Outpost II: Black Sun - review

2012 (UK)

2012 Lionsgate Home Entertainiment Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains mild spoilers.

I'd been led to believe I shouldn't expect too much from director and co-writer Steve Barker's 2012 sequel to his 2008 dark Nazi horror Outpost; stick with the first, the original I was told; forget the rest, but I shouldn't have listened. I did really enjoy, if that's the right word, the first. It was gritty, real and nasty, and oozed palpable heart-thumping suspense at every corner. Full of memorable firefights, gory and gruesome deaths, as well as intelligent and coherent character design and development, it wasn't without fault, but things were easily overlooked and it came to be quite the claustrophobic and sadistic little favourite of mine. The first thing that sprang to mind coming away from this sequel is how Barker's hasn't chosen to deviate; it's just, if not more, dark and brooding and that's what made outpost tick, and constantly challenge my bowels, is all still there. Barker had fashioned quite the nightmare world, and Black Sun has every right to belong as part of it

Armed with a larger budget, though still modest if I've read right, Barker has definitely dialled the notch up though. The cat is out the bag so to speak. Following straight on from the rather fatal antics of the first, everyone from NATO through to, let's say slightly more nefarious parties, are now acutely aware of the rather small bunker in Easter Europe and the rather dangerous and intimidating trans-dimensional zombies and their plan to usher in new a thousand year Reich. Physicist Hunt and his British no-nonsense military mercenaries of the original didn't really help if we're honest. Ok, they brought the not so late Brigadeführer Götz and his army of super soldiers to the attention of the world, but in doing so somehow armed him with not only additional ambition but the ability to act on it. It's here with a rapid NATO response force desperately holding back the relentless and inevitable tide of terror that our story begins.

Black Sun is quite relentless and ambitious, opting for a more expansive story over the subtle claustrophobic driven narrative of the first. It's a film that tries to cram a lot in; perhaps a little too much with far larger scale zombie death, carnage and mayhem over-exposition and build-up pretty much from the start. I'm not complaining; though maybe Barker could have started with a little more insight as it took me longer than he probably intended to get fully behind Lena (Catherine Steadman), the Nazi war-criminal hunter and even longer, her relationship / acquaintanceship with physicist Wallace (Richard Coyle). That being said watching grand NATO skirmishes with the putrid zombie horde was truly delightful and I'm not sure I'd trade...

The rag tag gang of British soldiers that Lena and Wallace get caught up with compliment the narrative of the original whilst offering something both new, and coherent with the story as Barker is trying to tell it. Whilst they at first they come across a bit one-dimensional and peripheral to the core pair, Barker once again weaves wonders unveiling and unravelling each and every back-story, so that by the time, inevitably, this is Outpost remember, they're killed off in increasingly sadistic, brutal and pointless ways, they're looked at with appreciation and even fondness. Even the token gobby Scot who f's, blinds and threatens with the best of them eventually knocks at the friend door demanding to be cared for.

One thing Black Sun could perhaps be accused of is trying a little too hard; with maybe one of the producers or co-writer Rae Brunton (sole writer of the first) telling him to cut down on the sugar intake during filming. We're not by now talking about the whole trans-dimensional stuff and Klausener's Nazi experimentation to shift soldiers outside space and time Philadelphia Experiment style. We're talking about human machine integration; cyborgism and the ability to expand electro-magnetic-fields as a consequence, strange electric lightning ray powers (a la the Emperor from Star Wars), a strange Nazi zombie hag (Medeiros girl) and predominantly the end of the film. It doesn't all ruin the film but it does hamper it from being quite as coherent as it could; and did tend to spoil the ending. I also couldn't help notice the zombie trans-dimensional ability seemed to be more focused on invulnerability over jumping about in space-time. I can understand this provided the means for the more linear and coherent narrative which wasn't removed entirely; but the zombies of Black Sun in many instances lost that fear factor they had from literally being able to be around any corner. The introduction of EM pulses as a means to actually defeat them also detracted from that utterly undefeatable aura they had in the first. Don't get me wrong; they're still, in action, quite formidable and the nastiest group of undead psychopaths you're ever likely to see but it's just all a lot more traditional zombie; albeit stabby, stabby not bitey, bitey.

Barker has taken two of our most popular conspiracies and run with it, fashioning an unashamedly perverse alternative world history that for as prosperous as it all sounds makes for a remarkably serious, coherent and cohesive duo of films. A rare zombie film that not only embellishes and compliments its predecessor but leaves them intact as unique experiences, I can do nothing but praise. Ok, as said, the ending wasn't great and Barker could have shown better composure with pacing and some, shall we say, improved discernment over some interesting but out of place ideas, which could easily have reduced all the good work to farce. The hellish nightmare vision Barker presents though, does ultimately hold together and thoroughly entertains - 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead - review

2014 (Norway)

2015 Entertainment One Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains spoilers.

Dead Snow was a brilliant film, but it was also a bit of a confusing one. Not confusing in terms of plot and story; the way it told the derivative cabin in the woods cum Friday 13th albeit with Nazi zombies not Jason pick em off slasher was entirely gettable. But confusing in terms of identity, starting all dark with jumpy horror and switching half way through to full on Bruce Campbell at his audacious zany best. I reviewed it very early for the blog and this was enough to see it relatively down marked. It's the one review that has always sat heavy on me though. While confident to go against the crowd I couldn't help but notice it's appearance on many greatest zombie film lists, so with more (hopefully) insight with the genre I decided to use this look at Dead Snow 2 as an excuse to watch it again.

I ended up re-rating the film coming to the opinion that while there was still a spot of stylistic schizophrenia, if one was pull the whimsy and humour from the second half into the first rather than what I did last time being disappointed that the tension and fear was so eagerly brushed aside then the film held up far better. Go read my review but it's safe to say I'm now rather fond of the film. Anyway...

What of Dead Snow 2? Well, first off it doesn't make these mistakes. In fact Dead Snow 2 doesn't really make any mistakes at all. Cementing itself purely as a black comedy it continues the manic adventures that concluded Dead Snow, dials it up to max and is quite frankly nigh on perfect, and easily one of the best zombie films ever made. In fact, and I may get some criticism for this, in my opinion it perhaps more perfectly than most also captures the look and feel of Evil Dead since Campbell fought the Army of Darkness than any other film since.

Ørjan Gamst is back as Nazi commander Standartenführer (Oberst) Herzog, a Draugr (aptrganga or aptrgangr transl. again-walker) aka Revenant; an undead creature from Norse mythology up and about to protect his ill-gotten treasure. Except with the Nazi gold reclaimed (Dead Snow), and for a narrative excuse for him to expand his remit from just the barren tundra near Øksfjord, Norway into the town itself, he recalls Hitler's last order to raze the place and its population to the ground in a petty act of revenge for their acts of sabotage some, now seventy years ago.

Cue, death, destruction, blood, intestines, tanks blowing up babies and a general lack of any taste and decency and one of the best laughs I've had in years. Now cut from the shackles of the early part of the first film to at least attempt to stay sensible and rational, Director (and also one of the writers) Tommy WirkolaIt is free to indulge any and all ideas, however absurd or non-canon, and not break the film's overall coherence. Herzog is now the slightly more cognizant, talkative and able commander, the brainless zombie horde under his control has been expanded to include exaggerated comic roles such as a medic, tank driver and navigator, and his opposition have been heavily upgraded from traditional cabin-in-the-woods / Friday 13th sent to die trope.

Vegar Hoel is Martin, sole survivor from the first. Beaten, bloody, and now armed with not just his new found extreme zombie survival skills, but Herzog's arm, is the new Bruce Campbell. Armed with all the same quirks and qualities, though maybe not quite the charm, he's manic, desperate, slightly insane from all he's experienced, and most importantly, he's up for the fight. Switch chainsaw for magic arm, with the ability to raise the dead, he now also has the same iconic tools and mentality to challenge a foe which on first appearance was unchallengeable. Demonstrating real flare, vision and imagination WirkolaIt Martin isn't left alone for the task, soon picking up an assortment of companions, from the Zombie Squad™, three young US geeks with a love of all things Z, an out of his depth, introverted WW2 museum curator and the new Bub, who's bound to be a cult favourite: Sidekick Zombie (Kristoffer Joner). Their interaction is witty, natural, and despite being caricatures, their addition is a welcome addition opening up avenues to daft scenes and jokes that are masterfully taken, while never exploited.

Dead Snow 2 isn't a film, it's more an experience. A riotous explosion of guts, blood and fun; it's perfectly paced, perfectly formed and oozes style and imagination from a director and team that clearly understand how to approach the absurdness and inherent contradiction that lies at the heart of zombie cinema. With never a dull moment, never a distraction WirkolaIt, like Raimi, has managed that illusionist trick of presenting a world and story that is both laughable and preposterous in a way that is both coherent and tangible. Easily one of the top zombie films ever made we also finally have a worthy successor to Campbell, who now surely has entwined himself in such a way as a third without him would feel bereft. Dead Snow 2 is everything you'd want from an absurd splatter horror comedy. It's the best Evil Dead / Dead Alive (Brain Dead) film we've had in quite some time, and it's 10/10.

Steven@WTD.

Revenge of the Zombies (The Corpse Vanished) - review

1943 (USA)

2001 Cornerstone Media DVD R(All) Cryptkeeper's Collection with Voodoo Woman

Contains mild spoilers.

Now there's two ways of looking at this Monogram Pictures sequel to the 1941 zombie comedy King of the Zombies. The first is that it's really just another barely adequate seventy year old low budget thriller with unconvincing acting, and a hackneyed, long winded story full of all the charms of racial segregation, servitude and the perfectly acceptable misogyny that came with the times. The second is that Revenge of the Zombies is quite the uncredited gem playing more than a passing role in establishing the many of zombie tropes and idioms we now take for granted. King of the Zombies may still have had one foot firmly rooted in the Haitian voodoo zombie origin myth but there were hints of a more western scientific narrative. Revenge of the Zombies took the next logical step, shrugging off magic and the devil all together, fusing the idea and myth of the Haitian Vodou slave with Shelley's more western scientific methodology of reanimation, arguably for the first time.

Scott Warrington (Mauritz Hugo) accompanied by his friend Larry Adams (Robert Lowery) have arrived at a small retreat in the swamps near New Orleans to investigate the sudden death of his sister Lila von Altermann (Veda Ann Borg), which local family friend Dr. Harvey Keating (Barry Macollum) believes suspicious. Dr. Max Heinrich von Altermann (John Carradine) is courteous and welcomes the three men, and their servant, Jeff, the returning Mantan Moreland into his home where he shows them her body and promises a quick funeral. Behind the scenes of course he's the nefarious mad evil (albeit here it's ideological and political rather than being league with Satan) scientist, his motivations are entirely morally lacking and goal driven and it's not long before the usual cat and mouse, room to room intrigue and subterfuge with everyone showing restraint and decorum befitting those in high society when they actually all get together.

There's nothing new, it's all a bit over done and even for a just an hour long it manages to over stays its welcome. Lila disappears, Lila reappears, there's suspicion, accusation then rinse and repeat. Each actor plays their one dimensional caricatures as well as could be expected. Mantan Moreland reprieves his role from King of the Zombies as light relief breaking the scenes of serious drama with his slap stick style, quick and witty banter and contemporary, even subversive style demonstrating yet again why if he had been born a different colour he would have been an undoubted comic legend. However, what the film makes up for against the trite narrative is the occasional iconic scene and the paradigm shift in reimagining our zombie friends free of magic, hypnosis and new world influence.

Well, almost. First off, it's New Orleans, the heritage home of Vodou and the zombie but that doesn't mean magic is in the air. The zombies of Dr. Max are reanimated by science. Drugs, electricity, the idea that a body once mature retains the ability to be restarted are his methods of reanimation, the careful paralysis of parts of the human brain are those that gain him control. 'Against an army of zombies', he tells his Nazi confident, 'no armies could stand. Even blown half to bits, undaunted by fire and gas, zombies would fight on so long as the brain cells' that receive and execute commands, still remained intact.' Writer Edmond Kelso, allowed to continue to expand his ideas from King of the Zombies might well be responsible for establishing quite the set of zombie staples.

The zombies of director Steve Sekely's film might well be impervious reanimated machines built for fighting but they're still very firmly slaves under the control of a master. There's no flesh eating or rabid primal driving, they're workers able to reply to orders and perform all manner of rudimentary tasks implying their memories and cognitive abilities are still very much intact. There's also the indication that full self-aware reanimation would actually be possible with Lila seemingly able to retain some of her will and even the ability to 'turn' Max's army of zombies back onto him. The narrative for this control is still quite confusing and incoherent and it's never explained why the zombies were able to return to their eternal slumber once their master was killed but it did lend itself for quite the atmospheric final scene in the same graveyard that was saw the dead rise at the start, this time close the crypt's door.

Credit must be given for breaking the given notion that zombies are inexorably tied to voodoo and magic, hinting at a more western and contemporary approach to thinking about the walking dead in terms of chemicals and science and atmospherically it does a lot right but ultimately Revenge of the Zombies can't shrug off its dismal cliché story, shallow characterisation and pedestrian acting. A low budget war time film it's not bad per-se and Mantan Moreland does shine, but this undoubted piece of important zombie cinema is denied any real esteem by just being a bit too ordinary, 4/10.

Steven@WTD.

Outpost - review

2007 (UK)

2008 Sony Pictures Home Entertainment DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

If I'm honest I came at Outpost expecting another goofy Nazi zombie farce with a rambling unconvincing narrative, weak actors and an over abundance of gore and exploitation to make up for a lack of actual scares, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Outpost is gritty, dark, intense and genuinely scary; it's real horror, intimidating and all quite unsavoury, and yes it's modern day and they're genuine reanimated 1940's Nazis, but you won't find so much as a snigger.

Hunt (Julian Wadham) is in an undisclosed war torn Eastern Europe country looking for a band of no nonsense mercenaries to help him find something. The motley group of ex servicemen he recruits are lead by former Royal Marine D.C. (Ray Stevenson) and the something he needs to find requires them to travel deep into the combat zone and infiltrate an old army bunker. The premise is simple as is the set-up; a group of mercs cut off, an old spooky dark Nazi bunker and monsters from the grave picking them off one by one. I'd kind of guessed all this, I kind of knew what was going to happen and it even all played out pretty much how I'd expected, but I hadn't prepared myself at all for just quite how dark, suspenseful and most importantly believable it would all be. Let me qualify a little. I'm not saying I genuinely believe reality-phased seventy year old dead Nazi soldiers could occupy some forgotten part of Europe, just that the manner in which director Steve Barker has gone about presenting the mission, the combat, the soldiers and their reaction to what is in effect quite the leap of faith is gritty, coherent and real.

At the bunker believing the site secure the soldiers begin their search, discovering remnants of its previous Nazi occupation, sinister signs of unethical experimentation and the rather macabre discovery of pile of corpses they believe is the result of a local ethnic cleanse. The first sign the group may be a little bit in over the head comes when they discover one of the bodies is still alive, albeit mute, shocked and uncooperative, Götz (Johnny Meres) and the second is when the perimeter is shot at by an unseen assailant.

The tension for the first half of the film as the group settle in and the scene is set, is borderline unbearable and Barker is a master at providing constant subtle suggestions and reminders that things are not quite as they seem. If anything when the gruesome, inhuman zombies dressed in full Nazi regalia did arrive it was almost a relief; they were here and I could stop worrying about what they would do when they did, as they were now doing it; if any of that makes sense.

The something Hunt has been sent to secure by his unknown powerful backers is a unified field generator which the SS were experimenting with to create super soldiers. The idea was to unite both electromagnetic and gravity fields into a single unified one and expose soldiers to it so they would effectively be outside space-time, invulnerable and immortal. It's the Philadelphia experiment, except with people, not boats, vibration or light. Dead Nazis phasing into reality hell bent on sadistically dispatching anyone nearby to then suddenly pop out again is all a bit far fetched, but it's an incredibly effective horror mechanism. It's taking what is already a nightmarish concept; a reanimated corpse intent on killing and giving it yet another even more terrible trait. At least with a zombie you can shut the door, with these guys, you're never safe and really it's all a bit of a paradigm shift. Merely playing with idea that space-time, reality and life-death could be mutable and transient is scary, allowing monsters the ability abuse this knowledge is terrifying. Operating outside space-time these impermanent undead are also impervious to bullets and this includes shots to the head, as if everything we've already spoken about isn't already enough. Derrida spoke about zombies being disturbing because they blur the distinction between the living and the dead and a failure to bring order to the life-death binary opposition. The head-shot, the zombies Achilles heel still allowed the opposition to ultimately be satisfied; not only removing that but deliberately pushing the contradiction and inability to resolve this dichotomy, while introducing a whole host of new ones, is what ultimately makes Outpost such an unnerving and uncomfortable experience.

Metaphysical shenanigans aside, Outpost is still very much about the horror and pacing is key. Once the slow inhuman shufflers make their appearance the action, scares and blood become relentless. Soldiers die, heads are scratched, secrets are uncovered and desperation drives the dwindling characters to try and do anything to stay alive. Full of ever increasing intensity and brutality the character choice, broken 40-somethings' over younger muscle bound jar-heads shines as the disparate group comprehend and deal with the unremitting reality that they're probably all going to die. The characters are brilliantly realised with depth intelligently gleamed from dialogue, behaviour, accent or costume with Barker never taking the easy option with extended exposition that would spoil the pace and atmosphere. It's a very well put together film and quite the cinematic tour-de-force with an eerie subtle sound track that enhances the constant feeling of disquiet and dread.

A gritty, genuinely scary and relentless dark horror ride with great character acting, high octane military fire fights and some quite gruesome sadistic murders it's a powerful first rate claustrophobic horror. The narrative isn't without its faults and I did find aspects of the climax and the events leading up to it a little  incongruous; mainly why a full frontal assault when they could just 'pop' where they liked and why such sadistic playing with the perceived enemy, but I can understand the decisions from a cinematic perspective and I didn't mind going along with it just to enjoy the ride. Easily the best zombie Nazi horror I've seen, which is really quite the odd thing to say; recommended, 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

Zombie Lake - review

1981 (France/Spain)

2013 Redemption Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

Director Jean Rollin thought Zombie Lake so bad he tried to hide his role in it and used the pseudonym J.A. Laser, and he ought to know. And I actually didn't mind the whole thing for thirty odd minutes or so. The gratuitous and totally unnecessary exploitative ten minute (well it felt that long) naked skinny dip was at least pleasing to the eye, the first couple of zombie deaths were amusing and original, and the picture of a small rural French town physically and psychologically recovering from the occupation and what they had to do to resist was taking shape. Oh, I'm not for one minute going to say what I was watching was good. The acting was wooden, the narrative pedestrian and the zombies bizarre and unconvincing with appalling make-up and the death of the second victim resembled more of a zombie slobber than a gore but it had a certain European low budget je ne sais quoi. The problem with Zombie Lake though is that this was as good as it was going to get.

With the other hour or so watched I can frankly say I honestly don't know what Rollins who I understand only arrived on set a fortnight before filming, the writers and the crew were thinking when they put this drivel together, but I wished they hadn't.

There's a dark secret to the so called Lake of the Damned town mayor (Howard Vernon) tells reporter Katya (Marcia Sharif) looking for the inside scoop on the bizarre tale of ghosts and the spate of recent disappearances. The dark secret we learn through a convenient if not entirely convincing flashback, was an ambush, ten years earlier by the local resistance on a back peddling patrol of Nazis, with their bodies thrown in the water. For an oppressed persecuted nation I'd hardly call it a dark secret and more a reason to hold a yearly festival; but anyway, this isn't the whole story. We also learn that one of the soldiers (Pierre-Marie Escourrou) was in love with local girl (Nadine Pascal), who nine months earlier had thanked him for saving her from a mortar strike by taking her kit off in the hay barn and letting him impregnate her with a daughter he briefly gets to learn of before being shot.

Ok and I hear you. What does this all have to do with zombies coming out of the water at night to prey on the towns ample more attractive lady folk? Well nothing. But... and this exemplifies Zombie Lake for the incompetent, incoherent, farcical, convoluted nonsense that it is, a few centuries before all this, and apparently this wasn't important to know until near the end, and in fact I get the feeling no one involved in the writing had any inkling either, the 'Damned Lake of the Damned' was actually the site of black mass, sacrifice and all manner of satanic jiggery-pokery and souls thrown into the water were condemned to eternal damnation or something or other. The undead soldiers you see, are up and at 'em because of the combination of all these things.

I don't care to be honest. It's all nonsense and it doesn't come together in any reasonably coherent fashion. The zombies are rubbish, the acting is poor, the music sounds like someone with extreme epilepsy had been put in front of a glockenspiel and they'd turned the strobe lights up to 11, the pacing is all over the place and the story as mentioned is a babbling brew of bunkum and baloney. I understand Rollin isn't adverse to a little titilation but the constant nudity on show here is feeble, contrived and unnecessarily gratuitous. Multiple times the use of the lake is exploited with excessively objectifying up-facing underwater shots concentrated a little too much on the girls crotches with their heads not visible above the surface to be comfortable or ever erotic. I really don't know what Rollin was aiming for as the narrative ends up being an incomprehensible horror, thriller, love story all wrapped up as a European-art house, soft porn Benny Hill style, grind-house/exploitation mess. It never at any time aludes to a singular identity and switches its narrative and presentation style frequently with no reason or consistency and its portrayal of the zombie as the protaganist is no better.

The first thing I took from Rollin's interpretation of the now reasonably established zombie, was the fact they were incredible-hulk comic-book coloured green. Ok, they'd been under the lake for ten years so it could be algae or something but they weren't exactly fetid oozing bloated pustules of slime. There is an attempt to present some of the background undead as a bit dirty and fetid but on more than one occasion, either the love-forlorn main hero-zombie or the zombie nazi commandant made an appearance with clean well tended hair, a dry well pressed uniform and spray on green tan that didn't completely cover all his wrists or neck. The second thing was what a large incoherent mish-mash of ideas were being played around with. From the first zombie emerging from the watery grave to successfully skulk, stalk and take down his prey, to the esoteric uncomfortable zombie-daddy daughter love pact resulting in zombie on zombie wrestlemania, to the random, brazen full-on sieges of the town, there's never any convincing or cohesive reasons for why any of it happening. They're mindless dead thirsting for flesh and blood, they're loving and protective, they're taking order off their old leader, they're sharing a bucket of blood, passing a bowl knowingly between themselves, they're a bit of this, a bit of that and a right bloody cacophany of ideas from people who didn't know what they were doing.

I could honestly go on criticising Zombie Lake all night, really I could. A real stinker of a film with little to no redeeming quality I'll probably only remember it for the out of place nudity and terrible green make-up. The Redemption Blu-ray is clean and crisp though, if the sound is a tad muffled and muted at times, and presents all Rollin's daftness as well anyone would want. Whether anyone would want it though is another question, 2/10.

WTD.

Bloodstörm (Nazis at the Center of the Earth) - review

2012 (USA)

2012 Revolver Entertainment Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains mild spoilers.

I've seen some daft films in my time but nothing prepared me for Joseph Lawson's Antarctic Nazi exploitation craziness. Maybe if I'd take the time to research it a bit and discovered its US title I would have had more on an inkling I'd bought a first class ticket to crazytown and importantly I may have saved myself from all the cinematic lunacy as it's not a zombie film.

You see, the decaying Nazi foot soldiers aren't actually dead. They're nearly dead; they should be dead, but they're not. From the cover and title I'd kind of assumed another Dead Snow, and I'd even wondered if this was to be another Draugr film but Dr. Josef Mengele (Christopher Karl Johnson), the evil mad scientist and leader's minions are in fact patched up monstrosities kept alive with harvested flesh and organs taken from unsuspecting Antarctic researchers. They're foul looking and kind of behave for the most part like zombies but they're very much alive. A certain Nazi bigwig is kind of either brought back to life or reanimated with half an hour to go and I guess he could be a kind of zombie but I'd just be opening a big can of worms if I said he was, and in all honesty it's not something I care to do and I don't think he really is. In fact as the film was reaching it's truly off the scale bat-shit-crazy climax I was in two minds whether to actually write a review for my blog and it was only Paige Morgan (Dominique Swain) shouting 'bobble headed zombie Nazi son of a bitch' that swayed me to do so.

It all starts reasonably sane and safe, if seventy odd year old hidden Nazi kind-of-zombies capturing Antarctic research students to experiment on and harvest, can be deemed safe. Paige and Brian Moak (Trevor Kuhn) out experimenting on the ice are seized and taken to the Nazi secret underground bunker. After failing to check in, the rest of the Antarctic team lead by Dr. Lucas Moss (Joshua Michael Allen) set off to look for them only to find signs of a struggle and footprints leading off into a series of caverns that go deep under the ice.

It's a 'The Asylum' picture so it's in your face 'B' movie stuff with CG and blue-screen effects in keeping with the low budget direct to TV/DVD standard the studio is known for, and a script not afraid to jump off the deep end. As such I was ready for when the caverns lead to some kind of prehistoric (without dinosaurs, though I don't know why with everything else that happens) centre of the earth lost world. I was also ready when when the gang found the secret Nazi complex and the lead Antarctic scientist Dr. Adrian Reistad (Jake Busey) was outed as a Nazi sympathiser and explained how he was complicit helping them stay alive and preparing to take on the world and begin a fourth Reich.

I like a good bad film and so far so good. I'd left my brain at the door, ignored the dialogue, laughed at the narrative and cringed at some of the truly gratuitous gore sequences. It was daft, the pacing was all over the place but it was all interesting enough and the acting wasn't that bad. There was nothing I could have done to prepare me for where the film went for final thirty or so minutes though.

I imagine writer Paul Bales half way through writing a semi-serious screenplay about kind-of-zombie Nazis and lost worlds just suddenly said ah, fuck it and every idea screwed up under his desk was picked up, unfurled and added to the mix. But as much as I want to say it's the most painful, mind numbingly atrocious, absurd piece of cinematic fruitcake I've yet seen, I couldn't help but be blown away by the sheer ambition and audacity of it all. That someone took the screenplay, read it and exclaimed they would make it, on its own is breathtaking; that they actually did with seriousness, consistency and coherence is truly mind blowing.

One of the most ambitiously ludicrous films I've ever seen with very little to recommend it other than to say that you actually have, Bloodstörm is an ultimate 'B' movie. You can't help but admire everyone involved in getting this made but you also have to question how and why they did. I imagine after that first screening to friends and family there would have been a lot of awkward polite smiles and nods, and a lot of excuses to leave quickly. A bad film made kind of good only through the audacity to be as mad as a bag-of-cats, just not a zombie one, 4/10.

Steven@WTD

Dead Snow - review

2009 (Norway)

2009 E1 Entertainment Blu-ray R(B/2)

Contains spoilers.

Sometimes you can be wrong. Dead Snow was a film I always felt hit me on the wrong day, or maybe too soon. I kept looking back at my initial 6/10 then seeing it on various best zombie film websites and thinking, maybe, just maybe I'd got it wrong. With its sequel in hand I decided to finally take a second look. This time armed with three years and 160 odd reviews I wondered how it would fare and boy do I have to hold my hands up. Dead Snow is a fantastic Evil Dead parody that not only captures the spirit of Raimi and Bruce (almost) in Martin, but does so with such extreme wit, confidence and style that it deserves to be talked about more positively than I did... anyway, here's the original review with a slightly altered ending...

A Norwegian zombie horror/comedy directed by Tommy Wirkola, Dead Snow for one half follows the clichéd horror staple of a group of teenagers alone in an isolated cabin getting picked off one by one by an initially unknown predator. The second half sees the film turn into a kind of goofy Bruce Campbell-esque bad-taste splatter parody / Shaun of the Dead zomcom mash-up. As a film it has a lot of charm but in trying to be all things to all men it's in danger of losing it's identity; anyway, I get ahead of myself.

Dead Snow opens with a young woman getting chased across the icy tundra near Øksfjord, Norway, by a couple of snarling menacing nazi zombies, establishing early on as if we weren't aware from the cover what we'd be in for. The film then cuts to our seven plucky students off to an isolated frozen cabin retreat for Easter vacation lead by Vegard (Lasse Valdal) the boyfriend of who we now know to be the late Sara (Ane Dahl Torp). Arriving on foot the film makes great efforts to reiterate to us that they really are miles away from civilisation, that there really is no phone reception and that they really are isolated, which I think I got. The film does have the confidence to self reference this horror cliché, but a cliché it still is.

First night in, cue a wise old hiker dropping by to tell them the uncomfortable and unsettling story of the region. How during World War II, a force of Einsatzgruppe, led by Standartenführer Herzog (Ørjan Gamst), occupied the area, abusing and torturing the citizens, and generally getting up to no good. At the end of the war attempting to abscond with the all the town's gold and valuables the townsfolk fought back en-masse killing many and driving the remaining soldiers with Herzog out into the tundra where the cabin now sits, to their icy death.

So to the first half of the film. Our seven intrepid heroes in true horror fashion are slowly stalked with the outside toilet a prominent location throughout. It's also during these early scenes that the group discovers a box of the lost Nazi gold and jewellery and the focus for all their troubles. Firmly entrenched in Scandanavian mythology, the undead Nazis in Dead Snow are draugr rising from the dead to protect their treasures and if only the students had worked this out sooner they could have avoided all the hell that was about to break loose. So with 45 minutes on the clock and the group in full realisation mode that something really is very wrong, Wirkola starts to change the film's direction from a slow, jumpy tense horror thriller to an action centred zombie slaughter-fest starting with a full on siege of the cabin.

So onto the second half of the film. With the siege over, our remaining shocked and scared survivors do what all good horror victims do and split up. Two head out for the car with two remaining behind to wait for Vegard who had left the group on his snowmobile before the trouble started to search for the missing Sara. Obviously with fresh snowfall obscuring the tracks back to the car the two girls heading for rescue get lost and consequently are chased all over the wasteland by the surprisingly fast and quite nimble zombies. The film is still quite tense and serious to this point but a scene where Hanna (Charlotte Frogner) wrestles a Raven to death giving her away her position up a tree signals the change of pace the film was about to make.

After accidently setting fire to the besieged cabin with a Molotov cocktail, the two men, Martin (Vegar Hoel) and Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen) who stayed behind flee and find themselves in the heavily equipped tool shed that happened to be next door. Arming themselves up to the hilt with scythes, hammers and a chainsaw and with new found confidence they turn their attention to the incoming zombie waves. Here the film changes to the Bruce Campbell-esque comedy zombie splatterfest I mentioned in the first paragraph. The now seemingly less invincible zombie horde are cut down with swagger, precision and a lot of blood and it's during this full-on undead pagga that Martin gets bit and confident in his medical-student education answers the eternal question of how one would cut one's own arm off by severing it one-handed with the chainsaw and cauterising it in a freshly constructed small fire. Soon joined by the returning Vegard who has had quite the adventure of his own the group cuts, hits and shoots down the remaining undead under the direction of Herzog and then turn their attention to the leader himself.

Distancing itself from the Romero zombie, the undead in Dead Snow are seemingly being guided and controlled by their old leader, the also undead draugr Herzog, who is him (it)self is driven by the re-acquisition of the stolen gold found and tampered with by the group. They mindless horde are able to use weapons, binoculars, and to a certain degree demonstrate cunning and guile. Whilst they also seem to able to work together in teams to attain their goals they're still also very much guided by zombie canon in that they are also driven by a desire for living human flesh and the only way to halt their progress is to destroy the brain.

...And what a lot of brains get destroyed. Despite obvious budgetary restrictions the zombie-gore comes thick and fast and Wirkola and his team have produced a polished production that never feels like a b-movie. It especially looks crisp and clean on Blu-ray and they've done a remarkable job putting to shame many big budget releases. With the screen constantly filled with hacks, slashes, disembowelments, gouging and brains, I'm not sure I've seen a film with so much red in quite some time and it's not a surprise to read that supposedly 450 litres of fake blood were consumed during filming. Those that like a good bit of over the top cringe-worthy gore won't be disappointed.

As I said from the off, Dead Snow is fun and enjoyable but struggles to establish a firm identity. It describes itself as a horror comedy and I'd argue for the first 45 minutes or so the laughter is thin on the ground with the focus on forging a tense traditional jumpy horror narrative. With a slow build-up the first true scares only come after many nerve-wrangling teases, and the comedy and genre parody only appears once the film is very much in its stride, very much like its Evil Dead inspiration., The acting, whilst not being particular memorable is strong throughout. As said, this is a revised review, of sorts, where I'm happy to hold my hands up. Wirkola has fashioned an incredibly well shot, intelligent play on the genre that still holds its own. With constant contemporary reference, yet memorable and original scenes it deserves praise of its own. Set against a beautiful crisp backdrop, it's absurd, scary, gory, and now 8/10.

Steven@WTD.