Tim Dodd

ZolarCzakl puts gets his two cents in on Undead

Since the dawn of the modern zombie film in the late 60’s there have been hundreds, if not thousands of cinematic stories told about the undead and those left living who struggle to remain alive. So it’s understandable that to make a zombie movie these days you need to try to put a new spin on the whole idea if you want your movie to get noticed. The Spierig Brothers from Australia have, for the most part, done this in their relatively recent movie Undead (made in 2003 but just now hitting our shores), although the execution of the film leaves a bit to be desired.
The story goes like this: In the small Australian town of Berkeley, meteorites start falling from the sky and immediately turning people into crazed, flesh-hungry zombies. Rene (Felicity Mason), a local beauty queen, holes up in a house owned by a strange farmer named Marion (Mungo McKay), who happens to sell weapons and really knows how to use them. Two cops, a park ranger and his pregnant wife show up as well and the rag-tag group of strangers must band together to survive the zombie onslaught. Things get much stranger from this point on as mysterious hooded figures come into the picture and to tell you any more would be a crime that I’m just not willing to commit.
There seem to be two major species of the zombie film: the serious kind and the funny kind. On the more serious side we have the George Romero movies from Night of the Living Dead all the way up to the recently released Land of the Dead. These movies have sprinklings of humor but for the most part are played in a serious dramatic manner. On the other side we have movies like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series and the movie that perhaps personifies this entire sub genre, Peter Jackson’s 1992 gore opus Dead Alive. These films take goofy characters and situations and mix them with stomach-churning gore and horrific suspense to create a unique blend of sickening violence you can laugh at. Even though the trailer for Undead makes it look like a very serious Romero-type zombie movie, it seems that the Spierig’s were trying to make one more in the Jackson camp but couldn’t quite pull it off.
The problem is that the movie can’t decide if it wants to be funny or if it wants to be serious. Scenes that are meant to be funny (but don’t quite make it) are surrounded by long action scenes (that are at times too drawn out) and even longer stretches of drama. If you look back at Peter Jackson’s first (Bad Taste) or the first Evil Dead movie, you can see that those directors had the comic/horror blend down pretty well from the beginning. It’s apparent that the Spierig Brothers don’t have it yet, but certain things in Undead do show promise for these Aussie filmmakers.
When the humor works, it works really well. In some of the action scenes, the crazy farmer Marion suddenly starts pulling some stunts straight out of Hong Kong crime movies and the Matrix series. Guns appear from out of his sleeves into his hands and he does impossible body flips in slow-motion that are very out of character. There are humorous lines found throughout and some of the violence is really funny in that Dead Alive way. There’s also a scene with zombie fish that has to be seen to be believed. If they could have found a way to keep this humor running consistently throughout the movie then it wouldn’t seem so out of place and would be much funnier overall.
As far as the zombie effects go, they are done pretty well. There is a lot of CGI stuff going on, but it didn’t bother me as much as it does in other movies. The blood and guts are effectively disgusting and the zombies were disposed of in much more entertaining and imaginative ways than they were in, say, Land of the Dead (had to get another jab at Land in there). You know a movie is going to be pretty good when you see a fountain of blood shooting very unrealistically out of someone’s neck like in a Monty Python sketch in the first few minutes of the film. Well, at least I do.
The film was a little disappointing but overall pretty entertaining. Not to compare or anything, but I got more genuine zombie thrills from Undead than I did Land of the Dead. It’s impressive for a first film and should provide enough blood and quirkiness for those who crave goofy zombie mayhem.

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ZolarCzakl slaughters Romero!

In the wonderfully twisted world of horror and exploitation flicks exists the lumbering, rotting, twitching beast of apocalyptic doom and gut-wrenching gore known as the zombie film. Most fans of these movies know that George A. Romero was essentially the creator of the modern zombie film; before his groundbreaking low budget feature Night of the Living Dead (1968) zombies were of the robotic voodoo kind, controlled by an evil master to do his will. Night of the Living Dead presented zombies as re-animated dead bodies, mindlessly devouring human flesh in an evil quest to destroy and conquer all life on the planet. Pretty heavy stuff, except that Night and the two sequels that followed are so damned fun to watch and are hallmarks of truly great horror entertainment.
Night had a simple premise: a radiation accident causes the bodies of the recently deceased to rise from their graves and start munching on the living, a small group of which hole up in an abandoned farmhouse and try to fend off the ghouls. Romero followed this eleven years later with the much gorier Dawn of the Dead, which concentrates on a group of survivors fending off the zombies in a shopping mall. The third installment of the series was 1985’s Day of the Dead, where a group of soldiers and a group of scientists wage battles on each other while trying to survive in an underground bunker and fend off the relentless walking dead.
So now twenty years later, George A. Romero has unleashed the fourth installment in his Living Dead series, Land of the Dead. With the recent success of movies such as 28 Days Later, Cabin Fever, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, and splatter-comedy Shaun of the Dead, it would seem that zombies are making a comeback, and who better to show them all how it’s done than Romero himself? Surely with studio backing, a fairly large budget, famous actors such as John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper, and today’s special effects technology, Romero has finally made his zombie masterpiece, right?
Well, kiddies, I’m sorry to say that it just ain’t so.
But first, the story: it is the present day and many years since the initial zombie attacks. A group of military-like zombie hunters, led by the perfectly-coiffed Riley (Simon Baker) and racial stereotype Cholo (John Leguizamo) protect the inner sanctum of what may be the last city populated by the living. The wealthy live in a mall-like fortress owned by businessman Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), who eventually hires Riley to take care of a little business concerning Cholo and some missing weaponry. Added to this, the throng of living dead are beginning to organize themselves a bit more and soon become a major threat as they start to march upon the walled-in city. Riley and his small group of loyal friends find themselves with a lot of problems to fix and thousands of zombies to decimate in many stomach-churning ways.

Let me get right to it and tell you that this movie left me feeling on the colder side of lukewarm. While all of the Dead films concentrate on the conflicts that occur between the living humans as they struggle against the zombies, Land does this in a far less convincing manner than the other three. The other Dead movies have something that this one lacks: heart. A big part of this comes from the one-dimensional characters that simply don’t allow you to care about whether they live or die. You don’t care about their motivations and you don’t care about their problems, therefore you ultimately don’t care about the movie.
Sure, you might say that these movies are mainly about the zombies and the blood and the intestines being pulled out of people’s body cavities, but if you think that’s what makes the Romero Dead movies great then you’re missing half the picture. You can get gore almost anywhere; check out Cabin Fever and a slew of other half-assed movies for that. What you get with a Romero picture is the action and gore plus little observations on humanity that might just make you think a bit about life. You get both for the price of one, and at eight bucks a movie ticket, you should be getting that with Land of the Dead. Unfortunately, it seems that someone shot this movie in the head on the way from script to screen.
What do we get in Land of the Dead? We get a overly good-looking and thorougly unconvincing “hero” in Riley, who is sensitive and perfect in everything that he does and has about as much depth as a plastic kiddie pool. We get Cholo, who acts like the most cliched “spic” that Hollywood could come up with and has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. You also get Dennis Hopper, who puts in a decent enough performance but seems like he’s just going through the motions in a lot of it. He has his moments of that patented Hopper craziness and gets in a few good lines here and there, but ultimately seems kind of wasted in this role.
There’s also a love interest of sorts for Riley in the character of Slack (Asia Argento), whom Riley rescues from being eaten by zombies in a kind of gladiator game in the city’s underground (if that sounds really stupid, it’s because it is). She’s a hooker, but given the chance just happens to be incredibly handy with high-tech weaponry and guerilla tactics. In other words, she’s a horribly contrived and completely unbelievable character who only exists to be a sexy counterpart to our bland leading man.
Ok, ok, we get it. The characters suck. But you still haven’t convinced me that this isn’t all about blood and guts. How are the zombies?

Well, there’s a main zombie, a former gas station attendant who kind of leads the ghouls around on their quest to kill and eat. The problems I found with this zombie are that first of all, he looks less like a zombie and more like one of the vampires from From Dusk Til Dawn, and second, there’s no real exploration of why he can suddenly think where all the other zombies before weren’t really able to. This zombie suddenly knows what’s going on and feels compassion for his fallen zombie brethren and finally leads the attack on the city. Ok, how?

“Mommy!”

Beyond that, all of the other zombies look cool and act like zombies should. The special effects are executed well and there are plenty of gross-out moments to please any fan of gurgling blood and ripped out spines. It’s all fine and good, but honestly I was expecting a little more. Each Dead movie has had a progression in its over-the-top violence and inventive ways of killing creatures off, but this one seems to just recycle things from past movies. There’s nothing really all that memorable in any of the gory scenes, especially if you compare them to the scene at the end of Day of the Dead where the zombies rip screaming Joe Pilato in half and show him his guts. Now that’s great stuff.
I imagine many people will see this film and say that it is a fine addition to the hallowed halls of the zombie film, which it may be. Others may be encouraged to tell me to take the stick out of my ass and just enjoy the goddamn movie. Well, perhaps they have a point. But I feel that there is a lot of room for artistic creativity in the realm of horror and exploitation, even if that art only ends up being visible as a nice attempt. I think that there wasn’t even an attempt made in Land of the Dead and that disappoints me. However, I’ve thought about it and realized that even if this movie had nothing to do with the series and was made by another director, I would still be disappointed. And that’s what ultimately counts in my appraisal of this zombie flick.

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ZolarCzakl takes a sip of magic brew and contemplates his place in the universe

Imagine a black-magic voodoo priest whipping up a blood-tinted bubbling cauldron of mystical potion. He’s standing there, outside at night at some sort of voodoo camp and he’s all decked out in the feathers and the long things hanging from his hair and he’s even got a bone through his nose. He’s chanting in an ancient language while carefully placing an array of sketchy items into the brew: pieces of bats, assorted insects, cups of various blood-like substances, and even a few powders (which he takes a snort of from time to time). When the ingredients have all been well mixed and the voodoo soup simmers for just the right amount of time, the chanting reaches an orgiastic climax as the priest yells the magic incantation and he gets the crazy eyes, full of fire and full of death.
He raises a clay cup of the heated brew to the sky and speaks one final incantation, and for just a quick moment the thousands of visible stars in the sky seem to shift ever so slightly. You are standing a few feet in front of him, taking all of this in. You see the stars do their thing but try not to be freaked out. You feel a strange rumbling in the ground but think it’s maybe just that Poncho’s burrito you somewhat foolishly ate for dinner. Then the priest, whose name is Benny, steps forward and brings the cup close to your face, right up to your now trembling lips. His crazy-eyed stare has you captive and you have no choice but to ingest a mouthful of the rather warm and truly horrible-tasting brew… then comes the biggest change you’ve ever experienced in your life.
Suddenly you’re flying high above the ground, soaring over houses and Vietnamese restaurants that you know and adore. Time seems to have stopped, for there is no motion on the ground. Everything and everyone are frozen in their tracks, some people in mid-walk on the sidewalks, others in their cars with the lights on and the exhaust streaming from the tailpipes. You now exist outside time and outside the laws of physics, soaring high straight into the mind of what you can only imagine is God.
After flying around in a daze for what seems like quite a while (time is non-existent at this point so you don’t really have much of a concept of it) you feel very overwhelmed and find yourself flying into a glowing white room high up in the clouds. You arrive at the room and float into a very regal-looking but rather comfortable reclining chair. It takes a few moments for you to collect yourself and regain your wits, but once you do you look around the room and see that there is a rather nice widescreen television set suspended in front of you. To the right of your recliner is a TV tray with a bitchin’ assortment of snacks and drinks. To the left is another stand with a remote control on it. A loud booming voice erupts in your eardrums and you nearly leap from your bones. It says, “Watch now as the secrets of all the universe are revealed to you oh special one, for you have been chosen to taste of the holy voodoo brew and be imparted with my perfect knowledge so you can spread the word of true enlightenment to all your fellow man.”
The lights dim, the remote floats into your sweaty hand, and you instinctively press play as the television comes to life.

What you see for the next three hours is a close-cropped dark-haired goofball doing a plethora of shitty and retarded things to himself and to others. He snorts salt into his nasal cavities, takes a shot of tequila and has someone from the audience squeeze a lime into his eyes. He has people staple dollar bills to his shirtless torso and arms. He takes broken glass, slashes his tongue, chews up the glass and swallows it. He goes to a used car lot and pisses himself while trying to test-drive a car. He dresses up in a funny wig and jogging suit (the ass of which he has filled with chocolate pudding) and runs around asking people if he can use their bathroom. He wraps his legs with saran wrap and hires a hooker to pee on him. He climbs up onto the roof of a hotel and jumps into the pool. He and his buddies repeatedly smash their heads into a pumpkin in an attempt to break it. He loads his head with hairspray and has a friend spit fire onto his hair, singing it and burning his face. He dresses up like a clown, gets drunk, vomits a lot, goes to a bar, and gets the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of rednecks. He walks around in a park on stilts, juggling and entertaining families until he falls over and acts like he’s been seriously injured. He dresses in that funny wig and half of the jogging suit and dances around the city while listening to music. He dresses in a suit and hangs out at a train stop, acting like a lunatic until the cops show up. Him and his buddies rub down a barely-clothed crack whore’s ass with Vaseline and light her ass on fire as he skateboards over it. He also balances a rather large knife on his nose.
And all of this only takes place in the first half-hour!
By this point your mind is so overloaded with these images that you realize that your consciousness has forever been altered. After watching such disturbingly banal acts with no hint of social value, not even to mention any real hint of true entertainment, you have reached an almost Zen-like state. Millions of non-sequiturs pop into your mind. Random thoughts, complex questions and juvenile, ridiculous situations all fight for space in your mind and try to find their proper place in the universe. As the voodoo stew has melted your brain into a primordial soup, only one thing snaps you out of this corpse-like sleep of stupidity: the voice of God.
“What you have seen is a sampling of what humanity truly has to offer from this point in history until the end of mankind, which will be in 34,262 years, but that doesn’t really mean anything to you… anyway, now that you have been imparted with this very important information, you must make a choice.
“You must either
1) Accept that humans are silly, stupid, selfish, gross, idiotic, hurtful, mean, nasty, evil, and wasteful and not let it eat you up inside… be ok with it… let all of your bad feelings toward people and society go… just be happy, live your life, and don’t be so gosh-darn angry all the time, or
2) Kill yourself.
God out.”
At precisely this moment you are transported to a ledge outside a very tall building. You have to stand up straight against the side of the building in order not to go tumbling over the edge to your death. This is no longer a weird dream – this is real. To your left you see an open window, which you can easily crawl into and be safe. You’re about to make your move then your mind is filled with images of that close-cropped, dark haired goofball getting peed on by a hooker…