Devouring the flesh of the living

Crossposted at Blog of the Living Dead

“You get the machete”
“But I don’t know how to shoot a machete.”

Ah another day another zombie comedy.  Dance of the Dead has been on my radar for months having heard all the praise lavished on it following its showing at the South By Southwest festival earlier in the year.  So how does it actually stand up against all the hype?

More-or-less set during a single day (which is surprisingly common for zombie films, unlike most mainstream movies) Dance of the Dead follows a bunch of highly cliche schoolkids as they try to survive the unoriginal zombie attack on their school.  Having been raised from the dead (presumably due to the nearby nuclear power-station) on the evening of the high-school prom, the zombie plague ravages the little town, finally converging on the school.  The Sci-fi club were naturally too nerdy to get dates to this event, but were unfortunately stupid enough to be spending their evening playing Ghostbusters in the nearby cemetery during the zombie uprising.  They have to group together to find all their fellow dateless losers and formulate a plan to come to the rescue of the prom guests.

Pure wish-fulfilment fantasy from start to finish, Dance of the Dead might well have been a script John Hughes accidentally misplaced in the 80’s and rediscovered in 2008.  Losers talking back to teachers, Nerds rescuing cheerleaders, schools exploding, kids saving the day… all this harks back to the glory-days of teen cinema.  The actors here actually are the age they’re playing, the jokes are brilliant and not just tacked on, and the horror is played straight giving the perfect example of how to pitch a horror-comedy.

There are some great scenes here, in particular the grave-rising which reminded me of the motorcycle zombie scene from Dellamorte Dellamore (as did the gravekeeper).  Also we have zombies who actually call for “braaaiiins!” (which is strangely a stereotype that is almost never seen in zombie films), and a cheerleader who turns undead at a particularly unfortunate moment for the geek she is about to ‘romance’.

I found this a great addition to the zombie genre.  Sure, it’s ludicrously unoriginal as everything in this whole film has been done over-and-over elsewhere, but who cares?  It was genuinely funny and brilliantly acted, and the whole package was top class.  I hope that one day people look back on this movie with the same fondness we give to Return of the Living Dead.

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

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

Right, I feel it’s about time I try out something new here.  Up until now I’ve seen big-budget Hollywood horror, foreign language zombie flicks, gory comedies, and the ubiquitous shot-on-video fan productions.  Where else can this genre go?  How about a one-man production, animated, OTT zombie gorefest?  Well here we go.  Frank Sudol pretty much single-handedly put this little number together.  And by single handed I mean he directed, voice acted, designed, animated, scored, edited, produced, scripted, and just generally did EVERYTHING.  That is one hard-working dude!

City of Rott tells the story of Fred, one of the few survivors of an apocalyptical zombie plague as he wanders around town looking for a new pair of slippers.  With only a talking walking-frame for comfort, Fred plods around buildings, bridges and streets fighting off all the hundreds (maybe even thousands) of the walking dead using his badass ninja moves, as well as just clobbering them over the head with his walker.  Well, mostly just using the walker. (he is pretty old, after all).  He does meet several nutjob survivors along the way, but they either want to just nail themselves into wooden boxes, or just get out of the city all together.  Neither of these are options for Fred because they don’t involve him finding new loafers.

For the first 50 minutes or so of the film all that basically happens is that Fred moves from setpiece to setpiece, bashing in Zombie skulls with his handy walking frame.  This is all well and good.  Gore flies liberally around, there is some comedy, and even a little bit of plot!  However, when Fred starts to realise his predicament thing start to turn somewhat sour (for both Fred and the film itself).  The final 20 minutes seems like an entirely different add-on, with several new characters thrown in that were never around beforehand, and a bizarre sidestory which suggests that the cure for all this zombism lies in Donuts.  (Mmm, donuts!).

However, the majority of the film is pretty decent.  Once I got used to the cartoon style effect (which reminded me of an old childhood cartoon – Ivor the Engine) I started to sit back and appreciate this movie.  OK, the story isn’t much deeper than a (bloody) puddle, and nothing much happens for the majority of the film, but there is a lot to enjoy.  Cartoon gore and some great nods to Romero (for example a poster on the mall wall states “At Night, Dawn Day will sing This Land”!), as well as some digs at consumerism and how we are all turning into automatons for trying to be just like everyone else.  Plus it gets bonus points for being a fanboy flick that doesn’t just involve the director getting some mates together and throwing some fake blood on them.  Frank actually put A LOT of effort into this, and it shows.

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

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

Now, I was thinking of just doing a 1-line review for this movie, along the lines of “Day of the Dead – easily the best Romero Zombie film”, but it appears that (as is often the case), people don’t seem to agree with me despite the fact that I am always right.  So apparently I will have to justify this claim.  Now, all of his zombie movies are pretty spot-on (yes, even Land of the Dead, while not a patch on the others is still far superior to most other zombie films), and I am sure most people would more-or-less agree.  Where I am in the minority is in my knowledge that with Day, George got everything pretty much spot-on.

The characters in Day are much more interesting than the Night or Dawn chaps.  Tell me that Flyboy doesn’t annoy the bezeesus out of you, or that you don’t want to leave Barbra out for all the monochrome zombies to devour just to shut her up?  With Day, the only character who is nearly as irritating is Captain Rhodes, but this is acceptable as we are supposed to hate him, and we both want and expect him to get his comeuppance.  He’s the bad guy, for gawds sake!

With Day of the Dead, the gore effects that were trialed out on NOTLD, and were given a bit of a budget (and tested out in colour) in Dawn reached their peak in Day.  The zombies don’t look like they are made of plasticine as they do in Dawn, and they do not utilise cheap looking CGI as in Land of the Dead.  How often have you seen effects from this film ripped off and mimicked in more recent movies?  Rhodes’ death itself is so iconic it’s been copied to death!

And then there is the story.  Night of the Living Dead is your typical siege film, locked in a building with no escape and plenty of infighting.  Dawn is a meandering tale that takes an age to get going and tries to encompass the whole of society, but in the end is too caught up with anti-consumerism and has far too many characters resulting in a rather disjointed affair.  Day of the Dead discusses the utter futility of life itself.  Here the whole of human existence is condensed into one location, one generation and a few short weeks.  Should we spend our existence fighting for survival, studying and trying to find a purpose to life, or simply sitting back and making the most of what you have?

To delve even deeper into the sociological metaphors, here the military take on the role of the politicians, the scientists as the philosophers and the civilians are the proletariat.  A condensed yet concise slice of society.

Anyway, this is getting a bit too ‘film studies’ now.  It is a great movie because the story, characters and effects are superb.  There are numerous memorable set pieces, fantastic music throughout, and it is a thoroughly consistent film from start to finish.  This is his best film for these, and many more reasons, just accept it eh?

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