I'm in! I've been
accepted as member of the Large Association of Movie Blogs. One small step for
zombies, one giant leap for credibility? Nah, but excellent nonetheless!
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Slither - review
2006 (Canada / USA)
Contains mild spoilers.
Alien Parasites.
They're nothing new to the zombie myth and I've reviewed my fair share of films
that saw little grubby predators weasel their way into the living and dead to
take control. I'll admit though to always feeling a little wary when it comes to
little green, err, things infiltrating and mimicking the native population,
while all the while working towards the ultimate goal of global dominion. I
mean, where the parasites take control of cadavers it's easy to shout zombie;
they're reanimated dead and they look the part. What about when the hosts are
still alive with their pre-parasitical personality suppressed or even joined
with? What if the parasite has introduced a new uncontrollable desire or drive
like sex (procreation) or hunger (survival); does an insatiable all-consuming
addiction constitute enough of a loss of self, will, ego, being to semantically at least proffer the
idea of zombie?
Director James
Gunn's horror / comedy / alien parasites land on earth and look to take over
zombie flick Slither both tasks me to ask this question while at the same time
lets me off the hook completely. Three quarters of the way through the film
after watching the very foreign parasite take its first victim, the town big
shot Grantford Grant (the brilliant Michael Rooker), successfully find a mate
and procreate with Brendalynne Gutierrez (Brenda James) and finally look to
step things up spewing thousands of slug like throat guzzling parasitical
spermatozoon on the world, Slither did the decent thing and allowed the hosts to
die first. The resulting dead controlled by the will of the shared single
conscious alien super disease are as close to the modern
zombie as one is likely to get; their old selves, other than perhaps access
from the new host to memories, are gone; they stumble about like something from
a Romero film and they like to feast on flesh.
Slither lists itself
as a horror comedy but I always felt the tension, gore and scares outweighed
any desire for outright laughter. Ok, alien parasitical take over stories are
out there and the film is chock full of audaciously brilliant set pieces that could
certainly be seen as uncomfortably funny but there's no throw-away gags or
cheap easy farce. The film takes its subject matter seriously but isn't afraid
to be playful in a non detrimental way to the core story and atmosphere and it
works brilliantly. Nathan Fillon as town sheriff Bill Pardy is the dry wit and
hero of the film and arguably does have the lions share of one line quips but
again they're never out of place or jarring; in many ways he's the Indiana
Jones or Han Solo lightening the mood now and again but never at any expense.
The film has a
comfortable cohesiveness, a singular vision, and flows with an effortlessness
that signifies a cast and crew who were not only professionally invested but
were actively enjoying the ride. All the sequences work, there's no dead dialogue or scenes and all the themes
played with work; Gunn has cut and shot the film to perfection. Pacing is on
point and the climax is satisfying and not drawn out and even though the
central idea of the film is ludicrous it somehow manages to avoid any thoughts that it might be; it's a clever trick and shows it knows what it's doing.
As to the earlier
question of whether the increasingly 'alien' but alive Grantford Grant is a
zombie I'm happy to leave it up in the air. He's definitely had his self
repressed but there's definitely a bit of the old person still there. It's all
deliberately vague and disturbing, hinting at a precariously easy malleableness
to a definition of self we consider so resolute and absolute. Also, if I start
at this juncture including alien possessed films where do I stop? Species and
The Thing are obvious starters, but I'd soon move on to any and all films that
had someone temporarily possessed by someone / thing else and I'm not sure I'm
ready to throw Wrath of Khan with Chekov and Terrell succumbing to Khan's
indigenous eels into the mix just yet.Slither is a triumphant alien parasite spectacular with first rate acting, a tight on point story that never languishes and lavish over the top special effects that manage to avoid ever degrading to farce. I'll admit to enjoying this far more than I expected and I was surprised I'd no memories of ever watching it before which is odd as it's the sort of thing I would have actively sought out. An alien parasite film, with tenderness, scares, laughter and zombies, this is definitely an extra-terrestrial recommendation, 8/10.
Steven@WTD.
Monday, 16 December 2013
World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 - review
2011 (UK)
Contains spoilers.
Now I'm not exactly
sure as to the reason I felt the need for a couple of weeks zombie cinematic
vacation but I'm sure putting myself through yet another undeniably mundane and
mediocre, however well intentioned end of the world spectacular had something to
do with it. The Zombie Diaries wasn't a bad film; it had an earnestness and a
gritty realism that elevated it's rather poor production and pedestrian pacing
to be something I felt wasn't as bad as it could easily
have been. It was still a very average film however, and to learn that it felt
deserving of a sequel with an equally low budget was surprising to say
the least. Learning that it was also set in the same 'world' with the same look and feel and the same first person narrative left me perplexed but intrigued as for all its faults the first showed undeniable promise. Without giving away the punch line it would seem I was right to be cautious.
Directors Michael
Bartlett and Kevin Gates have returned to the bleak English muddy fields,
slowest least dangerous looking undead shufflers ever seen on camera and
obligatory shoehorned in morally bankrupt survivors as if insinuating should
civilisation and authority ever crumble every young lad will immediately set
off sadistically raping and murdering without a second's pause. The first
instalment attempted an ambitious weave of a trio of survival narratives and
while it didn't necessarily all work it was these small personal and
desperate insights, and not the gun toting action finale that made the film
work. The World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 seems to disagree totally with my take however, dropping
any delicacy and any ambition to instead tell a more straightforward corridor
shooter story with a single group of armed soldiers fighting their way through
one heavily scripted encounter after another. There's no real depth, no attempt at anything particularly fresh and an over reliance that having a lot of zombies on screen and plenty of rather lacklustre head shots could carry it all.
It's several months
after the apocalypse. The countryside is awash with the undead and a lone group
of part time semi-military types are forced to flee the relative safety of their
barracks / bunker, because someone left the door open, and make it on foot to
the shoreline where they've been lead to believe they'll be rescued and
transported abroad where things are much better.
Each of the characters has a reasonably coherent back story and the plot itself while wholly unoriginal is not the worst thing I've come across in an amateur production it's just the whole thing is so dreary. I understand
that bleakness and desolation was the theme, and that a zombie
apocalypse wouldn't be a cause for balloons and dancing, but having the rather
stale and derivative posse quite so uninspired and miserable soon makes viewing
unnecessarily weary.
If you've watched
the first you'll understand the description, slow and non threatening, yet
persistent and plentiful. For a group of armed and trained soldiers the near
snail paced zombies pose a surprisingly major threat. In fact I'd go one
further and really question how such a pedestrian and unassuming foe could so
quickly and totally have overcome a far quicker, more mobile, better equipped
and far more cognizant population. And here's the rub; I'm all for no direct
monster post-apocalyptic dramas, but if you're going to go to all the trouble
to fill it with gnarly undead flesh eaters that are purported to have been
responsible for the untold murder of billions, one could at least try and present them in
a way that might other than fleetingly appear vaguely dangerous.
There is some nice blood and gore and some nice deaths, albeit all too often helped by the
coincidental blurring / damaged film / interference from the hand held docu
style capture but it never manages to ever completely shake off it's low budget
restraints or dare I say lacklustre direction.
It's [REC], Diary of the Dead, Blair Witch all over again with one of the soldiers Jonesy (Rob
Oldfield) seemingly intent to record absolutely everything that happens however
ridiculous it would be that he wouldn't stop and put the camera down to say, run
away or shoot back. I've seen far worse but still suffers the same contrivance
accusations levelled at all films of this ilk. There's also an attempt to add
tension and purposeful drive to proceedings with the inference that should they
not reach the boats on time the country will be firebombed to oblivion though
this too never feels any more than a tacked on convenient narrative
contrivance.
The World of the
Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 is an uninspired Romero-esque homage. Average acting
performances, laboured dialogue and a plot that feels artificially stretched
with unnecessary scenes added just to
fill the gaps; it rarely offers anything for the viewer to ever get
particularly excited about. There's a certain competence to proceedings and
there's nothing pro-actively offensive, other than maybe an unnecessary and
unhealthy fixation to include rape or torture, it just fails in all ways
possible to stand out. Maybe I'm a tad jaded or maybe I've seen too many
'average' zombie films but The World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 just
didn't do it for me in any way, 3/10.
Steven@WTD.
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
The Dead Next Door - review
1989 (USA)
Contains spoilers.
Now I know what
you're all thinking. This low, LOW budget shoddy piece of amateur film making
will undoubtedly receive a full zombie beat down where I'll bemoan it for
ambition over ability to deliver, for having a quite awful artistic and
physical presentation and for having woeful b-movie actors forced to work with a contrived hammy
narrative. Well you're right, but you're also kind of wrong. For all its faults which there are
many, the thing I will take away from director / writer / make-up / producer /
line-manager / editor / special effects / camera operator J.R. Bookwalter's
cinematic début is a feeling that here was a genuinely earnest and honest
attempt at a grand zombie opus, and it nearly got it right. Sure, it should
possibly have been a bit more realistic with it's aims; going small and
discrete rather than expansive and ambitious, especially with someone at the
helm who by his own admission had not really even known how to operate a
camera. But really who could really argue against an enthusiastic young eighteen old, who'd just been given
$75,000 by Sam Raimi, who also came on board as executive producer, just going for
it.
A possibly misguided
attempt at to pay homage to Romero, The Dead Next Door is the tale of a team of
pseudo military cops called The Zombie Squad and their stand as part of the
last line of defence against a world two years consumed by grotesque flesh eating
undead. Pete Ferry is Raimi their leader and he's assigned the mission by
Doctor Moulssson (Bogdan Pecic) to head to ground zero, a research lab run by
the late Doctor Bow (Lester Clark), find his research notes and return so they
can put a stop to the flesh eating viral parasite. To say the acting is the
worst I've probably seen would be exaggerating, but not by much. Whether it's screaming glib and
cliché one word action-film lines or working their way through
tedious contrived exposition designed to tell us the audience who these people are, what they're doing, what's happened to the word and the
compete zombie survival guide a to z, it's amateurish, obvious and badly dubbed in a
Mattei way, yet it's all somehow incredibly earnest and watch-able. And that's the rub. As
the group reach Bow's Lab and come face to face with a strange pseudo
Christian, pro undead, sacrificial death cult lead by the ever weird sunglasses wearing Rev. Jones
(Robert Kokai) and his band of equally weird disciples, the characterisation,
the dialogue and their interaction never gets any better; and yet it somehow manages to never offend as you feel it should. 
The cultists don't
like the soldiers and the soldiers don't like what the cultists are doing so
they inevitably clash with guns, grenades and rhetoric. The action moves along
at fairly nice pace and along the way there's a good amount of blood, guts and imaginative
and original zombie set pieces,
especially at the cultists lair and the manner in which they're a) being
protected and b) being used as a weapon in a manner not all too dissimilar to
that employed by the Governor some twenty years later. It does suffer from all
too contrived and needlessly uber-stupid
behaviour for many of the totally avoidable zombie bites and whether it's
accidental fingers put zombies mouths, or mucking about with electric windows each kill is lazy and distracts from the generally good amateur effects
that ensue.
There's a mad
scientist, isn't there always, and he's inadvertently unleashed an infectious
virus on the world that kills its host then continues to hunger for nutrition
to sustain its life. It's actually probably most similar to World War Z; the
idea that the hosts become vessels to propagate the spread of the virus and
require flesh to keep going. Without sustenance, the undead drop after
about three months, but with so many tasty morsels as so if often the case when something does global, the virus was able to stay
alive and spread. Interestingly Bookwalter also used The Return of the Living Dead total reanimation idea, though who was first will have to left
open (ROTLD came out in '85 / TDND started shooting in '85). The virus keeps
whatever part of its host going, albeit until it runs out of juice, so head
shots, decapitation all help slow the zombies down but they're not a permanent
solution. Bookwalter also brings to the table a solution of sorts. Moulsson,
with the help of Bow's research concocts a formula that can speed up the viral
process so that the corpses burn out in hours not months and that leads to some
nice melting zombie scenes and the concept of zombie/human hybrid fusions, that are neither alive or undead, but pretty grotesque, violent and quite coherent
all the same.
Don't get me wrong,
The Dead Next Door is out and out poor b-movie film making, but I'm starting to
think I secretly hold quite the candle for earnest amateur horror, especially
zombie rubbish as my recent euro-trash reviews would attest. As contrived as the story is, the tussle over
Dr. Bow's research and the pro-zombie stand off was at least original and
mostly held together as long as one is willing to look past all the inconsistencies. whilst not a comedy, there were a few deliberate and non-deliberate laughs and even the attempts at the odd bit of satire, though this could never be called a deep film (watching petty bureaucracy survive as Moulsson is forced to sign for zombie specimens, and the attack on the pro-zombie protesters were personal highlights.)
Alas a good film this
is not, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it for any kind of casual viewing, but if you like good b-movies and appreciate sincere,
industrious, if incredibly flawed attempts at zombie horror you might find, like I did, that you enjoy this far more than you feel you probably should, 6/10.
Steven@WTD.
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Resident Evil: Retribution - review
2012 (Germany / USA / Canada / France)
Contains mild
spoilers.
Twenty Five minutes
in, watching Alice (Milla Jovovich) in full black leather glory leap, spin,
slash, kick and shoot her way, with sumptuous control and style through one
group of slobbering flesh eaters to another, to only finally come up against the
equally resplendent Ada (Bingbing Li) ready for another whirlwind CG cat-fight, it came to me director / writer Paul W.S.
Anderson had finally, metaphorically and literally lost the plot. One very much
for style over substance I'd noticed a general decline in actual coherent
content as the budget rose and technology caught up with his flamboyant far
reaching designs, and with Resident Evil: Retribution, he's finally reached a
new high (or low depending on where we start) in cinematic superfluous
superficial silliness. There's no attempt any more to try and provide any
rational reason for the series of high octane combat sand box set ups, no attempt
whatsoever to reign things in, and totally no remorse for any of it.
This is where I'd
normally talk about the story but honestly I could put it all down on the back
of a postage stamp. Alice, captured after the fight at the end of Resident Evil: Afterlife gets some help and escapes. That's it. Ok, I'm being a little trite, but if I
embellish, adding her escape involves traversing and fighting through a
series of connected virtual cityscapes with a vindictive computer AI throwing
increasingly absurd and implausible bioengineered opponents at her, it doesn't
make it sound any more rich in narrative. Don't get me wrong, it looks
spectacular; with grand sweeping virtual camera pans and some jaw dropping
virtual sets and ideas, it's just the endless grind of combat and gratuitous drive for
the most extravagant of set pieces on the biggest baddest scale, it just all ends up
coming across flat, and dare I say all too precariously close to feeling like a series of rehashed
scenes all done before.
The problem with with this all action approach is there's no longer any real emotional engagement,
character depth or sense of danger. Watching the now seemingly invincible Alice
plough through a set of zombies, a pair of executioners and even a gargantuan Uber-Licker
one never feels she's ever really in any trouble and the experience feels
sterile and even mundane. I'm not sure who's to blame; but whether it's
Jovovich or Anderson finally tiring of their cash cow there's a very humdrum
and by the book feel to the film as if (re)producing a series of sterile high staged action scenes with CG abandon would be good enough.
Anderson does try,
with arguably the best set of sequences of the film; a genuinely engaging
ground zero scenario played out with 'real'
people in suburbia and it is one ray of hope in the wash of tedium that the
series can be saved. Jovovich is now mum and wife and not the uber-fighting killing machine we're accustomed to, and the siege of their little safe world is the
one heart pumping moment where there's real dread and anxiety. Her movements to
desperately make sense of the whirlwind she finds herself in all the time keeping her
little girl safe, with palpably intimidating and chilling, real traditional zombies
smashing their way through her living room, is moving and utterly absorbing. Ok it's not
Alice's memory, it's those of a clone grown to research and showcase Umbrella's biological weaponry, so it's not a real part of her story any more, but it demonstrates that should Anderson ever
feel the need to return Resident Evil to its roots he could do so quite
admirably.
By now, five films
in, we understand that alongside your more identifiable fast moving Boyle-esque
flesh eaters there will be an assortment of other undead / mutant proponents
Alice and crew will have to fight. Majini zombies (the ones with the parasitical
face thingie) are back along with the executioners I mentioned, but all new are
a rather macabre army, literally, of machine gun toting, rocket launching and
chain sawing Las Plagas aka Red Army zombies who pack a real mean punch and
look like something that could have crawled straight out of Outpost. As said, the
connected biodome / narrative of Retribution grants Anderson licence to finally
play as much as he likes, so each area is filled with the rafters with all the
zombie types the series and games are known for. Yes, it's probably closer to
the games, but call me old fashioned, I liked it all better when the main enemy
simply wanted to rip into a bit of flesh and hang out in number.
An undoubted CG
showcase, cinematically Resident Evil: Retribution is off the scale with lavish
effects, perfect make-up and spectacular fighting choreography, but big dial up
to eleven effects alone just won't cut it. With a woefully superficial story the
whole film comes across as a lazy half-arsed way to include all the daft over
scripted fights he could think of, and while the story has never been central
to Resident Evil at least with the previous films it tried. The action itself
it so sterile to be uninteresting and tedious, and with no real danger, or cause for
any of, the audience is utterly unable to engage or care with what's happening.
Arguably the worst of the five, Retribution is not style over substance, but
style instead of, with a narrative so contrived and perfunctory to be an insult
to the viewer, 3/10.
Steven@WTD
Wednesday, 20 November 2013
Goosebumps: Welcome to Dead House - review
1997 (Canada)
2004 20th Century Fox DVD R(1) Watched on Netflix
Contains spoilers.
Well this is a bit
of departure, but I did say I was going to review it all. My daughter's a big
fan of the PG rated late nineties adaptation of American author R. L. Stine's
horror shorts. They're fun and exciting little self contained stories with Stine
getting the fine balance of scary and family friendly right every time and the
US/Canadian television interpretations are well made and true to the source
with Stine even beginning each with a small narration. Each episode usually
drops one or more children, quite often siblings into evil and frightening
situations where they, without adult help, have to use their own abilities and
imagination to win the day. It's child friendly, so there's never any deaths,
the children are never on the receiving end of direct violence and there's
always a happy ending, yet Stine, as my daughter will attest, certainly knows
how fashion a stressful situations a child can get into.
Egyptian mummies,
Monsters, Werewolves and possessed magic items all story themes played with but it's the two part adaptation of his first book published in 1992, and
my daughter telling me all about it after watching it on Netflix that's the
focus of this review.
Brother and sister
Amanda (Amy Stewart) and Josh Benson (Ben Cook) have been forced to relocate
some five hundred miles to the town of Dark Falls for their fathers work. It's
your typical children's haunted house of horror, the building itself is dilapidated
and in desperate need of modernisation and a lick of paint, the neighbour hood
is overgrown and run down, and the neighbours act suspiciously and keep to the
shadows. No sooner than they arrive Amanda begins to feel something isn't right
briefly glancing a face at the bedroom window that of course her parents
disregard as a gust of wind or a trick of the light. Things go from bad to
worse and in full scooby-doo / gothic-panto glory lightning, thunder, sinister
piano music, mystery voices and barking dogs are all used to tell us the
Bensons are in for a rough couple of days.
Part 1 ambled along
pretty safely; overly friendly neighbours introduced themselves yet shied away
from an old family wreath reputed to bring good luck that had been hung, weird
pale skinned neighbourhood kids acted strangely and even a few good scary moments,
all directed at Amanda with strange sightings, something breaking at the wall
in her wardrobe and even a ghostly visitation and dire warning. It was fun,
reasonably coherent and well acted family friendly entertainment; not
especially my cup of tea but I could go with it. I came into this understanding
it was, as my daughter put it, all about the living dead and if these walking
talking neighbours were the zombies then that was fine.
I was wrong though
and nothing quite prepared for me for where it was all going in part 2. Eventually with
the children searching the woods for Petey their dog who'd escaped, they
stumbled upon a graveyard, and the entirety of the neighbourhood who had seemingly
convened for a town council style meeting. The realtor (estate agent) was here,
as was the neighbours daughter, the town fireman, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker (probably); however gone was the slightly
off tone skin tone, and friendly rational demeanour. Here were zombies, grey
and blemished rotting undead parasites discussing how they needed to siege the
house for the Bensons blood. There was no sugar coating it; they were dead and
they wanted Amanda and Josh to join them.
Giving the zombies
the two states is quite a fun little idea and not a million miles away from
Dead & Buried. On the one hand they're living out some strange fantasy
existence pretending to be who they once were to gain the new families trust,
however underneath they're vampiric brainless corpses with a singular
uncontrollable appetite for blood. They're not who they used to be; they're an
echo of their old self, a charade able to remember but only in the pragmatic
sense that this might help them to satiate their hunger. For a simple children's
story Stine shows a surprising amount of sophistication and the story is
refreshingly complete and compelling. The make up is edgy with more than
passing resemblance to Romero's offspring, albeit with blood itself off the
table, their movements are purposeful and menacing and the final siege of house
is scary and suitably relentless with undead bursting through walls and
gnashing their teeth, and for a moment I could almost have mistaken it all for
something far more grown up.
Welcome to Dead
House is fine example of how to make children's horror fun and light yet also not
insulting or overly dumb. A great little self contained story; narrative isn't as
rigid as it perhaps would be in an adult tale, with several scenes of
misdirection never really fleshed out but it all works for a target audience
that doesn't really need it to. The central story feels strong and satisfying,
production values, music and acting are all as competent as you'd want and
the zombies are well made up and genuinely intimidating. Undeniably one for
kids (probably not small ones though) there might just about be enough here for big old hairy kids like me too, 6/10.
Steven@WTD.
Steven@WTD.
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
Escaping the Dead - first look
Had some PR sent to me about a
new Danish zombie film that took inspiration (if that's the right word in this
context) from the horrifying flesh eating narcotic Krokodil that I WOULDN'T recommend you ever image search. Looks and sounds gritty and deeply unpleasant;
so one to keep an eye on.
Here's the PR
gubbins:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FIRST LOOK AT ZOMBIE
APOCALYPSE "ESCAPING THE DEAD"
The good old classic
quote "There's something rotten in the state of Denmark" rings true
these days, although it is probably not quite in the way it was meant when
written by William Shakespeare in "Hamlet"!
In directors Martin
Sonntag and Bastian Brinch Pedersen's near-doomsday prediction "Escaping
the Dead", Copenhagen reaks of rotten flesh after having come under attack
of the living dead and the last remaining survivors fight for their lives.
The film stars
Bastian Brinch Pedersen (who is also the co-director and producer of the film)
as David, Rama Øzel as Ahmir, along with Daniel Hutera, Ali Öezkan, Iben Ma
Bønnelycke, Nicolai Huan Nguyen, Camilla Ludvigsen and Kim Sønderholm
("Blood Fare", "The Winedancers", "Sinister
Visions") playing Lars - a policeman that David comes across during his
run out of the city.
Director Martin
Sonntag about the film:
"The film is
inspired by a series of articles about the deathdrug "Krokodil" that
was published about the same period of time when Ronald Poppo had his face
eaten by a naked man hooked on bathsalt in Miami. We saw it as the perfect
zombie plot: a deathdrug that turns people into zombies.
The film has its
starting point in a typical day for the lead character, David. David is the
local marihuana pusher, but he is the kind of dealer that smokes more than he
sells. In the meantime the country has been hit by a new deathdrug and when
David and his partner in crime Ahmir is offered some exceptionally cheap
cocaine they see it as an opportunity to earn big money at the big techno
concert the following Friday, but the cocaine turns out to have a terrible side
effect that creates a giant zombie outbreak that spreads across the entire
Copenhagen. In the film we follow David and his bloody fight out of the
city."
Detention of the Dead - review
2012 (USA)
Contains mild spoilers.
"This is so the
Breakfast Club", my wife commented, "They've even taken whole
scenes and lines." Now, I've not watched The Breakfast Club as back when
it was released I was ten or so, and more interested in running around skidding
on my knees shouting pew pew than watching teen angst ridden romantic indulgence. Then the years since I've never really felt the need to catch up; probably because that
young boy grew testicles. "You should watch it, for research," she
commented at the shrug of my shoulders. "But I don't have to now" I replied "because
you've told me this is The Breakfast Club and this one has zombies in
it." She had no reply to this of course, smiled and nodded. So... my point is, this
is The Breakfast Club with zombies, and it even says so on the cover, but
you're going to have to take my wife's word for it, not mine.
It's detention time
and six one dimensional high school types have collided to write 'I must not be
so superficial' or whatnot a hundred times. Jacob Zachar is Eddie the bullied
nerd, Jayson Blair is Brad, the good looking cool popular kid who torments him, Christa
B. Allen is his gorgeous blonde cheerleading girlfriend Janet, Max Adler the
token jock Jimmy and Alexa Nikolas, Willow, the angst misunderstood goth chick. Each is adorned in the appropriate
costume, each is replete with lines and behaviour befitting their caricature
and each actor is really way too old for the high school personality they're
purporting to be. Oh, I should add, there's also Justin Chon as Ash, a token stoner and a bit of a throwaway character with throw away jokes. There's something about dumbed down high school comedies that
almost demands single dimension tropes and it's hard to be too critical about
it all if I'm honest. Detention of the Dead knows what it's trying to do and
it's an authentic parody attempt that never tries too hard to be anything other
than a pop corn indulgence with characters and acting appropriate and on message.
The characters are
introduced and zombies appear. Detention of the Dead to its credit doesn't
dally with their appearance and plays the new post-modern zombie card that of
course the high school kids are fully vested with the modern zombie zeitgeist
and instantly recognise them for what they are. They know not to get bit, they
know to go for the head and brain, and they know that a good barricade, or
closed door will hold them back (yes they're your quite crap corpse eaters that
stop their immutable creep of death at the smallest obstacle - or the budget
didn't include breaking and replacing doors.) What follows is a zombie survival story with angst ridden misogynists and the me-me generation
trying desperately to come to terms with the fact the zombie apocalypse might
actually be more important than their own depthless problems and confused romantic troubles.
It's light, it's
airy, full of all the bright clean colours of US high school life and it never
takes itself seriously. There's plenty
of infantile and throwaway jokes and dialogue, with humour and playful a constant theme to the many extravagant and gratuitous scenes of gore and flesh ripping. There's a
little bit of satire scattered here and there but the narrative never tries too hard to come across clever or insightful.
Director / writer Alex Craig Mann has done a more than competent job imbuing
the action with a teen audience look and feel and has picked a
suitably light youthful soundtrack to accompany the gut munching and high
school shenanigans that never allows the pace to lull.
The zombies are
Romero slow lurchers that never-the-less lunge quite quickly at times for the bite. They're well made up, though with, in
my opinion excessively forced and added guttural low demonic growls; they
snarl, horde, pull out intestines and generally act with all the unpleasantness
you'd expect. The action starts small and insular focusing tightly on the
school then expands leaving the question whether the whole world is now in
trouble hanging. The manner in which the many extras stagger out about is
cohesive enough for what it is and I've no real complaints with our undead
chums.
Detention of the
Dead is what it is, a Saturday night spectacle suitable for partners and mates
with pizza on the coffee table and beer in hand. It also made a nice change to
watch something openly with my wife rather than skulking off shamefully to some
exploitative thirty year old nonsense I'd probably not openly to admit to
liking as much as I do. Yes it's superficial, deliberately derivative and
ultimately quite forgettable but never-the-less it's fun, obvious and enjoyable
for all the same reasons. I've no real complaints with comedy, horror parodies such as these; they're
undeniably jumping on the zombie bandwagon, uncomplicated and not particularly ambitious,
but that's ok and its far better to work within your limits than try too hard and too serious. Also competently made zombie reinterpretations of, let's say,
more female oriented cult classics are always welcome and it's not the first;
just look at Romero & Juliet aka Warm Bodies; which actually kind of worked
and it makes me wonder what might be next, Fried Green Tomatoes? Pride and Prejudice? A recommended date-night film with first rate acting, that should
also satiate that zombie itch, 6/10.
Steven@WTD.
Friday, 15 November 2013
Night of the Seagulls - review
1975 (Spain)
Contains mild spoilers.
It all started so
well. Amando de Ossorio's Tombs of the Blind Dead was an original creepy and
atmospheric euro-horror masterpiece with intelligent characters, a surreal yet
coherent narrative, and enough exploitative scenes to satisfy and shock even by
today's standards. Unfortunately for de Ossorio, whether it was from over
reaching, with Return of the Evil Dead, or from having to work with cripplingly
low resources and money the sequels never came close to reaching the same
height. Night of Seagulls, the final chapter, marks the end of long,
tumultuous, yet not entirely unpleasant low budget euro-horror journey. Like
The Ghost Galleon, it's a tight, often ponderous story full of cliché and some unnecessary repetition imbued with a feeling of forced financial temperance,
but it would also appear that de Ossorio has finally come to terms with the
hand he's been dealt presenting a film that's self contained with a less
audacious story that's at once more coherent and believable. Gone are
transdimensional ghost galleons, contrived one-dimensional villains, and forced
obligatory rapes, instead we almost return to where it all started with simple
yet deep characters, a non overly convoluted set-up and a rounded
complete story with a beginning, a middle and a satisfying end.
By now you'll be
aware the other than the back story of medieval templars returned from the East
with new found occult knowledge and a willingness for baring and slicing into the breasts of
nubile young virgins to consume their hearts and flesh, all in order to gain undead immortality, de Ossorio has never felt the need for continuity
between the films. Each film has it's own setting, it's own rumours and
superstitions, and an all new set of modern heroes and anti-heroes with which to
play with in an all new sandbox. All that we can be sure of is at some point the
blind undead wispy chinned knights will rise from their rest and people will be
killed in as gratuitous and exploitative a way as de Ossorio can get away with.
Dr. Henry Stein
(Víctor Petit) and his wife Joan (María Kosti) have travelled to a run down
isolated fishing village to replace the old doctor (Javier de Rivera). On
arrival they are met with blatant rejection and dismissal from a community that
makes it clear outsiders aren't wanted, an aging anxious doctor who's only to
happy to be getting out as soon as possible and Teddy (José Antonio Calvo), a
handicapped and bullied young man who fresh from a recent beating is treated
and given refuge in their loft. That night Joan is woken by the ringing of
strange bells, which Henry dismisses as a necessary aid for passing boats in
thick fog, and the cries of distressed seagulls, which neither can explain, but it puts them on edge and suggests there's more to the village than meets the eye.
Come the morning and
ignoring all the demands to not pry and not leave, Joan befriends a young village
orphan Lucy (Sandra Mozarowsky) who agrees to come work with them and she also takes in Tilda Flannigan (Julia James) a young girl from the village who is clearly
quite scared. After a rather confrontational visit from the village elders, the mystery is slowly unravelled with Teddy finally
spilling the beans. "Corpses, rise up out of the sea, take pretty ladies,
one each night for seven nights, the pretty girls that die, they become the
seagulls; they're the damned spirits of the sacrificed girls."
It's the same
costumes, the same models and the same adorned horses; also nothing has changed
cinematically with how the blind skeletal crusty old corpses pull themselves out of
their tombs, ride, dismount then ponderously shuffle towards their prey
stabbing and slashing their swords as if they're waving their white sticks. What's
different is the very specific nature of the curse, which requires them to rise
every seven years, to take seven fresh female victims on seven consecutive
nights, and how they're not doing this to appease Satan, but as an
offering to some Lovecraftian-esque sea god / demon they have a large statue of.
The tighter smaller
story and ensemble allows the templars to shine in a way they probably haven't
since the first film. They're intransient, yet unreal, menacing and for the
first time in three films believable and not distractingly amateurish. Pretty virgins
in white linen gowns tied up to rocks by a terrified village
folk, to appease a curse isn't new, and Andromeda tied up for the Kraken to
appease Thetis immediately came to mind, but de Ossorio manages to make the
scenes his own and doesn't squander the
opportunity with stylish cinematography and restraint. It's clear that Night of the Seagulls feels
more at one with itself; it's story is rounded and complete, the narrative and dialogue is confident
and understated, characters are exposed slowly and subtly, and pacing never
feels harried or forced.
Not perfect, Night of the Seagulls at least bows
the Blind Dead out on a high and reminds us that Amando de Ossorio when push
comes to shove can fashion quite a moody, eerie atmospheric horror
that can stand the test of time. It's still undeniably misogynist, where girls are
demarcated by how pretty they are and women who show undue concern are labelled
hysterical and in need of sedation but at least finally the obligatory
shoe-horned in rape is absent and really, if it wasn't for de Ossorio's track
record, I probably wouldn't be making such a big deal of it all for a film of its time
and place. Competent, coherent, de Ossorio's Night of the Seagulls is a fine
70s euro horror and a nice reward for getting through parts 2 and 3, 7/10.
Steven@WTD.
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
KFZ: Kentucky Fried Zombies (Die-ner (Get It?)) - review
2009 (USA)
Contains spoilers.
Ok I didn't come at
this low budget zom-com with high expectations but from the cover I at least
expected a daft zany riotous zombie spoof with an abundance of gratuitous and
unnecessary gore and blood, albeit to make up for lacklustre narrative and barely
adequate acting. You know, looking at the cover, there's crazy demon-esque
zombies and the diner's on fire, so something along the lines of Trailer Park of Terror or even Plaga Zombie; nothing that would blow me away but ninety
minutes of leave your brain at the door indie fun. Well, I can definitely attest to
the latter as director / writer Patrick Horvath's zombie cum serial killer /
slasher is certainly light on the story side, and if I'm being kind the three
leads just about get away with it, but as for the rest, well, it's another oh-so-familiar case where redesigned cover and choice quotes don't necessarily match what's actually in the box.
KFZ: Kentucky Fried
Zombies is neither riotous, zany or funny, and it's neither gratuitous, gory or
particularly bloody. If I'm allowed to cut to the chase, it's a slow, rambling,
occasionally mildly amusing, dry little amateur art project that never really
goes anywhere and even unfortunately manages to bore the viewer on the way. I would normally
stop at this point to point out despite the purported $500k budget and mere
eight nights of shooting there was obviously a lot of good intention and the
directors ambition and vision does manage to bubble to the surface here and
there, but really here it's quite the opposite. Whether
it's the performances, the script, the story, the action, the make-up or the
direction, it feels the benchmark was set to merely adequate early on and there
was never a drive in any aspect for anything more. Even for a low budget b-movie everything
manages to feel cheap and rushed, scenes that are mostly superfluous and could
easily be dropped, linger, sequences are repeated unnecessarily and the story
runs out of steam well before it even gets going. 
On paper there's not
a bad little yarn. Ken (Joshua Grote), a serial killer picks out an off the
beaten track diner in the middle of night to have some fun with its staff and
passing customers. After dispatching the waitress Rose (Maria Olsen) and cook Fred
(Jorge Montalvo) he's forced to impersonate a new member of staff to avoid
undue attention from love-troubled couple Kathy and Rob (Liesel Kopp
and Parker Quinn) and Duke, the local Sheriff (Larry Purtell). As if pouring
coffee and being faced with having to make a house salad wasn't enough, Ken is
suddenly, without warning, faced with the additional problem that everyone he's
just killed has reanimated and is hungry for flesh.
As said, it's not a
bad little set up and an interesting survival dynamic in the making, with really enough for Horvath to sink his proverbial teeth into, except he
never really does. The zombies are dealt with, Ken reveals and asserts his
position as alpha-one by gun point and over extended over indulgent monologue
and lecture, then Kathy and Robb manage to over power him allowing
Horvath the opportunity for the first of two quite baffling dream like sequences
supposed to in some way take us back to Ken's childhood and why he is the way
is. I'll admit my attention was drifting somewhat by this point but if there
was some intelligent and important insight that helped make sense of his one
dimensional sociopathic character I missed it. Like the story I'm sure
some thought had gone into it and the many meandering encounters and drawn out
dialogue that made the rest of the film, but it always played out slow, stale and safe, and was never as
interesting or dramatic as it really could have been.
The zombies too are
merely adequately made up with just enough make-up and blood substitute to
differentiate them from everybody else. They're slow, they groan, they bump
into things and when they do attack it's always telegraphed and always a bite
to the neck with the same token of flesh ripped off. There's also plenty of the
low budget, cut to anything else, trick, when the action looks like it might
get a little tasty. Also, the zombie origin story is never really explained, as
with the rest of the film I don't think Horvath really cared enough to think
any of it needed to make sense; after all it's just a zombie film and us zombie
fans will simply lap up any old shit, won't we...
KFZ: Kentucky Fried
Zombies is a turgid, incoherent amateurish bit of cinema that plods along
happily wallowing in its own tedium and averageness, never pushing itself to
try just a bit harder. None of the little semi-interesting narrative plots get
explored or developed, the easy option is grasped at every opportunity and it
all stumbles to an obvious and abrupt conclusion that comes across as if
someone on the eighth day looked at their watch and called for the film to be
wrapped whatever state the story was in. Best avoided, 2/10.
Steven@WTD.
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
The Mask of Satan (Black Sunday) - review
1960 (Italy)
Contains
mild spoilers.
The Mask of Satan
(aka Black Sunday, redubbed, rescored and tamed a little for the US) is a sumptuous
visual treat and widely regarded as one of the finest cinematic gothic horror
fairy-tales with directors Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Tim
Burton all citing its influence. Despite being banned for eight years in the
UK by an over-sensitive conservative reactionary committee for several
dark and shocking scenes it's really the tangible and constant atmosphere of
dread that flits seamlessly though and along all facets of the film that
defines Mario Bava's full directorial debut. The Mask of Satan is a film at one
with itself; flowing with grace and ease from one scene to the next, full of
symbolism and subtlety yet telling a very real story with a firm
unambiguous back story and climax.
The opening five
minutes is evocative and provocative cinema at its finest; a bewitching and
haunting sequence that demonstrates directorial confidence and skill. It's a
dark brooding night and Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele) and her lover Javutich
(Arturo Dominici) are dragged up onto wooden posts to face the most severe of
punishments by the inquisition for devil worshipping and witchcraft. Before the
mask of Satan, a cruel iron-maiden-esque metal depiction of the devil
punctuated with internal nails is hammered on to her face and she is burned alive she manages to scream out a curse on her brother, the head of the
inquisition, and their family line declaring she will have her revenge though
the bloodline. The thump of the hammer as the mask is driven into her head is
sadistic, gratuitous and shocking. It's also one of the main reasons the film was banned, yet
without it's inclusion the scene would lose the impact and focus it had and deprive of us
of one of cinema's most iconic scenes.
200 years later and
Dr. Thomas Kruvajan (Andrea Checchi) and his assistant Dr. Andre Gorobec (John
Richardson), travelling through Moldavia come across her burial tomb and you
know how things are, one thing leads to another, the crucifix standing guard at
the end of her resting place gets broken, her mask is removed and Dr.
Kruvajan manages to snag his hand, dripping blood onto her surprisingly fresh
looking face. I really don't want to spoil the plot, but I don't think I'll be
giving too much away by saying that it looks like she might be getting that chance of revenge after
all, especially with the nearby castle now being occupied with her brothers
direct descendants, Prince Vajda (Garrani), his son Constantine (Enrico
Oliveiri) and his daughter Katia (Steele again) who just happens to be the
spitting image and exactly the same age as Asa, when she was killed.
An aversion to the
cross, blood for rejuvenating, hypnotic suggestion of the weak, puncture marks
on the neck, only coming out at night and resting in a sarcophagus during the
day all point to vampires and this is certainly right. A. Boylan at Taliesin Meets the Vampires
argues that Asa is a witch vampire in keeping with Romanian mythology, and the strigoï vii (a living witch
type vampire) and strigoï mort (the undead variety, which the vii becomes
after death). This witch/vampire cross over certainly
fits with her psychic ability to drain Katia and the recommended
method of dispatch which isn't by wooden stake through the heart, but by
piercing the left (evil) eye.
So what does this
have to do with zombies? Other than Asa, the undead whether summoned like
Javutich to climb from his two hundred year old slumber in unconsecrated
ground, or those more recently turned, act as mere puppets to her will. Though
able to talk with occasional glimpses of the person they once were, they are stripped of their self and soul and unable to refuse her commands
however unsavoury or malevolent. I'm not going to pretend The Mask of Satan is
any way a traditional zombie film but those woken / reanimated / turned to protect and
serve her are of definite genre interest and show many of signs of the
genre-fusion we've seen before in an Eastern European mythology and folklore
full of vampires, revenants and the draugr. One must also remember the year is 1960 and it
would be many years before Romero would usher in the new wave.
Zombies were still transitioning from the new world and magic to the west and scientific dogmatism; they were still synonymous with slave/servent and it wasn't yet established whether they even had to be physically
dead. The undead vampire-esque slaves of Asa depicted here, are
valid enough in this transitional period and we should always be mindful not to under estimate the vampire's part in the zombie story.
The Mask of Satan
has little to fault. Steele shines amidst equally solemn and assured
casting and acting performances, and the cohesive and satisfying narrative is accompanied by equally
exquisite photographic direction and pacing that makes each scene a delight to
flow along with. Bava has a real knack for allowing sequences to evolve with
single long sumptuous sweeping shots that start on small details only to pan
out without breaks or changing camera and the results are beautiful, stylish
and utterly absorbing. The moody black and white palette compliments the gothic
ambience and Roberto Nicolosi's musical score is an accomplished and
understated accompaniment (there was a new more generic horror score by Les Baxter for the US release which I've not
heard.) The Mask of Satan is
a cinematic triumph full of flare and vision with plenty of zombie genre crossover to warrant it's inclusion. Magical, powerful, it's recommended, 9/10.
Steven@WTD.
Friday, 8 November 2013
The Walking Dead (1936) - review
1936 (USA)
Contains Spoilers.
Ask me a year ago
whether a frankenstein-esque film such as this had a place on my oh so precious
zombie only blog and I'd have shook my head, resolutely quoting my ideological
stance that zombie equals reanimated dead and definitely not resurrected and alive.
Today I'm a little more relaxed, my naive dogmatic definitions shaped in the
post Romero era have crumbled a little and while I still hold to notion zombies
and deadness is immutable I'm a little
more amenable to whether a lack of pulse is strictly necessary.
Boris Karloff plays
John Ellman, a pianist and unfortunate wretch who has recently been released
from a ten year stretch. Desperate for employment he becomes the unwitting
patsy for a group of wealthy racketeers who see his release as the perfect
opportunity to rid themselves of the troublesome Judge Shaw (Joseph King) who
has become quite the thorn in their side. Hired by Trigger (Joseph Sawyer),
their hit-man for hire, Ellman, who was originally convicted by Shaw, is tasked
to wait outside his house and make notes on the judges coming and goings, as if
a PI assistant helping establish whether he's engaged in an extramarital
affair. It's the perfect set-up. Shaw's body is dumped in the back of his car
along with the murder weapon, his note book makes it look like he's been
stalking the judge and he has the motivatin as Shaw was responsible for his own
sentence ten years earlier. As if this all wasn't enough Nolan (Ricardo
Cortez), who is really working alongside the racketeers is put in charge of his
defence. His death by electric chair was really quite inevitable.
It's time we
mentioned Jimmy (Warren Hull) and Nancy (Marguerite Churchill), two medical
assistants who happened to see everything. Despite being threatened to keep
quiet they confess all and
though they're too late to save Ellman, Nolan makes sure of that, there is a
plan B. B stands for Dr. Evan Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn), their boss, who is researching artificial hearts and resuscitation, and because of the great injustice that now appears to have been
befallen Ellman agrees with the district attorney and prison warden that it's
worth a shot to see if he can be brought back to life.
Director Michael Curtiz depiction of Ellman being brought back to life is sophisticated, modern and understated. Yes there's vials bubbling and electric currents but there's no clap of thunder, hunchbacks pulling levers or screams. The
reanimation sequence is clean, scientific and open; indeed Karloff himself was
vocal about distancing the cinematic experience to Frankenstein which he filmed
five years earlier. There's no stitching together of human pieces and Ellman
comes back alive as if waking from a deep sleep to a cheque for $500,000
compensation, his picture in the paper and a guardian to help him back on his feet. So why am I reviewing this? Because the Ellman resurrected is not
the Ellman who died.
He has no memories
of his life before, not even his name. He can speak and understand, and he does
demonstrate a new short term memory but he has no recollection of his death or,
which is of particular interest to Dr. Beaumont, that period he was dead. His
movements are also now sluggish and limp, and he has a crooked neck and he
seems distant, like what has come back is some kind of echo and not the same
full soul that departed. He's more than an echo though, and whether one
interprets it religiously (there are many instances of scripture quoted), or scientifically, or something else, Ellman is now very much some kind of Ghost
of Christmas Past with the knowledge and ability to directly confront all those
who engineered his death.
It's a hard and
strange one to interpret. There are hints of the old Ellman; he can still play
piano, but what has returned, if it is Ellman at all is entirely focused on
retribution. One by one he confronts each racketeer asking them "why did
you have me killed?" and rather than taking the cheap and easy option
portraying him as some knife wielding murderer out for revenge, Curtiz instead
portrays Ellman as some untouchable innocent who holds some stark mirror up to
the souls of those who caused his death. There's an 'It's a Wonderful Life /
Christmas Carol' feel, and it's more subtle and more coherent. Ellman isn't a
monster; he's the question, and the omnipotent knowledge and truth the
murderers can't escape. Trigger falls back
shooting himself, Blackstone runs away into an oncoming train, Merit has a
heart attack then falls out his bedroom window; each racketeers' reaction to
being confronted is different, some even try to mount an offensive first, but
each of their deaths seems inevitable and self afflicted, as if Ellman is now
some angel of justice obeying some grand design.
Then again he might
not be. There's enough ambiguity, and divine retribution after-all is a bit old
testament. He might actually be some primal damaged reflection of Ellman who has seen
the infinite nothing of death and just wants to kill his enemies; I don't know.
Karloff's character reminded me a little of Andy from Dead of Night (Deathdream), of someone who ought not to have returned. There also a bit of The Returned, the idea
of the restless dead who aren't merely apparitions. Either way he might not be a
'ZOMBIE' in any traditional sense, but it's certainly of genre interest and he
does die and is resurrected/reanimated, he does stagger towards each racketeer
with a vacant look and arms outstretched, and he's definitely not who he was
before with what seems like a prescribed agenda, so there's enough going on to warrant a look. Also it's called
'The Walking Dead', and that's
something.
The Walking Dead is
a delightful piece of cinema. It's beautifully shot with a great script, great
score by Bernhard Kaun with believable sets and confident first rate acting.
The story of Ellman is poignant and tragic with a beautiful ambiguity that leaves
quite many unanswered questions, but no sense of being cheated. One of the best
films I've seen from the 1930's The Walking Dead is a delightful, almost
contemporary horror that never feels as old as it is and it's thoroughly
recommended, 8/10.
Steven@WTD.
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