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Zombies

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15:44 / 07.09.07

I hear there willb e a lot of hand-held camera action (a la Blair Witch Project). Other than that...

I wonder what has become of the Day of the Dead remake. I heard they were doing it, saw some footage that included the Marcelus guy (his name escapes me now), but then, only silence.

And I might add: there´s nothing Romero has to redeem himself for!!!!! NOTHING!!!!!

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

15:51 / 07.09.07

I refer you back to grant on p. 1 of this thread and Cemetery Man FTW.

16:06 / 07.09.07

Diary's supposed to take place at or around the same time as Night of the Living Dead. I just don't see that particular aspect of it working, not when the films in the main series are so tied into specific periods.

Jawsus-son Starship

16:19 / 07.09.07

I watched the worst example of shoddy film making thanks to Empire's Kim Newman - The Zombie Diaries. Have you ever fancied a Blair Witch-esque zombie film? Me niether, but it was new in Blockbuster and I had a free afternoon.

The film itself; five sections of video diaries dipicting the zombie apocalypse was poor from start to finish - marvel at the bad acting, wonder where people are recharging thier video cameras when there isn't any electricity, marvel as people risk life and limb to show some film such nonsense.

However, all this is moot, as the special features are amazing; these people who made this film seem to think it was Citizen Kane, and talk about it as such. I ended up fast fawarding through the film to watch the making of, which made me laugh for hours.

So go and rent it, if only in an ironic way.

Uatu.is.watching

16:33 / 07.09.07

This is pretty essential.

Mysterious Transfer Student

17:09 / 07.09.07

Earlier in this thread bitchiekittie wrote:

I'm a bit shocked to hear people say that they think X or Y movie is shit; I love all my my horror babies, and if it's got zombies in it, it's 3,000x better for it. NO HATIN ON THE CHEESE!

While most zombie movies are self-evidently great, anyone who takes this position will be sorely pressed to continue doing so after a viewing of Day of the Dead 2: Contagium, which has precisely nish to do with the Romero oeuvre but nonetheless failed to cash in on the then-current release of Land of the Dead. I saw both movies at London's Frightfest in 2005 and can happily say that I've never seen another movie cause a cinema audience to be united in ecstatic disdain quite like Contagium. Thank god George Himself, who was guest appearing at the festival, wasn't there that day. It was a horrible mating between a regional medical soap and some five-year-old's fevered description of a TV commercial for Dawn OTD.

17:46 / 07.09.07

If you want truly bad - and I'm not wishing to bandwagon here, they are truly bad - then you could go for the two House of the Dead films.

Apparently the second one may be slightly better than the first one. But that's like comparing losing one finger to losing three - one's better, sure, but both end up with dedigitation...

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

18:04 / 07.09.07

There's a Canadian movie called Fido that I really want to see, but haven't yet. Anyone?

18:50 / 07.09.07

Diary's supposed to take place at or around the same time as Night of the Living Dead. I just don't see that particular aspect of it working, not when the films in the main series are so tied into specific periods.

In that making-of clip on the page I linked to, it looked like it was contemporary but done at the beginning of the plague, like starting a new continuity today.

I'm not positive about that, though - some of what Romero was saying could be taken either way.

Is there more I don't know?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:42 / 08.09.07

I'm still quite fond of a small little film called Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse Romance, although I don't think it was too widely released. It was shown in the same film festival around here as Fido.

01:42 / 10.09.07

Ain't It Cool has posted a review of Diaries of the Dead

14:26 / 10.09.07

Quite encouraging:

The movie starts with a news crew outside an apartment building where several people have been shot. This is 100% raw uncut footage, we are seeing what they are seeing. As they are filming the dead bodies being put into stretchers one of em starts twitching. Us in the audience knows what’s about to happen, but the people at the scene don't have a god damned idea. This is the first day of the zombie outbreak, no one knows what is going on. Sure enough the bodies come back to life and start causing shit. This opening scene was so brilliantly done that the audience gave it a huge round of applause after it was done.

The rest of the movie is shown through the eyes of several cameras. Mostly by one dude, a documentary film makers who was out in the woods with his classmates filming a mummy movie. We also see footage from security cameras, cell phones, web cames etc. This is NOT Blair Witch with zombies!!! The movie plays out as a narrative film, what we are seeing is all the footage edited together by a surviving member of the crew.

Got a standing ovation, too. Hmm.

16:04 / 10.09.07

Another good sign: the comments under this post on AICN are now heading into sniping over whether or not there was "looting" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. That it has anything to do with this movie is, well, encouraging.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:43 / 10.09.07

Just watched 28WL and was, well... fucking impressed, actually. Let's forget for a moment that Danny Boyle always claimed that 28DL wasn't a zombie movie, which it CLEARLY was... in fact it was three of them. It was Romero's trilogy crammed into one film.

Given also that Romero dropped the ball a bit with LOTD...

28WL is kind of what I'd wanted from LOTD, really. But set in London and with fast zombies. No idea who this Fresnadillo guy is, but on the strength of this he can make a GOOD zombie flick.

It's a little worrying that Romero (though I do like Land of the Dead, it was more than a little disappointing) has been utterly outclassed by a movie whose director claimed it wasn't a zombie movie, a sequel which by rights should have been terrible, and Shaun Of The Dead (I would have said "a parody", but that wouldn't have been true, because SotD was actually a fucking great zombie movie which just happened to be funny, and parody implies a cynicism which just wasn't there).

28 Weeks is not as good as 28 Days, but is still a fucking good film, if you ask me. And it should SO have been shit. All the signs were bad. There was no way an outsourced sequel would work. But somehow it really did. Despite all my pre-conceived notions that it was going to be a big pile of poo, it was fucking great.

I'm now REALLY pissed off I didn't bother seeing it at the cinema.

(Incidentally, if anyone's in London who I haven't already asked, or can make it down here when requested, I now have a camcorder, access to the local cemetery and a mate who has both powertools and the training to use them safely. I am SO making the zombie movie of my dreams as soon as I figure out how the camcorder works. You too could be an undead YouTube star).

21:16 / 10.09.07

28WL is great and was great on the big screen. My main complaint against it is that there wasn't enough Idris Elba.

Jawsus-son Starship

10:21 / 11.09.07

I had the same problem with 28wl that I had with LOTD; they both felt like "hollywood" adaptations of the film/series they were based on. With 28wl, the whole sniper on fire/helicopter attack felt like a balls out action scene that I would enjoy in a standard hollywood film, but sat in the 28 universe felt out of place.

Also, the promise of the first ten minutes, the character work that Bobby Carlyle could have done if not for the direction his character took (trying to avoid spoilers, but you know what I mean) spoiled the film a little. It could have been an interesting film with a few action packed moments, much the same as the first. Instead it was an action film with a few interesting moments.

Pyewacket The Elder

18:15 / 11.09.07

Lets be fair 28WL was thrilling in many ways but had some of the most STUPID plotting.(spoilers coming late dudes)

...Sentient zombie Begbie who...get this you won' believe it...despite being tainted with Rage spends half the film showing up enigmatically to just ... stare ... at the fleshy human kids. Oh and that's after all the refugees get safely secured in a massive room with large swingy doors and no guards - which of course psychic Zogbie finds in NANOSECONDS.

If it weren't for those two elements it would have been more than just some good thrills. And yes I think we can call it and the original 'zombie movies'.

ANYWAY in terms of Zombie films has anyone read 'World War Z'? This is one of the best reads I've had in years and apparently is being made into a film by (I think) Brad Pitt's production company.

READ WORLD WAR Z. Then pray for movie. Then send me a tenner in the post. It will be amazin'.

18:42 / 11.09.07

READ WORLD WAR Z. Then pray for movie. Then send me a tenner in the post. It will be amazin'.

You mean, like this one?

Am I the only one who enjoyed Land of the Dead in this board? Well, maybe it's because it's incredibly hard (if not impossible) to get a good z-movie in my turf (Shaun of the Dead went straight to video, for instance)

Pyewacket The Elder

18:57 / 11.09.07

uuuuuUUUuuuuEEeeeeEeeerrrrr Megatron brains make good link me eat dem..

Land was okay but felt a bit 'Dated John Carpenter Boys Own' at times. Dunno...it just wasn't totally cool and that my friend is the only factor required.

But really DO read the WWZ book it's a great book beyond the fact it's da zombies - nicely written with originality and freshness of rotting face. reeeeaaaaadddd<

19:32 / 11.09.07

I don't know, I thought it was pretty cool. In fact, I think it was Romero's attempt to round up as many cool characters he could in his already established world/mithology. The Green building was cool (talking about a zombie decoy), Dennis Hopper evil landlord routine was cool, the Z-figthing warrior team was cool. The semi-intelligent (almost Monster Island lich master-like) zombie leader was cool, Dead Reckoning was damn cool.

But my favorite thing was the Cholo character. Specially when, after being bitten, him saying he "always wanted to see how the other half lived". I mean, he could have being a selfish, naïve, terrorist, white-man henchman murderous asshole, but man! did he have some BALLS!

And his spike gun was cool too.

Pyewacket The Elder

20:34 / 11.09.07

I hear ya dude. i guess one mans cool is another's mans bit of hammy old cock. Actually that's way too harsh on LOTD - I guess it just didn't feel right to me is all.

In retrospect my fave part of the film should not just come down to a homage to the wonderful 'Carnival of Souls'. But yes the film had its cool moments.

21:10 / 11.09.07

i guess one mans cool is another's mans bit of hammy old cock

I hear ya, man!

18:16 / 11.12.07

Here is interview with Lloyd Kaufman, director of Poultrygeist.

It gets better once you get past the Schindler's List jokes. Oh, Troma.

14:14 / 28.03.08

Interesting hype about the (Straczynski-penned) script for World War Z.

Calling it "Children of Men with Zombies."

"The world of the film reminds me of CHILDREN OF MEN on the page. Realistic but set in the near-future, in the aftermath of the zombie wars. We see a flashback to Gerry being given his assignment to write a report about 'where the system worked, where it didn't, how and in what ways the various organizational infrastructures failed.' It's a politically shitty job because no one wants to know that they were responsible for anything that went wrong. Gerry's hesitant because it's going to take at least six months away from his family, just as the world is starting to right itself. He takes the job, and as he travels to his first interview, we see how hard travel has become. I hate going through airport security these days, but at least I don't have to strip naked and subject myself to a blood test. Yet."

Could be very good indeed.

15:15 / 28.03.08

I want to read the book now.

You read it, Granticus?

15:36 / 28.03.08

I've heard the audiobook—an abridged version, but performed by a full cast. The conceit of the book is that it's an oral history, you see, with various survivors telling their own stories in a series of interviews—so the narrative is fragmented, accretionary.

In my perfect world, the film of WORLD WAR Z would look like a Ken Burns documentary—talking-head interviews and sepia-toned still photographs, black-and-white faux-archival footage, soundtracked by lonesome banjos and weepy fiddles.

15:41 / 28.03.08

Yes. It's pretty good, actually - exactly what the subtitle says: "An Oral History of the Zombie Apocalypse" or whatever. So it's just a collection of various people describing their one bit of a globe-spanning phenomenon.

There's a plot, and there's character, but the characters only exist for 10 pages max, I think (one or two are important people who feature in each other's stories) and the plot as a whole is really separate from each of them. Some people are bound to hate it as a result - it really is just like reading an ethnography or anthropological study. One interview is one of the astronauts on the ISS. Another is with a guy whose job used to be oceanography but suddenly became deep sea zombie cleanup. The "war hero" stories are better told than some of the "international" stories.

It was written, I think, with a documentary in mind.

EDIT: Ha! X-post with Jack.

16:12 / 28.03.08

I actually read about this a couple of days ago. Just soliciting opinions, really, although I'm sure folks will find the description of the book's structure interesting.

02:34 / 10.04.08

The Beyond
I think Lucio Fulci's House by the Cemetary and the Beyond are pretty good zombie flicks as well as Soavi's Cemetary Man. Other classics I recommend are Tales from the crypt the movie 1972 starring Joan Collins.
Here are some clips:
House by the Cemetary
The Beyond
Cemetary Man
Tales from the Crypt

03:47 / 13.04.08

Cinderella

I don't know if you'd count the Korean Cinderella horror film as a zombie movie. It's creepy more like a ghost story in the vein of the grudge. I thought it was a real good horror film check it out if you have the chance.....

Cinderella

16:19 / 14.04.08

What makes this zombie-film-like?

19:13 / 14.04.08

She's clearly trying to get to that girl's (delicious, gourmet) meal...

03:27 / 15.04.08

Sorry, It's more like a ghost story in the vein of the Grudge than a zombie film. Cinderella deals with the horrors of cosmetic surgery where girls go under the knife to look beautiful by a crazed plastic surgeon that lost her daughter. But there are some zombie like moments like when a girl strapped into her chair sees a reanimated girl with her face sliced off turns and looks at her and she sees her slowly get up from the bed beside her and can do nothing since she is strapped in.......

scene from Cinderella

06:34 / 15.04.08

Return of the Living Dead III
One of my absolute favorite Zombie film is Return of the Living Dead III. A female tries to refrain from eatting her lover as she slowly turns into a zombie......

Return of the Living Dead III trailer

The Serpent and the Rainbow

Other essentials I think are The Serpent and the Rainbow where they show some zombie rituals, the old Hammer studios A Plague of Zombies, Bela Lugosi in White Zombie,.....

The Serpent and the Rainbow trailer
A Plague of Zombies
White Zombie trailer

08:02 / 15.04.08

Quick Tip: at the end of an image following the last quotation mark " after the image address press spacebar and type in width=300 then an arrow >
Like so:
" width=300>
It's all in the format text, post links and images wiki
It'll stop images from breaking the frame, etc.

Return of the Living Dead III is actually quite good or, at least, the premise is.
Plus it has Julie from the OC.

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