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Movie Review: Warm Bodies

Posted by kiwidust on June 23, 2013
Posted in: Movies. 3 comments

IMDB, Warm Bodies“Warm Bodies” on IMDB

Comedy/Horror –  2013 – 98 Minutes

This may be the first big-budget entry into the growing collection of zom-rom-coms.  This may also be the most pure example of the sub-genre.  While films like “A Little Bit Zombie” [Our Review] or “Fido” [Our Review] have certain elements, their focus lies elsewhere; this one is all about the “rom”.

The basic story is a very loose – very loose –  interpretation of “Romeo and Juliet” (there’s even a balcony scene).  “R” (he can’t remember that rest of his name) is a singular Zombie.  He’s introspective, inquisitive and longs for something more.  When he sees Julie, a part of a scavenger squad from the walled city nearby, he’s instantly smitten.  Luckily, he’s just killed her boyfriend and eaten his brains (which, of course, gives him all the memories that those brains had) so he even knows a little bit about her.

The zombies in this movie just barely meet the definition.  They mill about well-enough but the script needs them to be approachable so they’re far from scary.  They have only the rudimentary make-up and generally have expressive faces and clear skin.  They talk (sort of) and have relationships (sort of).  The exception are the villainous “Bonies”, zombies that have given up, stripped the flesh from their bones (which somehow makes them faster and stronger) and will now attack anything.

R and Julie (get it?!) spend a fun, montage-fueled few days together.  When Julie tries to get back home R convinces his fellow corpses to let her go.  This awakens something in them.  They find themselves remembering their previous lives, their speech improves and they even begin to dream again.  The bonies don’t like this.

The movie is more “romantic” than “zombie” by any measure.  It’s just as predictable and simplistic as any other rom-com and just as annoying in the particulars.  The resolution is totally sappy and heavy-handed as hell but in the context it works perfectly.   I suppose the simplest way to frame this is to say that if you like rom-coms then you’ll really like this.  If, like me, you’re not so hot on them but do like zombies… well, it’s passable I guess.

Zombie Shirts at Woot!

Posted by kiwidust on June 18, 2013
Posted in: News, Products. Leave a Comment

ShirtWoot, Zombie NoodlesIn addition to a brand new zombie-themed shirt-of-the-day (pictured) Shirt.Woot has an entire collection of Zombie Shirts available all this week on Woot Plus!  Here’s a quick list of them with my unsolicited one-line reviews:

The shirts are all $15 bucks and from my past experience, decent quality for the price.  Go get one and show your Z-pride today!

Zombie Apocalypse at ThinkGeek.com

Posted by kiwidust on June 17, 2013
Posted in: News, Products. Leave a Comment

ThinkGeekLogoThinkGeek.com, our favorite purveyor of all things useless but absolutely required, is having a Zombie Apocalypse Clearance Event!  There’s no indication of when the sale (or civilization as we know it) ends so get while the getting is good.  Unfortunately this looks to be a general clearance sale rather than Zombie-specific merchandise but there are hundreds of items available.  Man does not not-live by brains alone, am I right?!

Zombie of the Week: Tarman

Posted by kiwidust on June 16, 2013
Posted in: Zombie of the Week. 1 comment

Return of the Living Dead, Tarman

The 80’s were a heyday of sorts for campy zombie movies.  Zombies were not yet popular enough to make any of the experimental stuff commercially viable and Dan O’Bannon didn’t want to mimic George Romero.  Instead he made 1985’s “The Return of the Dead” the prototype for the modern zombie comedy (or “Zom-com” for short).

Digital effects were still pretty terrible which didn’t matter because they were too expensive for the budget.  Practical effects were the name of the game and Tarman was one of the most memorable.  Played to perfection by professional puppeteer (and naturally skeletal) Allan Trautman it’s reported that most of the film effects budgets went into the creation of Tarman.

The design was meant to convey that immersion in the Zombie creating 2-4-5 Trioxin had melted away the zombie’s skin and much of the musculature.  Trautman’s slower, bent stance and spread limbs was his way of intimating that more traditional, upright movements might cause the eroded zombie to literally fall to pieces.

Tarman was so visually striking that even non-genre fans remember him.  The excellent visuals coupled with Trautman’s truly disturbing movement created one of the most iconic zombies in modern film.

Crafty Zombie Snot!

Posted by kiwidust on June 16, 2013
Posted in: Crafts. 1 comment

Zombie Snot!My daughter wanted a “Science Party” for her eleventh birthday.  For one of the activities we let them each create a cup of fake snot.  This is an easy activity that would complement any horror/zombie themed party.

Materials for this include:

  • Water
  • Elmer’s (or other white) Glue
  • Borax (a laundry detergent booster, found in the laundry aisle)
  • Food coloring (optional, but white snot isn’t much fun)

Mix 1/8 cup of borax into 1/2 liter warm water.  Mix or shake until (most of) the borax dissolves. Let this cool.  In another container, stir 2 spoonful’s of glue and 3 spoonful’s of water together (note that we actually doubled this for the results in the pictures).  Add food coloring to decorate.

Finally add a spoonful of borax solution you made earlier and slowly mix.  You should now have some very fine snot!
(Borax is mildly toxic, so don’t eat this stuff unless you’re already dead.)

Here’s a quick video to give you an idea of what you’re getting yourself into:

While the little girls in our example chose bright, primary colors we would suggest going heavy on the green, yellow and red for more authentic zombie experience. Have fun!

Zombie of the Week: Madeleine Short

Posted by kiwidust on June 10, 2013
Posted in: Zombie of the Week. Leave a Comment

White Zombie, Madeleine ShortWhite Zombie [IMDB, Wikipedia] is the story of how a corrupt plantation owner and an evil voodoo master turn the beautiful Madeleine Short into a zombie slave.  Although an independent film it starred Bela Lugosi at the height of his career (less than a year after “Dracula” in fact).  It is widely considered to be the first zombie feature film.

It was also considered to be pretty terrible by the critics of the time.

Reviews included such gems as  “[The film is] interesting only in measure of its complete failure” and “The plot…is really ridiculous, but not so startlingly so as the acting.” It was one of the only American horror movies to be approved for distribution in Nazi Germany (which seems a dubious honor at best).

Madeleine, the titular zombie, was played by former silent movie star Madge Bellamy who reportedly earned $5,000 for her work on the film.  She later recalled that Lugosi would kiss her hand as she appeared on set each day.  Unfortunately her star faded early and she suffered financial issues most of her life.  The first movie zombie died at the impressive age of 90 in 1990.

Movie Review: A Little Bit Zombie

Posted by kiwidust on June 6, 2013
Posted in: BEBE 2013, Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters, Movies. 2 comments

IMDB, A Little Bit Zombie“A Little Bit Zombie” on IMDB

Comedy – 2012 – 87 Minutes

This was our second selection for Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2013 and ended up being our favorite by far.  It has become, in fact, one of my daughters favorite movies.

The premise is pretty damn novel: a mosquito drinks from a zombie and then from our hero, Steve, who acquires the traits of a zombie but retains his senses.  The inability to feel pain is kind of fun, at first, but the need to eat brains (and an inability to eat anything else) becomes quickly problematic.

You see, Steve is actually on a weekend couples getaway with his girl, his sister and her boyfriend.  The plan was to spend the whole time planning out the perfect wedding for his demanding fiancée.  His new situation means that their plans have to change.

If you’ve spent any time with SyFy Channel original series then you’ll recognize most of the cast.  Many of them have starring roles in shows like “Sanctuary”, “Being Human” and “Primeval: New World”.  If you’re a fan of these shows (which we are) then the movie definitely gets an easy likability bump.

Not that it really needs it.  The jokes are silly, but deft.  The acting and staging is all high quality.  The script is clever and quick.  The only real complaint is that the movie really didn’t know how to end.  Things go off the rails a bit then veer back and everything just kind of stops.  That’s a minor complaint in the larger scheme.

Zombie comedy is hard (which is why, with few exceptions, most of it devolves to fart and dick jokes) and doing anything surprising or new with zombies is even harder.  This movie succeeds at both.  It’s one of the more likable movies, overall, that we’ve seen and an excellent family selection (this is a very soft “R” rating) for zombie fans.

Zombie of the Week: Zombie Michael Jackson

Posted by kiwidust on June 2, 2013
Posted in: Zombie of the Week. Leave a Comment

If there’s one thing that both forgiving fans and devoted haters can agree on it’s that Michael Jackson was best dead.  The music video for “Thriller” was in all ways a full theatrical production.  With a running time of nearly 14 minutes, a screenplay and direction by John Landis (“The Blues Brothers”, “Animal House”, “An American Werewolf in London”) and creature effects by the legendary Rick Baker (“Star Wars”, “Men in Black”, “Hellboy”) no expense was spared.  It even contained a lengthy spoken word section by horror cinema god Vincent Price.

The video was released on December 2, 1983 and quickly sold over 9 million copies (on VHS no less).  It’s been entered into the National Film Registry (the first music video to be so honored) and won two Grammy’s.  It’s estimated that over 4 Billion (with a “B”) people have seen the video.  So whatever your opinion of Jackson and the allegations against him it’s hard to argue with the fact that he’s quite literally the most famous zombie ever.

Game Review: The Last of Us Demo

Posted by kiwidust on June 2, 2013
Posted in: Games. 3 comments

The Last of Us CoverThe Last of Us Website

Reviewed on Playstation 3 – Rated “M” for Mature

This is a short review of the playable demo of “The Last of Us” released on June first.  Here we’ll be focusing on the game’s zombie enemies.  Visit our sister site, DepressedPress.com, for our thoughts on the game’s characters and environments.

“The Last of Us” is set some 20 years after a parasitic fungal plague has destroyed much of human society.  Humanity lives on in controlled quarantined zones while the victims of the plague roam the remains of our cities which are slowly being eroded by unchecked nature.  Victims of the plague fall into two broad categories that mirror some of the major schools of thoughts on zombies.

The fungus attacks the brain turning fresh victims into highly aggressive “runners”.  The runners will instantly attack anybody in their line of site.  When not attacking they wander aimlessly; clearly confused. mumbling and in extreme pain.  Your best bet is to sneak up and quietly throttle them.  This takes time however, so you need to make sure that any others nearby don’t see you do it.  Should that happen the entire nearby population of runners will be barreling down on you in a few seconds and your only hope is a barrage of very lucky (and wasteful) gunfire.

After a time – it’s hinted, years – the fungal infection engulfs the entire head of the victim.  These horribly misshapen “clickers” are more methodical and leverage their hearing and echo-location to hunt their prey.  It’s also hinted that they can be ambush hunters.  Clickers can be distracted or even momentarily stunned with thrown objects but will mob the slightest noise in force.  You can only navigate at a (slow) quiet crawl around them and even then their erratic movement makes them dangerous.  Once aroused they are fast, feral and tenacious.  Having almost no sense of self-preservation melee weapons are nearly useless and even with gunfire they’re much tougher to drop than a runner.

It’s unclear how the infection spreads, exactly.  In the demo we’re first introduced to the clickers when we find the corpse of one lying against a door.  The fungus has (apparently very quickly) spread out from the corpse to engulf much of the doorway and frame.  As Joel is forced to peel the body away to gain access a cloud of spores is released.  His seemingly lack of care may be a sign of kind of immunity or treatment or perhaps just a sad fatalism.  We’ll have to wait for the full game to get the background story (assuming we get it at all).

While the demo was very brief with only about 30 minutes of gameplay and many of the details haven’t been released the fungal plague has already been given a convincingly realistic (if partial) life-cycle.  It’s already one of the more intellectually interesting zombie outbreak triggers (read up on Cordyceps if you don’t plan on sleeping nightmare-free for a while).  I do hope that there’s more depth to be seen but even if not it’s already thought provoking.

Movie Review: Resident Evil

Posted by kiwidust on June 2, 2013
Posted in: BEBE 2013, Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters, Movies. 1 comment

IMDB, Resident Evil“Resident Evil” on IMDB

Horror – 2002 – 100 Minutes

This was our first selection for Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2013.  Of course we’d seen it before but when you’re still waking up and running through your morning routine it’s nice to start with something that doesn’t need your full attention.

This is the first in what’s since become a five movie – and counting – series.  A surprisingly solid series overall, despite a few unfortunate missteps, but one that that has gotten progressively larger in scope with each installment as the infection destroys more and more of humanity.  This first outing was a much closer, intimate film.  Nearly all the action takes places in what amounts to an office building – a fantastical, advanced underground office building to be sure, but an office building nonetheless.

The movie was designed to work within the seams of the video game series and does so admirably.  (In fact the movies have maintained significantly better internal consistency than the games.)  More importantly the movie was designed to work with the game not (as nearly all other game-movies) against it.  There’s no misguided attempts to attract a different audience, no eliminating what the core audience loved and no hubris leading to radically new ideas.  This is as close to a perfect video game movie as we’ve ever seen.

That’s not say it’s a perfect movie, of course.  By focusing on a group of trained, well-armed military personal it eliminates much (but not all) of the desperation and loneliness of the game.  The monster at the end is both convenient and clichéd and a lot of the science is… stupid.  Those are clearly minor complaints as the few places where it doesn’t work are either forgivable or ignorable for the greater part.  Everything else works.  Even things that shouldn’t work, like the hammy acting and over-the-top personality cliché’s work.  They work because they mirror and respect the game and so gain much of the goodwill and forgiveness than the game enjoys.

This is a modern classic both in the video game and zombie genres.  It’s not the most thought-provoking or original of films but it honors its source material, respects its audience and is utterly watchable.  What more could you want?