ROTLD takes viciously wild punches at most all of the standard clichéd tools used in horrific monster movies, especially those featuring flimsy teen characters prone to vice. Those wacky teenagers, an endlessly excitable bunch prone to poor decisions and quick retribution. Meanwhile every character in Return of the Living Dead lacks all motivation outside the single goal of self satisfaction — sex, drugs, violence — shortly followed by self preservation. One exception: a particularly strange punk rocker played by Thom Mathews (Freddy). Pretty much the youthful protagonist of Dan O’Bannon‘s undead melodrama — the suddenly sympathetic Fred has to deal with a world of occult flesh eaters, government cover-ups and the desires of his recent girlfriend…all this on his first day at work.

Freddy still reveals himself as slightly dumber than a box of hammers, or maybe a bowl of screwdrivers. Whatever simple machine in a container, our friend Freddy ain’t smart and neither is his friendly superior (Frank) played by Clu Gulager. Their combined stupidity is exponential and ever-expanding, especially with the introduction of Frank’s boss (Burt) a selfish dick played by the always intimidating James Karen.

Half of the movie  involves these stooges try their best to maintain composure while every piece of death flesh around them comes back to life, a distracting challenge when you work in a medical supply warehouse, next to a morgue…outside a cemetery.

Our friend Freddy is persecuted, not only by his punk pals, each of them pained by reality’s lack of chaos and sententious pleasures. Even though they’re technically protagonists, you pretty much delight when the punks get attacked by the viral zombie contagion, brewed by our rather incompetent military.

Consider this — our primary fear in the 20th century…you know it. Total nuclear oblivion. The final end of human life, the trigger pulled by a willing human hand. Grab your book, El, because the zombie weapon of self destruct was inspired by plagues…AIDS, small pox, Ebola virus, etc. Something about rapid decay. Our nightmare monster shrunk from the size of King Kong to the nanometer scale. In ROTLD our antagonist originates in a spray of weaponized gas created by the corrupt military industrial complex for which we, the uneducated voting public, are responsible. The best part of all this biting commentary is that the audience sees no heavy hand, just solid comedy and gore.

Did you miss it at Fantastic Fest 2010? Well, you can watch it on Fear.net as soon as October 4.

The movie contains nothing truly new to the zombie genre, aside from exotic rural terrain rarely seen on film. My favorite moment involves one of the main characters comically inching around a nearly immobilized zombie, hoping on broken legs. Seems laughable until the severely broken corpses crawls its way to your death. Best to live in the country, rural, outback, boonies. THE DEAD presents a spacious and endlessly hazardous world of the cannibal undead.

The trailer seems to insinuate some kind of racial bias like the poorly considered character aesthetics of Resident Evil 5, thankfully skin color doesn’t play an idiotic roll in the story. Neither does believable acting or compelling action sequences. Not without effort, THE DEAD flops like a dying fish on the stinky boat dock of movie horror. Rent it.

ZZZZOMBIES from David King on Vimeo.

I saw this one during a Fantastic Fest 2010 pre-show at the Alamo Drafthouse.  Simple stop-motion is sometimes so perfect. Z-props to the meticulous artist David King who did it one frame at a time (sexy) in the minimalist short animation ZZZZOMBIES.

Like whoa! Some talented nerd(s) used the software render engine from the video game Left 4 Dead and built out a complete level using my favorite movie theater as a playable map. Even the neighborhood karaoke bar Highball gets rendered in 3D, although I’m not sure how one plays bowling or skeeball with gun drawn.

If you don’t know, let me inform you. The Alamo Drafthouse is the best thing that ever happened to a movie nerd living in Austin, Texas. They schedule the rarest horror flicks with crazy pre-shows and intros from some of the most knowledgeable film experts on the block (which is really saying something in Austin). Obviously, the Alamo is run by true exploitation film fanatics, which is why every year the Alamo Drafthouse puts on the best damn film festival I’ve ever attended — an all genre movie explosion called Fantastic Fest. Nothing but gore, nudity and tantalizingly offensive cinema.

Mr. Romero begins with a philosophical query into the nature of human behavior under stress, as I perceive it, his dead films follow through on questions of human response to disaster & duress. His observation in cinema form fits the model of modern cable news cycles. Think about the ubiquitous distant spotlight on news anchors knee-deep in the fire, flood, terror, tragedy. Slowburn zombies are the stars today, and despite the occasionally mediocre elements,

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD could absolutely play in black & white, as an old time 1950s creature feature. Something new and something old, that’s exactly what I crave for modern horror. Romero continues legit academic scholarship in the field of the literature of the living dead. 3/5 cannibals in cowboy hats.

To start, I noticed the intro motion graphics for the sequel involves an animated number two squared popping over the previous logo like: [REC]2 , which struck me as oddly meaningless from a mathematical standpoint, but whateva. The sequel could stand completely on its own, although [REC 2] follows an identical internal movie clock of the previous [REC], constantly expanding on the mystery of the fast zombie disease and/or violence haunting which has rapidly overtaken an apartment complex in urban Spain. Try pronouncing ”zombie” in a Castilian accent. Sounds like “thombie.” Yeah!

Anyhoo, the original began with a small TV crew and a first response team of firemen with the unfortunate luck to reach the totally evil cursed-condos before anyone else, and thus getting locked inside by some supra-shady government organization. Here we start out with a group of SWAT-like special operative military types dude. They all have fancy helmet cameras, so that’s convenient for us.

Just like the many reboots of successful video game franchise HALF-LIFE, each time we’re shown through a new pair of eyes. REC2 start in the tightly confined space of an army transport and, like said video game, showing you various first-person-perspective camera work to get you adjusted before the real narrative begins. If you’ve seen the original, it will be especially fun to watch the narrative timing of the sequel collide with the original REC movie. Sadly, some big studio of idiots will likely poorly remake it in English like QUARANTINE, because they think Americans won’t read subtitles. Lame. I prefer the version en Español.

Growing out of a small town in frosty rural Canada, the PONTYPOOL flavor of zombism reeks of social collapse. Communication becomes the killer means for infection: madness, murder, feeding. For all those haters claiming the genre of the comeback corpse dies an unimaginative death at every new zombie book, movie, video game. Wrong. No. Het. Incorrect. Sorry, the zombie story is continually reborn in new mythologies thanks to directors like Bruce McDonald and writers like Tony Burgess.

5 of 5 undead radio DJs. Watch it, you damn zombie!

Quality bloodwork means a lot on super grainy 16mm film stock. And while there’s something beautiful about cheap film, I can’t help but to think that $25,000 Canadian dollars would have gone farther shooting in an inexpensive proconsumer HD format.

Bad dialog and bad acting permeate the film. With the exception of a bullet hole POV cam, most of the shots stink of lazy photography. Two zombie feet (out of five rotten foots). View the trailer

Watching THE ROAD entertained me on a purely exploitation film, pulp comic, dirty magazine level. Cormac McCarthy, like 1930s radio drama THE SHADOW, knowz what evilz be lurch’n da hards o’ dah menz. If only some wise person would reboot the original radio series, detective stories in LOLCat speak.

Anyway, THE ROAD has zombies…of a sort. More like pseudo zombies. Unzombies. Ugly, messed up, malnourished humans in the fallout of an unspecified apocalypse. No food. Everything is tainted and covered in ash – very much in a SILENT HILL manner. In the face of the devastating societal madness that comes with human extinction, cannibalism becomes more and more reasonable.

This gets to the heart of what I love about the zombie narrative. Mass disaster = humanity under stress. Especially after the collapse, after the pain of the initial shock, right into the survival and acceptance as you navigate a new kind of existence. Watching any disaster movie, for me, involves the hypothetical question of my own survival potential.

Could I live with zombies clawing outside my door every night? Sure, at first. With time, would madness wash over me until I give up at high tide and throw myself to the hordes of undead?

In most cases, I come to the conclusion that I ain’t the hardy survivor of my post-humanity fantasies. Guess I better team up with some skilled zombie killers when the time comes.

Watching The Revenant bestows a bit of that original terror I experienced when first exposed to the potential existence of the living dead. For me, it began rockstar zombiemakers like Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson & Dan O’Bannon who cinematically bitch slapped us in the face with The Evil Dead, Braindead (aka Dead Alive) & Return of the Living Dead.

I grew up in a smallish Texas town and found salvation in the form of late night cable horror and VHS rentals based on whatever b-movie cover art looked the best. Hastings, Two Day Video,

The Revenant (2009)

Randall’s & Albertson’s Family video rental…BLESS Y’ALL. My friends would take turns paying the rental/late fees and generously offering their parents houses for weekly late night screenings.

Tapes rewound. Tracking adjusted. Popcorn & Dr. Pepper  in hand. Horror movies, along with the good company of a few friends, saved my adolescence.

Back to The Revenant – an adventure to watch the characters discover a new, difficult-to-classify vampiric zombie lore. Iraq War veteran returns home in a casket and later shows up at a friend’s apartment.  Weird, dark, undead buddy-comedy film gets stranger and stranger. The zombies in The Revenant are unlike all others I’ve seen before. They retain their cognitive abilities (despite decomposition), shoot guns, commit crimes and ingest copious amounts of drugs – which begs the question: Can the dead get high?

Good acting, good gore and comedic moments that stick like superglue. If this film doesn’t get the wide theatrical distribution it deserves, it will nevertheless be a huge sleeper hit at the rental store, Netflix, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.

Four and a half zombie thumbs up for The Revenant & the unafraid filmmakers who build new mythologies from dead scratch.

So I’m thinking: “Why is this movie so goddamn good?”…And ya know what I found? That old Wiki sez:

The Revenant is written, directed, produced and by Kerry Prior, who also supervised the visual effects on the film. The film is co-produced by Jacques Thelemaque and Liam Finn and edited by Walter Murch.

Walter “Maniac Editor of APOCALYPSE NOW” Murch!!! Are you kidding me, Wiki? For the sake of Sweet Zombie Baby Jesus, no wonder The Revenant is so damn good.

Trust any movie that allows for a slow motion father-son zombie sack race. Zombieland stays goofy like Evil Dead II while constantly supplying high quality bile-spewing gore. Coming from backgrounds in music videos, late night talk shows & reality TV, the director/writers team decided to segment cinematic moments into mini rock n’ roll montages. Perfect for a zombie fan with a short attention span.

Normally I shutter at the Hollywood habit of gluing disjointed episodes together and charging box office prices, as was the case of the wayward Resident Evil movie franchise. Here, it works!

Zombieland holds up from start to end, most especially for those well-versed in the mythic language of the zombie. Jesse Eisenberg narrates in a coming-of-age tone a la Wonder Years, plainly laying out the rules to survival in a post-human world dominated by the walking dead using a playfully comic motion graphic text. My favorite rule: “Double Tap” -– meaning committing one extra bullet or blunt object-to-the-head in order to make extra sure that Mr. Zombie doesn’t relive for a final dramatic attack.

Zombies of this world maneuver with inconsistent speed and intelligence. Director Ruben Fleischer explained that each zombie turns at a different stage of rigamortis and decay, thus producing a variety of zombies types. Zombieland is not going to change your political outlook or stop you from fucking that chicken. What it will do is entertain both the horror novice and the most jaded zombie expert.

There’s a wonderful celebrity zombie cameo… Don’t look it up, just see the damn movie!

Q: What famous zombie would you like to be eaten by?
I wouldn’t mind being disemboweled by past U.S. presidents like Zombie JFK or Zombie Lincoln.

The Revenant (2009)

I’m a little dazed after so much weird, wild, violent, sexy, scary cinema. No, really. I’m quasi-delirious and am a bit unsure as to what is reality and what I saw in the dark of the matinee theater. The other day my wife caught me referring to a story I claimed was told to me by “a friend.” She had to explain that my friend’s anecdote wasn’t real but rather from a fictional film character in one of the movies we’ve seen at Fantastic Fest.

I reacted with a resounding, “Shit, I could have sworn that really happened!”

The wise festival programmers of the Alamo Drafthouse continue to refer to the type of bizarre films they yearly wrangle as “genre films,” claiming FFest is a “genre festival.” Okay, maybe…but don’t all films lands somewhere in a give genre? Sci-fi, horror, documentary,  animation, crime drama, sex film, etc. They’re all genres, GUH!

I think of Fantastic Fest as a yearly face dive deep in the fringes of exploitation cinema, as in the marginal movies which employ extreme sex, violence & taboo subject material. The good exploitation films challenge my sense. The best exploitation films disturb me and shake my way of thinking.

My favorite zombie films of Fantastic Fest 2009 go as follows:

1. The Revenant – Unpredictable zombie buddy action comedy from Kerry Prior.
2. [Rec] 2 – Spanish supernatural sequel to the terrifying original masterpiece.
3. Full Employment aka “Arbeit für Alle” – German short that will grab you by the gonads.
4. Zombieland – Post-post apocalyptic Hollywood horror well worth watching from reality TV & talk show makers.
5. Daybreakers – Not sure if high functioning super-mod vampires driving around in tricked out Chryslers qualify as zombies, but the fanged reanimated dead do drink blood cappuccinos! Totally creative take on old mythology from the talented Spierig brothers who brought us Undead.
6. Doghouse – British mutant zombie comedy /slash/ commentary on gender relations.

My favorite non-zombie films of Fantastic Fest 2009 go a little something like this:

1. Fish Story aka “Fisshu sutôrî” – An apocalyptic tale for true music lovers.
2. Stingray Sam – An episodic musical western in space!
3. Kenny Begins – Basically a live action Space Quest starring the Swedish Roger Wilco.
4. Consoul – Norwegian short done in 8-bit pixel animation.
5. A Town Called Panic aka “Panique au village” – Simple but wonderfully absurd French animation.
6. House (1977) aka “Hausu” – Mind melting with many similarities to Evil Dead.

I’m fittin’ to attend the annual Fantastic Fest – a crazy-disorienting film festival that prides itself on screening nuttin’ but wonderfully offensive sci-fi, horror, shock cinema. As the word “annual” would suggest, this 8-day film showcase takes place yearly in AUSTIN, TX, USA, EARTH.

Zombieland production still

Once again my significant other and I opted for VIP badges, which come with the hefty pricetag of admission (just under $300) but are no doubt always worth it. In fact, this is the only large film festival we attend because we prefer the company of the film-savy gore hounds who frequent the Alamo Drafthouse.

The best thing about Fantastic Fest is that unlike Sundance, Toronto, Cannes, etc. you ain’t gonna find no corporate industry goons lurking around, hunting for the next commercially successful prime time, video game, cereal box franchise. Yup, no one’s out to buy. It’s just the fans.

Zombies, now more than eva…
Not sure if the living dead-obsessed public knows it, but we got a zombie renaissance going on here:

1. Zombieland – Amateur “Cheers” bartender,  Woody Harrelson beats zombies with style and grace.
2. The Revenant – One dead Iraq War veteran returns home to the states to fuck shit up.
3. [REC 2] – Note the first [REC] (2007) remains awesome and then some. Although to enjoy the film, one must read the Castilian lisp-heavy dialog with Spanish subtitles. So…what followed the next year was a soulless shot-for-shot Hollywood remake called Quarantine (‘cus we Americans can’t read them squiggly words what spell). Yes, I’m excited about this! Damnit, the original freaked my shit out without the hindrance of any boring expositions, explanations, or expected plot conventions.
4. Doghouse – A cannibal disease sweeps through a small British town predominantly populated by women. Coincidentally, some sexist dudes decide to travel to this same town in the hopes of gettin’ totally laid. Looks like buckets o’ blood and gore a plenty!
5. Survival of the Dead – Veteran zombie auteur George Romero goes for the 1-2 punch after his redemptive Diary of the Dead, which happened to premiere at the 2007 Fantastic Fest. I actually got to meet this creative giant (literally & figuratively). Mr. Romero was friendly, articulate and chill, an impressive feat in the face of an army of anxious fanboy zombie nerds. Speaking of which, I had the opportunity to ask (or axe) the man a question that had been bothering me:

REC production still

Me: “Do your zombies ever die or starve to death due to the eventual exhaustion of their food resources.”

George: “In my films, I will never answer that question. I think that is one of those fill-in-the-blanks we must each individually resolve on our own.”

At first I found this an unsatisfying response until a friend later explained her theory on zombie longevity. She said, “Zombies are simply the new dominant species. Humans had their chance…” Basically claiming a new biological paradigm enters with the arrival of the zombie apocalypse and the rapid demise of the human race.

Regardless of your personal theories on undead biology, stay tuned. I’m going to be reviewing the above zombie films and more from upcoming Fantastic Fest 2009.

Check out the amazing 2D cutout backdrops in “Evelyn: The Cutest Evil Dead Girl.” The video is a bit more adorable angst-ridden goth than sexy suicide girl. Feels like a live action Henry Selick animation. Good work, human slaves!

EXHIBIT A: Lucio Fulci’s slowmo voodoo zombie flick comonly known as ZOMBI.

It must be noted that human meat post-zombitization must taste like delicious meat popsicles. Similar to the process of curing meat, the undead body becomes like a walking stick of hickory smoked turkey jerky as a human crosses over and becomes a living corpse.

MMMM. That’s scrumptious zombie!

Left unanswered in the film:
How terrifying would a zombie shark be? Pretty damn frighting is the correct answer.

Beyond the non sequitur shark fight, ZOMBI remains awesome.

Still from ZOMBI: Nothing tenser than a slow eye gouging!

Respect to the Italians who saw what Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and grew the horror galaxy with some of the best gore in cinema history  (re: history’s longest anxiety provoking eye-gouge). Not to omit the eye bleeding found in Fulci’s GATES OF HELL. You don’t see a lot of spontaneous eye bleeding these days, and I’m unsure why….like the frequency of maggots used as props in horror movies. ZOMBI contains its fair share of sleepy zombies lumbering around covered with gross-but-benign fly larva.

So to finally end the discuss: Yes, there is indeed a perfectly good reason why a voodoo style zombie and shark would get all caught up in fisticuffs. Zombies are tasty. You’re just too busy running for your life to sample a bite.

So why wouldn’t the zombies just eat themselves all day? Good question. Well, like junk food, undead flesh is delectable but lacks all of the nutritional properties of healthy living human flesh. Guh!

I also have to root for really slow zombies. They’re really working hard for their meal. Keep on crawling, Mr. Torso Zombie, you’ll get there eventually.

Land of the Dead poster

George primarily sticks with what he knows. Commentaries on social & economic class warfare get delivered in dump truck-sized doses. The wealthy few have managed to hole themselves up in a mall/condo/high rise called Fidler’s Green, an island protected by water on all sides, all made possible by Kaufman (the enterprising capitalist played by the impossibly difficult Dennis Hopper). Everyone else who managed to survive this long is relegated to the drug and disease-ridden slums surrounding Fidler’s Green.

John Lequizombie

As an aside, exactly one month before the June 2005 release of LAND OF THE DEAD, the ensemble genre blending hip-hop troupe THE GORILLAZ released DEMON DAYS which rocks. And how could the album suck with guest spots from some of the industry’s greatest: MF DOOM, Dangermouse, Roots Manuva and Del tha Funky Homosapien to name a few? With heavy sampling of tracks from GOBLIN and Dario Argento’s music

composition from the original DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), DEMON DAYS remains an impressive tribute to zombie myth and culture. In addition to overt z-tracks like LAST LIVING SOULS, the album contained a strange song called FIRE COMING OUT OF THE MONKEY’S HEAD, which is basically a dark fairy tale narrated by weirdo alien-sent-to-earth Dennis Hopper.

As Romero expands on his own zombie mythos, braking previously established rules, as the undead learn to communicate with gestures and problem solve while mastering tools and weapons. Romero implies that zombies feel empathy towards each other and simply desire to survive. Damn those zombie peaceniks!

While he occasionally employs gorgeous gore via timeless practical effects, Romero opts for CGI more than ever before, with questionable results which already show their age. George returns to the basics in DAIRY OF THE DEAD but will no doubt be forever haunted by the melodramatic z-parody that is John Leguizombie’s performance.