Devouring the flesh of the living

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

“I do not enjoy shooting staff members!”

Having spent recent weeks enjoying the delights of both box-office failures and the SOV straight-to-dvd zombie fare I though it about time I dived back into the mainstream and watch a quality zombie film that everyone can enjoy. However, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of I abandoned that plan in favour of yet more no-budget gore-o-rama.

Dead Men Walking is a particularly gruesome little number taking place solely within a prison. A prisoner obviously infected with some sort of horrible disease (in this case, a biological zombie toxin) is checked into the joint, and promptly sent off to the medic to be checked over. After numerous highly bloody vomiting sessions he is locked away in solitary to slowly and disgustingly turn from infected human to rabid zombie. As this involves rather a lot of noise the guards pop over to check on him, although this doesn’t go too well for them. Thus begins the mass infection of the whole prison, leaving the remaining guards, warden and a female CDC officer to fight for survival while trying to stop any infected from leaving the building for fear of infecting the whole world.

Yes, it’s a slightly different take on the standard Zombie Siege as the zombies are already within the building to start with, but that is about as original as it gets here. It’s the gore that this movie goes for, it just does what it does rather effectively. (albeit without being particularly bothered about adding anything new). Infected people spew forth gallons of disgusting blood, Guts are ripped out and devoured aplenty, gunshots leave bloody trails up the walls, arms are ripped off and eaten… you know, just the standard zombie gore. By no means is this boring though, at least not for the first 45 minutes, however once everyone who could get infected has, and the survivors have run around the prison for a while it gets pretty tired. There isn’t really anywhere else for this film to go. Step 1 – begin the infection, step 2 – chase and slaughter everyone, step 3…. um, well almost everyone is dead, so lets end the film in standard zombie-film manner.

It certainly is gory, reasonably well acted and directed and the script is pretty good considering the cliche nature of the film, but everything just kind of dries up towards the end. (Except for the blood, naturally. That just keeps on flowing).

Gore Score B
Norks Score C
Originality Score D
Overall Score C

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

I remember when starting this blog one of the first comments I received suggested I review Undead. Well, this blog has been up for almost a year now, so I guess I should crack on with that request.

In simple terms, Undead is a Zombie, Meteor, Alien gore-fest. It features a Triple-Barrel-shotgun toting Clint Eastwood (or Evil Dead’s Ash, depending on how you look at him) who is briefly abducted after becoming involved in a Zombie-Fish fist-fight. In order to save the world from future invasions when he is returned to his boat by the spaceship he stocks up on guns, builds a massive underground bomb shelter in his cellar and waits for the next alien attack.

Obviously a new invasion does occur, this time in the form of a huge Zombie outbreak in his little town. A few lucky survivors converge on his place by accident and become involved in the plan rid the town of Zombies. These people include the standard ‘Arguing Pregnant Couple’, a pretty Brunette, a daft policewoman starting her first day and a policeman who is possibly the sweariest human-being that has ever existed.

After hiding out in the cellar for a few hours the pregnant woman predictably goes into labour, so the crew have to vacate the premises in order to get to a hospital (despite it probably being infected with zombies). Obviously, the house is full of Zombies that need dispatching using highly gory methods (cue spilling guts, knives to the head, shotguns to the face, and flying limbs). Unfortunately, when they do manage to escape they find everyone has turned into Zombies, and discover a mysterious spiky Berlin-Wall encompassing the entire town, meaning there is no escape.

It’s a pretty weird film, and a great mix of Sci-fi, Horror and Comedy. The characters are reasonably cool if slightly cliché (as is always the case with Zombie films I guess), and the direction and plot are excellent. However, the standout aspect of this film is the gore! A Zombie gets his torso separated from his legs leaving a pair of trousers with spine cord still attached wandering around, heads are smashed through and brains eaten, (I think this is the 1st film since Return of the Living Dead where the Zombies actually call for ‘Braaaaaiiinns!’), not to mention the numerous limbs chopped off by circular saw, shotgun or anything that comes to hand.

Zombie fans love good gore, and when it comes from an original, well directed film it’s all the better.

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

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

I recently had a conversation about how on earth Zombie movies can still have even a modicum of originality, considering they have been around for over 70 years and almost exclusively revolve around dead people coming back to life and eating people.
“Well” said I, “recently we’ve had Fido”… and then that was as far as that conversation went.  However, had I been thinking properly instead of just drinking wine I could have remembered I had this little number on my shelf awaiting its first viewing, which certainly had the potential to be rather interesting.  A Zombie Western.

Set around 80 years in the future after a virus has turned most of the world into shuffling Zombies, The Quick and the Undead follows a bounty hunter who makes a living hunting down and killing off any Zombie throughout the country, and collecting their fingers as evidence to claim his reward.  However, he’s soon double crossed by his old gang and left for dead, his haul of fingers stolen.  Luckily being invincible he comes back from the dead and heads off after his old gang to reclaim his bounty.

However that is basically all that happens, one dude wandering around until he catches up with his old gang.  That’s it.  Sure there are some Zombies along the way that need dispatching \ running away from, and there is a slightly interesting parallel storyline involving the leader of the nasty gang trying to increase his haul by infecting healthy villages with the Zombie virus so he can kill them off and claim a larger bounty, but none of these ideas go anywhere.  Heck, even the idea of an indestructible hero is barely covered and is rarely used at-all in the movie.

The gore is reasonable, the direction is actually rather good, and the cinematography and overall look of the film is top drawer.  There is a great concept there but sadly the whole thing is spectacularly dull-ass boring.  It’s neither scary, funny, or tense.  The characters are uninteresting and really badly acted and to cap it all off there’s not a single nork shot in sight!  Sheesh, what a waste of time.

Gore Score C
Nork Score F
Originality Score B
Overall Score D