Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - review

2016 (UK / France / Germany / South Africa / Canada / Japan / Australia / USA)

2017 Sony Pictures Blu-ray R(Free)

Contains mild spoilers.

  

Well it's been a long ride for Alice (Milla Jovovich). Resuscitated with memory loss, attacked without mercy by the scourge of the undead and their corporate overlords, then over the decade hunted and beset by all the increasingly monstrous and depraved super mutants that director Paul W. S. Anderson could conceive. She's been shot, stabbed, sliced, diced and blown from the sky. She's been cloned, watched good friends die, learnt the dark secrets of her past and witnessed the world she knew torn a sunder. To say she's due a break is an understatement but with this instalment, it would appear Anderson might just be finally letting us, and her, enjoy some kind of rest to the madness.

Over the ten years and six chapters we've slowly but surely witnessed a profound cinematic transition to style over narrative, characters, or any real attempt at substance. It's as if someone gave control of the crazy dial to a young excitable boy and then kept ploughing him with coke long after he'd definitely had enough. From a gritty, claustrophobic and earnest debut, success turned into cash, then into budget, and finally unfettered approval to bring life to the most fantastical scenes and effects, and thus did story, congruence and any concerns for character arcs, in turn, fall to the way side. Part five was the epitome of action surplus; a cacophony of battles and over the top and never-ending lunacy that failed utterly to actually be engaging or rewarding precisely because of this deficit accrued. With The Final Chapter I'd argue that while the giddy young fella seems relieved from his sugar purgatory, this is for all intents and purposes the grand finale, and as such, why is there a want to temper things now. Whilst one can see a whisper of desire to return with Alice and the entourage to Racoon City, and to the intimacy and cinematic authenticity of where and when it all began, there's too much water under the bridge; too much superficial silliness to ever really think they could.

By now we understand that it's not the gold star action and cinematic wizardry that will let a Resident Evil film down but the downtime, the moments of peace between the double back flip, the Matrix style kung-fu, or the triple barrelled shot gun into the giant toothy flying mutant of doom (I think a Kipepeo). Yet I've seen The Final Chapter come in for a lot of criticism about how it's all been cut and spliced together. Ultimately I think it comes down to personal taste, as I didn't mind the frantic and chaotic shaky cam approach; in many ways recognising it as a nod to the perils and confusion of war. The fact that so much of it was shot in near darkness however, I did, especially as Anderson to his credit does manage to return the simple un-mutated zombie back to the forefront for a large swathe of the film, and it would have been nice if we could have really seen them in all their glory.

Another recurring problem I have by now, is Alice's invulnerability. I'm all for the epic hero, the Thor or Beowulf blessed by the Gods with incredible fortune as well as strength, but as all about her fall and as buildings tumble, one never get the feeling, not for one second, that's she's actually in any real danger. The problem with winning the no-win scenario, is how do you follow it but with an equally implausible one. It's the magicians conundrum. Day one it's escaping from a box, Day 100, it's escaping from a box suspended over the Grand Canyon, on fire with a rat in your underpants. Watching Alice, yet again dancing with the big Resident Evil brute +1, or the next CGI enhanced video game inspired super boss, there's nothing really new, never any real tension and no tangible threat. Yet again, dare I say, it's all a tad stale and insipid, and no, adding another rat or maybe a cat to the pants won't ever really fix the fundamental problem.

The Final Chapter isn't as bad Retribution but that would have been a hard thing to have accomplished. At least here there is a semblance of a narrative to make sense of the carnage, even it deviates on what we've been told before, and makes a mockery of all the heroes and villains that have come together to give her a final send-off, with what in effect are short meaningless cameos. Through in truth, if anyone is really watching Resident Evil for any semblance of a coherent narrative or intelligent by this point, they're way off the mark. With action this undeniably good I'd be hard pressed to say there isn't something of merit watching Milla's perfect death bringing choreography, or any of the big picture perfect explosions; and I did find some nostalgia in the final scenes despite them ending up an insulting mockery. So as I said, better than the last, but I had very low expectations - 4/10.

Steven@WTD.

Bride of Re-Animator - review

1989 (USA)

2016 Arrow Video Dual Format Blu-ray & DVD Limited Edition R(Free)

Contains spoilers. 

I've no doubt that in Herbert West's (Jeffrey Combs) mind, he really isn't such a bad guy and all the slap-dash and irresponsible murder, carnage and surgical mischief is justifiable when the goal, to unearth the secrets to life and death, is so monumental. Watching the blood flow, the body parts mount up, and new increasingly nightmarish mutations come to life, one might not fully side with his calamitous unethical scientific methods or agree with his health and safety record, but one really can't help but love him for all the chaos he brings.

Brian Yuzna's Bride of Re-Animator; the sequel to the glorious dark, bloody and riotously inappropriate Re-Animator couldn't really fail. Ok, that's not strictly true but, as with Evil Dead and Bruce Campbell, just casting Coombs as the same irrepressible and eccentric West, and fashioning another slap-stick b-movie with cohesive yet equally eccentric side characters, vulgar and unnecessary bad taste skits and a hokey story to surround him, was sure to work. And despite some small missteps; mainly the result of what Yuzna tells of limited pre-production time, the film is undoubtedly another huge success and a worthy successor.

The film opens with an explosive flashback then flash forward to events eight months after the Miskatonic Hospital massacre that ended the last film in a highly memorable magical b-movie maelstrom of death and chaos. West and his companion cum enabler Dr. Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), the only survivors, are following up their unethical experiments, now in the safety of the Peruvian jungle with the front line of civil conflict as cover. There stay is short lived however, but long enough to set the scene and inform us that West has certainly not learnt from his mistakes. Then with another flash and a bang we're all back to Arkham and the place of their earlier misadventures, though by now the hope is that everyone has forgotten the carnage, and moved on...

West carries on his highly questionable experimentation with Dr. Cain fully on board with the promise he can somehow bring his late love Meg back. West's nemesis Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale who begged to be part of this sequel), now a severed head, is reanimated by a rather too curious pathologist (Mel Stewart as Dr. Graves), and begins his singular mission to seek revenge. The story ticks all the b-movie boxes; an increasing implausible and insane story, eccentric characters getting more stressed and desperate, and an abundance of excessive and unnecessary blood, guts and carnage, with Coombs, the meticulous conductor always the centre of the storm. And while one can understand, and almost forgive much of the collateral damage that results from West's fight with the established scientific world, forced as he is to work on the fringe where norms just can't apply, it's harder to argue the case for someone who just wants to tie an arm to a dog or a leg and bring it to life just to see what happens, whatever the consequence. It's these scenes that solidifies West as the larger than life personality and defines Re-Animator as an exceptionally good bad-movie rather than an average to rotten bad-one.

Yuzna isn't one to shy away from a bad taste idea, however disturbing, and in Bride of Re-Animator increasingly bizarre surgical experimentation is free to come to the screen however off the wall the idea. From twitching feet, to bat wings sown to a head, to a finger and eye-ball homage to every great disembodied hand since Thing, watching for each new increasingly unfettered experimental monstrosity is as much a part of the experience as the story. Also for the most part they're all perfectly realised, given the low budget, with enough sinew and blood to cover the cracks; and though not perfect; it's eighties, it's b-movie and cracks are all part of the charm.

I'd be hard pressed to describe West's creations as zombies in any traditional or even contemporary sense. If anything these Frankenstein's meat slabs intimate of life returned; of consciousness, id, ego and will all back alongside breath and a heart-beat. It's b-movie mumbo jumbo of course; of primordial ooze extracted from the amniotic sac of the cuzco iguana and stuff about consciousness not residing in the brain but any of the tissue but the short of it West has found a way of reanimating flesh; the rest doesn't have to make much sense. There is enough ambiguity, and some of West's lesser successes, and remnants from the first film, certainly appear zombie with decay, mindless behaviour with hints of hunger and violence, and towards the end of the film appearing to be controlled by the will of another, all in good old pre-Romero Caribbean style. I'd also be hard pressed to say any of West's returnees are exactly corpus-mentis.

If I was to nit-pick, it could be argued the story is a little disjointed; more a mash-up of sub-narratives and ideas that happen to overlap rather than a grand singular story. It's also under critique rather light on substance with many of the more excessive and memorable scenes rather throwaway and unnecessary from a narrative point of view; included, the b-movie aficionado would argue for the shits and giggles, but for the cynic, perhaps to fill and because gore always sells. Still, they do fit with the insanity and as said they're really just as integral a part of the whole experience as the increasingly incredulous plot. Bride is another riotous Re-Animator chapter allowing both Coombs and the supporting ensemble to shine. With a lively, whimsical sound track and good pacing, it's perfect goofy, excessive and shocking b-movie entertainment, and this new Arrow Blu-ray release; packed with every extra you could hope for, does everything it can to bring it to life - 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

The Hanging Woman (The Orgy of the Dead / La Orgía de los Muertos) - review

1973 (Spain / Italy)

2009 Troma Entertainiment DVD R(All)

Contains spoilers.

I'd be lying if I said this quintessentially low budget European horror was good. I'd be equally disingenuous if I was to be overly harsh. Director José Luis Merino's La Orgía de los Muertos (translated as The Orgy of the Dead), otherwise known as Beyond the Living Dead (US),  Zombies - Terror of the Living Dead (UK), and finally and most popularly in the US, The Hanging Woman, in truth, is a distinctly mediocre gothic mad-scientist whodunnit dotted with enough distinctly brilliant and memorable moments that it almost fools you into thinking it's better than it is. The story, characters and acting is as equally laboured as It is convoluted and discordant, and despite Paul Naschy being Paul Nashy in his prime, he can't, this time, save the film entirely on his own mainly because his involvement was actually quite limited, due to parallel film commitment.

Serge Chekov (Stelvio Rosi as Stan Cooper) returning to his late uncle's estate for the reading of the will stumbles upon the grizzly scene of, whom he soon discovers to be, his niece's fresh corpse hanging from a tree. Then finding himself the, for all intents and purposes, sole benefactor he's quickly embroiled in a web of scheming and distrust, black magic and murder, in a claustrophobic and isolated backwater mansion with a cast of disparate and quite disturbed figures.

There's Igor (Paul Naschy), the crazy-eyed, dishevelled cemetery caretaker who we learn is also quite the necrophiliac and all round pervert; there's the newly widowed Countess Nadia Mihaly (Maria Pia Conte) who wants Serge to sell and is happy to persuade with sex, satanic ritual and voodoo; there's Professor Leon Driola (Gérard Tichy), the permanent guest of the late Count who specialist research is electricity and the nebulous curtain of death, and there's his daughter, the Countesses maid Doris Droila (Dyanik Zurakowska) who wants Serge to actually keep the estate for her father's sake.

At some point each and every one supplies motive and means to explain the, for at least an hour, rather sketchy, zombie murder mystery, and each and every one provides a discordant sub-narrative with Serge at the centre. And Serge loves it. Making the lead character and hero such an entitled obnoxious cad is either brave film making or suicide, as whether he's taking advantage of young vulnerable daughters or engaged in yet another innocuously provoked fist fight he's incredibly difficult to either empathise with or rally behind. Even as the credits rolled and he'd solved the case, and rescued and won the girl I couldn't help hope there would be some late twist and he'd still get the zombie maul he undisputedly deserved.

The zombies are one of the true highlights of the film and it was a pity it took such a long time to get to see them in all their splendour. Fetid, crusty and decaying, they're the epitome of the seventies walking dead infamously popularised by Fulci later in the decade. Unlike the esoteric mystical nature of Fulci's creation though, these guys have a mad Victor Frankenstein scientist and rational excuse for their reanimation. Spoiler… it was Professor Leon you see, and not any of the black magic or voodoo thrown in to put us of course. As well as learning the secrets of electrical resurrection he's also a whizz with micro-technology, designing and manufacturing a 'capsule' that slots in the corpses brain to both control its actions as well as pick up his thoughts. They're mindless drones incapable of independent thought driven solely to obey their master and the murders were all perpetrated at the behest of the prof who first wanted to kill his partner the count, to stop him using the discovery to amass 'an army of the dead'. The rest of the victims, beginning with the hanging woman, were unlucky dominoes that fell as the ever desperate Leon tried to cover his tracks. An interesting zombie twist to note at the end of the film and starting with the now resurrected Naschy, of a disobedience and demonstration of independent murderess intent, with the professor no longer able to exert control. It lead to a lively and satisfying climax, but as stated all came rather too late.

Naschy, the zombies, the sombre gothic atmosphere brilliantly captured, and the brooding organ music; there are many reasons to get excited over this early seventies continental horror. Indeed, as much as the story was long winded, trite, and discordant, and the characters generally unbearable and difficult to share any sympathy with, the constantly interspersed distractions were enjoyable despite themselves and perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Also one can't help but be charmed with echoes of a more innocent, or naive time when woman always fainted at bad news, it was ok to beat and shoot at the feet of disagreeable servants, and it was right and proper to invade and search a man's property because 'he's a strange sort and could be dangerous'. As charmed as I was though, and as much as I did enjoy the final fifteen or so minutes of zombie mayhem, I have to argue there are much better gothic horrors from this era, and this is far from Naschy's best effort. Yet, it does have a certain something that could warrant a viewing on a stormy night with curtains drawn, lights down low, and goblet of port in hand - 5/10.

Steven@WTD.

Bowery at Midnight - review

1942 (USA)

2015 The Film Detective DVD R(0)

Contains spoilers.

  

Bowery at Midnight is a dark film and I'm not just referring to the multitude of night-time outdoor, and basement scenes that combined with the grainy monochrome print make it hard to discern exactly what's going on. Bowery at Midnight is a dark film with psychopaths, double lives, indiscriminate murder, and we've not even got on to the resurrection of the dead. It's also not often I make the case that I'm not entirely sure what the zombies bring to the film other than a mechanism to turn the rather bleak ending into something altogether more cheer-some for those leaving the theatre.

Bela Lugosi may have received the bulk of his fame / infamy from his portrayal of Count Dracula both on stage in the late 20's and then in its big screen namesake in 1931, and then later when Ed Wood rather infamously pulled him from his drug induced oblivion in the late 50's. During the 30s and 40s when avoiding being typecast he starred in many unique films demonstrating both his unrecognised versatility and without question his star talent. In Bowery at Midnight Lugosi plays Professor Brenner by day; an erudite confident psychology professor with doting wife and nice house. By night he assumes the role of Karl Wagner, a philanthropic soup kitchen owner, known for his unconditional kindness and no-questions policy. What his wife, students and those unfortunates he helps aren't aware of, is he's also a double crossing, jewellery robbing, sociopath who takes a huge perverse pleasure in destroying people's lives; and Lugosi is terrifyingly convincing.

Writer Gerald Schnitzer and director Wallace Fox have fashioned quite the intriguing, intelligent, coherent and yet deeply disturbing story of deception, murder and mayhem. Lugosi as Wagner uses the soup kitchen to spot vulnerable young men who might be open to highly illegal but immensely profitable night time skulduggery. Then once the deed is done, with their skills no longer required he, or his right hand man, then kill the fellow leaving him at the scene; not just as one would think, as a way of decreasing the split, but as is revealed subtly over the movie, because he enjoys it too. As he tires, or begins to distrust his lieutenant, they too are replaced and then with the blood still warm he heads home, as Brenner, to his wife (Anna Hope) with gifts and apologies for being up all night researching his next book.

While I've been rather disparaging of the zombie element of the film, taken in isolation I'm rather taken with how Fox has presented them. Dr Brooks (Lew Kelly), a written-off old quack as well as caretaker of both sides of the soup kitchen has seemingly dedicated his spare time to bringing the dead back to life. It's medicine and science and there's no voodoo or magic which is something in itself given the year it was penned. They're also a hard one to define as they're never the focus appearing only as background to the basement action scenes. They're back from the dead, so alive and not undead, but up until the final scene, which I'll come to, they do appear docile and compliant, and not exactly cognisant or the way they were before. Then there's the way Brooks keeps them locked in a room below the basement, refers to them as his pets, and when they're called upon they're unreservedly violent, tearing, metaphorically, into Wagner as the net closes in on his crime spree. The final scene I mentioned? Well to take the edge off a story where the perpetrator does finally get his just deserves, but on reflection has ruined a lot of people's lives by killing an awful lot of loved ones, Fox ends with the resurrected back as their old selves, as if nothing's happened. It's a contradictory couple of minutes I didn't much care for; totally out of place coming as it does, straight after the savage zombie beat down that really should have ended proceedings.

Bowery at Midnight is first and foremost a crime-drama, a suspense driven thriller; and a rather successful one. What it isn't is a horror, supernatural or otherwise, and it's certainly not a zombie film. If anything the resurrected victims of Brook's nefarious schemes are the one element that threatens to break the coherence, in danger of turning a truly dark, subtle, intelligent, and utterly engaging exploration of one man's detached morality, into a bit of farce. Not only is the throwaway idea of an old doctor on his own discovering a way to resurrect the dead incredulous, but more importantly, it tries to remove consequence and impact from the death and destruction graphically witnessed. Bowery at Midnight has moments that are truly evil and raw, Lugosi's performance as an over confident and out of control serial killer is remarkable, and I really don't want to see its resonance minimised for the sake of some silly resurrections and a happy ending. This all being said, and maybe because I'm conditioned to see corpses walking about, I was able to distance myself from the distractions and marvel at what the film does do right, which is an awful lot. A remarkable piece of war time cinema I'll certainly be returning to - 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

The Dead Hate the Living! - review

2000 (USA)

2002 Digital Entertainment DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers. 

Director and writer Dave Parker's low budget, tongue-in-cheek noughties zombie nonsense screams enthusiasm, spirit and passion, and clearly a lot of time and energy has been invested into capturing early eighties Italian esoteric absurdity and mashing it with the high energy pop-influenced horror comedy that proceeded the decades after. And in many ways it works; one moment dark, strange and uncomfortable, only to seconds later shake off all pretence, and entertain with a more literal, whimsical and contemporary look and feel. It's a unique experience, exclaims Tom Savini on the cover, and I can't argue. The thing is, and looking at it as a complete work, this schizophrenic approach has also led to a film that’s undeniably a bit rubbish. Putting aside the poor pacing; a slow start is a given flaw in amateur horror, and the forgettable and generally uninteresting characters, the biggest problem with The Dead Hate the Living! is the disjointed and utterly unconvincing story. At no point does it ever appear Parker knew where he was going with a tale that seems to be built on random and confounding directorial and narrative decisions. Though maybe that's the point and the continental je ne sais quoi I was alluding too; and there's no doubting the feature is quite the experience…

No doubt Parker thought turning the tables on young and naive teens playing at making their own zombie opus such that they themselves become the stars of the show was clever and original. And it is, with the springing of the joke as dramatic, bloody and entertaining as one could hope. It's the bits leading up and the bits after that’s the problem with Parker seemingly struggling to really know what to do other than play it cliché, corny and hope the narrative itself would telegram the next obvious steps.

The first mistake first time b-movie film maker David Poe (Eric Clawson) makes after discovering the hidden, dark and nefarious lab complete with intimidating coffin was to persuade the rest of the vulnerable and remarkably gullible crew to see it as a good thing to incorporate the corpse of Dr Eibon (Matt Stephens) in their feature, arguing who wouldn't want to watch a Night of the Living Dead film with real dead in. The second, was put his body back into the strangely inscribed sarcophagus. The third, and definitely the one with most post-regret resonance would be plugging it back in and getting your leading man to place the nearby medallion back into its central socket all the while shouting about opening the gates of hell. I'm always torn when narrative is so staged, as to whether I feel it's all brilliantly cheesy, or dreadfully insulting; and the truth is probably both. I know a laughable unforced mistake is at the heart of the zombie trope, but this is perhaps going too far, as at no point watching was I ever thinking, heck screaming, anything other than what the f are you doing?

With the zombies out the chamber, so to speak, it's part slasher, part cat and mouse, part traditional low budget zombie, but plenty of the same baffling survival tactics from the survivors, and nonsensical world domination from the now fully locked and loaded zombie master. So there's some back story explaining his wanton desire to see all the living dead because his wife died of cancer and his desperate search to find an answer so he could break the veil. What doesn't quite complete the narrative though is why he'd shove her now successfully animated zombie shell on a slab in the morgue with all the other stiffs to be killed so easily by the now desperate rag tag survivors. Again, I don't think overthinking it would be good for me. What we need to know is he's an undead lord, turning the key didn't just resurrect his beardy arse but threw the whole hospital in to some space time limbo, and a pivot between the real world, and the world of the dead (think The Beyond and Army of Darkness), and he has quite the motley assortment of mutant zombies ready to help him with his scheme. 

Later, with Parker seemingly running out of ideas these towering, monstrosities Barker Hell-raiser inspired zombie-demons are joined from nowhere by a plethora of Romero clones who act and behave according to all accepted traditional tropes, except they're easily fooled by men with the right bit of make-up; which is handy as that's all David and make-up artist Paul (Brett Beardslee) have at their disposal. Refreshingly they both look and act the part, and I can have no quibbles for what was obviously a small budget. Gore and effects are always in your face too, but though it has its moments, it could never be a film that could be considered dark; the light and trite dialogue make sure of that.

What we have again is a baffling little zombie movie that somehow kind of works because one is able to transcend critical analysis to actually find enjoyment in, and despite, obvious mediocrity. The plot, a baffling, incongruous mess is more than often entertaining, the characters, bar Paul and perhaps Topaz (Jamie Donahue) are dry and hard to get behind; yet as vehicles to react to the zombie threat there's merit to their laboured and uninspired presentation. Matt Stephens is undoubtedly the star of the show and his camp and excessive b-movie performance warrants acclaim despite appearing somewhat ham-strung again with writing and directorial decisions that don't seem to want to ever push him beyond what you'd expect. So, an odd zombie film that demonstrates an awful lot of potential yet seems happy to squander much of it by being a little too scared to really stick to the dark recesses itself suggests; instead becoming a half-way safer and more whimsical house, that satisfies neither position. Still, there is fun to be had with some genuinely nice touches, and as Savani said, it's certainly unique - 4/10.

Steven@WTD.

Teenage Zombies - review

1960 (USA)

2015 Vinegar Syndrome with Revenge of the Virgins DVD R(0)

Contains spoilers. 

Now I knew revered b-movie specialist Jerry Warren came with a reputation to rival Ed Wood, and this movie in particular was ridiculed as one of the worst ever; but even I wasn't quite prepared for such incompetence and schlock. Definitely falling in the so dire it's good category, writer, director and producer Warren has truly excelled himself with a piece of cinema so cringe-worthy; and I'm saying this up front, just so god damn awful, that it, just like Ed Wood's endeavours, somehow transcends its own mediocrity to become watchable precisely for the reasons it fails. So yes, it's a 1/10 film, and yes all the things I'm just about to point out are as bad as they sound and it certainly won't appeal to all; but if you've got even a smidgen of the voyeur, then there might just be a fun booze fuelled evening to be had with this undisputed car crash of a movie.

It takes but ten minutes for Reg (Don Sullivan), Skip (Paul Pepper), Julie (Mitzie Albertson), and Pam (Brianne Murphy); four of the most insipid nondescript and asexual middle America teenager's ever to grace the screen to finish their milkshakes, sail out to the mysterious island™ and get themselves easily imprisoned by glamorous mad scientist Dr. Myra (Katherine Victor.) Another ten and we uncover her Eastern collaborators (I think it's all supposed to be Russian) and their plan to pop a nerve paralysing agent into the continent's water supply and turn every man, woman and child into a totally compliant slave. We also learn that each and every wide angle shot is going to clumsily staged and rehashed over and over, and each and every line of dialogue is going to end with a painful second or two of silence while the next actor cues his or her equally painful reply.

The story is incredibly thin, incoherent and awkward even by bad b-movie standards. A mysterious island with a top secret scientific facility with prison and lab that no one seems to know about; yet a fully stocked fridge, cocktails at noon and six kids who easily stumble across it all between water skiing sessions? Captives who pick locks, free themselves and even build an escape raft, instead choose to return to their cage to have a nap, and not make the little noise needed to free their girlfriends? Finally, Mitch Evans, a man in a rubber suit playing a zombie gorilla that's both one of the most truly ridiculous and amateurish monster scenes in all of cinema; and yet one the absolute screen-stealing highlights of the film. The other being Chuck Niles as Ivan the zombie, played somewhere between a stock Igor and the hulking voodoo slaves of the forties zombie plantation forays, and actually a highlight in the real sense; a single small shining piece of authenticity and competence in a wholly amateur affair.

It's that post-war, post dark-continent era that's seeing new scientific knowledge and theory replace magic and voodoo as the deep-rooted fear and methodology to take away a persons will and control. At heart it's still a forties / fifties Caribbean voodoo tale but now atoms, DNA and vaccines constitute the new unknown frontier and ask all the disturbing questions. Warren's Igor is the archetypical voodoo zombie; the perfect slave with a desire to work and obey, but very much alive and pre-Romero. It all starts well, with a good scene of multiple Romero-eque zombies spilling with menace and foreboding out over the landscape. But Dr Myra, an odd cross of Elvira, the perfect 60's housewife and the synonymous Scooby Doo villain and her plan, for all that's b-movie goofyness at its brazen best, is convoluted and a hodgepodge of ideas that merely drags out the already shallow ordeal. There phase 3, an inconsistent neuro-toxins leaving half; compliant and half teeming with rage; and a sudden shift to plan b and a zombie-inducing-formula that can be reversed. What initially showed some horror promise soon turns to Igor, the two girls who are briefly enslaved, and monkey-man to carry the threat, and it's all rather flat, and all scares, along with convincing fights or gunshots, are left firmly at the door.

Ultimately though, Teenage Zombies is perhaps for the purist, or the desperate, as there are better good / bad movies, and the good / bad bits are probably as not as numerous or funny as I think. Jerry Warren however one frames it, is a bad director and this is a bad film. Sharing Ed Wood's total lack of vision and inability to see fault or a reason to reshoot, each and every scene is a show-case for the entirely b-movie actors to clumsy position themselves and stutter their lines. Add to this the laughable action sequences; championed by the final 7 person brawl / wrestle in the secret lab, and it's easy to argue it's as bad, if not worse than Wood's classic. I can't however quite draw myself to recommend it the same way though. Plan 9 has Depp's Ed Wood film and nearly forty years of unrivalled infamy; it's untouchable as anything other than the myth it's become. Not many will have heard of Teenage Zombies and as such it hasn't earned the same reputation or pass, and it's difficult, if I'm honest, to argue for it as anything other than the awfully amateur, keenly low-budget and utterly unwatchable piece of 60s schlock that it is 3/10.

Steven@WTD.

Another World - review

2014 (Israel)

2016 High Fliers Films DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

Much like the internet™ I'm quite torn by director and co-writer Eitan Reuven's debut zombie endeavour. I loved each and every highly stylised, frantic and ultra-violent encounter and it's homage to 28 Days Later was near perfect; yet split as it was into six distinct slices, each re-purposing a similar big frenetic climax, I was in all truth rather weary of it all by the end. I was also intrigued by all the long winded pseudo-philosophical and religious ramblings that contrived the bulk of the down-time; yet for all the clever little existential and academic insights I just couldn't shake off the thought that maybe I wasn't quite grasping the whole, no doubt brilliant, meta simply because there wasn't one, and the 'I am very smart' script was just really a right up its own behind exercise in academia.

Pretentious might be the word I'm looking for, and a passage from Genesis and narrator introducing each day rambling about the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the perfect storm that may have been the cause, while all the time shooting parallels to the current apocalyptic shit-storm, most certainly was for starters. Also not naming the four disparate survivors; simply billed as Colonel (Carl McCrystal), Wizard (Zach Cohen), Doctor (Susanne Gschwendtner) and Daughter (Davina Kevelson) or ever really exploring their characters beyond their contrasting and reductionist philosophical positions was a bit showy too. Then again there was obviously enough know-how that it made for some interesting dialogue and clashes, even if, as said, I never felt it ever really came together well enough to pull off what I think it was trying to accomplish.

While I think it does the film a disservice to analyse the action sequences totally separately from the conversations and narration I think it's worth it, as a lot of viewers, and this isn't being insulting, will have glazed over well before the second long over-complicated chemistry lesson or nihilistic eulogy has begun. As said this isn't an easy one to call either. There's no doubting Reuven has a real eye for horror and a real talent at bringing the dark, menacing and truly dangerous to the screen. I understand the shaky, bouncing and cam technique isn't for all but I felt it brilliantly captured the convincingly made-up and perfectly choreographed fast, rabid infected, and the increasingly desperate and edge-of-the-seat efforts of the survivors to out shoot and out run them.

The narrative itself though is a bit of a convoluted mess. Yes, even aside from the high academia word-wankery, the way in which the story jumps about, leaving huge swathes of time unaccounted is jarring, and the base position that the foursome would rather take the fight to the zombies with vapour bombs, dynamite and the tight urban sprawl rather than drive two hundred miles, with two lorries full of provisions to hide and wait it out, is quite frankly ludicrous. Also while the cat and mouse fight with a zombie-hybrid billed as Mouser (David Lavenski) was actually interesting, even finally firing some connections in me to the pseudo-intellectual stream of consciousness being spouted by the narrator, he was painfully underutilised and unexplored, and brought to an abrupt end weakly and prematurely.

It's 28 Days Later territory. They're infected, alive and the plan is to get to a month or two in when they've all died of hunger or exposure then move to a nice clean spot and start life again. So not zombie? It took me a while but I've now embraced the mindless but alive, and will gladly argue their zombie place at the table. While I fully acknowledge Romero's legacy the further I've delved the more inherently ambiguous and ultimately moot the whole life and dead debate is; and it's lack of control which serves as the actual signifier. There were zombies well before Romero stuck his grubby mitts in, and they were very much alive, and while he created an undoubted cult niche, let's not get carried away.

So while I do have quite a lot of respect for Another World, I can't help but feel the high intensity and highly stylised action would have been better partnered with a pseudo-intellectual meta that wasn't trying quite so hard. There's a lot going on; way too much with a Pandora's Box approach to the end of the world that tries to mesh together just too many ideologies and principles. There's euthanasia, Viking burials, bastardised Descartes, dinosaur extinction and Gaia theories, the merits of autodidacticism and utilitarianism, and even God's eternal grace and love is thrown into the mix; nothing is left out the intellectual maelstrom and whilst there's no doubting the writers know a great deal of words and concepts there's little evidence they know how to weave a coherent story with them all. So certainly interesting, and certainly entertaining, Another World ultimately falls short as either the gnarly little horror or the little existential piece of art it thinks it is - 4/10.

Steven@WTD.

Humans vs Zombies - review

2011 (USA)

2012 4 Digital Media DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers. 

Laboured, derivative and predictable, amateur in composition, story and acting; writer and director Brian T. Jaynes's low budget genre-bandwagon Humans vs Zombies isn't going to win any awards. Then again it's somehow also nowhere near as bad as it could, or should have been. I'll also hold my hands up. It was only after checking IMDb afterwards that I learnt that Humans vs. Zombies; the popular college campus high-jinx referenced was actually a thing; a combination of a UK University and the Nineties, had this one pass me by. I'll also keep my hands up to admit if it had been a thing I'd have undoubtedly joined in with James (Jesse Ferraro) and the nerd-gang pretending to keep the streets safe from the undead scourge.

Before I go into the gaming meta, I'd like to reiterate that Humans vs Zombies, the film, is an entirely safe, entirely done-to-death zombie holocaust survival story. There's a biotech firm, fluorescent goo, an awkward beach scene encounter between a hunky guy without a shirt, his girlfriend in her underwear and a zombie in a hazmat suit, and an entirely avoidable and terribly derivative accident that's soon spreading out of control. Add to the mix a narrative where all but a fortunate few students succumb and the local campus, town and countryside is rapidly overrun, and it's a scream, run, hold-up, repeat template all the way. As said it's laboured, full of inconsistencies, and for all it does do right is entirely hampered at all times by the obvious budgetary constraints. Yet it does do somethings right, and there were moments where clever dialogue, polished acting and delightful gore and effects had me believing I was watching something entirely less amateur. Unfortunately these moments were always followed with reminders I wasn't.

A play on the school-yard live action phenomenon, Humans vs Zombies the film for all the geek references and call-outs doesn't perhaps play with the video-game nerds become heroes and save the day trope as much as it could. Sure James is called out to finally put his extensive zombie know-how and first person nerdship to good use but it ultimately doesn't do much good. If we're honest it falls to the other survivors; his room-mate, non-gaming football player, Danny (Jonah Priour), girlfriend of five minutes  Amanda (Melissa Carnell), comic-relief Brad (Chip Joslin) and Frank, a gun toting campus police officer, gulf-war vet and paranoid conspiracy nut to step up to the plate. Add in gaming-know-it-all, and stream-princess Tommi (Dora Madison) who again falls apart when things get ugly and real and it's almost if Jaynes didn't really care much for the gaming origin.

As with everything else, for every gnarly authentic looking zombie and gratuitous and glorious gut munch or head-pop spectacle there's the inconsistent friends of the shoot drafted in to get a sense of scale once the carnage had spilled out onto the street. It's never terrible; there's obviously been some good editing, it's just never good. There's also some terrible and baffling story inconsistencies and decisions, like leaving a relatively well fortified campus police facility to run across in broad daylight to a flimsy hardware store, and once there abandon the plan to board it up, preferring to sit around depressed, maudlin and horny till morning. Even the zombies themselves; a traditional virus infected fast post 28 Days Later; are suddenly and eccentrically thrown docility if they can't feed and a lack of hunger for those ex-soldiers who've been exposed to chemical weapons. It's almost as if with half an hour to go and struggling, any and all ideas were ready to be looked at.

By no means the worst film I've watched there's just not enough originality or real substance to Humans vs Zombies to really make a recommendation. Above average acting and dialogue, and intermittent moments action and story clearly over-perform is not quite enough to sustain interest in a film that despite only lasting an hour and a half easily outstayed its welcome. Also how Jaynes turned what should have been the obvious and derivative bio-chemical origin story-line into the convoluted and confusing mess is really something. It was only after some incoherent conspiracy ramblings about the Illuminati, secret bunkers and an entomopathogen (insect-pathogenising fungus) engineered from ants to eat oil and wipe out humanity that any of the opening aerial shots, zombie virus news interviews and foreboding radio shows made any sense. It's just not a particularly good film; and despite not nearly being as bad as first impressions promised, clearly financially restrained and with fleeting moments of greatness, it's just all a bit shallow, repetitious and ponderous to stand out - 5/10.

Steven@WTD.

Doctor Blood's Coffin - review

1961 (UK)

2011 MGM Home Video DVD R(All)

Contains spoilers.

  

I'm going to approach director Sidney J. Furie's rather tame and rather lame Cornish Frankenstein-retelling in two ways. Firstly I'm not going to hold my punches, despite undoubted charm and nostalgia, from a film that rather snoozes along with a repetitious and vacuous story that takes way too long to deliver. And second, I'm not going to underplay the significance of Paul Stockman's decaying, macabre, soulless and homicidal zombie performance, some 5 years before Plague of the Zombies, some 7 years before Bill Hinzman in Night of the Living Dead and most comparably, some 18 years before Zombie Flesh Eaters (Zombie / Zombi 2).

Peter Blood (Kieron Moore) has returned home to the small Cornish and fictitious village of Porthcarron to a spate of strange disappearances, and several break-ins to his father, Robert's (Ian Hunter) clinic. Offering his skills, as a medical practitioner and biochemist, the case soon takes a dark and more sinister turn as local drunk and tin-mine expert George Beale (Andy Alston) is kidnapped on the eve of searching the coastal tunnels looking for the missing souls. What we have in many ways is a quaint and intriguing famous five mystery with a bumbling local bobby, Sergeant Cook (Kenneth J. Warren), an old drunk but harmless mortician, an earnest Doctor and the ever smiling and ever helpful nurse Linda Parker (Hazel Court) who, if we needed any reminder this is a film from the late 50's, early 60's, utilises her medical education to make coffee, carry boxes and act as chauffeur and love interest for the returning Peter.

People have been abducted, there's some old tin-mines, a mysterious syringe with an unusual compound that drags Dr. Robert to the big city for analysis and all it's really missing is Fred, Wilma, Daphne, Shaggy and Scooby to unveil the faceless evil master-mind and save the day. The thing is, given the title, the obvious similarities to the young over ambitious and morally duplicitous medical student scolded and thrown from his Vienna scholarship in the opening scene, then seen bounding the Cornish coves and heather, and the whodunit is all a bit of damp squib. Furie at least seems to recognise this though, revealing Peter as the mad scientist before the pretence becomes unbearable. 

Sure the acting is solid, the dialogue coherent and the scenery beautiful, it's just that for all intents and purposes the film is one long drawn out hour of incompetent police work, lacklustre chases and unconvincing romantic courtship. Not only does nothing really happen, but the not-muchness that does happen is painfully drawn out; an example being Peter's chase of the crawling George who's somehow shaken off his paralysing drugs, back and forth over the Cornish cliffs a good ten minutes or so too more than is necessary or wanted. It's also hard to suspend the necessary level of disbelief that not only can no one can put two and two together to even suspect that the returning stranger with the medical background, and the strange vials of South American neurotoxin might be behind the stolen syringes and abductions, but also put him in an unchallenged position to cover each and every track. 

At least after some intense dates and some major red-flags, the proverbial pebble drops leading Linda to a really rather terrifying confrontation where Peter's now rather entrenched and pathological position is provoked to increasingly desperate ends. An hour and ten, is a long time to wait to be honest, for any kind of pay-off despite how good it ultimately is, and I'd be hard pressed to recommend the film other than for the fact the decaying, long dead person brought back to life, through Peter transplanting a beating heart, is easily one of earliest depictions of what we'd consider the modern zombie. Dark, foul, rotten, and explicitly soulless and violent, the creature is clearly not the kind late husband Linda spoke so fondly of, and is clearly not happy to have been woken from its slumber. Furie is even good enough to provide some origin; as during the argument that proceeded Peter's twisted actions she confronts his extreme secular and utilitarianism position that brilliant men should be allowed to live at the expense of bums and paupers, with religious and moral prediction and warning. Tampering such as he is with life and death, she vehemently argues, is inherently wrong, evil and fraught with danger, and only God alone is capable of creating life. She tells him anything he, or science brings back will be flesh only, without a soul. It's a brilliant twenty minutes or so, well thought out, and I'd argue well ahead of its time. It's just such a pity it took so long to get there.

Light on content and laboured, this low budget British horror isn't without some redeeming qualities. Kieron Moore convinces as Peter Blood cavorting around the beautifully captured Cornish coastline every bit the crazed and rejected scientist, desperate to prove his father and contemporaries wrong. Also individually many of the incidents in the build up to the confrontation in the cavern are engaging and foreboding; if, as said, all that bit drawn out and sporadic. As a 60s British horror I'd be remiss not mention the hammer horror vibe which it has with abundance, and also remiss not to at least mention some of the rather glaring mundane distractions such as the drawings behind the windows of the internal sets, or the clear chroma-keying utilised for the driving scenes. But it's not these that ultimately detracts, and older films come, in my opinion with certain visual leeway. Doctor Blood's Coffin is ultimately a victim of its own failings; not brave enough to apply a thorough edit, and too content that thirty minutes of good content stretched to become an hour of okay, with a twenty minute brilliant crescendo would be good enough, which unfortunately it isn't -  4/10.

Steven@WTD.

I Survived a Zombie Holocaust - review

2014 (New Zealand)

2016 Matchbox Films DVD R(2)

Contains mild spoilers.

After recently lampooning Cooties for offering little to an ever increasingly crowded genre, I feel a little two faced liking director and writer Guy Pigden's equally crowd pleasing zom-rom-com as much as I did. Just as farcical, slap-stick, easy to watch and dare I say whimsical, on the surface there's little, save Cootie's bigger budget and recognisable stars, to be able to call one out. Though perhaps, there's the rub; Cootie's was a deliberate cash-in; a contrived commercial venture that ticked all the right boxes because someone literally had a list of boxes that needed to be ticked. I Survived a Zombie Holocaust, in future referred to as I Survived, feels like it ticked the boxes naturally; purely by virtue of having a well-conceived and relatively simple script and vision, and the ability and enthusiasm of actors and a production crew to see it through. Nothing is forced and while the jokes, for the genre, are just as obvious and the farce tinted homage plays out just as predictably, there's a delightful authenticity and self-awareness, and you feel more you're invited in, than cajoled along.

I Survived is what I've started to refer to as a post-zombie zombie film. What I mean by that, is there's no pretence that zombies aren't a known thing, that The Walking Dead phenomenon didn't happened, and even the remotest of New Guinea tribesmen don't know the best way to deal with a shuffling corpse is a spear through the head. For most zombie films this doesn't equate to reduction in tension or build up; but rather a getting to straight to it, once anticipation makes way for survival, saving us all from ten minutes of rather awkward and contrived action re-establishing all the ground rules. Not only does I Survive wear this post-zombie t-shirt, but it's ballsy, or confident enough to actually try and go one step further. You see, there's no pretence; not only is their world our world; their zombie reality and heritage our zombie reality and heritage, but the film relies on all this for the narrative to make any sense at all. 

Wesley Pennington (Harley Neville), fresh from film school, has arrived on set as a junior runner for the zombie b-movie 'Tonight They Come'. Quickly brought into line as the shoot's dogsbody; he's also unwittingly one of the first to realise that parallel to the watered down zombie schlock being filmed, there's a very real undead threat, literally just around the corner. It's a fun, intelligenty thought out and original premise which serves to simultaneously give licence for shots at both b-movie films and b-movie film makers. SMP (Andrew Laing) the director cum dictator of Tonight They Come leads the rather formulaic and exaggerated production crew, with a sociopathic zeal through forty odd minutes of surprisingly entertaining and witty parody until zombies meet zombie extras and it's every bit all the running, screaming, carnage and death we've come to love.

Setting itself up the way it does, I Survived is almost a self-aware parody of a post-zombie film, and probably now I'm thinking about it, a hard film to pull off without coming across derogatory and insulting. I'm probably over complicating it all, save to say, I Survived isn't demeaning or dumbed down, and that's the point. It's clearly the work of people who get it; people who love the genre and have something genuine and original to say. Zombie rom-coms, are a great phenomenon but dangerously close to over-saturation, but Pigden et al. know it; and as said, it's this self-awareness that, elevates it from the crowd. Even though I Survived is every bit a a member of the genre and guilty in huge respects of all the things its parodying, it somehow works precisely because it itself is in on the joke. It's refreshing, honest and playful yet respectful; it's the comedian that gets away with all the offensive material because first and foremost he's the butt of every joke.

I've also seen comparisons made with Peter Jackson's eighties over-the-top slaughterfest Dead Alive (Braindead); what with Wesley's demeanour similar to Lionel's, the copious gore, and the same New Zealand badge of honour, but I think it would be doing both a disservice. Jackson's splatter masterpiece was a unique cinematic experience; audaciously stupid and excessive all for the sheer hell of it. Pigden's I Survive forges its own path, and whilst abundant in bad-taste and zombie-excess, it's less about gore-shock and one-liners and more about fitting in coherently with zombie-lore and providing its own subtler narrative. If anything, playing with the post-zombie experience the way it does its closest in style and substance to perhaps Mimesis, but with an added laughter track and a lot more innards.

I Survived a Zombie Holocaust took a risk and in my opinion it paid off. It is yet another modern rom-com but it works precisely because it knows it, and is happy to play along. With some genuinely funny moments, some stupid jokes, a witty, unpredictable script and perfectly pitched performances that played along it ticks all the right boxes for a fun zombie night in. Sure it's not without fault; I'd have preferred it if the real zombie threat had arrived a good ten or twenty minutes earlier, and I'd have liked them to have even pushed the b-movie parody just that little bit harder; but over-all I felt they got it pretty much spot on. Perhaps it also worked for me because unlike for most zom-rom-coms I feel as a hardcore zombie film fan I am this time the target audience; appreciative of the genre call-backs, the clever and satirical side swipes at not just the b-movie film making but b-movie zombie films themselves and the rich and dark humour. I often accuse zom-rom-coms of dumbing down so as to branch out and attract a wider audience and whilst I Survive can't shake this off in its entirety, the fact that it appears to know it, and play with this with such confidence and success is commendable - 7/10.

Steven@WTD.