HOW ABOUT A ZOMBIE MOVIE? NO? HOW ABOUT TWO ZOMBIE MOVIES? NO? WELL TOUGH - YOU'RE GETTING THREE ZOMBIE MOVIES - WHADDYA GOT TO SAY ABOUT THAT? PART THREE...

Cockneys vs Zombies (2013) UK

Well, faithful readers you've gotten through two of the three zombie movies that I recently viewed. We've had our teen flick, we've had our so-called adult movie. Now it's time for the senior set. Now I had to do a little looking before I started this review because I am the first one to admit that I am geographically ignorant and I never have even considered what the word 'Cockney' meant before.







So to be fair, I looked it up. I knew from watching this movie that it had something to do with living in the East End of London. But I didn't know the whats and whys. And I didn't know why there was a distinction. Now here in the States, I know different sections of the Country are known for their different dialects such as Southern accents, New York accents, etc. 

But as for England, my main frame of reference (and you may laugh if you want to) is the proper British accent of Stewie Griffin and Sir Patrick Stewart (yes, that's right, I'm putting together a cartoon baby with a distinguished actor), and the Cockney accents are the ones I've heard from watching sitcoms on BBC.

That sounds terrible. I know, which is why I looked it up. Basically, the word Cockney can be associated with geographical location, social interactions, and linguistic associations. As far as the area of London goes, it is the East end and while it covers many districts, it is traditionally a residential area which has experienced a growth of industry. In other words, the East Enders are known as a hard-working people.

As far as dialect goes, I think we've all heard both the so-called proper British accents, as opposed to Cockney accents. Those who speak with Cockney accents are more likely to use a particular type of slang. It is said that some of that slang originates from Yiddish words, others can be combinations of words. 

I did learn one word of slang I'd never heard used before, because it's peppered all through this movie, and that is the word Muppet. Were not talking Kermit the Frog or Cookie Monster, but apparently in Cockney slang a Muppet is a person who consistently does stupid things.

Okay, enough lessons for today. Our movie is another British zombie film comedy, which centers on a group of young Cockneys who work to rescue a group of elderly people from danger as a zombie apocalypse overtakes Eastern London. They give a quick back story to their ZA: a 17th-century graveyard is discovered, ordered sealed by King Charles II. As workers break it open, they are greeted by ravenous zombies who bite them, and off we go.

We have brothers Terry and Andy who are desperate because their grandfather is about to lose his retirement home. Apparently the whole area is being demolished in order to develop expensive properties. The only way the brothers can figure to raise enough money quickly is to do what their grandfather used to do when he was young and a gangster - rob a bank. Unfortunately, Terry and Andy don't have it all together. They do gather a team which includes their cousin Katy, friend  Davey, and Mickey who is their source of weaponry.

Even if you're a zombie you're on one team...

They have a sub subplot going on which gets things a little complicated and confusing. The developers who are planning to demolish the center to make their new buildings have a boss who is planning to embezzle all the money and take off running. He apparently has a partner on the inside; a woman who works at the bank.




Okay, this is a little too much to try to stuff into a zombie comedy. We have the seniors story, the development's embezzlement story, and the brothers story. It makes things hard to follow; not because it is too difficult, but because there is simply too much going on at once to keep track of the story progression.

...or the other.

Terry and Andy and their gang go to rob the bank expecting a modest payoff. But when they grab the money and run, taking the woman that was part of the embezzlement plan with them, and who thinks that this is the boss' way of cleaning out the bank, the would-be robbers are shocked to find that they are staring at $2.5 million.




The movie, then cuts away and goes back to the retirement home. Interestingly, when the zombies attack, it's the employees that end up getting eaten, since the senior citizens seem to have much better survival skills.

Of course, it helps that these are 'Romero' zombies which means that even the most feeble among them can use their walkers and get away clean since even THEY move faster than these zombies do. The senior citizens are not going to go down without a fight. They grab anything they can find whether it be a lamp a cane or just anything heavy and they swing away. It's interesting that the staff, who were much younger, were the first to die, and hardly put up any kind of fight, and yet here we have senior citizens who are beating the crap out of the zombies.

So the zombie apocalypse, at least for East London, is in full swing. Already things are crashed, smashed, wrecked, dead, chewed on, etc. The boys in their van are now trying to get back to their grandfather but have to go through all these obstacles. At the same time, the senior citizens seem to be doing all right for themselves. I don't believe they've lost a single person yet.

Since I'm always such a picky person when it comes to accuracy, continuity, etc. I have to point out one little boo-boo: Everything and everyone is in ruins, on fire, or dead. But, the light rail is still running. You think they would at least have halted filming until it went by instead of having it go through their shot. I just thought that was kind of funny. 

They did have one scene that was a little daring. Very few zombie movies will approach the subject of what to do in the case of a zombie baby. Off the top of my head right now. I can only think about three movies and one of those I can't remember the title of but the two that did was George Romero's Day of the Dead, and Peter Jackson's Braindead a.k.a. Dead Alive. 

The third movie was throw away and I can't remember the title, but I know the mother had the baby before she died so they thought it would be fine until… If I remember right, they drop-kicked that sucker. Here we have a zombie mother pushing a pram as they call them in England. I believe. The treatment of this zombie baby, because of course it is one, was the same; it's drop-kicked into oblivion.

I also found it interesting that the difference between the group of young bank robbers and the group of senior citizens in the senior center is that the young ones could not stop bickering among themselves and so several were killed because they weren't paying attention. The senior citizens worked well together and as I said, I don't believe a single one of them has been killed as of yet.

The most violent one of the young ones which would be Mickey (they give his excuse as he was a veteran who was wounded in the head and now has a steel plate), the one with a huge arsenal. After he is bitten (like I said, among the young ones several die because they do not pay attention) and has died, the remaining ones of the group raid his arsenal and arm themselves to the teeth.

One of the major problems I had with this movie besides having too much going on in a simple, or what was supposed to be simple, zombie comedy, was the CGI work. When are they going to learn that if something explodes and a spray of blood, but none of it hits the ground or the people standing right there that it is faker than any cartoon? 




In the rare cases of gore in this movie, that was a major problem. In other instances where they could have shown better gore, they actually performed the deeds (for example, cutting off the head), off camera. That is some major cheating. It's not the only movie to do this. In fact, the first zombie movie of the three I've reviewed today, Dead Before Dawn, when a zemon was run over repeatedly, that was not shown. At most, what we got to see was a severed leg. Major cheating.

Since most of London is pretty much gone, and obviously the money is no longer an issue, survival becomes the main topic of the movie. The grandfather in the senior center is still the smartest guy in the movie. If any of them live. It will be because of him.

As has happened in several zombie movies, the main objective when the old people get together with the failed bank robbers is to get to a boat, assuming that they can find an island or somewhere else where zombies will not be. As these movies usually step into the land of incredible coincidences, they find a boat ready to go right away. All board the boat and they prepared to move away from the dock, when they discover that no one has bothered to unchain the boat. 

Now someone must sacrifice themselves by going back on land and releasing the chain. The grandfather of the failed bank robbers, the most useful person in the movie, volunteers. He brings an automatic weapon with him because he is not stupid, and one of his grandsons decides to join him. They spray the oncoming zombies with countless rounds as they release the chain and somehow, because this movie is going to have a happy ending even if it kills us, they both somehow manage to get back on the boat.

Our final scene is the remaining young ones and all the seniors from the retirement home. Now where they go, and if they are safe is left open. However, the grandfather makes his final statement, which is that they will take back East London for themselves. I believe him.

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HOW ABOUT A ZOMBIE MOVIE? NO? HOW ABOUT TWO ZOMBIE MOVIES? NO? WELL TOUGH - YOU'RE GETTING THREE ZOMBIE MOVIES - WHADDYA GOT TO SAY ABOUT THAT? PART TWO...

Stalled (2013) UK

I am slightly claustrophobic. And yet, I keep getting suggestions from friends for movies that take place in very small areas. Like the one where the kids get caught in a sauna because their friend forgot they were in there. That was based on a true story too, except that nobody died in real life. I refused to see the movie where the guy gets stuck between two rocks and cuts his own arm off. 

However, I did see the movie with the three friends who were not so friendly stuck on a chair lift at a closed ski resort. I also watched, even though it took two attempts, the movie about the three friends, again, not so friendly, stuck in an ATM booth.

So when I saw this movie was a zombie movie, and the whole thing takes place in a bathroom stall, I passed it over like 30 or 40 times I swear. But, I was still struggling with the movie Manster and so, in desperation, I watched this instead.

I was surprised. I did not fall asleep or throw up. The man who wrote the screenplay, Dan Palmer, also is the star of the movie. Why do people do that? I mean, unless this is a low budget film, when you have written the thing yourself, I think you're a little too close to the movie to do a good job acting in it. This is the same thing that happened in the previous movie reviewed, Dead Before Dawn.

This is the story of a man known only as W.C. For reasons revealed later, he sneaks into the women's bathroom. He is obviously one of the janitors for an office building. It is apparently Christmas Eve and there is a party going on, but he was not invited. When he hears someone coming, he ducks into the last stall next to the wall and locks the door. 

It is two women from the party. They make jokes about their coworkers, and him, and because it is a party and they are very drunk and because this is a trend in movies nowadays, for no reason whatsoever they start making out. One woman notices that the other has a bite on her shoulder. She explains that she was making out with the pizza delivery guy and he got all what she calls 'rapey'. The two continue to make out until suddenly, the one with the bite attacks the other woman and rips out her neck. Our zombie apocalypse has now begun. And W.C. is still in the woman's bathroom stall. Because that's the movie.

W.C. is a real sad sack of a man. Here he is, on Christmas Eve, in a woman's bathroom, hiding from people because he was not invited to their party - as well as something else we learn later. Well, he's in the party now. The bathroom door opens and we see more zombies wandering in. I started to wonder just how many people they could stuff into this small bathroom and still have room for the camera and sound equipment. But then I just shrugged because I really didn't give a damn.

So if W.C. was not invited, why is he there? We see he has his toolbox which might be useful in fighting the zombies. Unfortunately, it's sitting on the sink. The zombies, whether they hear him or smell him I'm not sure, probably both, start to crawl under the door. One woman gets in far enough that he has no choice but to shove her head in the toilet bowl, and repeatedly slam the seat against the back of her head, eventually caving it in. He then has to move her head, in order to vomit. Oh goody, gore and vomit.

So, since he is making more noise, and making more blood, the zombies are even more eager to try to find a way into his stall. And that's pretty much the movie. But wait, there's a subplot. Why was W.C. there? The answer is in his toolbox. It is full of cash. It seems that this company, in typical company style, has chosen Christmas Eve to fire him. So, he decides to get a little even, by stealing the money the office had been donating in order to give to, uh, whoever British people give money to at Christmas. When I found out, I had my only real laugh - you'll see why.

So even if W.C. somehow manages to get to his toolbox, it will do him absolutely no good. He wonders if he should just let the zombies take him. Suddenly there's a human voice, several stalls away. She identifies herself as a woman who is considered by the others in the office as a real hottie. A lot of the movie is now spent with the two of them interacting with each other, trying to keep their hopes up, and find a way out of the bathroom without dying.

W.C., being a janitor, realizes that there is a crawlspace behind the wall behind the stall. He tells the hottie that he will break through the wall, reach her stall, and rescue them both. She tells him no, she does not want to be rescued. Wanting out of there, and at the same time wanting her, he ignores her, and somehow gets both his toolbox back and into the crawlspace and moves over to where her stall is. He then smashes a hole in the wall.

We now see why the hottie did not want to be rescued. She's not the hottie. She is actually an obese woman. The whole office had been making fun of her so she had gone into the bathroom to cry. The hottie had set her up to be humiliated by saying a cute guy in IT wanted to make out with her. Nice. She knows that no matter how big a hole he makes in the wall, she still cannot fit into the crawlspace. We never see her face, as she refuses to turn around while she talks to W.C. He still tries to convince her to come with him.

When it becomes obvious to her that he will not give up, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice. She opens her stall door and allows the zombies to take her. Shocked and saddened, W.C. moves through the crawlspace, sees that the whole office is full of the dead and the undead, and prepares to take the elevator.

The doors open - it's the hottie. She's been bitten but is still alive. Knowing now that she's the one who made the girl in the bathroom cry, he tells the hottie the IT guy wants to see her and directs her up to where the zombies are.

We then see that he has returned the money to the collection - this collection seen here in the picture. Screw Unicef or Red Cross! Ha! He then takes the elevator down to the lobby. No one is in sight. He goes outside into the night. Again, there is no one in sight. Apparently in the UK, they still have plenty of phone booths. He goes to the nearest one, closes the door, and calls his mother. 

After cautioning her to lock the doors and close all the windows, he tells her he is coming over for Christmas. As he hangs up, he happens to look around him. There are dozens (or at least as many people as they could afford) of zombies coming toward the phone booth. He says, "I need a toilet."

If they think I'm going to watch another movie with a man trapped in a phone booth instead of a bathroom stall, they're brain-dead. And for me, and hopefully for the world, this movie is over.

I was thoroughly prepared to hate this movie - but I didn't. Perhaps it was the bleakness of a man who has nothing and is now facing a horrific death in a woman's bathroom stall of all places. Maybe it was because of the 'season'. Maybe it was that death wouldn't have changed things for him very much. 

I found the human aspect, especially when he found out he had a fellow 'survivor' in another stall kind of touching. It was a bit short on emotion but still had its moments and wasn't the loser film I was expecting. He's not a hero, he's not brave, he's not even noble. He's just human. Maybe that was the most appealing part of it.

Oh and there's an after-credit scene if you wanna see what happens to Miss Hottie...

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HOW ABOUT A ZOMBIE MOVIE? NO? HOW ABOUT TWO ZOMBIE MOVIES? NO? WELL TOUGH - YOU'RE GETTING THREE ZOMBIE MOVIES - WHADDYA GOT TO SAY ABOUT THAT? PART ONE...

Dead Before Dawn 3D (2012) Canada

I just happened upon several zombie films by sheer desper... err, I mean sheer chance. The next movie on our Pure Terror Movie Marathon is an incredible stinker called Manster, a black-and-white movie with lots and lots of climbing scenes up an active volcano in suits, ties, and loafers, as well as another lesson about how crappy Americans are (according to this movie anyway). Yeesh.

So I found three films, one that seemed to be directed toward the teen set, one for adults, and one that showed that no matter how old you are, if the Zombie Apocalypse happens and they are Romero zombies, old persons with walkers can still get away clean.

Kevin McDonald's part was very, VERY small...

This one was interesting, dumb, a little bit funny, a little bit inventive, and a lot of entries into the land of incredible coincidences. For some reason, there's everyone's favorite crazy doc, Christopher Lloyd, a small role for Kevin McDonald (Kids In The Hall) and Rossif Sutherland (Keifer's half-brother, seen in the Lost Boys sequel). Since this film was Canadian, I didn't recognize any other names. 

This film had a lot to brag about; it is the first film shot in live action stereoscopic 3D, and for some reason they need to tell you that a woman directed it so they could say, unnecessarily, that this is the first Canadian stereoscopic 3D film directed by a woman. Okay.



Christopher Lloyd plays the grandfather of a boy named Casper. Yes, that is his name, Casper. The family owns a business called the Occult Barn. They never close. That means that both the grandfather and Casper's father trade off shifts in order to keep it open at all times. So already the setup is a little, uh, silly. 

When Casper was a small boy, an accident at the Barn took the life of his father. After that, Casper became afraid of everything. He also stayed far away from the family business, meaning that his grandfather practically lived in the place which, of course, is impossible. He's gotta sleep sometime.

One day, so we can get the movie started, his grandfather receives a trophy for a lifetime achievement at being a weirdo. Just kidding. But he does receive an award. So in order to get it, he asks Casper to watch the store while he's gone. Okay now we have our set up because Casper, being the typical teenager, brings all his friends with him. They of course don't believe in the occult and so they mess around the place, touching things are not supposed to touch, and picking up things they're not supposed to pick up.



The item that killed Casper's father was a strange looking urn with a skull on top. So of course they zero in on that same item because, as I said, this movie has to get started. Now these are all supposed to be college kids, and surprisingly enough, they looked like they might be. They're certainly stupid enough to be. But just to be sure I checked several of the actors profiles and found that their ages ranged from the early 20s and one was even in his 30s. Whoops. 

The woman who directs and produces, April Mullen, also gave herself a role in this movie. I could not find a page with her age on it, however, she seems to have been acting and directing for 10 to 15 years. I very much doubt that that puts her in the college-age range. 

This particular urn has a very nasty curse on it. Casper's father was killed just by touching it. But since this movie needs to move along, the kids are able to touch it, as well as toss it around like idiots. Of course, the urn falls to the floor and breaks. Casper's frantic. The others, however, since they don't believe in curses, make fun of him. 



Especially when he tells them that he does not know what the curse is. So, being kids, they decide to make up one of their own. This is that brief part of the movie that actually shows a little imagination. Each one adds their own little idea into this curse they make and so it goes as such:

After 10 o'clock that night, anyone who makes eye contact with them is compelled to commit suicide. They decide that the dead come back as zombies, but then changed their minds because the zombie idea has been played out. What about demons? one asks. No, we don't want demons. So one suggests, how about half demon and half zombie; a zemon. They agree. But that's not enough. 

One girl who is made to be oversexed, decides that zemons do not bite. They give you hickeys. When one receives a hickey, they become a zemon themselves. The oversexed girl adds one more little rule: If you are confronted by a zemon, they will become your slave forever if you French kiss them. Eww. What they don't know is, that if the curse is not broken before morning, it becomes permanent.

So as Casper cleans up, the rest go on their merry way; after all, there's a football game at the college that night. When 10 o'clock approaches, Casper becomes convinced that the curse is not going to happen. He goes down from his room to see his mother. She starts acting strange and ends up taking a toaster into the bathtub with her and becomes a zemon. Frantically, he realizes it's all coming true and runs to the college to warn his friends. But he's too late.



For some reason, at this particular college, football games apparently go on long after 10 o'clock at night because once 10 o'clock comes, the ones that are in the stands, the cheerleader, and the football player, all make eye contact with different people who immediately kill themselves and give hickeys to others. Soon all the game attendees are infected. And these are the fast zombies. Oh, excuse me, I meant zemons. These zemons sprint, jump over things, parkour and generally catch their prey with no problem.

The ones who created the curse decided to go back to the Occult Barn. There they find Casper's grandfather back from his award ceremony. Imagine my surprise and slight disgust when Casper's grandfather finds the urn broken and exclaims 'Great Scott!' Really? I mean, really? 

Anyway, he tells the idiots that the only way to break the curse is to restore the urn before dawn. He has a book that gives instructions on how to do this but they have to figure it out on their own, because they have looked him in the eye, so he crushes his own skull in with his trophy.

After the kids discover what they need to do to break the curse, we get a horrible montage of each kid finding some sort of weapon; mostly from household items. This takes forever. Or at least it just felt that way. And after Casper's grandfather explains (before he kills himself) that part of the ingredients they will need to and the curse is buried with Casper's greats grandfather, they feel the need to do yet another weapon gathering montage. 

It feels five times as long this time. They also need other items, some they will need to get at the college. Problem is, most of the zemons are also at the college. What to do, what to do. Stupid kids. And this is where the movie really starts to bog down. That was the problem with this film, it had some good ideas, but they never really followed through with them. You always felt like things were only halfway done. And even though the movie was only 88 minutes, because of those lapses it felt much longer.

So. They need the following items: Casper's great-grandfathers watch, a replacement urn (they decide to use a mug instead), and a human skull to seal it with. Thus, the trip to the college. They have the mug, Casper is in charge of digging up the grave, and the football player is in charge of taking a human skull from the biology lab. Why they didn't just use Caspers great-grandfathers skull (They're digging him up anyway, right?), I guess we'll never know.



But these are just stupid college kids. That means they fail. Miserably. Oh, they get the items all right, but they all die in the process. Casper is devastated, but he puts the new urn together as the book instructs. 

Then he notices that the book of instructions, after he follows the procedure, starts printing new instructions to complete. The final touch in order to break the curse is that an innocent life must be sacrificed. Since Casper is pretty much the only one left to live by this time, of course it's going to be him. He has a grenade. To break the curse he sets off the grenade, but just as it goes off the movie does that massive piss off that I hate with a vengeance: it resets itself.

Time goes backwards. Everyone dead is alive again, there is no curse, and although the kids remember what happened and the new urn is still a mug, everyone is all right. Shoot. Me. Now. We have the happy ending of all the stupid kids, somehow, graduating. Casper and his now-girlfriend visit his grandfather at the Occult Barn, explaining that they want to work for him to pay for their new apartment. 

So Horus (Casper's grandfather's name - see why I didn't want to use that before? Do you know how many words sound like 'Horus' to a dictation program?) is delighted because, since the Occult Barn never closes, he can now go on a vacation. Casper and his girlfriend look around but pay absolutely no attention to what they're doing, and as they begin making out… Say it with me… Saaaaay iiiiiit! 

They knock against the shelves and yes, they break the urn yet once again. They both look at each other and exclaim, 'We're dead!' Massive duh.

So, just like a lot of teen comedies or horror/comedies, this one had some interesting ideas. It was an almost-interesting premise, not very good acting though, plus the puzzling appearance by Christopher Lloyd, and just not enough juice to carry a full movie. Even though it was only 88 minutes, this story could have been told in an hour or less. 

It just didn't have enough of anything solid to keep the interest of the audience. If I actually graded things, this would get a C+ for effort, a D for story progression and special effects, a D- for the ending, and an F for shooting it in freaking 3D!

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I WOULDN'T WISH THIS MOVIE ON MY WORST ENEMY... BUT YOU CAN IF YOU WANT TO...






The Revenant (2009)

I was really looking forward to this movie. A zombie buddy picture, a horror/comedy about a soldier dying in battle who 'revives' after being brought home in a box, who then joins his best friend to be the good guys. 'Keeping the streets of L.A. safe for the undead' I believe is one way they put it. Massive BS on that. This foul mouthed duo needed to lie down and stay dead. First we have Bart, a soldier fighting overseas in a Country no one seems to agree on - I read in three different places Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Sorry to tell you kiddies, but even I (being geographically ignorant) know that these are three DIFFERENT COUNTRIES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. So where was he? I had to go back to the film (and I REALLY didn't want to) to find out he was - in the Rumaila Oil Fields, Basra, Iraq. SO THERE, YOU PEOPLE WHO THINK ANY COUNTRY WITH SAND IS INTERCHANGABLE. Whew, sorry but this movie brings out the massive jerk in you. Probably because the two 'heroes' in this movie are massive jerks. They may be friends but that doesn't make them good ones.


Okay, lets find something good to say about this movie. This should take about a minute. The makeup and gore and special effects were outstanding. Just looking at the makeup work on the main two characters made me wince - those contact lenses must've hurt like a bitch and I'll bet they spent half of the day in a chair getting that latex right. 

So what if Bart's facial injuries, scars and even skin texture changed from scene to scene? Did we expect better? Excellent effects sometimes means sacrificing continuity. Watch Evil Dead. Please. 'Cause this movie really, really sucks.

And the basic premise for the story was a good one - a fallen soldier and his friend go against the 'creatures of the night' so to speak to clean up the streets. Groovy.

Now the bad. This is going to take a while. No, you know what? It doesn't deserve that much. Yeah the makeup was good and so was the premise but the delivery, the length of the film (110 minutes), the juvenile language (Geez, do you guys know any words longer than four letters?) and the fact that these two are HORRIBLE people from start to end just ruined anything they did - you just wanted this piece of crap to end.

The soldier, Bart (David Anders), dies because he is a dumbass - an insult to the real soldiers deployed in foreign countries. Adding insult to injury, he causes the death of his squad. This is our hero? Granted, he thought he hit a small child with their vehicle (I'm wondering if that kid didn't start the infection) but when it's dark and you have orders and the lives of your comrades at stake you don't just say 'I'm gonna go out in the dark and see what's out there.' Blammo. Lots of people waiting with rifles idiot. Then for whatever reason it takes a month from the time he dies to the time he's buried. So he stinks. In more ways than one.

Funeral, burial, people drinking in the bar talking about their hero. His best friend Joey (Chris Wylde who I wanted dead in the worst way) 'comforts' Bart's girlfriend by sleeping with her. Nice. That night Bart 'wakes up', gets out of his box and finds his buddy.


Lots of bad language, lots of juvenile stunts, more language, typical zombie stuff like vomiting black goop all over everything, more bad language, both yelling at each other, more vomiting. So they do the natural thing - they go out to party. 


At the liquor store they encounter a stereotypical gangbanger (the stereotypes fly fast and loose in this crapfest) and he and Bart face off, both shooting the other. Bart gets up of course, and finds some quick nourishment feeding off of the dead dude's blood. So he doesn't do the taffy pull, doesn't pull off and chew on legs or arms, just eats blood.

Joey looks this up and decides that Bart is a revenant, a person who has returned, supposedly from the dead. Duh. Zombie. Ghoul. Revenant. Whatever. It doesn't make him any smarter. Although he becomes like the real dead during the day, sunlight doesn't hurt him. And this little tidbit works against this freaking movie later.

After playing like they're in a Tarantino movie for a while (shooting, sucking blood, chopping up the bodies - or not - then dumping them in the river) Joey gets in front of a bullet. Whoops. So Bart 'infects' him. After stinking up the place for, I guess, a month, Joey gets up and now both are sucking (literally and figuratively) and the bodies are piling up.

Small problem. These 'revenants' do not get destroyed as easily as they think. The original gangbanger who they chopped up and threw in the river returns, sewed together, bloated and pissed off. He captures Joey, cuts him up and sends Bart his head. Still um, alive. I'm not going to describe the scene of how he enables Joey to talk but he is asked to kill him so he takes a huge ass piece of machinery and runs over the head. Nice splat and squish by the way. The effects and gore were pretty good. If they could have cut the movie to just show those, they might have had something.



Instead we're tortured with more crap - Bart trying to kill himself which doesn't work, Bart and all the other he 'infected' being captured by the military and prepared for war. In capsules reminiscent of those in The Return Of The Living Dead the revenants are packed (if there's just enough of them to be mobile, they're usable I guess) and they are dropped over Khuzestan Province, Iran. 









That's where this sorry piece of... cinema makes its final mistake. These guys are REALLY DEAD during the day. It shows them being dropped in the daytime - yet we get one last woebegotten glance at Bart as he contemplates his immediate future. Uh, he's not supposed to be awake, remember? No no, don't fix it, just run the credits pretty pretty please...

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YOU'VE GOT RED ON YOU








Shaun Of The Dead (2004) UK

Having just royally dunned an English zombie movie and saying how leery I am of comedy/horror, I'm balancing the scales a little by presenting Shaun Of The Dead.

Yes, even this movie is a bit uneven, but Simon Pegg is downright brilliant as Shaun (there are no last names for the characters in this movie), a 29 year old appliance salesman whose life is going nowhere. He is totally oblivious to the fact that his life is ticking away and he's really not doing anything about it. Shaun embodies the average everyday person, that type of human that lives their life but doesn't really LIVE. He does nothing but go to his boring job, come home and go to the Winchester, his favorite pub. That's it. He has absolutely nothing going for him and his girlfriend Liz has had enough.Dumped and depressed, he and his friend Ed (a crude but funny Nick Frost) do the logical thing: go back to the Winchester and get totally pissed, to use the English term (I also love that they call pork rinds 'hog lumps' - that just seems more honest).

This is brilliant in its social commentary, as George Romero infused into his classic Night Of The Living Dead. From the beginning, people are getting sick, falling down in the streets, crashing cars, running in terror, even eating pigeons in the park and Shaun is all but oblivious. While trying to sell a TV he changes channels which show different news reports of the disaster happening around him but he totally ignores it. You also will see (if you pay attention) that every scene pays homage to one zombie film or another.

A great scene is when he visits his neighborhood convenience store as he does every morning - except this morning no one is in the store. He grabs a soda from the cooler, not noticing the bloody hand prints on the glass, slips on what we assume is a pool of blood on the floor, notices there are no current newspapers and no shopkeeper, but just leaves his money on the counter and carries on. One can imagine that if a disaster like this one happened here that most people probably would react the same way - totally ignorant.
When Shaun and Ed finally realize there's trouble in their little burg, the action picks up. Shaun decides to gather his loved ones and go to - where else - the Winchester. There's a great in-joke when Shaun calls his 'mum' whose name happens to be Barbara and when he tries to persuade her to let him come pick her up Ed yells into the phone 'We're coming to get you Barbara!' (I'm not going to explain that, you should know where that's from).

Things of course get very muddled as poor Shaun, who really has never accomplished anything in his life, tries to be leader and savior and fails - not for lack of trying.

The ending is a satisfying although abrupt one and there are a couple of holes in the plot (which Simon Pegg hilariously explains in the DVD commentary) but this is definitely a movie you should not miss. I don't see how you can if you get the Comedy Central channel - they show it at least twice a month.