Zombie Movie Review: Evil (To kako)

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

Greek horror is not something I am particularly familiar with, but when such a situation presents itself you can – more often than not – count on Zombie Cinema to fill that gap. Undead movies can be found on almost all continents of the globe (i’m still waiting for those lazy penguins to get their act together and knock up a scary movie or two) with Europe a decidedly proficient area.

The makers of this gorefest have obviously seen many of them, as it’s cliche ridden from start to finish. Not that this is a bad thing however, as when would anyone complain about bodies ripped in half Capt Rhodes style, or too many eye gouges?! However, there is one thing that is lacking here, and that is the plot.

Some cavers have are exploring an uncharted grotto somewhere near Athens and uncover a mysterious ‘something’ which apparently causes memory loss and delayed zombism, although we have no idea what this something is. These adventurers manage to get themselves out the cave and back home with no knowledge of how they got there.

The 3 of them then about their regular lives – going to a soccer match, going clubbing and eating dinner with their family. This is where the outbreak occurs as these 3 guys transform into flesh-eaters and devour those around them. We get to see a great scene where the soccer attendee turns to his neighbour and bites him, then turns around to the guy on his other side to do the same, while the first victim then turns to his neighbour to start feasting – it would have been a fantastic sight to have stuck with this view as the whole crowd turn on each other, but we are quickly and unsatisfactorily transferred to another outbreak elsewhere.

We are now at the stage of full outbreak, as a few survivors around the city try to escape and hide from the oncoming horde, while fighting off whichever zombie comes their way. Basically, this is what happens for the rest of the film. Survivors hide, do a bit of arguing, run away and beat up some zombies. There’s no character exploration, no real tension, but oh, is there plenty of gore! Heads explode, limbs rip off, and eyes are punctured with pure Peter Jackson glee.

This goes on until the final climactic scene – which was certainly a highlight – as we are treated to a overhead shot of zombies engulfing the city. This is not the only interesting directorial choice, as the film is riddled with 24-style split screens and picture-in-picture effects. It’s all good fun to watch, plenty of gore, but due to the lack of any real point it is ultimately a fun, if unsatisfying ride.

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

Zombie Movie Review: RetarDEAD

This film is showing on Netflix Instant US. Visit Blog of the Living Dead for details.

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+