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Summer of Zombie 2010 Lurches Away
Looking over my summer’s worth of data and articles, I discovered I had learned a few interesting things, alleviated some stereotypes, and not to mentioned got to tour the world locations through the eyes of zombie films. However, first and foremost, I realized that the rating systems I devised to rank the movies (as seen below FIGURE 1) was created based on how well a movie could emulate Dawn 78 which was both unfair and often inapplicable.
Since Dawn of the Dead 78 was my inspiration to start this search, I was looking for a lost classic that had many awesome kills, a grainy quality to the film, a creepy touch, a crumbling society atmosphere that almost feels freeing, some campy fun, and, of course, buckets of blood and guts. Dawn of the Dead 78 would have scored a perfect 30 on my scale, but I think I’ve come to realize that what made Dawn great isn’t what makes every zombie film great.
Take for example the Re-animator franchise, which I think are excellent zombie films. They would rank very low on the Summer of zombie meter because even though their gore and campiness would rock through the roof, they don’t film in a grainy style, they aren’t particularly scary, they don’t kill many zombies, and their atmosphere isn’t comedic and not really what I was 
looking for. However, Re-animators 1,2,3 are all excellent films in their own way.
Even though Dawn of the Dead 78 is still my favorite zombie movie, I think the Summer of Zombie has taught me to try to enjoy zombie cinema without trying to fit every zombie film into a formula. That being said let’s examine the countdown and try to re-rank and reanalyze. (SEE FIGURE 2 Below)
The 1# Summer of Zombie Lost Classic, after careful thought, has to go to Cronenburg’s Rabid. It had the ability to create an apocalyptic atmosphere with more little snippets of carnage than most films can do with hordes of zombies. A perfect example is a scene where a car full of government officials are arguing over policy and two emergency workers approach and crack open their cars with the jaws of life, peel out the driver, and eat him. It’s hard to say what made this piece so enjoyable, even with its non-traditional Typhoid Mary spreading the plague, the film was still able to both standout and deliver a comfortable formula. Cronenburg really nailed the less-is-more concept.
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie succeeds in similar fashion. It had all the typical fan pleasing material: slow lurching corpses, handfuls of guts feeding scenes, and a little dash of commentary about man’s inability to cooperate. However, the conventions aren’t expanded into the pleasureful repetitions and grander scales we often see in Romero and Fulci films. Regardless, with under ten zombies, Grau still succeeded in a big way that has me accepting his red eyed pseudo-clever superhuman zombies despite his complete lack of internal logic. And if your film makes little sense and still entertains, you’ve done something right.
The rest of the films fell a little (or a lot) below the lost classic rank and keep in mind this list is in no way a top eleven list of my favorites as the movies came through a very random selection process, but with that in mind Grapes of Death has to take #3. Even though it’s more of a Crazies type film than a zombie film, and even though Brigitte Lahaie‘s queen of the crazies scene was completely out of left field, the film created perfect atmosphere. Watching it, the viewer is drawn in by the feeling of overpowering isolation as Elisabeth tries to cross the desolate landscape of rural France’s wine country, finding only a blind girl for a companion who can neither appreciate the horror or the danger of the violence that is wiping out the villages. Not to say it’s a great film, but it’s paced well and enjoyable to watch.
Hell of the Living Dead still ranks fairly high in my mind, but probably only because it follows a typical and comfortable format, and that’s putting it nicely. Saying it straight out: it completely rips off Dawn of the Dead‘s pre-mall formula of being on the road in a land rife with zombies while government officials fight over how to handle the situation. Not to mention, they raided Romero’s closet for the SWAT uniforms and the soundtrack, but that’s a separate issue. At the end of the day, Hell still boasts lots of Romerian “slow-movers” and a good post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Besides, isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
Nightmare City also pretty much stayed around the same rung. Really another entry into the Crazies/Infect genre, but as I went through these films I realized that zombie films aren’t as much about how zombies act, but how society acts in response to the revolution of humans being turned into something else. Romero cited I am Legend (The 1954 novel by Richard Matheson), as his inspiration for NOTLD 68 and all he did was change the vampires to flesh eating corpses. Nightmare City changes the flesh rating corpses to overly radiated super-humans that look like the toxic avenger, but the concept of society being turned upside-down remains, in a civilization stripped of its order. Even though Nightmare replaces order with hokey-ness, this is still a good watch for fans of zombie horror.
Night of the Comet was given the most redemption by my little re-evaluation, since the SOZ meter placed it second worst, but as Let Sleeping Corpses taught us: less zombies doesn’t always make for lesser film. I’ll admit that Comet’s apocalypse is pretty bland and it’s typical 80′s girls in need of rescue, from the stock boy cult then from the evil government agency, may get old quick but if you understand the conventions of the 80′s comedy then enjoying an 80′s comedy-with zombies isn’t so hard, is it? Long story short, it belongs in the top six and not with the garbage in the bottom five.
Flesheater stands atop the slop mountain, winning best-of-the-worst, with Bill Hinzman digging up his old corpse to fondle young women. I admit his writing “emulates” NOTLD to the point that it’s by far the most shameless rip-off I’ve ever watched. It does have gratuitous nudity for no good reason and the worse acting I’ve ever seen, but it’s unpretentious and fun with bathtubs full of gore. Watch this one with good friends and lots of beer and you have yourself a great party film.
The Dead Pit came right at the time that the American zombie film was on it way out (until Resident Evil) and Jason, Freddy, and Michael were still rolling strong, so why not use a slasher format to spruce it up? Bad idea. The Dead Pit winds up being a failure as both a slasher and zombie film as it’s conventions of both are lessened by the other. While you may argue that Rabid mixed these genres, the difference remains that Rabid builds the atmosphere of a zombie film initially while The Dead Pit is like a sub-par slasher that comes down with a base case of zombie film to feed its climax. Most offensive was that it was marketed as a zombie film or a tied up and topless Cheryl Lawson film, but I’m not getting started on that rant again.
Oasis of the Dead is another mixed genre piece, which apparently is a part of a sub-genre of Nazi zombie films that I had no idea existed but there’s at least a half dozen of these, however I’ll save that for a “Winter of Third Reich Zombies” series. However, that’s not why it’s at the bottom; Dead Snow (also of this genre) was awesome. Oasis fails because its another movie that relies on T&A to sell a logically devoid movie with terrible effects and cinematography. Still, I found it the least pretentious of the trio of terribleness here at the bottom.
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things takes the “At Least its not the Worst Award”. Sigh. As hard as it is for me to trash the work of the late Bob Clark, this is a terrible zombie movie. People who consider this film a classic try to liken it to a Twilight Zone format where the build up of the villain’s awfulness really pumps the viewer up for the curtain to raise on the final act so he get his come-uppings, but honestly the dialogue is awful and when the zombies finally show up after an hour of waiting there’s nothing worth seeing. Bob Clark should put a sock in this one like he had that guy stuff one in Kim Cattrall’s mouth in Porky’s
The worst of the worst is Zombie Holocaust or Zombie 3, as it was named to try and cash in on Fulci’s masterpiece. This piece almost single handily set zombie films back fifty years as it relies on a formula of zombies controlled by a master like in White Zombie (1932.) That is not to say that that type of story can’t be pulled off in a modern flick, but when the rest of your film is feedings scenes by living human cannibal tribes and exploitation of Alexandra Delli Colli’s naked body, which is on screen more than any zombie, then you have a vapid piece of trash. Fabrizio De Angelis and Co. put together about the worst ideas Italians have had since Mussolini sided with Hitler. Yeah, it’s a bad film.
With that my Summer of Zombie comes to a close, and I feel like I’ve grown a bit. I’ve learned that zombies don’t have to be fast or slow, weak or strong, smart or dumb, mute or talkative, or even infected or undead to make a good film but they should make you afraid of having to become one of them. The fear of losing your identity and ultimately the society you know to these creatures is what makes them terrifying. However, even though the horror of becoming one of them is prominent, the spirit of revolution still provides an emotion of freedom in most well done zombie films, which is why the idea of surviving in such an environment has been associated with fun as of late. Zombieland, Max Brooks’ novels, and the Dead Rising games all thrive on this concept. At the end of the day, I don’t know if it’s even about the zombie anymore or the fact that escaping the mundane even at the cost of the horrific seems pleasing.
With a new philosophy of what the zombie film should be, I feel ready to take on a horde of bad zombies films with a new found respect and tolerance for them and I’ve gained appreciation for how broad the term “zombie” can be used. Except for those idiots that still put the Evil Dead movies on their best zombie flick lists. For the last time, they’re people possessed by Candarian Demons, not zombies, morons! Ah, it feels good to be opened minded.
FIGURE 1: Rating as per original Dawn of the Dead Cookie cutter system
1- Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1977) 24 points
2- Rabid (1977) and Hell of Living Dead(1980) 22 points
3- Grapes of Death (1978) Nightmare City (1980) Flesheater (1988) 21 points
4- The Dead Pit (1989) Zombie Holocaust (1980) Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1973) 14 points
5- Night of the Comet (1984) 12 points
6- Oasis of the Living Dead (1981) 10 points.
FIGURE 2: Re-ranked
1- Rabid
2-Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
3-Grapes of Death
4-Hell of the Living Dead
5-Nightmare City
6-Night of the Comet
7-Flesheater
8-The Dead Pit
9- Oasis of the Dead
10- Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things
11- Zombie Holocaust.
SOZ Review #11 Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.
Posted by Chris in Reviews, Uncategorized, Zombies on August 16th, 2010
Perhaps, a zombie film shouldn’t be judged by its first zombie, but there’s something to be said about how you how you toss your first punch at the audience. Romero’s infamous first Zombie, Bill Hinzman of Flesheater fame, lurked in the distance, creepy and dark, like gathering storm clouds at the edge of the cemetery. Jack Snyder’s little girl from Dawn’ 2004 stepped into the light to reveal her shredded face, then she unleashed hell. Day of the Dead (1985) darkened its screen with a long shambling shadow that stepped out of the glare of the blazing sun to reveal a living dead man with no lower jaw and a long rotting tongue hanging out.
Jorge Grau‘s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1977) first zombie is very reminiscent of Bill Hinzman’s NOTLD 68′ graveyard zombie, lurching slowly through an old graveyard in a black suit. Watching him apprehensively, is Edna,(Cristina Galbó) whose trip to her sister’s house has been plagued with delays and missteps. She waits for her traveling companion, George, (Ray Lovelock) who while receiving directions learn that local farmers are testing a machine that shoots radiation into the ground to kill insects.
Everything seems to be in place for the typical formula to unfold. Locals messing with experimental technology, a woman left alone without the car keys, and a drunk looking man shambling towards her. The unknown man reaches for Edna and she is forced to flee to her car, but like Barbabra before her, she forgot she didn’t have the keys. She has to flee through the river, but when George returns with the farmer the zombie has disappeared.
Yes, It’s one of those clever zombie films and even though George and Edna have a car and newly acquired directions to her sister’s house, they get lost and the “Yogi bear” of (smarter than the average) zombies beats them to her sister’s house. Back at the ranch, we learn Edna’s sister is a heroine addict and her photographer husband has asked Edna over to help him commit her sister into a rehab clinic. While waiting for Edna to arrive, the unhappy couple have a fight and Edna’s sister sneaks off to the shed to do some heroine.
In the shed, the audience is treated to some classic creepy tension building camera angles and the eerie labored breathing that marks the zombies in this film. Edna calls out, but no one replies, until an inflatable raft falls over and Edna’s zombie friend is waiting behind it. Well, that explains how he beat them, he took a boat.
Edna’s crack head sister manages to escape by breaking a window and catches up to her husband that is photographing a nearby waterfall. Yogi gives chase and attacks the couple, ultimately killing her husband. She flees in terror with the creature fast on her heel but when she flees to the driveway, headlights bleach out her face, and again, the zombie sees the car and ducks into the bushes. Yawn.
From here on out, the movies settles into an even slower pace, where it can establish its social commentary about the distrust between the post-war generations.An old school cop heading up the investigation suspects Edna and George, “those dirty drug hippies” to be responsible for the murder and everything else from drugs to satanic rituals, but refuses to believe the truth of the zombie plague. George himself has problems believing his new companion and after they discover that man Edna saw at the river is deceased George decide to go on field trip to the graveyard so he can prove to her that he’s in his grave.
They arrive at the tomb to discover…a zombie film! The narrative and genre conventions finally pick up as they find his coffin to discover it empty and the cemetery caretaker eaten. From here, we have a claustrophobic fight scene where even though our heroes are locked in the tomb with Yogi and his super-human strength, however he seems distracted and uninterested with putting real effort into eating them. Instead, he starts placing his blood on the eyelids of the dead, but I thought the farming equipment brings the dead back? Whatever.
While he’s distracted raising re-enforcements, Edna and George slip out the back of the crypt into a newly dug grave and a cop that the paranoid detective sent to tail them arrives just in time to join the fun. Even though, they’re in the open field with their choice of vehicles a short jog away and the slowest moving creatures pursuing them, they decide to take the only course of action that will give the zombies an advantage and trap themselves in a small building. That makes sense. With creatures that have no speed and superhuman strength, you want to corner yourself.
From here, the movie becomes very episodic. From Mortuary, to mansion, to hospital wing, the zombie plague moves from location to location (and by plague I mean never more than four). The police continue to distrust the young couple and anyone else that witnesses the zombies ends up dead, leaving Edna and George running from both the undead and the law. The lack of cooperation between all parties leads up to a climax that ends in a ironic Romerian style conclusion.
While the internal logic in this piece seemed to have rotted away somewhere early in the script writing, the film still succeeds with strong atmosphere, creepy cinematography, and clever social commentary. Despite the hokey super zombies, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie‘s message of clan mentality: Scientific community pushing forward without questioning side effects or outside criticism, Generational profiling by law enforcement, and neither groups willing to admit for a second that they may be the one that is wrong is the ultimate downfall of their society. Very rarely, outside of a Romero piece, is zombies and satire pulled off with such ease.
Zombie fans may be disappointed with this piece that deviates from a very promising and comfortable formula; the typical horde never rising from the lofty expectations that lurched onto the screen with that first zombie, but, despite all my complaints, I can’t help but coming away from this piece with the feeling that I actually watched a half-way decent zombie film that didn’t really on boobs (though one gets peeled like an over ripe mango) or gimmicks to sell tickets.
S.O.Z RATING 23 of 30— Not the type of lost classic I wanted to find, but a lost classic none the less.
Grainy Value- 5 of 5
Scary – 4 of 5 *Very tense and creepy.
Atmosphere- 5 of 5
Gore- 5 of 5* Hardly non-stop, but brutal when it happens
Camp Value- 2 of 5
Zombies Kills- 2 of 5 * only burnings
This Room Is Green – Revisiting Cube
Posted by Matt in Hidden Gems, Reviews on August 14th, 2010
[THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Back in the days before Netflix and On-Demand, I used to peruse the aisles at Blockbuster for nearly an hour each visit looking for something unique amongst the 400 copies of Titanic and Men In Black. Inevitably, I’d end up in the horror/sci-fi section reading the backs of VHS boxes. It was like a lottery. There weren’t any blogs offering reviews. I didn’t buy film magazines. I just watched random movies. One of these random movies that ended up surprising my 14-year-old self was the now cult-classic, Cube. I remember loving the premise of a bunch of strangers waking up in an unknown futuristic prison consisting of identical cube-shaped rooms for apparently no reason, some of which armed with lethal traps.
Evidently I wasn’t the only one impressed with this under-the-radar Canadian flick, as it has become revered by the horror community in the same way films like Session 9 have. I don’t think I’ve read one negative review over the years but I decided it was time to re-evaluate Cube since I hadn’t watched it in easily 10 years. Especially with movies, I think it’s easy to form one positive (or negative) opinion at one point in time and then become nostalgic about it even though your own tastes change and your critical eye evolves.
Cube opens with a bald unnamed man waking up in an empty room where the walls are illuminated white panels. There are six hatches, one on each side of the room, leading to identical rooms with different colored panels. After peeking into a blue room and a red room, the man decides to enter an orange room. All is quiet as he steps toward the center of the room when suddenly a slick metal sound is heard and the man jumps slightly. The camera pans to show his bleeding head and then to reveal the symmetrical square-shaped blood stains forming on his clothes. His body has been chopped into hundreds of pieces by a super sharp metal grate that hurled its way through him. The pieces gradually fall to the ground in spectacular gory fashion.
Sometime later (we can assume), we’re introduced to a group of strangers, all dressed identically in prison-esque outfits bearing their last name, who gradually find each other. There’s police officer Quentin, math genius Leavin, government fearing doctor Holloway, prison escape artist Rennes, world-loathing Worth, and autistic Kazan. Despite being strangers, they all have one thing in common. Namely, that they have no idea what the hell is going on or how they arrived in this sadistic death machine.
Once the group manages to gather themselves, they realize that they’ll need to work together if they have any hope of surviving. It’s no coincidence that they were hand picked to participate, as they each possess unique talents. Plot-wise, Cube follows the sextet as they attempt to navigate room after room of treacherous obstacles including sound activated spikes, face-melting acid and spinning metal wires designed to slice and dice. Once Leavin notices that each room is marked by a series of numbers, she gets to work as to what they mean and inevitably leads the group (or what’s left of them) towards where she believes the exit to be. As the hours wear on and conflicts develop between several of the strangers, we’re left to wonder who to trust and who will remain standing.
But what really makes Cube interesting is everything we don’t know and the impact that lack of knowledge has upon the characters. Director Vincenzo Natali uses the cube to represent the power of an unseen force (mainly God or government, in this case) that subjects humanity to suffering and each character represents a different philosophy or way of dealing with this reality – Quentin uses sheer force, Leaven works her brains, Holloway descends into illogical paranoia, Worth denounces the merits of living, Rennes is consumed by the hubris that he can handle anything, and Kazan waits to use his unique savant gift.
As they traverse the traps and ultimately grow wary, the characters begin to ask the big questions – who? why me? It becomes a dystopian musing on the world, good/evil and a dissection of humanity. Natali toys with Kafka’s idea that maybe no one is behind their imprisonment. Rather, they could be there as a result of an ongoing beuracratic process where one party doesn’t know what the other is doing. Food for thought. Just as central, is the exploration of how quick we are to abandon our humanity in order to survive. Would you leave an autistic person behind to die if he posed a threat to your own survival? Would you attack someone because they’re having a breakdown and you want them to shut up? The real horror in Cube resides in these ideas, not the elaborate traps (though they’re cool too). Calling any of Natali’s ideas “groundbreaking” or “revolutionary” would be exaggeration but Cube does give you something to think about and that’s a lot more than I can say about most horror these days.
Where Cube comes up short is sometimes ridiculous dialogue. I don’t care if I ever find myself trapped in a room with acid-shooting guns. You’ll never hear me utter “It’s my job to read people like an x-ray” or “Have you been on glue your whole lives?” The script is generally strong but lapses into occasional moments with no basis on actual human interaction. Overall, the acting is strong except for Holloway’s melodramatic anti government tirades and Quentin’s violent outbursts. Otherwise, this group of relatively unknown actors does an excellent job embodying Natali’s characters.
So, is Cube a masterpiece? Not completely but its a unique premise that has since been copied countless times (Saw franchise, I’m looking at you) and it leaves your synapses firing for a while after you turn it off. We don’t know what’s outside of the cube and we’re not supposed to. That’s the fun part – thinking about it. So, what did you think was across that bridge?
SOZ Review #10: Rabid
Thirty years before our friend Paco Plaza reintroduced a strain of rabies into Zombie Horror, David Cronenberg had a similar Candian entry into the zombie canon featuring a prominent porn star who ran for Vice-President of the USA, twice. While Ms. Marilyn Chambers never made it to the White house, I’m sure the porn queen’s soul will rest easy knowing that her zombie film Rabid 1977 was recognized by No Room In Hell’s “Summer of Zombie ’2010″ series….But I digress
Cronenberg (who is most famous for pieces like The Fly (1986), The Dead Zone (1983), and Naked Lunch takes an interesting approach to the zombie genre by having a beautiful girl become a carrier (infected, contagious, no symptoms) after an experimental surgery to patch her up from a motorcycle accident. The procedure gone-haywire causes her to awaken with a new hunger for blood and a tube like worm-fang appendage that shoots out of her armpit allowing her to penetrate her victim’s flesh. I bet Edward Cullen would never see that bad boy coming…
Blood sucker jokes aside, the trick of Rabid is that everyone of her victims ends up looking like one of Plaza’s quarantined tenement dwellers and a plague of rabid zombies floods the Montreal streets. Cronenberg dishes out this spreading carnage in little vignettes as seen through the eyes of a handful of main characters like the doctor who performed the operation, Rose’s Boyfriend Hart, Rose’s best friend, and Rose herself. With bedlam unfolding everywhere: carnage on the subway, doctors slicing their colleague’s fingers off during surgery, zombies on line to see the mall Santa (watch for the sluttiest Elf costume ever) Marshall Law is instated, and the film shifts to a Romerian approach on critiquing military government
As Montreal passes through the rings of hell, a more personal love story between Rose and Hart fuels the main narrative as Hart tries to weave his way through an infected Montreal that is locked down by government troops. Rose, on the other hand, showing no symptoms of the virus seeks refuge at her best friend’s apartment and has to struggle with her agonizing hunger to prevent making her friend her next meal, but Rose, somehow, remains in denial that she is indeed the Typhoid Mary spreading the plague.
Overall, most zombies fan will probably leave this one wishing for a grander apocalypse, and more zombie carnage; but, for me, Croneberg’s style nailed this one. However, I recognize that some genre purists may dispute Rabid as a Zombie movie at all, but I think it has the genre’s atmospheric qualities more so than some of the other entries I’ve tackled on this project. Either way, I think this piece is a must have for opened minded Zombie fans that want something with a little different pace.
S.O.Z RATING 22 of 30— Maybe not the Lost classic I was looking for, but a good watch.
Think Santa lied about the Elf's uniform?
Grainy Value- 5 of 5
Scary – 3 of 5
Atmosphere- 5 of 5
Gore- 3 of 5* Minimal Gore, but used well
Camp Value- 2 of 5
Zombies Kills- 4 of 5* Only Gunshots but some very effective ones for the tone of the film.
SOZ Review #9: The Dead Pit
In the 80′s when Mom and Pop video stores were king(before Blockbuster conquered and long before Netflix dethroned Blockbuster) renting a movie consisted of wandering the aisles gazing at the now seemingly Cinder-block-sized VHS cases and their cover art. A few covers from that era always stuck in mind: Ghoulies with that ridiculous creature emerging from a toilet, Bad Dreams with that rotting hand clasped over that girls mouth, Sleepaway Camp for its simple knife through the sneaker approach, and The Dead Pit with that zombie rising from a green glowing hole and a horde of his friends in toe. With that image stuck in my mind and being such a die hard Zombie fan I’m surprised I didn’t view this one sooner, but somehow The Dead Pit (1989) always slipped through the cracks.
Since The Dead Pit is in the last year of the 80s and thus at the tail end of the first rise of Zombie popularity, the movie carries a lot of negatives because of the influences of the time. On a basic visual level, by 89′ most of the grainy feel, which prompted me to start this series in the first place, is gone. Also, The cover art is misleading as the zombie segment only occurs in the last one-fourth of the film and the majority of the movie follows more of a slasher format.
Dead Pit’s slasher is mostly referred to as “The Surgeon,” who was once a brilliant neuron-surgeon that turned to performing dark occult experiments on the asylum’s patients . Of course, one of his colleagues, Dr. Swan (Jeremy Slate), discovers his plot and shoots him in head then seals him up in the basement where his dark experiments went down. From here, we fast-forward 20 years to when a young women with amnesia, Jane-Doe (Cheryl Lawson), is emitted to the hospital. Upon her arrival an earth quake occurs and breaks the seal that was holding the demon. Apparently, Spackle and a new paint job can imprison demons.
Regardless, the next hour follows Jane as she tries to piece her past together and deal with her chronic nightmares of “The Surgeon” as even her waking life is haunted by glimpses of him wandering the grounds. While Dr. Swan tries to help Jane remember her real identity, the demon surgeon stalks the ward at night with his Lee-Press-on nails claws and Rudolph red glowing eyes, picking off the staff one by one and resuming his work by submitting them to his brain scrambling experiments.
This formula goes on long enough for zombies fans to start looking at their watch and wondering if the box art had lied to them, but eventually, after kidnapping Jane, the surgeon lets loose his zombie horde on the hospital. The zombie unleash typical attacks on hapless staff and inmates, but their function is cryptic. Instead of eating brains the creatures pull them from their victims and just tend to stare at them.
With Zombies running around staring at brains, Swan comes to terms with the fact that he has to try to defeat his old colleague once again, and Jane teams up with another patient trying to find a means of destroying the evil. Long-Story-short: Swan fail, but one of the loonies is a Nun whose creation of holy water seems to have an instant-melt effect–wicked Witch of the West style– (yeah they’re going that route), and Jane’s fellow inmate, Chris, happens to be an ex-military demolitions expert that notices the facility has a giant water tower on site. I’m sure you can add up the clues to the end game from here.
Nurse, is this really the standard Asylum issue clothing?
The rest of the movie relies on the twist about who Jane Doe really is, which is fairly obvious to anyone whose brain hasn’t been ripped out and stared at by zombies. Overall, it’s not a zombie movie, and pretty hokey slasher. While the Slasher/Zombie movie blend is an interesting marketing technique the true selling point of the flick seems to be about Cheryl Lawson running around in a skin-tight cropped t-shirt and high cut white panties. If you don’t believe it then you will after a dream sequence where the Nurse Ratchet want-to-be ties her up with leather straps and shoots her with a fire host that eventually strips her clothes off. Even though this scene has absolutely nothing to due with the plot it’s actually portrayed on a few of the marketing posters. Needless to say this film covered its bases when trying to market to several different types of horror movie going fans.
S.O.Z RATING 14 of 30—Average. Too multi-genre. Too far separated from the height of the Zombie Craze. Too much damn red glow on the eyes.
This is a deep symbolic methaphor, Right?
Grainy Value- 1 of 5
Scary – 2 of 5
Atmosphere- 3 of 5
Gore- 4 of 5* Lots of Brain imagery.
Camp Value- 2 of 5
Zombies Kills- 2 of 5 * Only the damn holy water, but melting is kinda cool…I guess
SOZ Review #8: The Grapes of Death
No, John Steinbeck didn’t write a Zombie movie after he won the Pulitzer, and no this isn’t another Pride, Prejudice and Zombies deal. Instead, Grapes of Death (1978) is a rare entry coming from France instead of its usual Zombie prolific neighbor Italy, which begs the questions if there’s going to be a zombie plague in France what’s going to cause it? Well, Wine, of course.
The foreshadowing rich opening of Grapes portrays laborers at a vineyard spraying a new pesticide on the grapes that will be used for this year’s Wine Tasting Festival. One of the workers starts to complain about a mysterious fever and headache coming over him, and the dark clouds are already gathering on the horizon. Then we cut to our Protagonist, Elisabeth, who is riding across the wine country on an empty train with her friend Bridgette in an attempt to reach her fiance who is a foreman at the vineyards. 
All is peachy, until the train stops at a station, and a lone man infected by the sour grapes boards. Bridgette leaves Elisabeth to go to the bathroom and the newcomer sits across from Elisabeth even though the entire train is empty. Elisabeth tries to ignore his strange behavior, but then notices that this man is itching a bit. Then an open wound appears on his neck. Then most of his face starts to melt off. Elisabeth high-tails out of there just in time to avoid being grabbed and flees down the hallway to discover Bridgette dead on the floor. She pulls one of the Train’s emergency brakes and flees off into the country.
The plot becomes pretty episodic from here. First, Elisabeth discovers a father and daughter that are acting strangely, not responding to her accounts of the murder on the train, and eventually she is coaxed to rest upstairs where she finds the wife and mother of the household with her throat slit. Before Elisabeth can scream the daughter covers her mouth and explains that her father is infected and they both need to escape. Of course, that plan goes south quickly, but Elisabeth makes it out okay. The daughter…Well not so much.
Elisabeth drives on and discovers a blind woman, Lucy, wondering about the countryside and agrees to lead her back to her village only to discover that the place has been ravaged by violence. She tries to convince Lucy that they need to stay inside, but Lucy breaks off in search of her lost love, instead she runs into the arms of the zombie horde. Her lost love shows up just in time, but he’s infected also, bummer. 
By the time Elisabeth arrives on the scene, Lucy’s ex-lover has crucified her on the back of door and proceeds to decapitate her. Elisabeth decides that when heads starts to roll so should she and attempts to escape, but is grabbed by someone. When she realizes what has occurred she finds she has been dragged into a home by a strange woman in a white dress that shows no sign of infection, but is clearly nuts. Of course, the woman is with the insane outside and eventually tricks Elisabeth and turns her over to the zombie horde.
The woman in the white dress segment ends as abruptly as it begins when two new survivors, Paul and Lucien, ride in with shotguns and dynamite to rescue Elisabeth, but the incident sticks out like a sore thumb against an otherwise straight-forward The Crazies type plot. Since the rest of Grapes features people made homicidal from a chemical, a witchy woman in a white gown walking around with two dogs in front of her like a queen of the undead figure doesn’t really fit, especially since no one ever give us a reasonable explanation why she is immune to the rotting and why she seems more sound of mind, wily than the others.
Aside from that odd curve, the movie tends to follow the typical arch of a person traveling through a post-apocalyptic zombie setting. While the incident seems pretty containable and not all that contagious, (Just don’t drink the damn wine) Elisabeth’s struggles for survival are identifiable and the violent hordes are creepy in their own way. Even though the climax is little hard to buy, the rest of the film is enjoyable, but definitely not highly recommended for the fast paced zombie movie watcher as this piece has more wandering through open country than Fellowship of the Ring. Still, you can’t beat a good old fashion Crucifixion once in a while.
S.O.Z RATING 21 of 30— More an “Infected” movie than walking dead, slowed paced, but not terrible either.
What do you mean my Character is Tonally awkward?
Grainy Value- 5 of 5
Scary – 2 of 5
Atmosphere- 5 of 5
Gore- 5 of 5* What’s better than a Crucifixion
Camp Value- 2 of 5* bonus point for hokey white dress woman, otherwise not campy at all.
Zombies Kills- 2 of 5 *a few bite it but nothing special
SOZ Review #7: Oasis of the Living Dead
As we begin August, I like to delude myself and try to believe that there can’t be worse zombies than the soulless garbage I’ve watched thus far, but just as there’s always a more disgusting corpse waiting around the corner to bite your ass, there’s always a worse zombie film. Oasis of the Living Dead, or BLOODSUCKING NAZI ZOMBIES, or OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES or, TREASURE OF THE LIVING DEAD or, GRAVE OF THE LIVING DEAD or, THE WALKING NAZI DEAD (maybe they thought more names would help) made me realize two things: one, you can pretty much add zombies to any storyline, and two, there is an entire sub-genre of zombie Nazi films, but for the sake of this review we’ll focus on Oasis.
Oasis of the Living Dead (1981) seems to be the product of a mind that thought Lawrence of Arabia (1962) would have been better with zombies. The story centers around a WWII veteran that ambushed a Nazi caravan at an oasis in the deserts of Turkey, but after the battle nearly claimed his life he has to be nursed back to health by a wealthy local whose daughter he ultimately falls in love with and fathers her child. Flash forward to the present: the movie begins with two dippy tourist girls wandering into the remains of this “Oasis” where evil has taken hold and the slain Nazis are a tad on the restless side. What do two young women wandering around the Oasis have to do with the plot? Nothing, but the opening cinematography needs shameless T&A (I’m talking the camera focuses on their shorty-shorts for a count of twelve seconds without making the effort to pretend its pointing at anything else) and an early body count. Their nice young flesh that we’ve wasted several minutes on is ripped off and we return to the long back story.
Our hero of the Middle-Eastern sands receives a visit from an his old colonel who after doing some research has realized that the caravan, which his old friend defeated during the war, was carrying a few million in gold. Of course, after the colonel coaxes his friend to give him the location of the Oasis, which I guess is secret to anyone that doesn’t look good in shorty-shorts, he kills him and heads off to claim the gold all for himself. Wasn’t that guy the protagonist? Nope, I guess not.
Enter Robert, the newly betrayed and deceased guy’s son. Learning of his father’s death, Robert get his hands on his father’s diary and learns of the past, which plays out in typical old war flick fashion to the point we forget that there’s zombies or shameless T&A in this film. After learning of his father’s past, Robert also decides that it might behoove him to head out to the desert and take his shot at those piles of Nazi gold. With his girlfriend, a school buddy and his professor, Roberts sets off for Turkey in search of untold wealth.
From here on, a lot of typical stuff happens: the dude that offed Robert’s father gets his come-upings at the hands of the undead, Robert’s buddy meets a girl that he gets to bang repeatedly in order to keep the T&A quota filled and hide the fact that the movie is horrible, and of course Robert meets his grandfather in the stereotypical it-was-his-destiny kinda way.
Unfortunately, Grandpa,who knows the dangers that the Oasis holds, is still willing to give his newly met next of kin the directions to the Oasis full of zombies. Either Dharma or Karma or a weak plot deems it so, and with that the group is off to the climax.
The final showdown of Robert’s peeps versus the zombies is a mess of awful cinematography that dilutes logic and baffles the mind. Maybe it was a way to hide the fact that they couldn’t afford special effects, but when you’re defensive scheme was to make a ring of fire out of gasoline you would think that your entire party would stand inside that ring where it was remotely safe. Instead, Robert’s buddy’s bang-toy runs around in idiotic circle while the camera man (who must be drunk) makes it confusing to tell where the hell she thought she going other than down a zombie’s throat in bite sized pieces.
While this mess is going on, Robert tosses molotov cocktails at his attackers (which hilariously make the same noise that the grenades made in the WWII flashbacks. Couldn’t afford a second sound F/X huh?) and tries to drag his half fainting girlfriend to safety. Someone yells that they only have to hold their lines until dawn because the zombies vanish in the sun. I guess they expect us to forget that the two shorty-short girls were killed in the DAY TIME! Regardless, the sun rises and the zombies fade off into nothingness.
Grandpa rides in on his camel the next morning to discover that his grandson is alright and has even managed to keep his pretty much worthless girlfriend alive. He asks him “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes, myself.” Robert replies and they ride off. Wow! This movie must be deep to end on such a profound quote. Oh good! Good for you, jerk. You got your best friend killed, your professor killed, your girlfriend is going need therapy for the rest of her life, but you found yourself. Wasn’t the whole idea of this little adventure, money? Did you not notice when you got to Grandpa’s house that he lived in a God damn palace? Maybe, you should have stopped there, especially when gramps told you the place you were going was full of freaking flesh eating undead Nazis!
I guess if you took a gander at these zombies though, you might be more amused than scared as they are only paper mache heads with blow up dolls mouth and painted ping-pong balls for eyes. However, if the appearance of the zombies was my biggest compliant then this movie would be an instant cult classic. Either way, its good for a laugh and disgraceful to both zombie movies and war movies everywhere. It takes real talent to put on a nasty stain on more than one genre with just one film.
S.O.Z RATING 10 of 30— Barely worth double digits. Don’t be like me and Robert – stay away from the damn Oasis!
Grainy Value- 4 of 5
Scary – 1 of 5
Atmosphere- 1 of 5
Gore- 1 of 5
Camp Value- 2 of 5 *Funny bad, but takes itself too seriously
Zombies Kills- 1 of 5 *nothing but Molotovs
SOZ REVIEW #6: Flesheater: Revenge of the Living Dead
Remember in Night of the Living Dead 68′ when Barbabra described her experience with that first zombie to Ben, “And then he Grabbed me, HE GRABBED ME!” Apparently, S. William Hinzman, the actor play that first zombie, didn’t get his fill of groping young women in 68′. Molesting young girls seemed to be a main objective of Hinzman’s when he wrote Flesheater (1988) where Hinzman recreates his zombie from NOTLD except this time its implied that he’s been created from some cult, which I guess is why he’s supernaturally strong and smarter than your average zombie. At least, he smart enough to show up whenever a naked girl is around, so he can put his hands all over their bodies before he bites them. I guess if you were going to write, direct, and star in a terrible movie you myswell include pointless shower and sex scenes to populate the movie with as many naked girls to attack as possible.
Of course, Billy-boy Hinzman would have to write a plot for this abomination, or maybe he could just borrow one? While the story starts off with a group of teenagers riding a hayride out to the woods where they intend to camp it soon shifts to an abandoned farm house where they have barricade themselves in after one of their female friends has been bitten by Hinzman. Let’s recap. A group of people boarding themselves up in an abandoned farmhouse where zombies are trying to break in while a girl lies dying on a table from a zombie bite, sound familiar?
Yup, the entire movie is basically a shameless NOTLD rewrite that even wraps up with an identical redneck and yokel local sheriff extermination squad on clean up duty. To authenticate the ripoff completely, the red-neck mob mistakenly kills the last survivors of the night after mistaking them for zombies. Unforgivable.
Don't Worry I've been professionally groping actresses since before you were born
To give Hinzman some credit, the middle pieces have a small degree of original writing, basically creating a formula where he continually introduces new characters and locations just to up the body count. A sheriff rolls up to save the day, but nope he’s to ripped shreds after only killing two zombies. Here’s a random family of four: mother, son, daughter, and one naked showering housekeeper that’s we’ve never seen before. Ten minutes later: Dead, Dead, Dead, gets the privilege of wrestling naked and pinned to a bed by Hinzman then dead. Another random couple are introduced as we finally see the two survivors from the original group of hay-riders fleeing towards their house. The frantic kids tells the husband what’s going down while he’s outside feeding horses. They race back to the house to find his wife watching TV, her face is hidden from the audience. I wonder if the zombies beat them back to house and she’s already turned? Hmmmm?
After this formula repeats itself three times, interrupted by a few news report – Hinzman may as well have just played the old news reports from NOTLD at this point – the two surviving kids arrive at a barn party where the typical jock and cheerleader dynamic is rocking out a raging fiesta of seven people, and surprisingly the zombies show up and turn them all, except the two hayride schmucks who hide in cabinets for the night. Even more shocking is that the most attractive girl at the party gets naked and Hinzman attacks her. Weird.
Even though FleshEater is the most shameless rip-off, cash in I’ve ever seen and even though the movie has the worst actors on the planet, and even though its clearly just a lame attempt for Hinzman to cop some cheap feels of young breasts, something about this movie is enjoyable. Maybe it’s the fact that the gore keeps flowing, and the dialogue is hilarious in a MST 3000 sort of way, but at the end of the day I just feel like that these people had fun with making this movie (especially Bill) and that, in an odd way, comes across to the viewer.
While it’s painful to listen to these people act, and logically the equivalent of Looney Tunes, it has a handful of creepy shots and it is just generally fun to watch for its silliness value. At the end of the day zombies are zombies, and zombie fans aren’t usually hard to please. With that in mind, FleshEater has most of the pleasing blood bath and gore conventions intact, but don’t be surprised if you permanently lose ten points off your IQ after watching it.
S.O.Z RATING 21 of 30— It’s “bad,” but at least it’s “funny-bad.” Grope away Bill!
Grainy Value- 5 of 5
Scary – 2 of 5
Atmosphere- 3 of 5
Gore- 5 of 5
Camp Value- 5 of 5 *Redefines the meaning of Camp
Zombies Kills- 1 of 5 *Nothing but gun fire
A Fistful Bones: Reviewing the crap I’ve been watching lately
Babysitter Wanted is the story of a religious girl that goes off to college and takes a job as a babysitter in a house where pure evil is about to descend. While this one starts off with the typical: here’s a bound and gagged girl on a table about to be carved into pieces, I wonder if the protagonist will have to face this same danger, it also hits you with an interesting twist early and then pretty much deflates into the “Final Girl” formula of a slasher film. While the twist has a little charm, once it’s out there, it’s so obvious that you’re mad at yourself for not seeing it coming. The real high point of this film is the protagonist’s slutty stoner roommate and a cameo by Bill Mosley as the sheriff. I guess that’s his penance for doing House of a 1000 Corpses. “Well Bill, since you portrayed a guy who slaughtered girls in pretty much the worst horror movie ever made now you have to save a girl from one such house in a somewhat less horrible movie. ” Whatever.
Rating….rainy day or nothing else on movie
DayBreakers… Man I’ve been waiting to see this one for awhile and now that I have…eh. DayBreakers was one of those movies that introduces a great environment, creepy ideas, and then follows through with none of them. Basically, you have Ethan Hawke as the “hooker with the heart of gold” vampire that is sympathetic for the few remaining humans, but who works for the most cliched villain possible – the evil head of a big corrupt corporation portrayed by Sam Neill, trying to find a solution to fact that blood is running out. Conceptually, the idea of vampires becoming the most prominent race and starving to death was interesting, especially since they rot away into mindless monsters as the process goes down, but the plot takes a turn for the worse as we are brought to the human camp and meet their hokey over the top leader, Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac, played by Willem Dafoe. After that it’s just another dull action flick with really stupid solutions and everything that was interesting about this flicks blows away like vampire ash on a sunny and windy day.
Rating…. watch the first half then find something else to do. Send me an email and I’ll tell you what the cure for vampirism was if you want.
Session 9… That detective guy from CSI Miami (David Caruso) and that guy who looks like Matthew Mcconaughey, but isn’t (Josh Lucas) team up with some other guys to clean up an old abandoned insane asylum, and creepy shit ensues. Not really sure how creepy this one really was. This is one of those films that follow that DAY 1, DAY 2 format, but more days go by than should before anything substantial happens, and while the film has an a constant eerie emotion to it don’t become swayed by reviews that that is the creepiest film EVER, though. Regardless, Session 9 was an interesting think piece that ends without spoon feeding every answer to the audience, but watch it as a drama or mystery fan because it in no way delivers a horror film.
Rating…worth a watch but I’m not doing cartwheels over it.
Hatchet. Well I know this one is old news, but I just got around to watching it. Hatchet, for me, goes in the same file as The Hangover, fun, but grossly over-rated. Basically, a homage to the 80′s slasher film, Hatchet takes an ill-fated swamp tour boat of Mardi Gras goers into the deep dark part of New Orleans where a Jason Voorhees like legend awaits. When Hatchet’s slasher, Victor Crowley, shows up the film offers fast paced splatter and funny commentary on overused genre conventions, but brings very little to the originality table. At the end of the day, enjoy this one for it’s lighthearted approach to the old school slasher or, at least, watch it for the brilliant Tony Todd cameo, but don’t let the hype convince you it’s anything more.
Rating…Awesome fun… but not the second coming of Hitchcock.
Grace (2009/III)- oh boy, this one was a trip. A pregnant woman’s husband dies in a car crash that also kills the infant inside her, but somehow, at birth, the baby is still alive or is it? As time goes on, the woman, Madeline, realizes that her child, Grace, doesn’t what milk. Instead her little girl wants blood. At first, Madeline resorts to draining it from supermarket chop meat, but the child eventually wants the real thing.
‘Uncomfortable’ is the best word to describe this piece. Just plain uncomfortable. Either it’s the amount of bloody nipples this film has to offer or the insane fifty-something mother-in-law that never stopped producing breast milk and whose breast are constantly on screen, this film makes you cringe in new and unimaginable ways. While there’s no real punch line to this piece, I applaud it for its ability to turn my stomach.
Rating…Worth a watch, but no cartwheels here either.
My Little Eye (2002). Biting off the popular of reality TV and Webcast, My Little Eye brings reality TV into the horror genre by placing six people a house filled with cameras for six months with the stipulation that everyone has to stay the entire time for each member to win one million dollars. Of course, bad shit starts to go down, and DA DA DA the cast member realize that “the show” may not be what it seems. Unfortunately, the end result is that this is another flick that has lots of mysterious build up for a predictable over done punchline.
Rating…Rubbish
SOZ Review #5: Night of the Comet
Posted by Chris in Reviews, Uncategorized, Zombies on July 17th, 2010
If The Breakfast Club had zombies then each of the eighties stereotyped characters would probably have been armed with Uzis instead of wise cracks, and the final cut of the film would have been pretty close to Night of the Comet (1984). Being born in 80′, I’ve heard the title tossed around hundreds of times, but somehow I never sat down and watched it. Doing so twenty-six years separated made this film more hilarious than it ever was intended to be. 80s culture is hard to believe as a reality even after having lived through them.
NOTC has the quality of Laser Tag: fun but clearly entertainment from another age much like the graphically challenged Tempest arcade game that our typical 80s tom-boy heroine protagonist “Reggie” is trying to land the high score on when the film begins. Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) is an employee at the local movie theater where she often has romps in the attic of the theater with her projectionist boyfriend. The movie begins on one such evening where instead of going to see the passing the comet she stays at work and sleeps with her boyfriend. Before doing so, she calls her little sister to provide her “evil step mother” with an excuse.
Her big-haired blond ditsy cheerleader sister, clad in leg warmers and workout spandex, has a big altercation with their evil step mom over the issue and ends up on the losing the end of a slap boxing match, which encourages her to sleep outside in the tool shed. Everyone else in town stays out to party and watch the comet fly past. Morning comes and all seems well until Reggie ventures out side and finds that everyone is either been turned to dust or zombified. Reggie hurries home to find her sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney) has also somehow survived and they use their superior valley girl intellects to figure out some crazy plot point about both sleeping the night in structures made of steel being the factor that saved their lives…it really doesn’t matter.
From here on out, a mix of post-apocalyptic fun unfolds, but other than the initial scene outside here Reggie discovers her boyfriend being eaten by a zombie–and a talking zombie at that– this isn’t really a zombie film. Well to be fair, Sam is attacked by three cop zombies but only in back to back “false scare” dream sequences and those three zombies inhabiting the nightmare make up half of the whopping grand total of six zombies in this film. However, the creatures are talked about as if they are everywhere. When Reggie and Sam discover another survivor, Hector (Robert Beltran), at the radio station, he tells the girls a group of zombies ate the girl that he drove into the city with.
Don't Worry Its only a Dream... Again
With mostly Zombies being only talked about, the remainder of the film is basically filled with the usual post apocalyptic conventions, evil government organizations with dark plots, strange cults that hide in malls, public target practice with automatic weapons, and even an 80′s verison of the Dawn of the Dead 78‘ shopping Montague, but this one is set to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Did I mention this movie was made in the 80s?
After the Montague ends, the girls lose a gun battle to the weird mall cult and end up chained up in the basement and forced to play Russian Roulette only to be saved by the evil government group that also wishes them harm. Hector, before the montage, headed home to find out the fate of his family. Instead, he encounters “ONE” zombie child who he escapes from by getting back in his truck and heading back to LA to reunite with the girls.
The climax involves a big show down at a shady HQ military base where hopefully Hector will arrive in time to save the day…yada yada…and there’s a couple more zombies on screen for a few seconds. In typical 80s fashions, the good guys win with a boom and the audience is treated with a witty light-hearted epilogue that delivers a punchline to a joke started in the first five minutes of the flick. Hooray-8os!
Being a child of 1980 and growing up with films like Mannequin, FootLoose, Gremlins, Big Trouble in Little China, and, of course, The Goonies, it is difficult for me not to enjoy an 80s movie that I haven’t seen yet because the nostalgic atmosphere is very overpowering. NOTC is overflowing with eighties conventions and enjoyable for nostalgic value but fails as miserably as a zombie film. Far from the 80′s Shaun of the Dead, NOTC should just be an 80′s post-apocalyptic spoof movie, but since we we live in a digitally sub-divided film rental world this one is always going to find its way into Zombie horror. Thus, allow me to educate: its a far stretch to be called a zombie film, but if you like 80s foolishness and zombies than it should please.
S.O.Z RATING 12 of 30— Low score because its classified wrong, but still fun for those who understand and appreciate the 80s
Grainy Value- 3 of 5
Scary – 1 of 5
Atmosphere- 1 of 5
Gore- 1 of 5
Camp Value- 5 of 5
Zombies Kills- 1 of 5
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