesn’t sit well with me.  Besides, i’m kind of trying to get hold of the Japanese 6 disc version of the whole Grindhouse release – with the proper theatrical release that only the lucky USA peeps got to see originally – but that’s looking like it’ll cost me around £50 so I shouldn’t really complain about the price other people pay for individual movies.  Anyhow enough winging about the price of DVDs these days and onto the film itself.

Planet Terror is pretty much the type of movie I would make if I were a reasonably famous Hollywood director with free reign to film whatever I choose.  Take a bare bones nonsense zombie plot, borrow several well known actors, chuck in liberal and stupendously O.T.T. CGI special effects, not to mention various lovely ladies and you’ve more-or-less got the ideal film for lovers of pure cinematic guff.  There are no morals to this story, no dippy romances, no character development, just a bunch of ridiculous people and some chemically poisoned zombies shooting the bejeezus out of each other.  What more could you want?

OK, possibly there are too many human characters here as each of their ’stories’ gets a tad lost in the mixture, but each one serves their purpose, (ie, for us to enjoy their misfortune).  There is a female doctor exposed as a lesbian by her husband who consequently anaesthetises her and locks her in a closet, an ex-stripper with a machine gun for a leg, a child whose sole role is to shoot himself in the face by mistake, and some army jocks who are infected with zombie virus but are gassing themselves in an attempt to prolong their lives.  The film also features the typical gun slinging outsider, a couple of useless sheriffs, some other randoms i’ve no doubt forgotten at the moment and of course Tom Savini (who else would you give a substantial cameo to in a Zombie homage movie?).

The gore effects and unique storytelling techniques are way too sensational for a mainstream movie, with bloody gunshot wounds splurging miles into the air and a comedic Missing Reel screen midway through – which allows all the humans and zombies to mass around the same vacinity with no explaination as to how everyone arrived at this situation.

Everything about this movie it utter, utter nonsense.  How do you pull the trigger of a gun attached to your stumpy leg without using your hands?  Why would you collect a jar of testicles?  Why would you stay with your abusive husband when your lesbian lover is Fergie from Black Eyed Peas?  None of this matters as the whole experience was the perfect mix of gore and comedy.  It’s just a pity that the only norks on show were during the fake trailer for Machette at the beginning, but then that’s essentially still part of the film so I’ll accept it.

Gore Score B
Norks Score C-
Overall Score B

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

The ‘Horror Comedy’ genre is not a particular favourite of mine, I suspect because I find plenty of comedy in the terrible over-the-top blood & gore special effects that are present in the majority of genuine horror films from my collection. Heck, I even laughed at the head explosions of the Burmese villagers in the latest Rambo film, (and was the only person in the whole cinema to do so I might add). I think my sense of humour is being warped due to the deluge of guts and gore images that I pour into it on a near daily basis.

Although Horror Comedies themselves do not usually float my boat (Scary Movie i’m talking to you) the actual ‘Zombie Horror Comedy’ genre does contain some gems. Obviously ‘Shaun of the Dead’ is at the top of the pile and embarrassingly I did enjoy ‘Dead Heat’ as well as ‘Night Of The Creeps’ despite neither having much to do with actual Zombie ideas. I imagine this is probably down to my juvenile sense of humour.

With this point of view in mind I embarked into the previously unexplored world of German Comedy Horror with ‘Night Of The Living Dorks’, and was pleasantly surprised. Sure, the Zombies look more like a bunch of kids who have just stayed awake for 5 days playing World of Warcraft as opposed to being members of the Undead and there is very little gore at all, but it was good to know that the Germans do have a sense of humour, although they do seem to be about 20 years behind the rest of the world and based very much on the Dick and Fart Joke school of comedy.

The plot involves 3 nerdy kids accidentally becoming Zombies and trying to find a cure while fending off the Jocks using their new zombie strength, stapling back any body part that comes loose, and trying to stop one of their number from going on a cannibalistic rampage against all those who bullied him in the past. Not forgetting trying to get laid by the hottest girl in school (who I felt had a rather horse like face, but perhaps that is what the Germans are into. Still, at least she got to show off her cracking norks). Oh yes, this is typical 80’s teen-comedy fare but with a zombie subplot, and while no Night of the Creeps it does still have it’s charms.

It is without doubt the finest German comedy film I have seen, although due to my lack of exposure to the genre it is consequently also the worst. Particular enjoyment came from spending the first 15 minutes flipping between English Dubbing, German language with subtitles and combinations of the two. It was at its funniest in English with English subtitles though, as it produced some amusing script alternatives.

“If we had that attitude at Stalingrad we’d never have won the war!”

Apparently a Hollywood remake is in the pipeline which might be interesting. I wonder if that will have so many naked guy butts and detachable testicles?

Gore Score D
Norks Score C
Overall Score C