Devouring the flesh of the living

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

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-

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