Survive or Be Eaten

Okay, so there's a sudden zombie outbreak and you need to know how to survive one.  Where do you turn?  Max Brooks thinks he has the answer, and in The Zombie Survival Guide, many of those answers are truly good ones.  In this book, he gives tips on what to do and what not to do, as well as thinking about survival from a realistic point of view (e.g. automatic rapid-fire weapons work less effectively than a shotgun).  From weapons to knowing your transportation and terrain, Brooks leaves no stone unturned, and he even gives examples of zombie attacks, which in turn, is an effective lead in to the follow up book World War Z.  A highly recommended read (both of them).

World War Z

From the author who brought you The Zombie Survival Guide comes a collection of stories from the Great Zombie War some time in the future.  Max Brooks writes a great account of the "war" in World War Z. In the future, the zombie epidemic reaches dangerously high levels to the point of the human race almost being wiped out.  The unnamed interviewer in the novel goes across the world to interview different people who have experienced the Great Zombie War and each interviewee offers their own story.  Each story is unique and offers a different perspective of how each country handled the epidemic.  If you're familiar with Studs Terkel's The Good War, this is where World War Z gets a good amount of inspiration to the point of Brooks being labeled "this generation's Studs Terkel" on the back cover of the book.  Since it involves zombies, you can also see a George A. Romero influence, as Brooks slips in some social commentary to the effect that the reader will be aware of it and not be distracted from the overall story.

Zombie parodies in books is reaching out of control levels, but for those who only seek the best, World War Z should be one of the first books to pick up.

The Three Ring Circus Mall

Zombies have been (some of) the rage lately, with zombified novels and of course movies.  None of this would be possible without the work of one George A. Romero.  Whereas Night of the Living Dead started it all, it was his second zombie film Dawn of the Dead that established the parameters for how to deal with a zombie invasion and how zombies should act in a movie, that is, if zombies can get it through their nonexistent brains.

As with any Romero film, there is social commentary in the film, with the zombies gravitating towards a shopping mall in this film.  The main characters are a helicopter pilot, his girlfriend, and two soldiers, who escape a zombie invasion and find refuge in a mall.  For a while, the four fight off the zombies while trying to make some kind of living in the mall before the rigors of fighting off the zombies gets to one of them and he becomes one of them.  A biker gang disrupts the living, which naturally causes chaos within the mall.  Most of the gang becomes zombie food, and eventually, the surviving main characters have to flee the mall in the helicopter.

It was in this movie that the best way to deal with them is to shoot them in the head or sever the head from the rest of the body.  Also in the movie is some of the worst zombie makeup ever, which to be fair, wasn't established, since Romero was still trying to figure it out.  I never said this was a perfect zombie movie.  Even with the social commentary, there are some light-hearted moments such as the zombies trying to use the escalator and sometimes falling, and the biker gang trying to use practical jokes such as spritzer water and pies in the face of zombies.  I don't know about you, but pies in the face are good for baseball players, but zombies won't take too kindly to that sort of thing.

Yes, there was a remake of this movie, which I absolutely refuse to watch, and yes, the rules established in the movie have since, been broken (by Romero, no less, in Day of the Dead, which by the way, offers more social commentary and a reason for breaking the rules here, so he gets a pass here).  However, there are few zombie movies that are essential viewing like Dawn of the Dead.

Hotel to Hell

Mention the name Lucio Fulci and one of the very first things that someone will say is The Beyond.  Along with Zombi 2, this is one of Fulci's most famous movies.

The plot of the movie?  I did the lazy thing and looked it up on IMDB:

"The New Yorker Liza Merril inherits an old hotel in Louisiana, and invests her savings to reopen the place. While repairing the building, many people die, and local Dr. John McCabe feels close to Liza and tries to help her to solve the mystery of the hotel. Meanwhile, Emily, a blind woman, advises Liza to leave the place as soon as possible. Later they realize that the place is one gate of hell and has been opened, permitting the dead walk on Earth."

The real fun in the movie isn't just the ways in which the people die, but also the scare factor.  This is definitely not a movie that you would want to try acid on (not that I do that kind of thing) because the movie is pretty weird even without someone trying drugs.  While not nearly as gory as Zombi 2, The Beyond more than holds its own in that regard and has one of the most ambiguous endings that you will see.  In other words, it's up for open interpretation.

Bastards and Sharks

For all of the talk about George A. Romero and the "Dead" trilogy, which includes Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, all three of those combined aren't nearly as cheese filled as the signature film of Lucio Fulci. If you have never seen Zombi 2 (this is how I will refer to the movie in this piece, as that was the Italian name, since Dawn of the Dead was titled, inexplicably, Zombi), then turn in your zombie movie card now.

The plot to Zombi 2 is paper thin, like most zombie movies, as a reporter and a woman team up to find out about the whereabouts of the woman's father. Parts of the movie were shot in an exotic location, as well as New York, where the first signs of a zombie infestation occur on an abandoned boat. Here's all you need to know about Zombi 2: there's a shark vs. zombie battle, a woman gets her eye impaled by a wooden spike, the wonderful creature you see in the picture above rises out of the ground to feast on a woman's throat, and the director forgot to close off the bridge at the end of the movie. Sounds simple enough, really, but that's only the beginning. There is a lot more to that, and Fulci offers cheese and zombies in abundance. All of this adds up to one of the top three zombie movies ever made.

Gangsters, Zombies, and Ridiculously Big Guns. Oh, My!

For today's movie adventure, I will be taking a trip to Japan. No, I'm not going there physically, although that would make for an interesting chapter in the Tito Martel Saga. Rather, today is about the movie Versus.

Here's all you need to know about Versus: don't bother with remembering names of characters, as they don't have any, aside from the main character, who is given an identifying code similar to a prisoner (which he was in the beginning of the movie), don't try mushrooms while watching this movie (not that I recommend it), and there are lots of sword fights and ridiculously large guns. The plot? It's your basic good vs. evil plot, except that one of the characters has trouble remembering what side he is on, and a mysterious girl has to help him remember. Meanwhile, the other half of this equation is seemingly invincible, and "recruits" the dead to do some of his bidding.

The plot is kind of paper thin, and the dubbing into English sounds rather unconvincing, as both main characters could be in the path of a tornado and both sound as though nothing is happening. The fights put the entire House of Flying Daggers and Mortal Kombat movies to shame, and the zombie action isn't huge, but the blood factor is enough to satisfy horror fans. The Japanese won't be challenging the Italian horror community anytime soon, but with movies like Versus, Japan just might be worth checking out for horror movies, after all.

Zombies and Hippies

Here's a little history lesson for you: Every knows about the multitude of Dawn of the Dead ripoffs that occurred since the release of the original, including that 2004 remake. What you may not know is that the first George A. Romero offering Night of the Living Dead spawned its own copycats. The most notable of these (and by notable, I mean the only one people really know about) is from a Spanish director named Jorge Grau. The movie in question bore the title of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, and much like Night of the Living Dead, it had the same socio-political message of not screwing with the environment or bad things will happen.

The movie begins with George closing shop for Holiday, which is the equivalent of a vacation in Europe, and meeting Edna at a gas station after she crushes his motorcycle while trying to park the car to get some gas. He hitches a ride with her as she is on her way to see relatives. However, the living dead begin to surface and soon, the two are fingered for murders that the recently zombified folks committed, namely eating the living. The couple try to clear their name while fighting off the zombies. That's the basic plot in a nutshell.

As for the movie itself, it is very strong on its own, and considering that it copies NOTLD, the movie actually is quite underrated. In addition to the environmental message being sent through the movie, it also touches on the conservative/hippie clash, as George and Edna represent the hippies and the cop that is chasing them represents the tight-butted conservative. There isn't a great deal of violence, but the one that stands out is when a receptionist gets cornered by a trio of zombies and gets her boob ripped off. Overall, this is one of the more under-appreciated movies to have come out of the 70's. A ripoff done right, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is one of those must see movies if you consider yourself a zombie movie fan.

They're Coming to Get You, Barbra!

No discussion of horror films, and zombie movies in general, is complete without talking about the original Night of the Living Dead. In many respects, it was the beginning of the zombie movie subgenre, but it was also the film that catapulted a young director named George A. Romero into the spotlight. While he is best known for the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, in which he established some general rules for dealing with zombies, it is the 1968 debut that brought to mind a "what if" situation in which the dead suddenly come back to life.

The movie begins with a brother and sister driving out to the countryside to lay a wreath on their mother's grave. Before I continue, I'd like to make a joke here, but this sounds like the drive that I would have to make if I was to visit the grave of my grandmother on my mom's side of the family, so I won't do it. Back to the movie, before the siblings can get back to the car to go home, a man with some serious skin and knee problems comes ambling along and gets his hands on Barbra. The brother tries to to save her, only to meet his fate after getting his head rammed against a rock. This leads to Barbra trying to find shelter in an abandoned house. Soon, she is joined by Ben, who is definitely taking this zombie invasion seriously, as he not only tries to board up the house, but also sets fires to keep zombies away. At the time of this movie, there wasn't a set way of dealing with zombies, so fire was the best way to keep them at bay. That duo is joined by a mother and father, and a couple of teens/young adults. Let's just say that they don't make it to the end of the story. I'm not telling you how that happens, so you'll just have to see it for yourself.

George A. Romero made his name with Dawn of the Dead, but it was Night of the Living Dead that ended up being the beginning of all things zombie related. With both films, he brought some subtle, yet clever social commentary to the horror genre and at the same time, inspired others to make such films, however horrible most of those are.

Running With the Idiots

Finally, after about six and a half years of having a DVD case that was chewed up by a friend's dog handed to me, I got around to trying to watch the movie that was encased within the mangled cover. And as you can probably imagine, it was an exercise in trying to get through Shatter Dead, emphasis on the word "trying."

The plot, with the source coming from the ever reliable Wikipedia:

Shatter Dead is a zombie film set in an unknown area following a woman named Susan's (Stark Raven) attempt to return to the apartment of her boyfriend (Daniel 'Smalls' Johnson) in the midst of the return of the dead to a semblance of life. On her way, she is harassed by a preacher (Robert Wells) and a dead woman named Mary (Flora Fauna) intent on convincing her that being undead is preferable to life.

The director of this debacle is one Scooter McCrae, and this film looks like it was definitely made on a $500 budget, as the camera used was likely one that a vacationer would use in capturing something for home movies and the makeup and blood effects look even worse. Acting is almost nonexistent, which is best (or worst) displayed by some guy that calls himself The Preacher Man. If I wanted someone to convert me to their way of thinking, I would not want to call on this guy, as he is the least convincing preacher ever. On paper, the storyline is excellent, but one has to execute such a story, and that is where McCrae falls woefully short. Not helping matters is a scene where a couple of fruitcakes start shooting up the house where Susan is holed up in, with one of them saying as he kicks in the door, and I quote, "Prepare to be physically challenged!" Since when did Double Dare become associated with a zombie movie, anyway? The violence is wonderful and there is some full frontal, so parents should hide the children when watching this film. However, that is not enough to make Shatter Dead anything more than a curiosity watch.

Inside the Perimeter

Another side effect to yesterday's events is that now, I have the ol' writing pipeline backed up. So, in an effort to get it back to normal, I will subject you to a second dose of writing today. Helping out is that I managed to finish yet another disturbing piece by relative newcomer Alan Spencer. Having released his first book The Body Cartel back in September 2009, it didn't take long for him to come out with another book in the form of Inside the Perimeter: Scavengers of the Dead.

Inside the Permieter is a departure from The Body Cartel in the sense that this one has more of a B-movie feel to it. Imagine Night of the Living Dead in literary form if zombies had somehow found a way to keep living even after being shot in the head. The central story surrounds Boyd Broman, a detective that was falsely imprisoned for murder and eventually thrown into what is called "The Perimeter" under the premise of finding Hayden Grubaugh and capturing him in exchange for his freedom. However, "The Perimeter" is an enclosed area that is the size of a small town that is infested with zombie-like creatures who can only be killed by being set on fire. Since these creatures are hard to kill, many who are thrown into "The Perimeter" are often prisoners whose sole purpose is to provide parts for the creatures. Aside from a few of the prisoners whose deaths are detailed in single chapter segments, much of the story focuses on Boyd and Hayden, with only a couple of other characters joining the story halfway through to provide some depth to the story. One of the things that makes the book worth reading is that it gives the viewer little time to breathe, as the constant attacks from the zombie-like creatures keep things interesting. One could argue that Inside the Perimeter takes some of its cues from director George Romero, in that the book also includes some social commentary. While it is more obvious than any of the Romero films, it doesn't detract from the overall content of the book.

In many respects, Inside the Perimeter is an improvement in that it focuses more on the central characters instead of bogging down the story with multiple characters. However, like The Body Cartel, there is an inordinate amount of graphic violence that would definitely not be recommended for the younger set or for the weak of stomach.

Flying Zombie Heads and Other Things

I'm sure that you're saying that there is a safe country from the zombie epidemic, that there is no possible way that zombies can surface in certain places in the world. Well, that is where you are wrong, and as Zombi 3 shows, it can happen anywhere. Okay, so that point was "proven" already with Hell of the Living Dead, but that movie was really shot in Spain and not where the movie claims to have taken place.

Zombi 3 takes place in the Philippines and begins in a science lab, where some scientists are experimenting with something called the Death One virus. Now, stop and tell me if this sounds familiar to you. Yes, this movie is ripping off Hell of the Living Dead, which should figure to some degree, since the guy who directed the Dawn of the Dead ripoff Bruno Mattei, also had a hand in Zombi 3. Before I go any further, it should be noted that the movie began as a Lucio Fulci film, but he left halfway through and Mattei finished the directing responsibilities, though the official directing credits go to Fulci. Back to the story, the experiment goes awry, the scientists head to the waiting vehicle with the virus secured inside a case, only to be met by some eco terrorists, and one of them runs off with the case. During the chase, the case gets shot, the man who had the case gets infected by the virus, and he begins to look worse before dying, but not before biting one of the bell boys and killing a maid at a hotel in which he took refuge. The army finds him, burns him, and the result is that it releases the virus into the air. Long story short, it affects the birds, which will affect the people who are central to the story.

Now, for the good, bad, and ugly of the movie. First, the good: the flying zombie head that attacks one of the people that were in the party van and the zombie baby that attacks a woman who was also part of that convoy. The bad: zombies should not be able to speak in complete sentences, let alone, in a coherent manner when it is clearly established that said infected person is a zombie. Also, zombies should not be able to move fast...at all. Period. The ugly: the makeup that is used on the zombies in the making of the film. To clarify, that is also a good thing, since it shows a marked improvement from the early days of zombie movies.

Zombi 3 commits a lot of sins when it comes to the "rules of zombie movies," which for the most part, equals disaster. Some comedy relief comes in the form of the radio DJ, who provides a smooth voice to the chaos within the movie, as well as some social commentary on the environment. Logic flies out the window with regularity for no reason on Zombi 3, so those who expect even the slightest hint of such an idea should stay far away from this movie.

Zombie Doom

Do you want to see blatant false advertising at its best (or worst)? Well, look no further than the movie Zombie Doom. This German "horror" film is 75 minutes long, yet only has about five minutes worth of zombies. So, why the name? Well, if I was to market this movie to the younger set, I would not want to have the parents see that movie was called Violent Shit III, which was in fact, the original name of this movie, though one has to wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to market it to the youth in the first place.

The basic plot of the movie is that three people get stranded on an island that houses a mysterious cult of people that wear masks that they get from what looks like a Radio Flyer wagon. The leader of the group is a guy that calls himself the Meister, who looks for all the world like a poor Hulk Hogan impersonator. Also in this group is Dr. Senius, complete with the Hitler 'stache and the Meister's father. The three castaways find themselves at the mercy of this horde and while two survive, the other gets killed before what the horde calls the "Pig Hunt." It is there that the two remaining survivors are joined by the horde's castoff Leon, and last time I checked, I don't know any Asian people named Leon. The trio does fairly well for themselves for a few minutes before the castaways run as the zombies begin to surface. Meanwhile, Leon is joined by a couple of his friends that were also cast off from the horde. It should be mentioned that the two remaining people from the beginning of this film get killed off about halfway through the film. Somehow, there is a longer sequence with ninjas (!) than there are zombies, and at the end of the movie, the only people left standing didn't even join in until halfway through the movie.

So, obvious logical errors aside, there are absolute signs that Zombie Doom was indeed, made on a small budget. When the people get decapitated, it is blatantly obvious that the mannequins of the victims are the ones taking the fall. The English dubbing is quite bad, ranging from the inability to sync sound effects with the proper actions to the "one sound effect at a time" idea to memorable lines that have people saying that others make them want to puke. There is lots of gore, lots of explosions (from Nerf guns posing as rocket launchers), and a bunch of stuff that would have been more at home on a low budget martial arts flick. If you're looking for gore and lots of it, Zombie Doom is the movie for you. If you're looking for any semblance of logic, then stay far, far away from this movie.

Zombie Bloodbath 3

I can remember seeing Zombie Bloodbath 3 on something that used to be the video format of choice called VHS (maybe you have heard of it). As you may remember, during my college days, I used to borrow some horror movies from a friend of mine to watch for a few days. This was one of those movies that I wish that I hadn't watched. Terrible in just about every way imaginable, yet just as much of a train wreck that I can't simply turn away.

Zombie Bloodbath 3 was part of a trilogy of films directed by Kansas City based director Todd Sheets. Locals will know him as the guy who owned a few haunted houses back in the day, which explains some of the settings for the movie. What is not explained is the incredibly shoddy "space" sequences, or the fact that the "high school" looks a lot like an elementary school, or the fact that zombies can talk and somehow play the piano, or just the incredibly lazy editing that sees the ending mirror the beginning. Saying all of that, there are some pretty good gory scenes for what it's worth, and the dialogue, though not intellectual, does provide some laughs every now and then. There is even a bloopers segment at the end of the movie, which at the very least, shows that Zombie Bloodath 3 doesn't take itself seriously.

Premutos: Lord of the Living Dead

Since I had a little fun writing about the last movie I wrote about A Blade in the Dark, I decided to talk about another movie. Now, to help set parameters for what will go here as far as movies go, if it isn't in my collection at the time of the writing or it is incredibly obscure, it will go here instead of Metal Psalter, unless it gets pushed by other media outlets.

Today's movie falls under the category of the obscure. Believe it or not, I didn't really get into the horror movie genre until the Summer of 2003, when the first movie I watched was Dario Argento's Suspiria. At some point during the fall, while I was still in college, I met a guy that had quite a collection of obscure horror movies. The first movie that I was made to watch is also the subject of today's piece: Premutos: Lord of the Living Dead. Made in 1993, this German movie was all about body count, and it showed from the beginning. With a pretty blatant disregard for storyline, director Olaf Ittenbach goes for the gore, and many of the results shown are as graphic as they are spectacular.

However, I suppose I should tell you the entire purpose of the movie, other than just blowing zombies up and watching people get disemboweled. The central figure of the story is a fallen angel by the name of Premutos, who gets resurrected throughout the ages. Remember that because it will be important later. Fast forward to modern times, and a man named Mathias (Ittenbach), whose stepfather is a war veteran who seems to be stuck in that mode, a dominatrix sister, and what can pass off as a normal mother. It so happens that it is the stepfather's birthday, and there is to be a party featuring an emasculated male and his snobby wife, the stepfather's old war buddy who gets wasted, and a shy woman who recently came back into the country. Mathias gets hurt in the futbol game (read: gets cleated in the groin) and has to miss the party. The stepfather gives him some reading material, which just so happens to be the book of Premutos. By opening the book, Mathias ends up turning into Premutos, and soon, a zombie horde begins to take over, eventually taking out the dominatrix sister, her boyfriend Taco (again, don't ask me why), and shortly thereafter, the horde descends onto the party, where the people have to fend them off.

If any part of the synopsis makes your head explode, then don't blame me, I didn't make the movie. If you can ignore the storylines, Premutos: Lord of the Living Dead is actually a comedy and horror movie at the same time. Among the highlights of the movie are when Hugo, the emasculated male, flicks a booger into his wife's mouth and she stops for a second, only to continue laughing for no reason, and the full frontal fantasy sex scene sequence between Hugo and Tanya, the shy woman. Don't expect intelligent dialogue either, as the English dubbing sounds like a small group of people just got around a TV and put the movie on mute to put in their own commentary. And in case you didn't get that body count was important, it does a final tally at the end of the movie.

Serious horror fans should stay away from this movie. Those who seeks lots and lots of violence will love this film, and even those who just like car wrecks will love this movie, too.

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Since my predictions are eating it and given that I'm close to the finish of the book that I'm reading now, I decided that now would be a pretty good time to make an attempt at reviewing said book. The book in question? That would be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Yes, you read that correctly, and in case you think your eyes are deceiving you, the picture of the book cover should remove all doubt.

The book, written by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, is a hilarious take on the original Pride and Prejudice novel written by Austen. With some "help" from Grahame-Smith, there are now zombies, or as they are referred to in to story, unmentionables. The basic story remains intact, as Elizabeth Bennet has to deal with the infestation and the appearance of arrogant prick Mr. Darcy, among other things. The determination to wipe out the horde displeases her mother Mrs. Bennet, who wishes for the marriage of her five daughters, including Elizabeth, instead of the training that Mr. Bennet puts them through. Conflict arises when Lady Catherine de Bourgh makes an appearance and appears to challenge the Bennets, proclaiming that their style of training from the Shaolin temples of China are inferior to her training that she received from Japan. That conflict would escalate when Elizabeth, blindfolded, manages to kill the three ninjas that de Bourgh sends during a training session. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has to deal with a friend that gets infected by the unmentionables and eventually marries Mr. Collins, for whom it was intended by Mrs. Bennet that Elizabeth should marry. The description in which Charlotte's slow transformation into an unmentionable (the reasons for which is later revealed) is pretty graphic, but leaves no details out of how others react, which is one of the highlights of book.

As for the rest of the book, I really thought Mrs. Bennet came off as the nagging mother that just simply wouldn't shut up. In fact, I felt like smacking the crap out of her for every time she talked during the book. The evolution of the relationship between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy is carefully plotted out, from the hostile beginnings to what is seen as a warmer mutual feeling between the two. Even though the whole China/Japan prejudice is never really explored in the novel, it gets mentioned quite a bit. I would have liked to have known a little more about it, but it wasn't a central part of the story, as is the whole marrying the cousin concept that seems to keep coming up, so those are minor complaints to an otherwise great novel. If you've read the original Pride and Prejudice at all, you know how the story ends. If you haven't, I won't spoil it here. Overall, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is one of the better reads in recent memory. It has humor, romance, drama, and best of all, zombies. I definitely recommend it for all, especially for those who just simply can't get into the original story.