City of the Living Dead

AKA Gates of Hell

I guess it must have been about 3 months since I last watched a Zombie film with the Girlfriend (Night of the Living Dead) so that means I get to inflict another one on her. Apparently I am allowed 1 every quarter, so that’s 4 a year. I’ve pretty much given up choosing ones that I think she’ll like and have decided to go with one I know that I like. I’ve been getting the itch to watch ‘The Beyond’ for a while, but realised that I’ve not seen the 1st in Fulci’s pseudo-series ‘City of the Living Dead’ in even longer, so why not start at the beginning then?

City of the Living Dead is without a doubt a classic of the genre. Featuring several highly memorable scenes that only Fulci could imagine, we start off with a daft seance where we see a vision of a priest hanging himself. This is so traumatic it causes the young lass who has seen it to have a spectacular heart attack and die. Actually she was only ‘mostly-dead’ as during her unattended burial she comes back to life. Sadly it’s a bit too late as she’s already 6 feet under, although a passing journalist hears her screams and decides to bust her out of her coffin. Stupidly of all the tools to use to open a coffin I would have thought that a pick-axe would be the most dangerous option, particularly when you’re whacking it into the coffin lid directly over the body’s head, luckily this doesn’t cause any problems aside from adding to the already immense stress the buried alive lass is suffering. (I wonder, had he speared her in the face and killed her, what would he have been charged with?)

Anyway, this journalist and lady decide to head off to the village from her vision to try to stop the dead from taking over the world, which has already started in earnest. People are dying all over the place in bizarre fashion, and the locals aren’t dealing with it too well. One of the obvious highlights of the whole film is the death of a young lady who it hypnotised by the zombie-priest and promptly vomits up her whole internal organs. Yes, hell unleashed on earth is apparently pretty gruesome.

There are several awesome scenes here, (a drill to the head anyone?) and coupled with the fact this film actually has some semblance of plot it’s overall a highly enjoyable movie. Even my Girlfriend quite enjoyed it, which was perhaps the most unexpected aspect of the film, (although the drill scene where the villagers turn on the local nutjob didn’t meet with her approval, but seeing as that’s my favourite part I guess we even out nicely.)

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

 

The Serpent And The Rainbow

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

Wow, a zombie movie more-or-less based on a true story?  Made by a famous director?  Featuring a famous and ubiqutious lead star?  Oh yes, there are no toxic-waste spewing, brain-chomping undead rotters in this 1980’s flick.  Hot on the heels of the awesome ‘Spaceballs’, Bill Pulman kicks off his 3-random-films-every-single-year-from-then-until-eternity career with this Haiti set real life voodoo exploration.

Having been attacked, drugged by a creepy voodoo Bokor and then stalked by jaguars in Haiti just after the opening credits, Bill Pulman returns to the US only to be told that he has to head back to the country to root out some mystic death-faking (ie zombie) drug that could be used by the American government for some reason.  (Probably for misguided and unexplained military purposes, as is the way in zombie movies.)

Anyway, old Bill turns up over in Haiti and starts hanging out with some doctor lass who he surprisingly takes a liking too, even going so far as boning her under a waterfall. However, being the only white dude in the country he attracts suspicion from the local government and they take it upon themselves to attack, drug and then provide him a (slightly unwanted) scrotal body piercing service.  Still, at least it was free, eh?

Thankfully he manages to get up and about the place following this incident, and goes about his task of trying to find this magic zombie anaesthetic while still getting his end away with the doctor chick and hallucinating quite a bit on a daily basis.  He still gets chased around by the evil baddies though, it’d be boring if the just let him go and forgot about him.

The Serpent And The Rainbow was a really enjoyable affair. While a decent thriller in its own right, it’s also good to see a film that truly goes back to the roots of zombie culture, which this film does better than any film I’ve ever seen that’s not in black & white.  Educational, bloody, and a great ‘zombie rising from the grave to grab Bill Pullmans crotch’ scene.  What else could you wish for?  (Well ok yes, there are even Norks in this too).

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

 

Mutant

AKA Night Shadows

I think it’s about time for a change of scenery around here. Time to start reviewing RomComs… Ha ha, yeah right. I’m not even going to veer away from Zombies into standard horror! No, the change of scenery comes from a change of blog layout. With new decor it’s only appropriate to go with a nice new film to kick things off. Well, it would be new if it were 1984…

I wonder if we were all aware at the time just how cheesy the 1980’s actually was? In fact it has forever left its mark on cinema as we now have a whole genre – ‘The 80s Film’, a feat not matched by any other decade.

Mutant shows two brothers are driving around off for a holiday somewhere in redneckville and are spotted by some truck driving locals who take it upon themselves to ram the out-of-towners off the road and into a ditch. This forces the brothers to stay in the town while they await a mechanic to help haul their truck back onto the road. They nip into a local bar and again encounter the locals, and a big ruck kicks off. Poor rednecks, they always get a raw deal in movies. I’m sure there are plenty of moonshine swillin’ inbreds that are perfectly accommodating and friendly! Anyway, the towns alcoholic policeman is called and takes the kids off to a little old lady’s house to stay for the night. However this lady seems to be harbouring some mutant demon or something because one of the brothers is dragged off under his bed by it in the middle of the night.

His brother decides that he should probably go and find his sibling when he doesn’t show up in the morning, but there is nobody in town to help him, having all died of an unexplained illness, or come down with a bizarre flu-like sickness. Eventually he does manage to hook up with a local schoolteacher girl and the pair toddle off looking for his brother. However, it appears that this flu is actually due to a zombie chemical that is turning everyone into melty-handed undead, so the brother and his lady friend have to escape the town while at the same time trying to find a cause of this outbreak
.

The zombies take a little while to show up, and are pretty cheap looking, (although i’ve seen much worse!) and the acting is dubious at times. Also the lead actor ‘Wings Hauser’ is kinda creepy looking, which makes him come off more sleazy chancer than hero. There is much to like here though, particularly the school siege and the zombies using their toxic hands to melt through glass windows. All-in-all though it was pretty average, and although it passed the time well enough it doesn’t have anything in it i’d crave seeing again.

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

 

Zombie Death House

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

AKA Death House

Zombie films set in prison are not as uncommon as I first thought.  I earlier reviewed the reasonably decent Dead Men Walking, and also have “Shadow : Dead Riot” on my shelf awaiting a viewing.  There is great potential in the whole ‘locked in a large building filled with the undead’ idea, as was recently shown to great effect in the superb [REC]. 

Zombie Death House seems to be a mixture of the zombie prison idea combined with a truly awful mobster tale. 

Derek, driver for mob boss Moretti, has been boffing the bosses lady on the sly, which doesn’t go down too well with the boss and his cronies.  They decide the best course of action is too knock off the young lady and frame Derek for the crime.  Using handy quick edits Derek is framed, tried, convicted and sent to Death Row all within the first 15 minutes. 

Unfortunatly for Derek the prision he ends up in is one where the government are secretly trialing out some injections in order to breed a super soldier.  (Hmm. An original idea that one).  Naturally one of the test subjects breaks free during his own execution and starts a mass killing and riot spree infecting most of the prison population.

Derek, despite being a blonde prettyboy and only having been resident in the slammer for about a week takes on the role of the prisoner in charge and instead of trying to find a way to escape uses the riot as an excuse to get Moretti to come to the prison so he can get his revenge, all the while trying to help a blonde female scientist work on a cure for the zombie-ism.

It’s all pretty daft cheesy stuff, particularly all the scenes with Derek (Dennis Cole – who appears to be on some vanity ego project – bedding cliche 80’s blonde women, being both the bad guy and the hero, and then saving the day almost singlehandedly).

The zombies themselves take a while to appear, but when they do they put on a reasonable performance, although light on the actual flesh munching.

The film scores bonus points for a totally shoe-horned in dream sequence where Derek imagines one of the females naked in a field, all in slow-motion, just for an excuse to get some nudity on display.

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

 

Day Of The Dead

(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

 

Redneck Zombies

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

So, from one end of the Zombie Film spectrum to the other. Redneck Zombies, possibly the trashiest zombie film i’ve seen in a long long time, and about as far removed from the Living Dead at Manchester Morgue as My Chemical Romance is from Quality Music.

To even remotely enjoy this movie you have to appreciate the glory that is Troma : independent cinema of the highest quality. Weighing in at about 0\10 on the acting, script, directing and intellect scale, Redneck Zombies isn’t even the slightest bit bothered about aiming for the mainstream, and all the better for it.

A family of Rednecks come into possession of a barrel of toxic waste (ie – they rob an army guy transporting it loosely on the back of his jeep) and proceed to use the contents to brew up their special brand of Moonshine, which they then send their gender-curious sibling off with to sell to the whole population of the surrounding village. Strangely unperturbed at drinking neon-green liquid out of jamjars that was brewed by inbreds, the locals quaff down the liquid and naturally become radioactive zombies. Unknowing of this turn of events the remaining redneck family decide to sample the brew themselves, which leads to a 10 minute zombie transformation scene, more akin to a cheap neon 80’s music video than a quality zombification (see 28 weeks later for possibly the greatest scene of this ilk).

While everyone is indulging in zombie-moonshine a collection of out-of-towners have descended on the area to go camping, unfortunately pitching up about 100 yards from the zombie chemical still. A couple of the ladies of this group get picked off buy the redneck family in fantastic Troma style (ludicrously over-the-top gore flying all over the place, rubber eyeballs sucked out of plastic skulls, blood and guts smeared all over the floor. You know the drill), leaving the remainder or the group to go hunting for them, discovering and attacking any zombie along the way, some successfully, some less so.

There are some amazing scenes here – the delivery boy discovering a gagged girl in a house of rednecks who is forced to watch a documentary on baby chickens being slaughtered – a couple of inbreds sat watching a close-up pair of norks on TV covered in cream and cherries while they chat in Beavis and Butthead style ‘I like knockers’, ‘yeah, I like knockers too’ – a local woman feeding the green zombie alcohol to her 3 year old son who for some reason is sat in a washing machine. Not to forget the ace Autopsy scene where one of the townies attempts an autopsy on a zombie while high on LSD, and proceeds to hallucinate that each of the organs are actually various props such as human shoes or plastic dolls, before realising what he’s doing and promptly vomiting into the corpses open chest.

Yes it’s trash, yes it’s god-awful, but it’s distributed by Troma so you should know what you’re letting yourself in for. Hell, it’s better than Buttcrack at least.

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

 

The Dead Next Door

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

I have been trying to watch this film for several months but have only managed to make it 5 minutes into it each time I try.  It is the film that always seems to get put on when we get home from a Saturday night out at about 3am and consequently everyone falls asleep just as it starts.  However this time I decided to watch it at a more sensible hour so that I could finish the whole thing this time.

Starting a movie with a bunch of Zombies trying to rent Dawn Of The Dead in a video store is slightly concerning, giving the impression that this would stray too far into the parody domain that so many more recent films have fallen and of which I am not a huge fan.  Thankfully this turns out to be one of the better self deprecating films in the zombie canon.  Sure, there are characters called Raimi, Carpenter, Savini and even Romero present, but this never gets in the way of the story and it is quite possible to sit back and enjoy the movie without feeling you’re part of a fanboy project (even though it quite clearly is). 

What probably sets it apart from other fanboy films is the ridiculous gore effects, which is presumably where the whole budget went (lord knows it wasn’t spent on the acting!).  Many tongues are ripped out, zombies are decapitated, bodies are run over. In a highlight, a zombie head chews off a dudes fingers and we see the severed digits reappear from the bodiless zombies neck while he munches.  And not forgetting the death of the good doctor, who suffers twisted off legs, torn out stomach, a ripped off face AND even gets his hat stolen!

OK, there is a plot going on in amongst all this gore.  A Zombie loving cult are storing the living dead in their church basement and the Zombie Squad accidentally stumbles upon this group,  tries to deal with the situation and to try to find a cure.  Sadly this involves killing off far more of the humans than Zombies, but oh well, at least they tried.

It is certainly an outstandingly gory film, and I definitely enjoyed it on this front. However once all the Zombie Squad reached the cult church about an hour into the film the plot seemed to vanish and all that was left was to count up which human got killed next for whatever reason, which kind of spoilt all the big build-up.  Still, it was well made, had quality effects and some laughable dialogue and a more professional looking SOV zombie film I’ve yet to see.  As far as fanboy films go this is easily one of the best.

Gore Score B+
Norks Score D
Originality Score D
Overall Score B

 

Toxic Zombies

Well it’s day one of my full week off work, and so far my plans stretch as far as ‘pick up the crisp packets that have blown into the garden and…..’ well, that’s it. After all that exertion I felt I needed to relax, so I opened a bag of Haribo and picked out a trash zombie film from my stack.

Toxic Zombie is a proper tacky Zombie film from 1980. It opens with a shotgun toting Peter Sutcliffe lookalike and his mate searching through some forest for something or other. Turns out they are actually very scruffy FBI agents and they are hunting hippies. One such Hippy happens to be a topless young lass sat in the undergrowth sponging herself down with a bucket and sponge, so naturally these government types shoot her through the neck then her hippy mates stab and strangle these agents to death. Oh yes, these are violent hippies indeed, and soon to get more so.

It turns out these hippies have been growing some Marijuana in this woodland and the government somehow know about this, but don’t actually know where exactly. Their plan to deal with this horror? Send out a drunk crop-duster pilot in a plane full of human-mutating pesticides. Naturally this pesticide covers all the hippies and they go off on a murderous rampage, chasing everybody around the woodland for the remaining 60 minutes of the film.

This film wins bonus points for its totally inept gore, plus there is a Father character who calls his own son a retard, then runs away from the Zombies shoving his wife out of the way and on the floor in the process. Then there is the opening gratuitous nork shot with the lady and her bucket, which is nice.

Gore Score D
Norks Score C
Overall Score C

 

Zombie Nightmare

Oh my. This is what happens when I decide to move away from mainstream zombie films and venture into the dark underbelly of crappy 80’s horror. This film was so ludicrously bad that I naturally loved it straight away.

Starring none other than the always awesome Jon Mikl Thor and an incredibly hammy Adam West, Zombie Nightmare starts off with a random murder which may or may not have happened sometime on the past. (It is never explained). Then cut to the present day(?), and Mummy’s boy Thor goes off shopping for the family groceries, baseball bat in hand. After saving the shopkeeper from some random ruffians he is duly rewarded upon leaving the store by being run over and killed by a bunch of teenagers. Naturally the shopkeeper does the obvious thing, and takes the corpse of Thor back to his mothers house, and dumps him on her lawn. The mother, not best pleased about her giant son being killed sends for the village voodoo priestess, who brings Thor back from the dead and sends him off on a revenge mission to take out the kids who killed him.

During all this fun and games, the kids are off being disgraceful, such as getting thrown out of nightclubs and hassling ladies. “I’m old enough to be your older sister” is possibly the best put-down I have ever heard uttered in any film. Ever.

Sure, Thor being the Zombie that he is (still sporting the same 80’s fashion he was wearing when killed, but now having gone from long blond hair to short dark mop-top with special bald-spot for no apparent reason) manages to track down these kids, and using his super strength snaps their necks, or impales them on his baseball bat.

Adam West does turn up every so often, as a cliche cigar smoking police chief. He manages to work out the whole plot, and meets up with the Voodoo lady and a graveyard. Here the woman explains the whole back-story part of the film, but it’s in such a bad OTT Haitian accent that it is impossible to actually make out what she was saying, but it had something to do with Adam West having done something or other in the past that may or may not have been related to the opening scene. Who knows. Anyway, Adam does a big Zombies=bad speech, gets grabbed by a new zombie summoned by the priestess, and gets pulled into a glowing red grave. The end.

There is pretty much no gore, certainly no norks whatsoever, and everything from the directing to the acting are pure bottom drawer. However, unlike Hard Rock Zombies, this film was genuinely trying to be a good movie but failed utterly. If ever you have wanted to see a perfect example of ‘So bad that it is awesome’ then this film is it. Utter Utter trash.

Gore Score 0\5
Norks Score 0\5
Overall Score 4\5

 

Hard Rock Zombies

Now I love my crazy 80’s cock-rock metal and obviously I love my Zombie films, so what better film could there be for me than Hard Rock Zombies? As it turns out, most films actually.

A band of terrible Poison wannabees book into play some city (named ‘Grand Guignol’ I kid you not) but get murdered by the crazy locals, and then return as Zombies to get revenge and to play the gig as planned.

This is a shocking, shocking piece of cinema, but one that falls so close to the ’so bad it’s actually good’ line that I am at a loss as to whether I actually enjoyed it or not. Seriously, I came away from it not on the fence, but genuinely confused.

It has so many genius moments here, with an old German man turning out to have been Hitler in disguise all along, accompanied by Eva Braun – who is a werewolf for some reason, 2 midgets who may or may not be playing Children – one of whom sits at a table and devours himself piece by piece (including eating his own face) and the other who leaps ontop of a cow and tries to eat it alive. – Plus rock music so boring that literally raises the dead.

And yet… Some films are rubbish because they just can’t help it, but with this one I just don’t know how to take it. Do I think of it as a bad film that is highly watchable because of the cheese, or do I think that it is just a contrived pile of nonsense that is trying way too hard to be funny?

You tell me. I certainly laughed a fair amount during it, so I guess that’s a plus.

Gore Score – 3\5
Norks Score – 2\5
Overall Score – 1\5 or 4\5, depending on your point of view. (even if it is great it’d never have gotten a 5 anyway. I do have some standards).