Zombie-Thon: October 2010

[ScottotD]

Trick 'r Treat is awesome imo

[Rude]

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Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis

Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis just isn't a very good movie. It never really attempts to stay true to the previous films, at least in spirit. Instead we're left with a pretty generic little monster movie filmed on the cheap somewhere in the Eastern Bloc.

Surprisingly, the plot kind of picks up where Return Of The Living Dead 3 left off. Except this time the military has apparently decided to go with the whole "zombie exoskeleton" thing. So, in order to continue their experiments, they begin doing the usual stuff. Ya' know... sneaking into Chernobyl, buying Trioxin from Russian gangsters and stealing teenagers from local hospitals.

But this time they kidnapped the wrong kid! His friends quickly pile into the Mystery Machine, solve the mystery of the zombies and expose Old Man Coruthers! Well, something like that anyway. Continue Reading...

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

[Rude]

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Return Of The Living Dead: Rave To The Grave

So just a few years after the events of Necropolis, the kids find a way to turn everyone's favorite weaponized zombie gas into an awesome new drug... and just in time for a Halloween rave!

Oh, but you know what? It'll totally turn you into a zombie. What a bummer, right? Oh well... that doesn't stop those crazy Romanian kids! Before you know it the huge rave turns into a zombie feast, and it's up to a couple hilarious INTERPOL agents to save the day.

No, seriously... that's the plot. I swear! Continue Reading...

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

[Relaxing Dragon]

Rude, will you be getting to Pontypool in this marathon of yours? I'm always curious what others think of that one.

George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead

Romero's at it again, with this sixth installment to his "...of the Dead" series. Here, a group of renegade national guardsmen (briefly seen in the previous film, Diary of the Dead) head out to an island off the east coast of the United States. They hope to find sanctuary, but instead end up in the middle of a decades-long feud between two families, one that even a zombie outbreak won't quell.

I enjoyed this film, a bit more so than I expected. Romero's been on shaky ground lately, even in the genre he essentially created. Diary is a movie that I find harder and harder to defend each time I think about it, and while Land was pretty good, it just didn't hold up to the greatness of the original three. This movie is definitely a step up form Diary, helped by having a more solid plotline, better and more likable characters, and just generally feeling more competent (I blame the restrictions of the "found footage" angle on the previous' entries failing in this department). It also has the most humorous and lighthearted feel out of all the movies, and it tends to work more often than it doesn't. As usual Romero keeps with the "people are the worst monster of all" theme, to the point where the zombies just seem like a random nuisance than any kind of real threat.

The Good: Core set of characters are an interesting bunch, particularly the main soldier and the "good" family head. There's plenty of Western tropes to help give this a unique feel to it. A  number of good laughs to be found. A rather unique idea on how to live with the living dead (especially effective in the scene where they find some zombies chained up and slowly re-learning their former occupations. It's hints of Bub all over again).

The Bad: Apart from the core set, we hardly get to know any of the other characters (which makes it weird to watch them die, since you don't even know their names). While certainly a watchable and enjoyable film, definitely not one that's on par with the original trilogy (or even Land, thanks to the larger scope of that one). The humor that doesn't work feels grating, and can be very awkward if shoehorned in after a serious moment.

The Ugly: Too many CGI gore effects and digital blood. It's all very obvious, and they look even worse when the instances of physical effect gore show up.

[Rude]

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Just a quick instructional:

Original YouTube URL:
http: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXXXX

Required Forum Format:
[ flash=425,344]http://www.youtube.com/v/XXXXXX[/flash ]

You can change the width and height, but the important part comes after the equal sign. In this case it is= XXXXXX
You also need to include the opening and closing brackets without spaces! I couldn't do it for this instructional, otherwise the forum would read the HTML rather than the actual text.

So basically copy and past this: [ flash=425,344]http://www.youtube.com/v/XXXXXX[/flash]
Delete any spaces, and replace the XXXXXXs with whatever appears after the equal sign in the original YouTube URL.

Sorry, guys. I know it's a pain... but i'm not a moderator, so i can't do anything about it.

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

BTW- I'll be back later to give you the heads up on Pontypool and Survival!

[Relaxing Dragon]

Weird, I thought that's what I did the first time I tried. Working now though, so thanks for your help.

[Rude]

...

I actually just watched Pontypool not that long ago, and thought that it was a very fresh and interesting concept. The whole "understanding of language" as the infection itself was really cool. But i don't think the movie did a great job of conveying that concept. In fact, some of the later scenes came off like comedy routines as the characters tried to relearn language in order to avoid infection.

The beginning was great though. The actor who played a radio DJ did it so well that i was sucked in pretty quick. Which is impressive because nothing really happens for the first third of the film. Overall i thought it was a great little film with a cool concept. But that it kinda' fumbled the ball towards the end.

Anyway, this year i've put Dead Air on the list. I hear that it's practically the same film... so we'll see how it compares.

Nice review on Survival, by the way. I think that your thoughts on the film itself, and the entire Romero series, are right on.

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

[Rude]

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Zombie 5: Killing Birds

Did you know that Zombie 5 was actually released one year before Zombie 4? Yeah, that's because it's actually just a random horror movie called Killing Birds. Some sneaky distributors knew that they could slap the Zombie label on any old thing and gullible suckers like me would run out and buy it!

Okay, i'm not really that gullible... i actually knew exactly what i was in for, because Zombie 5 is sort of infamous among zombie movie fans. So it's best to just think of the entire series as some kind of loose anthology or something.

Anyway, Killing Birds follows the boring adventures of a few Louisianian ornithology students as they trek around in the woods studying birds. Sounds pretty exciting, right? Well, eventually they take refuge in an abandoned house where undead ghosts begin to attack them. Continue Reading...

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

[Compound]

Night of the Living Dead : Reanimated

After the dead return to life, survivors take refuge in an isolated farmhouse....

Okay, most people are aware that Night of the Living Dead is public domain. Well, this is a film based around this fact. In it, teams of animators took scenes from NotLD and animated them, using the original soundtrack. And it...well. It's really a mixed bag. There's a wide variety of animation styles here. Some of the art is photorealistic, some painted, some cartoonish. There are scenes done with dolls, puppets, Poser-like programs and I think there's a scene or two with people recreating scenes using Garry's mod. Unfortunately, a lot of the animation is lousy. There are a number of teams who seem to be taking screenshots from the original film, running them through a photoshop filter and then animating them. There's a number of teams rotoshopping the film, and then using those images as the result. There's some Clutch Cargo-ish animation. There's a group who took pictures of themselves re-enacting the film and animated that. And then there's this:



You can't tell from a screen shot, but this is rotoshopped, the people turned into monochromatic angular images and then scribbled on. It looks horrible and is quite distracting, but it gets a lot of screen time in the film.

It's an interesting idea, but the animation is so uneven that it's hard to enjoy it as every few minutes there's animation that just makes me as an animation fan wince. Plot wise? It's Night of the Living Dead. Except at times, the actors become cartoon mice and cats. The soundtrack, for some reason, is noticeably sped up, probably  for legal reasons. (Nevermind. I had VLC playing it at 1.5 times speed. and didn't notice.) Anyway, it's a neat idea, but there should have been better standards for getting work into it.

Best Scene: There's some very good animation ihere. But unfortunately, it never lasts very long before moving onto another style. (The longest segments of animation seem to also have the worst quality of animation.)

Worst Scene: The crappy animation. Folks, when the people doing Clutch Cargo animation or using sock puppets look like they put more effort into their work that you did, maybe you ought to reevaluate your work. 

Funniest Scene: There's one scene re-enacted with Furbies. I just find that to be intensely amusing.


Side note: I'm aware of a recreation of Star Wars where different groups are each filming an individual scene, but that's a fan film, rather than a commercial product.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

There's a number of teams rotoshopping the film, and then using those images as the result.

Wondered what Ralph Bakshi's been up to....   

[Rude]

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Psychomania

Although it's actually a very popular cult film in Britain, Psychomania<img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zombithon-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B003Y7F1P0" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none!important;margin:0!important;" /> often finds itself just outside the peripheral of most zombie movie fans. Most likely that's due to the fact that these aren't your typical mindless, flesh-eating zombies.

Instead, members of a violent motorcycle gang called The Living Dead simply return to life after committing suicide. There's some form of black magic involved, but really the only requirement seems to be that they must believe that they will return. Continue Reading...

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

[mrbasehart]

I also watched Survival of the Dead this week.  Romero seems to have a big problem in maintaining a large group of people each with their own personalities - a lot of characters featured in the movie get maybe one scene (if they're lucky) that defines them before they get shuffled back into the pack.   I didn't like the basic premise either, nor how the zombie world is handled.  There are flashes of good stuff, but I thought Diary of the Dead (no matter how flawed that film is) maintains a greater sense of threat and suspense than Survival does. 

[Rude]

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The Plague Of The Zombies

The Plague of the Zombies<img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zombithon-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B001MBTSPO" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none!important;margin:0!important;" /> is another classic British zombie film from Hammer Horror. While generally a good movie all around, i believe it's André Morell's immense acting talent that lends this production a bit of class not usually found in most zombie films.

The plot borrows many familiar elements from Bram Stoker's Dracula; when a small Cornish village is beset by a mysterious plague, the town's young doctor sends for the help of his former professor. Their investigation eventually leads them to the "haunted" estate of the village squire, who is secretly practicing Haitian Voodoo. Continue Reading...

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

[Rude]

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Awaken The Dead

Alright... so an assassin's daughter, a Jehovah's Witness and a priest walk into a zombie safehouse. Sounds like a bad joke, right? Unfortunately that's just the beginning of Awaken the Dead<img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zombithon-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B000V53C0O" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none!important;margin:0!important;" />.

We're basically treated to the old, cliché zombie plot, where survivors hold up in a house until eventually fleeing for safety. There's a subplot explaining the relationship between a few of the characters, and linking the zombie outbreak to a military bioweapon. But all of that takes a backseat to the horrible video effects featured throughout the entire movie. Continue Reading...

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com

[Rude]

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Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium

Because Taurus Entertainment actually owned the rights to the original, Day of the Dead 2: Contagium<img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=zombithon-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B000AQ69RM" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none!important;margin:0!important;" /> isn't technically an "unofficial" sequel... no matter how badly Romero fans want to dismiss it. But if you've ever seen Contagium, you certainly can't blame them for trying!

The first part of the film takes place in 1968 where a military hospital is experiencing a zombie outbreak. In the confusion, one man manages to escape with a vile of the contagium before eventually being shot.

Flash forward about thirty years, and a group of mental patients discover the vile while cleaning a field or something. Of course they accidentally expose themselves to the virus and all hell breaks loose back at the local psychiatric ward. Continue Reading...

-Rude
www.zombiethon.wordpress.com