"We found ourselves holding our breath almost in expectancy, as though we might stand on the threshold of a great event, transfixed in the portentious moment of waiting, although inwardly we were perturbed since this new, awesome, orchestration of time and space which surrounded us might be only the overture to something else, to some most profoundly audacious of all these assaults against the things we had always known." ~Angela Carter
With NEW UK HORROR-FEST on hold, Dr. Girlfriend and I settled in last night for a sneak peek at MONSTERS. (Thanks, Kelvin!)
Monsters (2010)
Directed by Gareth Edwards
15,000 Dollars. That's how much this movie cost to make.
That alone makes this a film worth watching. If only to drive home just how much more can be done with low-budget films that we normally see.
But even with the low-budget, what we get here is a nicely-paced love story set against a backdrop of alien invasion.
For those not familiar, Monsters is the story of two people, trying to make their way back from Central America to the US, through what is now a quarantine zone making up most up Northern Mexico. It seems that six years ago, a space probe crash landed, seeding alien life throughout the region. Now, giant quid-like monsters roam the countryside, occasionally running rampant in Mexican cities. Luckily, the US built a giant wall to keep them out.
Or will it?
But all of that is really background. Setting.
The real story is about two people who slowly fall in love as they make their way through the quarantined area, in an attempt to get back to the US.
It's not a great story. It's not much of a story at all, really. And there's some sort of political subtext about US/Central American relations where the giant wall serves as a metaphor for an ultimately pointless attempt to keep "aliens" from entering the States.
But what it does have is heart. The characters are natural, with a great deal of improved dialogue. The threats are interesting. And the monsters are gorgeous.
Yes, it's a little slow, but this is an attempt at a beautiful, thoughtful film with a very nice sci-fi setting, and in my opinion succeeds far more than last year's District 9 - which is the film I've most heard compared to this one.
District 9 was more entertaining, don't get me wrong. But District 9 was a pretty stupid film at its core. Monsters has a bit more intelligence to it (despite some cringe-worthy moments) and doesn't fall back on gore and slapstick to keep the audience entertained. Here, the entertainment comes from the actual film-making, cinematography, and effects.
This is well worth a look. More satisfying than District 9, but not as entertaining.
The Disappeared (2008)
Directed by Johnny Kevorkian
This is the first feature length film by Johnny Kevorkian. If that is his real name.
I wanted to like this film. I really did.
There's something good here, but unfortunately it gets lost under a forced supernatural narrative. I understand that they wanted to make a ghost story, but someone somewhere along the way needed to tell them that it really wasn't necessary. The story about a young man going crazy with guilt over his missing little brother is much more effective and scary than a story about ghosts and a cliched serial killer.
There really wasn't a single "ghostly" moment in this film that was necessary. If the visions and whatnot had been in the kid's head, then it would have been disturbing. And much more powerful. There was no need to reveal the killer (especially with a brief shot of glowing red eyes), much less have him mysteriously escape in the end.
Oh yeah. Spoiler alert.
I really don't understand the urge to put these supernatural elements into the films when the basic ideas are plenty disturbing.
Harry Treadaway's performance as Matthew was admirable. He did a lot with a weak script and elevated the material into something that could have been much more effective if the writers and director had been willing to take a chance. Indeed, if they had ditched the whole supernatural element and left the ending as an unsolved mystery disappearance, this could have been something altogether different. The sort of film that people pay attention to. The sort of film that makes careers.
Instead, it turns into a hodge-podge of ghost story cliches that the Japanese grew tired of 10 years ago.
Although, to be honest, the Japanese films worked better because there was never any question about whether or not the ghosts were real. In J-Horror, the ghosts are most definitely real, therefore the threat isn't entirely psychological. When you're watching, you know what's going on, even if the characters don't. That's what makes the horror work.
If you're going to pretend that the ghosts might not be real, but then have them save the day by revealing important information that can't be discerned by other means, then the ghosts become a plot device rather than a conflict. The ghosts become a shortcut way to solve the mystery, rather than anything scary, and any psychological depth becomes two-dimensional, shifting the storytelling focus from character to plot.
Character is always superior to plot.
Madness trumps ghosts any day.
Unless, of course, you stop dicking around and focus on making the ghosts an obvious part of the narrative with as much reality as the living characters.
At least, that's my opinion on the matter.
And this forcing of the supernatural into situations that are scary and disturbing enough without them, just cheapens the drama, the performances, and the overall effect of the stories. Deathwatch did it first this week, and now The Disappeared follows suit.
Serious horror is difficult to pull off. You can't afford to cheapen the experiences and emotions of the characters with cliches and easy-outs. That's why horror, infused with comedy to humanize the characters, is so much more satisfying. Trying to be serious, but then copping out with absurdities, just makes your work pretentious and laughable.
The Cottage (2008)
Directed by Paul Andrew Williams
I didn't really look into what this film was about before adding it to the list. It was just one of a batch of UK Horror films from the past few years that was getting some buzz. Then, upon receiving it from Netflix, I realized that it had Andy Serkis in it.
I've not been a huge fan of the man. I mean Gollum was a nice performance, but I didn't really know anything about him, and honestly couldn't remember seeing him in anything else. But then, earlier this week, he was one of my favorite parts about the film Deathwatch. His crazed character was maybe the most distinctive character in the film. He was certainly the most memorable.
The name Reece Shearsmith was familiar, but I couldn't place it. Then, as the movie was about the start, Dr. Girlfriend placed him. He's one of the talents behind The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville!
Boy did I feel dumb.
Serkis and Shearsmith play feuding brothers who've gotten together to do a shady deal, make a load of cash, and never have to see each other again. Serkis does a pretty good job of playing a thug, and Shearsmith is perfect as a nebbish, whipped husband. Together, they kidnap the daughter of a local club-owner (who's clearly more dangerous than anyone they have any right messing with), and hold her for ransom in a small house in the country.
But, as one might expect, there's danger in the country. This time it's not werewolves or terrorists (as in the last two films), but a mangled, insane farmer. And after about an hour of very entertaining bickering and absolutely clueless attempts at criminal activity, the horror-show begins.
The gore is extreme and surprising after the long build-up, and when death is being dealt, writer/director Williams doesn't hold anything back.
Now, I'll admit. I'm biased toward this film based on the casting. For some viewers, the first part of the film may drag a bit, but I found it a joy to watch. Serkis and Shearsmith work with each other beautifully. Whether it's the little things like Shearsmith lighting cigarettes for the both of them, or Serkis trying desperately not to beat his brother to death over every little annoying thing that he does. Their relationship is funny, tragic, and the heart of the film.
Like I've said repeatedly this week, little bits of humor and humanizing elevate what could be a standard film to something special. And that's the case here.
I really enjoyed this film. I didn't think it was as visually and narratively creative as Severance, but it was just as enjoyable. Both as an entertaining comedy and as a gruesome horror film.
This is turning out to be a pretty successful film festival, if I do say so myself.
Postscript:
Yeah, tonight was supposed to be a rewatch/reevaluation of Neil Marshall's The Descent, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to watch it again. We didn't care for it the first time through, and figured our time was better spent watching something new.
Easily the best film so far, and quite possibly the best horror film I've seen in a good long while.
The story is simple enough: A sales group for an international weapons company are off for a Team-Building Retreat, when they are sidetracked, hunted, and murdered by... well, I'll let you watch the film to see what's what.
Christopher Smith is without question the most inventive and entertaining young director of any of the films we've watched so far. Not only is the writing clever and frightening at the same time, the direction is inventive and energetic, bringing a flair to the storytelling that neither of the previous films came close to even attempting.
I truly believe that the best, the most enjoyable, horror films are the ones that use humor to soften us up and make us like the characters before the really violent and horrible stuff starts happening, and this film is a textbook example of this technique.
The cast is diverse and funny. The writing is intelligent and clever. The violence is bloody and disturbing.
What more could one want?
I can safely say, without hesitation, that I will watch anything Christopher Smith directs from this point on. As soon as we were finished watching this film, I immediately put his earlier film, Creep, and his later film, Triangle, into my Netflix queue. I can't wait to see them!
And as soon as Black Death is available, I'm all over it, too.
It tells the story of a 16-year old girl, who's just given up her baby for adoption. Shortly after this occurs, she goes on a Church Youth Group overnight hike, and that's where things go off the rails.
Not with the filmmaking, but with the story itself.
This group of kids (two girls and three boys - one of whom is the father of Kelly Ann's baby and isn't supposed to be there), are accosted by a perverted shepherd and then hunted down in the darkness by a massive wolf-like beast.
A good portion of the first half of the film is set during the first night and a combination of poor lighting and overly restrained filmmaking instincts make it virtually unwatchable. Not for the quality of the performances of the story itself, but it's literally too dark to make anything out. There are a couple of murders, but we can just barely see what happens. There's a huge monster, but we really don't see much of it at all.
There's a lot of pointing and shouting as if we should be able to see what's happening, but we can't.
By the time we get down to three survivors (mum, dad, and extraneous boy), I had lost interest.
Along the way, Kelly Ann finds a baby, takes it, and essentially sets off the killing that follows. Because, of course, it's a baby Werewolf. The monsters are mainly just trying to get their baby back, but this concept is never really brought to the forefront of the storytelling.
In fact, it's only driven home when we get to the end, with a finale that was just ridiculous and silly.
It seems that while breast-feeding the found child, Kelly Ann is bitten, and thus when we reach the climax of the film, she turns into a werewolf, with a werewolf pup hanging from her teet, and then strolls off into the wilderness with her werewolf mate, taking the place of the she-wolf she'd murdered earlier in the film.
It's all rather silly, and isn't helped by the design of the monsters.
If the first half of the film was hampered by a lack of lighting and avoidance of showing the monster, the back half gives us way too much monster to be enjoyed. The design is big and bulky, more bear than wolf, with a huge, thick head with a nose that kept reminding me of something phallic and disturbing.
That might just be me, though, I admit.
In the end, this was a pretty average concept without much visual flair or inventiveness. There are good bones here, and the story had potential, but ultimately it just couldn't find a way to tell the story that was the least bit interesting. There's not even any good gore, which, while it's not a necessity, could have helped distract from the passionless presentation.
There just aren't enough films set during World War One.
Especially when it comes to horror films. Because, if you ask me, there's not much more horrifying than the reality of life in the trenches during WWI. What with the mud, the stagnant water, the rats, the corpses, the shelling, the gas, the barbed wire, the madness, and the mindless killing, it's the perfect setting for a horror story.
Of course, in that setting you don't really need anything supernatural. You just need the setting.
And with that said, we have Deathwatch: a film that could be so much better than it is, but is still pretty good.
Warning: There are spoilers on the way!
Deathwatch is the story of a group of British soldiers in WWI who survive a devastating attack, only to stumble out of the fog to discover a German trench, which they then take and feel obligated to fortify and defend.
But they're not alone in the trench. They have a German prisoner who pleads with them to leave, telling them that there is Evil there and they're all going to die.
As one might expect, the soldiers slowly begin turning on one another, and one by one kill each other, until finally one one man survives. And by man, I mean the 15 year-old who lied about his age so he could go off to war.
There's a lot to like in this film. Gollum himself, Andy Serkis plays a thoroughly demented chap with a penchant for violence and murder, and Billy Elliot star, Jamie Bell plays our hero. The filth of life in the trenches is scary enough without the supernatural elements and, ultimately, that becomes the film's main shortcoming.
I just didn't think we needed the supernatural element at all for this to be an effective horror film. Watching these soldiers turn on one another in what is clearly an extremely disturbed situation would have been enough. Instead, we get a story where our characters all turn out to be dead, and the German soldier is testing them to see who is damned and who gets to move on.
All in all, it's a very disappointing ending to an extremely promising idea. But depending on one's mindset going in, it's still a nicely done piece of work. The horrors of WWI are honest and disturbing, and there's not really a poor performance in the lot. I enjoyed the film quite a bit, but just wished the ending had been more realistic instead of the fantastic ghost story twist it seemed to feel obligated to provide.
Back in June I read this in The Guardian. It's a very interesting article about a new wave of British Horror Film and the directors involved. And with that, a future film festival concept was born.
And with Halloween coming up, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to launch ourselves into a New UK Horror film fest and see what happens.
I'll be posting reviews of each of the films we watch, as we go along. I might not be all that speedy, but I hope to be fairly thorough.
Here's the schedule:
Sunday: Deathwatch (2002) - Dir. Michael J. Bassett
Monday: Wild Country (2005) - Dir. Craig Strachan
Tuesday: Severance (2006) - Dir. Christopher Smith
Wednesday: The Descent (2006) - Dir. Neil Marshall
Thursday: The Cottage (2008) - Dir. Andrew Williams
Friday: The Disappeared (2008) - Dir. Johnny Kevorkian
Saturday: The Reeds (2009) - Dir. Nick Cohen
And if we have time, I'm interested in seeing The Dead Outside (2010), directed by Kerry Anne Mullany, and maybe more by Christopher Smith.
And to be quite honest, we're only watching The Descent to re-evaluate it, as neither Dr. Girlfriend nor myself enjoyed it the first time around, but just about everyone else we know seems to have loved it. We might watch Dog Soldiers instead if the urge hits (since they're both directed by Neil Marshall and we both already know it's good).
This week's What Looks Good is pretty much devoid of comics talk. Sorry about that. But it's got a list of 10 Hour-Long Shows I think people should be checking out. At least so far.
Aw yeah boyeee! F.O.O.M. is back! This time with a look at three, count 'em, THREE, Incredible Hulk films! The Incredible Hulk Returns (with Thor!), The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (with Daredevil!), and The Death of the Incredible Hulk (with Death!)!
It's been a while, but last night I freaked out and wrote a new F.O.O.M. column on the 1976Marvel Treasury Edition #10: The Mighty Thor. It's a 4-issue story where Thor and the Asgardians face certain doom from a giant space alien with the power of a Billion, Billion Entities!
Things don't look good for our heroes! But eight year-old me learned a few things about life, honor, and being a Man.
This is another film that I really wasn't sure about before pulling it up on the old Netflix Streaming.
Grey Knight is a Civil War Zombie film, although the zombies in this are a little bit vampire and a little bit ghost, as well. They can't cross running water, have aversions to silver, and only come out at night.
But, at the same time, they're more like the Nazi zombies of Dead Snow, in that they're agile and fully conscious. And their origins involve African magic instead of your traditional vampire source material.
That said, this is really more of a vampire movie than a zombie film, but it's really not a vampire movie either.
Does that even make sense?
The source of the zombification is part of what makes this both interesting and a little puzzling. Somewhere, underground, live The Makers. And they bring the dead back to life. An African tribe that nobody fucked with, was fucked with by white slave traders and some sort of plague was brought to America. Is it vampirism? Is it zombieism? Who knows.
Regardless, The Makers are over here now, and as the Civil War is winding down, a group of soldiers from both sides are slaughtering people and recruiting the newly dead. Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) is recruited by Ray Wise (Twin Peaks) - at the suggestion of Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now) - who then recruits captured Confederate leader Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law) to track down his old allies (one of whom is Billy Bob Thornton (Slingblade), sort of).
There are a lot of recognizable names in this (including a short appearance by David Arquette and a large, but silent, part by Cynda Williams (One False Move)), and the director, George Hickenlooper, also directed Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse and the short, Some Folks Call It A Slingblade, which might explain Sheen and Thornton's involvement. It was written by Matt Greenberg, who was also responsible for Halloween H20, Reign of Fire, and the recent 1408.
Okay, that's the pedigree, but is the film any good?
Surprisingly, yes. Although, as I noted, it's more of a vampire/ghost film, it's nicely put together and aside from a few narrative glitches here and there, isn't a bad way to pass an evening. Corbin Bernsen is actually very good as the Southern POW forced to hunt down his old regiment, and is about the only character with an actual development arc. This is his film and he does a fine job with it.
This isn't the best film we've watched this week, but it's not the worst. And for one that actually takes itself seriously and doesn't fall back on easy comedy and gore, it really does stand on its own as one of the better films we've watched this time out. I wouldn't say that you HAVE to see it, but it's not a waste of your time.
I wasn't sure about this one at first, but I'd heard nothing but good things about Dead Snow, a Norwegian zombie comedy pitting a group of twenty-somethings against Zombie Nazis, so we figured we had to fit it in the schedule this year.
And while I don't think Dr. Girlfriend enjoyed this one as much as I did, I think we could agree that it was one of the best zombie films of the 2010 Easter/Zombie Marathon.
Although, to be fair, until the zombies really come out to play, this was bordering on just too tedious and self-aware for my tastes. Now, don't get me wrong. I love it when a film references the classics, even when it's just by doing something cheesy like naming the characters after famous directors (like Fred Dekker did in Night of the Creeps).
It adds to the fun, when you suddenly recognize a name-check or see an scene that echos one from an older film.
I'm not too thrilled, however, with films that have characters openly referencing and quoting classic films as fans of those films. A cool T-shirt is one thing, but when a character starts commenting on how much their trip to a cabin in the woods is like Evil Dead, and then starts discussing the relationship between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, it's a bit too much.
I get it. The creators like those classic films. Discussing them inside the narrative of a film inspired by them is too Meta for me.
I suppose it could be done right, but usually, as with Dead Snow, it was just heavy-handed and annoying. Your mileage may vary.
But that's really nit-picking. Once we get past the introductions of the characters, as well as the "fun in the snow" montages, things start to really pick up. The plot is interesting, establishing why there are Nazi zombies running around in the first place, and the acting is effective. There were very few rough patches there.
And the gore effects are superb. As are the kills themselves.
This film brought two things to the table that I hadn't really seen before (or if I have, I've forgotten): zombies that are cunning, devious, and are ready to punch you in the face before they kill you; and a sex scene in an outhouse.
Yes. I did just say that.
One of the characters goes to the outhouse to take a dump, and a lady friend follows shortly thereafter and proceeds to sit on his lap and, um, you know. Never mind the logistics and the weather.
Anyway, it was the Nazi Zombies that really made this one interesting. Their leader, Standartenführer Herzog, orchestrates his zombie troops to converge on the isolated cabin with a motivation that makes them seem more like zombie Pirates than Nazis. All of this leads to a final confrontation between the last survivors and the Nazi hordes. There are horribly violent deaths, horribly violent self-mutilation, and laugh-out-loud moments one after the other.
I actually laughed so hard at one point I had tears running down my face.
Dr. Girlfriend looked at me as if I was a fool.
So, again, your mileage may vary.
But me, I liked this one a lot. So far, it's second only to Pontypool and rivals Night of the Creeps in my book.
Day Seven brings us the Argentinian zombie-comedy, Plaga Zombie: Mutant Zone, or Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante in the original language). I'm really not sure why the American release only translates half of the title.
Oh well.
This is a sequel to 1997's Plaga Zombie, and if I had known that before sitting down to watch this one, I would have searched it out and made a double feature out of them. Only I'm not sure I would have been able to sit through both of them back-to-back if the first one is anything like this.
And after checking out the trailer to Plaga Zombie, it looks like it was. Only with a smaller budget.
So, this is probably the only one you have to worry about watching. If you worry about things like that.
That in itself makes this an impressive little piece of work, if you ask me, but maybe a little bittersweet as well. You see, these three guys have been working together since 1991, making short films, and released Plaga Zombie in 1997 to the joy of Argentinian gore fans. Until the sequel was released in 2001, Plaga Zombie's fans called it the best Argentinian gore film ever.
But for reasons unknown to me (I'm really just too lazy to look into it at the moment), they stopped working together after Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante.
Anyway, back to the review.
If you like your zombie horror with a healthy dose of slapstick comedy, then this is the one for you. It's gory as it can get, with cheesy effects that bring films like Evil Dead II (with a smaller budget) to mind. And that's definitely the mark they're shooting for. There's very little serious in this one, making it a welcome breath of fresh air after The Zombie Diaries.
Apparently, in the first film we discovered that an alien race had made a deal with the American Government to sample a strange alien virus on an isolated test community. As you could probably guess, this virus turned the infected into zombie mutants and the disease quickly spread, overrunning the entire city. Our heroes, John, Bill, and Max barely escaped with their lives.
Unfortunately, they were then captured by the FBI and, as this film opens, are dumped back into the city as it is closed off and scheduled to be destroyed. We can't have any surviving witnesses after all.
What follows is a pretty entertaining splatterstick romp as the boys try to survive long enough to decode a government map showing the only way out of town, before everyone is killed. There are a few very nice twists and turns, and the zombie attacks are always fun (even if most of the zombies are just running around, not really attacking anyone) and gory.
Any film gets bonus points from me when one of the heroes twists off someone's arm and uses it as a weapon. The same with pulling out spines or carrying around lengths of intestine to use as rope when needed.
Plus, we even get a little character development, sort-of. I mentioned that Max went crazy, right? Well, when the boys discover another survivor named Max, who also wants to be best friends with John West, will crazy-Max's jealousy tear the boys apart? Or just the new-Max?
Sure, it's all pretty silly. But at least it's intentionally silly. That counts for something.
It's stuff like that that pushed this film a little higher than three stars, but not quite into the four star range. So, on a free scale, this would get 3.5 stars from me. On Netflix's scale it gets 3.
So, after watching these films, I'm going over to Netflix and rating them. The only problem with that is there are no half stars. It's all or nothing, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.
Because of this, more films are being ranked at 3 stars than actually deserve three stars. I'm giving 2.5 and 3.5 star movies 3 stars.
This is one of those cases.
The Zombie Diaries is a low-budget, independent British horror film shot entirely on hand-held cameras. It functions, as the title suggests, as a video diary of people going through a zombie plague outbreak in England.
It's not a bad idea. Hell, George Romero himself used the exact same idea for Diary of the Dead, which was released at about the same time as this film.
Zombie Diaries is a very quick exercise in nihilism at only 80 minutes long, so it's definitely worth the time to watch, however, be warned. It's really only the last 40 minutes or so that are anything interesting or original.
Which is why I'd rank this at 2.5 stars on an actual scale.
The set-up is slow and boring, as we follow around characters that we don't really get to know, thanks to the limitations of the plot device of filming with hand-held cameras. You see, our camera work is coming from a news crew on their way to interview a farmer about having to kill all of his chickens in response to an oncoming virus. Of course, everyone in the farmer's town is dead and zombified, but for some reason they wait until dark to come out and chase our "heroes" out of town and into the woods.
That occurs in one of the recurring annoying "I'm running through the dark carrying the camera" sequences.
At the same time (sort of), another group of people are trying to survive, and as luck would have it, videotaping the whole thing. This second group is even less compelling than the first, as the actors are less successful with their improvising. Oh yeah. A lot of this film is improvised dialogue, according to the Wikipedia site.
After putting off several urges to stop the DVD and go to bed, Dr. Girlfriend and I were rewarded with the back half of the film.
We discover another group of survivors; this time a group that is organized and trying to make a life for themselves. This is where the other two narratives converge and we find out what's happened to those characters.
And what's happened is pretty messed up. This is what raised this from a 2 star film to a 2.5 (or 3, according to Netflix). I'm not going to tell you too much about it, and be warned, the Wikipedia page spoils the ending (which is why I'm not linking to it).
But I'll just say this. Of all the films we've watched so far, this is the most nihilistic and the one that takes itself the most seriously. There really isn't anything humorous about anything in this film. None of the characters have any real personality beyond reacting to the zombie situation. We don't know who these people were before and we don't find out. The only character with much personality is a dick.
The whole thing is bleak and boring until you get to the last half. Then it's bleak and interesting and decidedly disturbing.
Which almost makes up for the first half.
So if you've got a little over an hour to waste, this is an okay way of passing that time. But there's really not much here you haven't seen before, the gore effects are okay, and the acting is passable at best. There's a kernel of a good idea here, but the urge to use hand-held cameras and justify it in-narrative kind of spoils the whole thing.
I'd much rather have seen a traditionally structured and filmed movie with this plot.
Okay. Night of the Creeps was written and directed by Fred Dekker, who would go on to write and direct another cult classic, The Monster Squad.
If you haven't seen Monster Squad, then shame on you. If you have seen it, but didn't care for it, then you must have never been a prepubescent boy who loved the Universal Pictures stable of monsters.
Sure, that lets a lot of you off the hook, I guess. But dammit! That movie is gold.
As is this one.
What we've got here is an alien invasion of sorts. An alien experiment is jettisoned from an alien spacecraft in the opening moments of the film. The experimental container lands on Earth back in 1959 and infects a college jock.
Cut to 1986 and the misadventures of two college students just trying to find nice girls and fall in love. In a misguided attempt to impress a young lady, these gentlemen decide to pledge a fraternity (one which will never actually let them join, of course), and their hazing involves stealing a corpse. The corpse, naturally, turns out to the the cryogenically frozen body with mysterious alien worms inside (the alien experiment, for those of you not keeping up).
The alien worms gestate in the brains of mammals, living or dead, causing an outbreak of zombie-ism on the college campus.
That's enough plot.
Let me just say that this is a low-budget horror film made by a man who clearly loves horror films. Nearly all the characters have names inspired by the greats in the horror film industry. There are narrative references to all sorts of horror precursors. And best of all, it doesn't suck while doing all of this.
It actually tells an entertaining story with likable characters while both advancing the genre and respecting the traditions.
This is one of the good ones, folks.
If you haven't seen it, then make some time for it. If you've already seen it, shouldn't you check it out again? How long has it been?
For me it was around fifteen years.
It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it does take itself serious enough to make it more than a shallow parody. It's a worthy entry into the pantheon of zombie film, if you ask me.
It's not Top Ten material, but it's not too far off.
Sure, it's hampered by an Eighties soundtrack, where they had to get someone to cover "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Sure, it's about two teenage girls in a post-apocalyptic wasteland version of LA.
But, lo and behold, it's not just some stupid valley girl comedy with "zombies."
What we've actually got here is a story, not really a zombie story, but oh well, about the end of the world. Sure, these two sisters are California girls, but they're got an absent dad who's a Green Beret and just happened to have trained them to fight and use weapons.
That in itself adds a layer of entertainment that I would have never imagined from the reputation of the film. I mean, come on, check out the trailer.
See? They really didn't even take it seriously when they were promoting it.
But the hints are there. If you pay attention.
Again, as with most of the films we're watching, this isn't your high quality entertainment. But so far as the zombie sub-genre goes, this is not only watchable, it's downright entertaining and, dare I say it, good.
It doesn't go too far into the characters' psychological reactions to being some of the few survivors after a comet annihilates the majority of humanity, but it does pay attention to the psychological effects. These aren't just Valley Girls. There's a hint of character work going on.
Sure, in the end it's one-dimensional and cartoonish, but damn it, it's fun.
Is that too much to ask?
Oh! And Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) from Star Trek: Voyager is in it as Hector.
Sugar Hill (also known as The Zombies of Sugar Hill) is a blackspoitation revenge film with a heavy dose of Voodoo Justice.
Sugar Hill's fiance is killed by gangsters because he won't sell his club (Club Haiti), so they beat him to death in his own parking lot. Sugar's related to a Voodoo Priestess who summons Baron Samedi to help her get revenge. He gives her control over a zombie army and she kills her enemies one by one.
And that's pretty much it for the story.
But it's a lot of fun getting there.
The deaths are not as gruesome as they could be, but they're working with a pretty limited budget. The most impressive effect was definitely the eyes of the zombies. They looked as though they were made of silver, or highly reflective glass. I assume they were just covers, but whatever they were, the zombies were creepy and might just show up in my nightmares tonight.
Marki Bey sells her role as Sugar as hard as she can. When she has to feel grief she shouts at the sky. When she's getting her revenge, she's hard ass. And she looks good doing it, too, with her straightened hair being replaced by an afro whenever she's in Kill Whitey mode. It was actually a subtle touch, and I liked it.
Don Pedro Colley as Baron Samedi also does a pretty good job with his role. The Baron is always around, using different accents and dialects to draw in his prey, before setting his zombie hordes on them. I'm such a Voodoo sucker, though, I enjoy just about any appearance by Baron Samedi in just about any Voodoo tinged film.
If you can track this one down, and have a few beers handy, I'd definitely recommend checking it out. It's not the best movie we've watched so far, but it's definitely not the worst.
And there really are zombies in it, so that's a plus!
Ah, Paul Naschy. What would Spanish Horror Film be without you?
Don't answer that.
Vengeance of the Zombies is a film that is entertaining, but really not very good. Although, to give Naschy credit, he doesn't look like a young Dick Cheney in this one (like he did in Frankenstein's Bloody Terror), but he's still one shorty and meaty dude. And he's got his shirt off for a while in this one.
Not to give anything thing away, but Naschy plays an Indian mystic named Krisna, his hideously burnt and insane Voodoo powered brother, Kantaka, and Satan in a poorly orchestrated nightmare sequence.
It seems that Kantaka was lusting after an English girl many years ago, but she was just teasing him. So, what else could he do? He raped her. That's what.
So her parents and three other English families all got together, trapped Kantaka someplace and set it on fire. Thinking he was dead, they went on their merry way, until now, years later, each family has a daughter that dies mysteriously, only to be reborn as Kantaka's zombies.
But we don't get all that at once. Instead we get a lot of Krisna acting enlightened before bedding the only surviving daughter of one of Kantaka's targeted families. I think Kantaka was controlling Krisna with Voodoo, too, but to be honest, I kind of lost interest in this one as it went along.
Even though there were boobies.
The first boobies of the zombie fest, actually.
That's pretty much it for this one. Tedious and not titillating in the least. I think one would have to be intoxicated to really enjoy this one. It's not even a so bad it's good kind of thing. It's just blah.
In an introductory segment, Paul Naschy discusses just how crazy and scary this film is. In his words, this is the most frightening Spanish horror film of all time.
March 27 0 - Pontypool (Canada 2009) – 95 min. Streaming
March 28 – Palm Sunday 1 - Evil (Greek 2005) – 83 min. DVD 1.5 - Boy Eats Girl (2005) 80 min - streaming
March 29 – Holy Monday 2 - Isle of the Dead (USA 1945) – 75 min. DVD
March 30 – Holy Tuesday (Seventies Flashback!) 3 - Vengeance of the Zombies (Spain 1973) – 90 min. DVD 4 - Zombies of Sugar Hill (USA 1974) – 87 min. Streaming
March 31 – Holy Wednesday (Spy Wednesday) (Eighties Flashback!) 5 - Night of the Comet (USA 1984) – 95 min. DVD 6 - Night of the Creeps (USA 1986) – 90 min DVD
April 1 – Holy Thursday 7 - The Zombie Diaries (England 2006) – 80 min. DVD
April 2 – Good Friday 8 - Plaga Zombie: Mutant Zone (Argentina 1997) – 90 min. DVD
April 3 – Holy Saturday 9 - Dead Snow (Norway 2009) – 92 min. Streaming
April 4 – Easter Sunday 10 - American Zombie (USA 2007) – 91 min. DVD
Maybe? Grey Knight (USA 1993) – 92 min. Streaming [REC] (Spain 2007) – 78 min. DVD The Signal (USA 2006) – 103 min. Streaming Flight of the Living Dead (USA 2007) 96 min- DVD Zombiemania (documentary 2008) 47 min – streaming
Day three brings us Isle of the Dead (1945), starring Boris Karloff (technical difficulties forced a scheduling switch, with The Zombie Diaries being moved to Thursday). And while there is sort of a resurrection in the film, it's really more of a psychological thriller.
Set on a Greek island during the 1912 War, we follow a group of people quarantined there due to an outbreak of the Plague. Or some form of plague anyway. One that makes you act drunk, stumble around, and then die quietly.
But all is not right. The superstitious old Greek lady in the group thinks that young Thea (Ellen Drew) is not just young and healthy, taking care of a sickly female friend. Instead, she believes that Thea is actually a vampiric demon known as a vorvolaka.
Thematically, this is a very nice little exploration of the conflicts between beliefs in science and superstition, particularly when people are confronted with a form of death that pays no heed to either ideology. Along with this, there's a very subtle and powerful condemnation of war as we open on a Greek battlefield.
As Karloff, as General Nikolas Pherides crosses a nighttime wasteland that is literally overflowing with corpses. Corpses that must be cleared away each night to avoid the spread of disease. Ironically, then, the General is then quarantined himself later.
All in all, this is a beautifully shot film. It is not, however, a zombie film.
Karloff's performance is suitably creepy as he slowly slips from being a science-minded military man into a superstitious, plague-infested zealot. His gradual obsession with proving that Thea is a monster and then his determination to kill her accordingly is all pretty horrific. Particularly his final scene, crawling slowly across a darkened floor, dying, yet still staring upwards at Thea, wishing only to kill her before he passes.
I just gave myself a chill. Ugh.
But what about that resurrection, you ask?
That's another pretty creepy part, particularly if you're claustrophobic (which, I imagine is why Martin Scorsese puts this film in his 11 Scariest of All Time list). I'm hesitant to spoil any more of the film, but I guess as soon as one character starts mentioning their overpowering fear of being buried alive, you kind of know what's coming.
So, overall, this is a pretty good film; it's just not a zombie film.
Since Dr. Girlfriend got home early from work tonight, we decided to squeeze in an extra film today. So, the Irish zombie film, Boy Eats Girl made the grade.
And did it ever!
This is three for three so far, quality-wise, as this is an entertaining, well-acted, nicely-directed, and bloody gory film.
If you're looking for a traditional zombie film, this might not be for you. However, if you're a fan of British comedy TV series The In-Betweeners, this might be right up your alley.
You see, most of the film is spent following four teens around their school. However, one of the teens, lead Nathan (David Leon) has a crush on his friend Jessica (Samantha Mumba), but won't act on it, despite it being obvious that she fancies him right back.
When his buddies set it up so that he has to confront her and tell her how he feels, she doesn't show (thanks to her overbearing father), so he goes home, gets drunk, and accidentally hangs himself. Luckily it's not auto erotic asphyxiation.
Nope, it's just a concerned mom bursting into the room while he's toying with the idea of suicide by hanging.
As luck would have it, mom works cleaning up at the local church and had just recently stumbled upon a secret basement where horrible things are kept. Horrible things like a book of voodoo, which she then steals and uses to bring her dead son back to life.
As you can probably guess, hi-jinks ensue.
This is a cleverly written film that goes way out of its way to make you like the characters before subjecting them to zombie horrors. And the script is nicely structured so that nothing just happens without being set up well in advance. Unlike Evil, this time when the heroine starts using kick-boxing skills we've already seen her practicing at the gym earlier.
And while there's not a lot of gore throughout the film, our climax of the film does a pretty good job of making up lost time in a scene that brings the end of Peter Jackson's classic Dead Alive to mind.
So far, this year's marathon is going much better than expected. We'll see how that holds up tomorrow, when we watch the British film, The Zombie Diaries.
After the sheer joy we experienced with Pontypool, both Dr. Girlfriend and I were a little apprehensive about jumping into what is billed as "The First Greek Zombie Film!"
First tries are rarely all that, especially in the world of zombie films, but since we really want to get an international feel to this marathon, we gave this a shot.
And to our surprise, we really enjoyed it!
To Kako, or Evil as it is titled in English, isn't the best zombie film we've seen. But it has enough good stuff going for it that it's nowhere near the worst.
In stark contrast to the confined anxiety of Pontypool, Evil, once the zombies start appearing, immediately takes it to the streets.
Here's the setup. Three construction workers (or something) accidentally discover a cave during the course of their day. Naturally curious, they lower a ladder down and check it out. This exposes them to a very Evil Dead approach of some sort of bodiless EVIL. The next thing we know, our "heroes" are continuing with their day. One is home with his wife and daughter getting ready for dinner. The second fellow is at the big soccer game. And the third is out at the club with his girlfriend (who he's ready to dump).
Then, at exactly the same time, all three of them begin gagging and coughing before their eyes roll up in their heads and they leap on anyone close and begin biting them for all their worth. The bitees are instantly infected and leap on someone close to them.
As you can imagine, the attacks in the club and in the stands of the big game are bloody and violent and within minutes we have zombie hordes running through the streets. The family man kills his wife, but his teen-age daughter runs away, finding help with a neighbor lady before both of them are chased down the fire escape and are forced to hide in an alley.
I really liked the open air threat, and Evil director, Yorgos Noussias (who also wrote the screenplay), dies his best to invoke films like 28 Days Later with the emptied-out Athens that our actual heroes have to survive in.
So the set-up is well done, and once we get our main characters introduced, I actually liked them, as well. They're kind of stereotyped, but each actor does a good job at making their character believable; even the comic-relief cabbie. The weakest link in the acting is the fellow who plays the soldier they stumble across later in the film. He's just not very good at making his character seem crazy, instead he just seems like a guy "acting" crazy.
And in a lesser-quality film it wouldn't be that problematic for me.
But then again, we do really have two types of films going on here. There's a lot of pretty serious moments that play well. However, at the same time, whenever our heroes are attacked by zombies, we start getting more splatterstick humor than realistic responses.
Which isn't a bad thing, really. But I had a hard time jumping back and forth between tones. When the bitchy girlfriend suddenly starts using kung-fu on zombies, it was just kind of absurd. And not in the good, Existential way.
But with that said, this was a very well-made film. Noussias isn't afraid to have some fun with the editing, giving us a lot of shock-inducing quick cuts and a few split screen shots reminiscent of what you'd see on 24. There were a few places where it was a little too "music video" but overall, it was a fresh and exciting piece of work.
Something that isn't really commented on, but seems to be a nod to vampire classic From Dusk Til Dawn, the zombies are not what you'd call stout. Their heads can be knocked off with a punch, arms come off if you pull on them, you can punch holes in them, and they die just like ordinary living people. You don't have to have a head shot.
This provides opportunities for some funny/violent moments and also allows for some very good gore effects. There was some money spent on the gore, from old-school ripping out of intestines and throats to heads being chopped down the middle or exploding in gunfire.
So, all in all, this is one that's worth checking out. The tone is a little uneven, but if you can get past that, there's some good work going on.
And it was successful enough that a sequel is in the works: To Kako 2: Evil in the Time of Heroes, starring the ever-genre-friendly Billy Zane.
Seriously.
And it looks like it takes up exactly where Part One leaves off. And jumps back to Ancient Greece, as well.
First up this week is Canadian "zombie" film, Pontypool, directed by Bruce McDonald and scripted/adapted by Tony Burgess from his novel, Pontypool Changes Everything.
We weren't really sure what to expect, having only heard that the zombie plague in this film is spread via language. It's an interesting and original concept, but how would they be able to pull it off on-screen?
Fantastically!
The film could, with some imaginative staging, be adapted to the stage. The cast is made up of only three main characters, with a fourth showing up later in the story. Of course, by that time we're sort of back down to three characters again.
I'm trying not to spoil anything, so I'll just leave it vague like that.
The story is set in a small radio station, headquartered in the basement of an old church in the small town of Pontypool, Ontario. Our main character, DJ Grant Mazzy, is a grizzled talk-radio host who has just fired his manager for getting him this nowhere job in this nowhere town. His producer, Sydney Briar, just wants him to do his job (school closing announcements, obits, weather, etc.) without too much drama. At least at this early stage in their employment relationship. Their assistant, handling the phones and feeding Mazzy info and news, is a hometown hero, Laurel-Ann Drummond, recently-returned from Afghanistan.
After a strange start to the day, on his way in to work, Mazzy sees a woman by the road muttering strange things and then disappearing into the darkness, we spend the rest of the film in the radio station as riots begin breaking out across town. And this is where the film really starts to shine.
Stephen McHattie, as Mazzy, does a great job as the crotchety and cantankerous DJ and it his and Lisa Houle's (Sydney Briar) chemistry that really make the film work. McDonald also sidesteps the budgetary demands of filming a widespread zombie outbreak by having callers describe what's happening rather than showing it.
I wasn't sure if this would really work, but it does. It works very well.
And when there is a chance for gore, the film doesn't disappoint there, either.
It was really the novelty of the way the infection is spread through language that really won me over, though. It seems that the English language has become infected. Not entirely, you see, but only certain words. Once you say or hear these words, they start to get a grip inside of you and take you over.
It's a very English Major kind of zombie film, which is why I suppose Dr. Girlfriend and I both enjoyed it so much.
This one is highly recommended!
My only concern is that the first film of the week was so good it may make the rest of the films pale in comparison. Hopefully not.
Next up: The first Greek zombie film! It's called To Kako! Or, in English, Evil!
Once Dr. Girlfriend returned home after doing her nightly duties making sure that the day's news was properly grammar'd up and formatted for the masses, we settled in to catch up on our recorded TV viewing for the week, beginning with this week's Mid-Season Finale of Caprica and ending with the glorious return of Supernatural.
Then, lo and behold! We realized that both shows were focused on the resurrection theme of our planned week of undead goodies, and before we'd realized it, the Marathon had begun.
Caprica's "End of Line" featured, without too many spoilers, the return of the Virtual Undead Tamara, and lots of dramatic twists and turns and possibly the deaths of a couple of characters.
It all felt a little rushed, with scenes being cut quickly rather than being allowed to breathe. And by the end of the hour we were surprised by just how much plot had been crammed in. There were cliffhangers galore, and who knows when we'll be seeing the show again.
No, seriously. When is it coming back? Is there a date set, yet?
So visions of the dead, confrontations with the dead, and one dead girl walking the earth later, Caprica wrapped up a pretty successful opening half of a season. If it was too slow for you, then watch Survivor. I'm sure someone's eating a rat or betraying someone over there.
Leave the thinking, and the amazing acting, to us.
Supernatural jumped right into the Resurrection Theme with this week's episode, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." Borrowing a note from the French return of the dead film Les Revenants(They Came Back) (you can check out my comments about it here), the dead are returning not as horrible flesh-eaters, but just as they were when they died. Except paler.
Of course, being Supernatural, things don't stay that way, but it's yet another very nicely done episode of a series that is having its best season yet. It has a lot of good character work with Bobby (Jim Beaver, of Deadwood fame) and lots of head shots for you old-schoolers out there.
Seriously. If you've ever enjoyed fun horror/action shows on TV, Supernatural is one you should try to catch up with. They've recently announced that there will be a sixth season, so if the Apocalypse isn't as final as it looks like it's going to be, we'll still have loads more fun on the way.
And with that, The 2010 Easter/Zombie Marathon is off and running...um, er, shambling.
Tonight, we'll be checking out the Canadian film, Pontypool. More on that, tomorrow.
