Wasting Away

Ah, the old ‘chemical experiments on recruits to create a new breed of super-soldiers’ plot. The current standard for zombie films. Can’t we kick off another Cold War or have a new Nuclear Arms Race or something? Anything just to get a new idea for reanimating the dead.

At least Wasting Away tries to do something reasonably original, that is by infecting the stars with zombism – via neon green zombie beer ice-cream no less – without their knowing. Yes, these 4 losers have become zombies and don’t even realise it. They see each-other as full-on normal chaps, but to everyone else they are the walking dead. This is done quite cleverly by showing the scenes of the main stars in colour, while whenever anyone else glances at them the film switches to black-and-white and we see them as they really are – veiny, shuffling members of the undead.

As unique as this sounds for a film it does present some problems. The first minor issue is that blood and gore looks a lot more exciting when it’s in colour. Secondly – and this is the main problem – having one unusual interesting idea is not really enough to base an entire movie on. Oh yes, it’s all good and fun the first couple of times the camera switches to Black and White and we see them transposed as zombies, but when that is the whole plot device and we have to sit through it again and again it just gets irritating. If they actually wrote a story around this idea then maybe it wouldn’t be so annoying. But there isn’t one. It’s just some crappy characters becoming unexpected zombies who spend half the film hanging out together not realising their condition, and the other half hanging out still not really doing anything but this time with an army private who has the same condition.

I guess they were trying to go for the ‘Return of the Living Dead’ comedy angle, but the film it really reminded me of was Idle Hands. And that’s a shame as I quite like that movie, but I don’t want to be reminded of this plotless borefest the next time I watch that.

OK, the acting is actually pretty good for a low budget film, there are a couple of genuinely funny moments, and having one unique idea is better than none, I suppose. But surely there needs to be something more to fill out a whole film? Hell, there’s not even any nudity or any real gore? Seriously, what’s the point of that?

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

 

Zombieland

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

We’ve all have conversations about what we’d do if we were the last person alive, and although Zombie movies often present this situation nobody ever seems to take advantage of it. Sure, recently we’ve had Last of the Living where the guy do spend a while just kicking back, squatting in big mansions and raiding the nearby stores for cool CDs, but eventually it all goes pear-shaped as expected. Not so with Zombieland.

Making the most of the seemingly endless electricity and petrol (best not ask how these are still working) Tallahassee just kicks-ass, drives his big 4×4 searching for the last box of Twinkies (soft, yellow, delicious bastards) and beats Zombies over the head with whatever comes to hand. Columbus, however, is a geekly World of Warcraft fan who has survived by following his own series of rules, such as having good cardio (although how a skinny loser who survives on Golden Grahams and Mountain Dew has such good cardio is bizarre.)

Naturally there as some chicks involved, who do what women are good at : getting in the way of the fun, being annoying and not putting out for the guys! Sheesh.

Anyway, these 3 peeps get together, have some arguments, get to know each-other and start bonding (well, the film does have to be about something I suppose).

In amongst the thin plot are some great zombie movie moments. There is some of the best use of Slo-mo since Baywatch, some great zombie kills (death by banjo, rollercoaster, grand piano and even car door) as well as the accidental murder of a celeb. Sure, there could’ve done with some more zombies, and the ones that were there don’t really have the look of the undead about them (just the odd bruise and lots of bloody faces, no limbs hanging off or suchlike). However it is highly refreshing to watch such a gleefully enjoyable zombie movie, one that doesn’t restrict itself to a typical siege plot and especially one that doesn’t attempt to give a nonsense explanation to the zombie epidemic, it just gets on with it.

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

 

RetarDEAD

When I heard of this film I pretty much knew instantly what sort of film it would be. I could practically hear the genre reviewers writing out the phrase ‘if you like the title you’re pretty much guaranteed to like the film’ And oh, how true that is. Appealing to the Troma fan in everyone (although it can take a bit of effort to bring it out of some people), RetarDEAD is a trash classic excelling in script, gore, offensiveness and utter, utter nonsense.

A mad scientist, fresh from resurrecting a turd monster in the previous film (MonsTURD) escapes the clutches of the boozy cops and sets up a new science lab in some abandoned factory. From there he sets out to find some test subjects for his (well meaning, but misguided) intelligence boosting experiments. He naturally selects the local mental hospital, and volunteers his services as a teacher.

While conducting his experiments the town police are hunting down both this escaped loon as well as the local pervert affectionately know as ‘the Weenie Waggler’. After being tracked down, this pervy nutjob points the cops to the new special needs teacher who has started working at the Special School in which he is the caretaker, so the cops rock on up to investigate. Unfortunately this is the point where the doc’s magic intelligence serum starts to backfire, causing the recipients to turn into flesh eating blue-grey Dawn of the Dead-style zombies.

This is the point of the film where the originality goes out the window, and the gore and slaughter kick off. The zombies start spreading, and the ridiculously cheap yet awesome entrails flow, more-or-less until the end of the film.

There are some excellent scenes in this movie : The cops tooling up ‘Here’s a handgun, another handgun, a sword, another handgun…..’), the mad scientist and his assistants dissecting a corpse for bait (involving A LOT of puking), plus the gore-gore girls surrounding and attacking their prey in the doc’s laboratory and dancing them to death.

Sure, we’ve seen a lot of this before, but such a great script and budget spent almost totally on latex gore effects and cameos (Jello Biafra!) this is something I love to see in my low budget B-movies. Hell, if there was some Nudity then it would’ve been perfect!

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

 

Deadgirl

How best to discuss this unusual little number then? Shall I talk about the theme of unhealthy obsessions, and how such neuroses affects you and those around you? Should I approach it as a commentary on male teenagers and their dehumanisation of the female? Or shall I just take my standard approach and chat about this film as it really is : 3 kids finding a zombie tied up in a basement and using her as their own sex toy?

Yes, who hasn’t dreamt of finding a naked and rotting undead corpse tied up in an abandoned hospital and what you could do with such a Discovery? Obviously the last thing to cross your mind would be to report such a unreal scene the police. No, you’d decide to keep hold of it and visit ‘her’ every evening with your mates to play an elaborate game of hide the sausage. Heck, if you did find yourself in such a situation not only would you not be ashamed of your actions, you’d positively revel in it, so much so that you’d want your mates to stand around and watch while you violently defile the trussed up zombie.

It’s a strange situation our characters find themselves in for sure. Rickie and J.T. nip out of school to go boozing in an abandoned hospital. After getting smashed on one 6 pack of transparent beer between them they wander off exploring the building. Among all the smashed windows they discover a much more unusual sight : an unexplained bound naked zombie female on an operating table. Sure, they’re not the luckiest lads when it comes to love, and for our star who has pined over some ginger lass for his whole childhood it even crosses his mind that romancing the undead could be a valid lifestyle choice. Not so for J.T. – he doesn’t even need to think about it, this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for! His own sex slave, albeit slightly rotting and disgusting. Hell, there are worse lookers out there I suppose.

It all goes pretty gross as you’d imagine. People start to hear about this bizarre situation and want some of it for themselves. Dogs get eaten, teenagers lose their intestines, and our ‘heroes’ get beaten up by a tough lady after whacking her over the head with a tire iron on one of their rare excursions away from the freaky zombie.

Depending on how you look at it it’s either a very brave and unique zombie film with numerous fascinating underlying themes, or it’s a sick film of teenager-zombie rape. Either way it’s a great original movie that will certainly stay with you forever. Hmm, maybe that’s not such a good thing after all…

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

 

King of the Zombies

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

“If there’s one thing I wouldn’t want to be twice, zombies is both of them”

Ah, googly-eyed Mantan Moreland. A star from back in the day when there was no such thing as Racism. Playing the standard role of ‘Scared Servant’ in almost all of his films, he parts with tradition for King of the Zombies and takes on the roll of ‘Scared Servant’. His job here is apparently to accompany his employer and friend on a plane which crashes onto a graveyard on a miscellaneous Caribbean island, and to be scared of everything.

This Island is the property of Miklos Sangre (Bela Lugosi – sorry, some actor called Henry Victor doing his best Lugosi impression). Sangre is an Austrian who has fled to the Caribbean, and apparently uses this base to radio out to some unknown people who all speak German.

Mantan and his team crash land on this island in 1941 just before WWII breaks out (or rather slap bang in the middle of WWII for the rest of the world) and are taken to Sangre’s mansion to await rescue. Because Mantan is a Servant (ie Black) he is told he cannot take a bedroom in the mansion with his employers but has to sleep in the Kitchen with the other Servants, and it is here that he meets the Zombies. Although being Pre-Romero these Zombies don’t actually do much other than look creepy while they queue up for their rations.

Well, it turns out that Sangre is actually an evil Nazi and has kidnapped another plane crash victim from the US army and is trying to extract war information from him by turning him into a hypnotised zombie. Stumbling into this plot is old Moreland who gets zombified by Sangre (for a while), which means he too has to act creepy and eat his rations. (Eating rations is apparently all that Zombies did back in the 40’s.)

It’s not a bad little movie really, although the plot is thread-bare the enjoyment comes purely from Mantans’ jokes and ludicrous scared expressions. Everything else is pretty much just padding between Moorland’s scenes, but that’s no bad thing. It’s also of interest to see just how Black actors were cast and treated back then, which would be hugely offensive if released in modern times but is now just an interesting snapshot of an outmoded era of cinema.

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

 

Zombiegeddon

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

At last, a decent Zombie Movie! After a few weeks of boring unoriginal zombie flicks I felt I needed a reboot so turned to Troma to help me out of the lull. Thankfully Zombiegeddon delivers the trash I have been craving, and more.

The plot of Zombiegeddon is just some insane nonsense about the Devil summoning up a bunch of zombies to wipe out the whole population, but it is basically just an excuse to get from set-piece to set-piece, with a bunch of b-movie celebrity cameos thrown in for good measure. We have Jesus Christ (Tom Savini) in bed with Brinke Stevens, Lloyd Kaufman as a cowardly caretaker and Linnea Quigley as a school principal. There is a zombie hunter who takes his son and his pet zombie-eating tiger out on patrol with him, some incredibly corrupt cops who just murder innocent people for kicks and a cop vs zombie kung-fu fight!

The highlights for me were Lloyd Kaufman’s homophobic janitor who mistakes the zombies for some homosexuals, and runs off to hide in a closet for the remainder of the film, as well as a scene where the 2 cops pull over a carload of boys using some very suspect interrogation techniques.

If it were to be judged on technical merit then it would fail abysmally. The quality of the filming here is pretty dire, with some bottom-drawer acting, terrible sound recording and laughably bad gore (seriously, I swear I saw the bucket come into view when a load of blood was spurted\thrown onto a wall), but none of this matters when you’re watching a who’s who of trashy horror complete with a zombie-eating tiger in it.

For extra laughs I highly recommend reading some of the user reviews on the IMDB site for this film. Seriously, some people just don’t get it.

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

 

Exhumed

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

 

Undead Or Alive

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-

 

Night of the Living Dead

I suppose it wouldn’t be a zombie film blog without reviewing the original flesh eater movie, which is surprisingly the last Romero film to make it onto this site.  Internet blogs and movie history books are littered with reviews of this film, ranging from it’s impact on the horror scene to the social, political and racial overtones it contains, and it would be pointless to take the same course when summing it up here.

So how do I discuss this film?  Well, the reason I had for watching it was because I am still fighting a losing battle to convince the girlfriend that Zombie films are all awesome.  I – perhaps unwisely – introduced her to the genre with Troma’s Redneck Zombies, with unsurprisingly failed to win her over.  The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue also missed the mark, and even Braindead – a film so outstanding that it should be mailed out to children at birth – couldn’t convince her.  Sure, she enjoyed Shaun of the Dead although that was for the comedy really, and 28 Days / Weeks Later also gets a tick in her box, but as we all know there aren’t any zombies in those films.  No, the only minor success I have had is with another Romero zombie movie, the superb Day of the Dead, which got the review of ‘alright’.  Sigh.  How about I go back to the drawing board and start with the film that converted many many people to the love of Zombies – George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

So, how did this film go down?  Well, she hated the characters of Barbra and Cooper, but that’s how everyone feels.  However she didn’t laugh out loud when Ben punches Babs in the face even though it’s the best part of the film.  She also got annoyed that Ben didn’t just wave his hands around shouting that he’s human at the end instead of just standing there and getting shot.  Maybe she’s got a point there.  Also, she was adamant before watching the film that there would never be a black & white horror film that would scare her and she stuck by that statement, never cowering behind a cushion or other such standard girlie actions.

Anyway, we all know how this films goes, but it was interesting to show it to someone who has never seen it before.  And her verdict?  It was ‘Passable’.  Hmm, maybe I’ll try out Return of the Living Dead next time, surely she’ll love that one?

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

 

Shadow : Dead Riot

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

Zombies and Prisons have produced some reasonably decent films in the past. Well, I say ‘reasonably decent’ meaning that ‘Zombie Death House’ and ‘Dead Men Walking’ were not as poor as I had expected.  Surely these films could only have been improved by changing the location to a women’s prison?  And how about chucking in a famous horror actor as lead zombie?

Well, the women’s prison angle works just as expected, meaning lots of pointless shower scenes and chicks with obvious stick-on tattoos fighting and moaning.  It’s a pity that none of them are particularly easy on the eye, particularly the butch muscly woman ‘Mondo’ who seems to have modelled herself on Dennis Rodman.  Mmm, Attractive! Still, none of them are particularly modest and have no qualms wandering into camera shot with their norks on display, and so the first hour of the film is a pretty good laugh, although light on the actual horror.

After about an hour we get introduced to the star zombie – Tony Todd of Candyman fame – who is resurrected when one of the prisoners accidently gives birth over the spot where he was buried (although he had died due to spectacular exploding, so I’m not quite sure what was left of him to bury. Anyway…)  Candyman brings back a bunch of his zombie mates and they start to terrorise the prisoners while he hunts down the female ‘Solitare’ for a reason that doesn’t make any sense.  He killed her Mum apparently, and that forged a connection of some sort with the child.  OK then.

One of the great things about undead movies is that the Zombies themselves are never really the stars, they just represent a generic ‘bad’ that the heroes have to overcome.  Introducing a main zombie personality takes the focus away from the struggle against the zombies and focuses it onto a specific character, meaning that it might as well be a standard serial killer type movie, which is all this really is albeit with a dumb supernatural twist.  Chuck in some terrible acting, cheap fight choreography and a nonsense (even by zombie movie standard) plot and what do you get?  Well aside from the copious full frontal nudity, not very much.

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