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LenoreLenore is a cute, precocious, curious little girl.  She loves cats and other animals (even if she often, presumably accidentally, kills them).   She’s also, quite doubtlessly, dead.  It’s really not clear whether or not Lenore is a zombie.  What we do know is that she’s dead but she’s still wiggling so let’s induct her, at least provisionally, into the zed-word wing for now.

Lenore is the comic creation of artist Roman Dirge and was the star of a series of web shorts still available on YouTube.  First appearing in 1998 in an all too brief comic series, now available as collected graphic novels, published by Slave Labor Graphics the character got a second wind in 2009 with a new series published by Titan Books.  Although news has been quiet for some time the character so impressed Neil Gaiman that he attached himself to a planned film version of the story as executive producer.

The comic was dark and goth before dark and goth got popular and then cliché.  It’s hilarious in that perfect way that makes you feel the tiniest bit guilty about laughing your ass off at a little dead girl.

BoomerValve Corporation’s cooperative masterpiece, “Left 4 Dead“, features a horrific selection of “special infected” to destroy even the most competent team’s sense of control.  One of the most recognizable, and to the suffering team one of the most feared, is the bloated, bile-soaked Boomer.

The Boomer is a meddlesome enemy designed to confuse and weaken your group.  It calls other infected to you while lowering your defenses with its blinding bile.  While easy enough to handle at long range Boomers have the uncomfortable habit of getting close at the most inopportune times.

Boomer’s are also, for lack of a better word, just plain “icky”. They’re a ponderous, roiling, pulsating sac of zombie-attracting bile.  They gurgle and belch constantly in a way that will haunt your dreams.  Here’s to you, Boomer!  Please stay way (way) over there.

IMDB, World War ZWorld War Z” on IMDB

Action/Horror – 2013 – 113 Minutes

There were a lot of hopes and expectations attached to this project.  At nearly 200 million dollars, it was the first blockbuster-budgeted zombie movie.  Starring Brad Pitt and headed by “Quantum of Solace” director Marc Forster it had superstar power to spare.  It was based on the beloved cult classic book, “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” by Max Brooks.  On paper, at least, it had everything.

So, did it rise to the expectations?  Was all that money worth it?

Well, kinda. There are two big issues with the movie that drag it down.  First, and simplest, is that to gain a more marketable PG-13 rating much of the potential horror was neutered.  There are still some jumps here and there but the overall tone is rather tame.  You’ll see significantly more disturbing images on television’s “The Walking Dead” than you do here.

That’s not to suggest that you absolutely need gore to make a good zombie story, but it does lead in to the second problem: that this is, in no recognizable way, based on the book.  The book is a selection of intensely interesting scenarios across the entire history of a world-wide zombie outbreak.  We hear about the early days of confusion, the years of survivors living isolated with the infected and finally the heroic efforts to turn the tide and reclaim our civilization.

The movie ignored the “big questions” of zombies so well covered in the book.  Instead it took the simplest view available.  Despite the obvious, the infected were dead.  Period.  There was never discussion of a cure or treatment.  All focus was on a vaccine for the uninfected.  As the movie only covered a few weeks, there was no opportunity to cover issues of extended survival, environmental issues or the psychological costs.  The movie is purely an outbreak story.

(As an aside, producers: the book, as written, would make an excellent long-form anthology television series.  You’ve been looking for something to compete with “The Walking Dead”, right?  Get on it, will you.)

Pitt is a former United Nations investigator blackmailed back into duty to protect his family.  His goal is to discover “patient zero” of the outbreak and discover a vaccine.  The premise may have worked as a way to introduce some of the variety found in the book but as we only visit three locations in our search – let’s call them “Expositionland”, “Actionville” and “Resolutionopolis” – we lose all of the scale and depth that the book painstakingly crafted.

Expositionland is the most traditional segment.  After an excellent extended introduction to the situation we get down to business with a visit to a South Korean military base.  A dark and rainy night, trained soldiers and the living dead.  We learn what we need to know and we trim the cast down a bit.  On a small scale the zombies are truly no better or worse than any other quality movie, but on the large scale they’re a sight to behold.

That’s where Actionville comes in with the overrunning of Jerusalem.  We see hundreds, or even thousands, of agile, voracious undead overrunning the city.  The movement is gorgeously choreographed and reminiscent of an insect swarm or flowing water; inexorable, alien and without remorse.  The complex, multi-layered action rewards multiple viewings.  Truly, Actionville is the soul of this movie.

Resolutionopolis returns to a more intimate, traditional approach as our hero, after an aerial misadventure, ends up at a partially overrun W.H.O. facility in Wales.  The whole sequence is, of course, all about wrapping things up.  This is the longest segment and unfortunately the slowest as well.  This is also where concessions made to the ratings board are most obvious.  Where the earlier segments were able to hide the more adult imagery under darkness or grand, sweeping, long-shots, this segment is well-lit, up-close and personal and conspicuous for lack of focus on the action.

The final few minutes of the movie present a narrated, quasi-montage bringing closure to the world-wide situation. While many of these seem drawn from the book, all they really do is remind you how much better it might have been to have spent the last two hours with them instead.

This is far from a bad film and is a definite must-see for genre fans.  It’s also, undeniably, a movie designed by committee to be more marketable than effective.  To leverage the name of a popular book while discarding everything that made it interesting.  Those who were hoping for a “Spiderman” style genre Renaissance and a flood of high-profile, high-budget, high-quality zombie movies will likely be disappointed.

Bypass GrandpaAs we’ve made clear in the past, we gleefully consider anybody that’s been resuscitated by medical science to be at least an honorary zombie.  Unfortunately we were able to witness this first-hand recently when grandpa up and decided to have himself a heart-attack.

Luckily he made it to the hospital on time. Unluckily he ended up requiring a triple coronary artery bypass graft.  Doctor’s opened him from neck to navel, stopped his heart, pulled some spare parts from his leg, bolted them on and then closed him up.  All of this (plus, as you can see, the tubes, electrodes and monitors) push him handily into the prestigious cyborg-zombie category.

That was three days ago.  He’s doing great, has been moved out of the ICU and is currently free of all visible cybernetic enhancement (but we know they’re in there).  Barring complications he’ll be home in a day or two.  My mother promises to watch closely for any tell-tale moaning, shambling or odd-cortex-shaped-cravings.

Sure, someday science may cover the globe in ravenous, cannibalistic, reanimated corpses.  We’ll probably be a little annoyed with it then.  Right now it saved my dad and my kid’s grandpa.  Right now, science is just aces with us.

Photo from IMDB.com.

Andre, Luda and their little, bitey baby bump. Photo from IMDB.com.

The 2004 remake of George Romero’s 1978 classic “Dawn of the Dead” is a damn decent zombie movie in its own right.  The movies transition from the adrenaline-fueled “first shock” horror of the first hours of an outbreak into the suspenseful, constant tension of living in a zombie world.  Our survivors, a much larger and varied group than in the original, are able to fortify a large shopping mall which is soon surrounded by thousands of walking corpses.

Two of the survivors, Andre and Luda, are expecting a baby.  We all know from the start that this isn’t going to end well, but the movie teases and distracts us from the inevitable with a commendable subtlety.  When the reveal is finally made the mood is perfect and the tension thick and heavy.

Poor Luda, we barely knew you!  Poor Andre, you sad, broken bastard!  Poor baby bitey, you freakish little slab of nightmare with insanity sauce.  Here’s to you all!

Michonne and Her Pets - 01My family recently went on vacation without me (long, but not a completely sad, story).  The good thing is, being guilty, they bought me lots of presents!  I already talked about most of my haul on DepressedPress.com but I also got some nifty zombie-related swag as well.

I’ve seen these Funko Vinyl Figures all over the place.  It seems like they’ve made deals with anybody that owns a character.  I didn’t actually realize that they had partnered with “The Walking Dead” but I suppose that since everybody else has it was just a matter of time.

After being introduced in the comic, Michonne quickly became a fan favorite (which also tended to make her a punching bag for author Robert Kirkman who loves to make us squirm).  Michonne is introduced as a hard, quiet survivor with a well-used katana and two, chained de-jawed “pet” zombies that act as camouflage protecting her from other walkers.  This combo pack of three figures recreates that iconic first appearance (later recreated wonderfully in the TV show by actress Danai Gurira).

(Also pictured is some zombie gum from BlueQ they brought me.  It’s just gum.  Expensive gum.  I’m not going to do a review of gum.)

The figures are nicely rendered and heavily detailed.  They have the same super-deformed heads and simplified facial features that are the trademark of the line (which I’ve always assumed was at least somewhat inspired by my good friend Sackboy).  I’m slightly disappointed that the figures lack actual chains but I’ll get over it.  These are not toys: there’s no moving parts or accessories.  These are purely set-and-forget display pieces.

I’m not sure what was paid for these (it was a gift!) but it looks like they sell for $25-$30 at the regular outlets.  This is more than I’d likely be willing to spend on myself but as a gift, I’m happy.  Obviously, if you’re not a fan of the super-deformed style then you should steer clear, but these are well done figures of an excellent character.  They’re cute enough to be an everyday display item, but still macabre enough to satisfy real zombie fans.

IMDB, MST3K, Zombie NightmareIt took Mystery Science Theater 3000 to make “Zombie Nightmare” watchable.  Even then you may have your problems (as, for example, fully half the movie seems to have been filmed at night with no lights) but at least you’ll laugh.

Jon Mikl Thor, Canadian body builder and heavy metal musician who bills himself humbly as “The Legendary Rock Warrior” plays good natured mama’s boy Tony Washington.  Tony is killed by a group of teenage 80’s hair-dos in a fast car.  As Tom Servo so musically puts it (to the tune of “Amore”): “When your car hits a guy and his body goes fly, that’s a dead guy.”

His mother, thankfully, is owed a favor by the local voodoo priestess.  She drags him back from death to allow his rampaging corpse to get his revenge.  She does this, by the way, through the cunning over-use of candles and make-up.

The movie is beyond terrible, even for Canada (I kid!) and Thor’s attempt at “zombie” looks pretty much like his attempt at “not zombie”.  He wanders around with a baseball bat, grunts, eventually runs accidentally into somebody that might deserve to die and then things happen.  Mostly off camera.  Still, the movie’s failure is MST3K’s success and for that we celebrate Tony Washington!

Xerxes the Zombie Poodle[I just realized that I screwed up the publish date on this and, horrors!, there was no zombie for over half the week!  I’m not sure you were all able to survive, but if you didn’t send me a pic and maybe you’ll be the next zombie of the week!]

Apparently artistic poodle grooming is a thing people do.  I’m not sure why that’s a surprise to me at all; I already knew there were professional potato carvers.  There are also people who make a living pretending to be celebrities on twitter.  So who am I judge?

Anyway, this is Xerxes the Zombie Poodle.  I believe that his means his name is “Xerxes”, that’s he a poodle and that he’s a zombie.  Really, pretty self-explanatory.  Yes his beloved owner,  Amy “Bullet” Brown, turned him into a zombie but let’s not hold that against her.  He seems happy enough.

I fear that he seems “happy enough” because of the surprising number of hollowed-out, licked clean noggins around the dog-house but, well, he seems happy enough.

Woot, Zombie Survival Guide LunchboxWoot! is selling a couple of snazzy tin lunch boxes as part of its “Back 2 School” sale.  There are actually many designs to choose from although only two of them have the good taste to be zombie themed.  Pictured is the Zombie Survival Box and also available is the Warning: Please Do Not Feed the Zombies Box.

This is your average 7.75″ x 6.75″ x 4.13 tin lunchbox and, as far as I can tell, is just the plain box – no zombie sammich holder, no zombie Thermos and no zombie juice box caddy.  Each box is $8.00 (minus the usual penny sacrifice to the gods of psychological marketing).

iZombie, GwenGwen Price is a complicated chick.  Well worth getting to know if you have the chance but “baggage” is definitely a word that comes to mind.  She’s unsure about her career, has some trouble connecting with her friends and has a really hard time with relationships.  She also has to eat a human brain once a month or so or else she’ll devolve into a senseless, rampaging zombie.

iZombie unfortunately ended after 28 amazing issues but is still available at the better comic shops and digitally.  Written by the always interesting Chris Roberson and drawn in an amazing pop-art style by Mike Allred it was a story that crossed genre and generational gaps.

It began with the insanely interesting concept that a zombie needs to eat brains to retain their humanity but suffered the memories and desires of those from whom they partake.  After eating a brain (readily available in her position as a grave digger at a eco-friendly graveyard) Gwen would be nagged by the inherited memories until she took action.  The series could have rested on this impressive, but admittedly minor, stroke of genius and become a simple anthology.  Instead it proceeded to expand its scope into nearly every supernatural genre in the most wonderfully bizarre ways.

Gwen’s best friends were an amiable, air-headed ghost and a neurotic were-terrier.  Later she becomes involved with a group of entrepreneurial vampires and the ancient order of monster hunters investigating them.  There’s a group of government-sponsored monsters named for (and led by) dead presidents.   There’s a 2,000 year-old mummy, a possessed chimpanzee and yes, there are Nazis.  There are also quite a few zombies.  At one point, at least, way too many zombies for the good citizens of Eugene, Oregon.

iZombie is a sharply written, deftly drawn orgy of genres and ideas.  It’s a must-read for anybody looking for an original, clean take on zombie mythos and concepts.  Until we do the right thing and complete a full review of the book just trust us on this one: spend some time with Gwen and her friends.  You won’t be disappointed.