Monthly Archives: October 2017

Movie, Review, Zombies

American Zombie (2007)

American Zombie is a mocumentary* suggesting that the reanimated dead live among us — from wild or low functioning zombies all the way to high functioning zombies who can pass for being human**. It’s amusing, a lot of subtle humor that sometimes you have to be paying attention and think for (God help us if we have to actually think!) — it could very well be a film that was shot right before some sort of mass zombie outbreak and consequent attack. This film, however, I feel would bore the life out of a non-Z-film-fan, but would be a good chuckle to fans of zombie genre.
* Mocumentary – a fictitious documentary
** Which could help to explain a few of the people I’ve met, particularly in the work-place and management.

In any case — American Zombie — Yellow Puss.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

28 Weeks Later (2007)

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When I saw that 28 Days Later was getting a part-2, I was beyond excited! Only a few years earlier I saw the original on DVD, and with this addition I could exercise my fandom with everyone else … then life happened and I found myself too busy and too broke to catch 28 Weeks Later in theaters.

Now viewing this this film 364 weeks (that’d be 7 years) after the release, I’m finding myself … well, I wouldn’t say that 28WL is a warm-over of 28DL, but I’m finding it bothersome that as many images and details along with elements of Jim and Saleena’s journey were drawn from 28DL. One could argue that someone had 1/2 to 2/3rds of the concept necessary for a part-2 flick and the rest of the script was filler from the original. When you watched Batman Begins, Dark Knight, and Dark Knight Rises, did you notice the identical components between the films? I did, and I made an Excel file tracking them — it’s unbelievable — the 3 films largely work off the same scenes, stunts, etc. When it comes to 28DL and 28WL I am seriously considering making a similar file — it might predict what will bee seen in 28 Years Later.

I liked that the film was set in the after-math of a zombie out-break — I’ve seen films where a population of survivors are holding out, but not during the reconstruction of a society. Overall it isn’t that this film left me wanting more, it left me wanting at least a little better. Without giving a spoiler I will say this for the film, it has a happy ending.

BagpiperDon’s Rating — Green Ooze nearing-Yellow Puss

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A NOTE ABOUT THE “28 Days/Weeks Later” SERIES from BagpiperDon (06September2014)

Sometimes hind-sight sneaks up and stabs you in the back like a grumpy UFO ninja pirate. In this case, I have been holding an inner-debate for the past few weeks as to whether I should include the 28D/WLater series in my inventory. Why?

Simple … I’m not 100% convinced that these are zombie films.

In the 28-series the threat is from rage infected people and my impression is that these people become dead and continue to be animated as a result of the infection; further they are never shown as dead who are reanimated by the virus. Like the films Quarantine and Carriers, the 28D/WL-series are infection films, not zombie films. So why have I left them in my review? For that matter, why are the Evil Dead and Army Of Darkness films in my review, too?

Again, the answer is ‘Simple‘ . . .
I like them, and this is my webpage — I can do what I want.

Maybe as zombie-film fans we need to question, though, “Do zombies have to be dead?” In VooDoo zombieism commonly is about a person who is controlled under the spell of another and during that time they are mindless, but they are not dead. The zombie genre is largely not defined, so perhaps there is room for an infection of some sort to make living people zombies. In other words, so long as people are mindless and functioning, they can be zombies … now zombieism can include office workers, managers, politicians, die-hard pot-heads, and sleep-deprived parents with newborns.

That said …

If you dislike my “It’s my webpage and I can do what I want” attitude, trust me, it’s better than having a grumpy UFO ninja pirate sneak up and stab you in the back … particularly when they have bad breath.

Movie, Review, Zombies

28 Days Later (2002)

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I came to own a copy of 28 Days Later by accident and I couldn’t be happier!  My rating for this film is Green Ooze and it can be found on my list of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.

While I won’t give away the ending to a film — and, in this case, I won’t give you the exact beginning either — but the film really starts when Jim, a bike-messenger, wakes up from a coma in an abandoned Emergency Room.  He has to figure out the enigma of where everyone is, and what happened 28 days  earlier after he got hit by a car in London. Zombie

This was my first introduction to Cillian Murphy and I’ve come to love his work.  This was also my first introduction to Naomie Harris — who I’ve come to love … her work.  You also get to see the work of the fabulous Brendan Gleeson.  All together directed by Danny Boyle , 28 Days Later goes for your throat, your heart, and chases you down dark alleys of humanity. Zombie

Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, & Naomie Harris

This was the first time I saw fast moving zombies, and for me that really CRANKS UP the threat level — the shambling thing never really did it for me. Apparently the shamble-vrs-fast thing is a debate among zombie fans — and I can see both sides of it, but after seeing fast I think I know what side of the fence I fall on…

I’ve heard that the part-2 film “28 Weeks Later” is a warm-over of the original film, but I still want to see it. There is also a graphic novel or two out there that further tell the story which I’d like to get my hands and eyes on — so the next time you’re wondering what to get BagpiperDon for his birthday, Xmas, celebration of next album release, etc … now you know. Zombie

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

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I like bad film… but not this bad.  Hard Rock Zombies is rated dark Red Blood and is the film that inspired me to start my list of Zombie Films Avoid.

I picked up a copy of Hard Rock Zombies a handful of years back while in a liquidation store for maybe $5.  It was on a DVD that had 3 zombie films — Night of the Living Dead, Hard Rock Zombies, and another title I can’t remember right now. Out of the three films, this one is such a POS that I think the other two films each cost half of the total  price and HRZ was thrown in for free — because this is the only way the folks who produced this film could get anyone to take a copy home.

Watching this film I get the impression that the producers and crew and the whole lot behind the film normally produce and shoot 1980s porn films.  In this case they got together outside of their usual work to do something different, or maybe they were trying to get a foothold in another part of the film industry other than porn.

The audio is bad, the songs are bad, the love affair between the lead-singer of the band and the local girl who seems underage clearly verges on having a pedophile element … maybe the only good thing about this is the outrageousness that someone thought to have a zombie film that included Hitler and Nazis.

BOTTOM LINE
Do Not Waste Your Time With This Film

I like bad film but this was so much of a train-wreck that I could only stand to watch it in 10-15 minute intervals.  It’s not one of those “It’s so bad it’s good” things — NO — it’s just outright BAD!

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Day of the Dead (2008)

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This Day Of The Dead remake of George A. Romero’s original 1985 film could be a called a cross between 28 Days Later and the 2009 version of The Crazies. From the start the action ramps up, and 30 minutes in it stays constant — intense gore-fest. The zombies are high speed, a bit super-human, and the humans consist of recognizable actors beginning their careers — all with no gratuitous displays of possibly-future-famous-breasts (they’re nice, but it just gets old in zombie films). This piece showed me a few new things to z-films, and the story-line didn’t particularly take any leaps, however I did have a few beefs…

I thought it odd that upon the point an infected human turns into a zombie that they instantly fester sores and rotted skin.

I might be okay with the zombies having slightly super-human strength, but a Spiderman-like ability to stick to walls/ceilings was a over the top — if they’re going to do that, I would have preferred to see that they had the strength to dig their fingers in and hold-on.

Toward the end two survivors who where military broke into a civilian firearms store — there are a few problems with this…..

Usually gun stores are highly secure, you don’t just push the door open

I would have preferred that the film made the weapons realistic.  Civilian versions of military style weapons are only available in semi-automatic, not full-auto (semi-auto: you pull the trigger and the gun fires once, commonly &/or intentionally incorrectly called an ‘assault weapon’ / full-auto: the weapon continues to fire as long as you hold the trigger AKA a machine gun).

Whatever its strengths or weaknesses, I rate the remake of Day Of The Dead as Green Ooze and it was formerly on my Top 10 list.

How do you know your zombie film is cool? It features Ving Rhames!

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Movie, Review, Zombies

The Crazies (1973)

The poster is arguably cooler than the film.

(Written part way through viewing the film…) The Crazies (1973) is probably at least a 1/2 decent film but it doesn’t adequately hold my attention. After rating it Red Blood I should probably watch it again sometime when I’m sitting still — I’d like to see how it influences the 2009 version of the film. This film looks like it was made in the 1970s — oh yeah, because it was! The look of it, the story telling, the fashions — everything — all of which just adds to the campiness of it. (Written after viewing the film) The film seemed to end without a point — which isn’t to say that it didn’t have one, its more that it generally didn’t hold my attention well enough to notice one — all of a sudden a guy stripped, got lifted out of the danger zone, and the credits started rolling amid some paltry excuse for a 70s-ballad style song.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

The Crazies (2010)

The Crazies (2010) is rated Green Ooze and is one of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.

I quite liked this flick — enough so that I believe I’d like to own a copy. It showed me some new stuff for a zombie film — largely with the ground-level very survivor-perspective of people in a situation trying to sort out whats going/gone on and what to do and the confusion that would come with that (much like 28 Days Later).

While it kind of had the typical zombie-film journey-theme (a group of humans decided that if they can travel from Point A they’ll be able to survive better at Point B), the main charactres didn’t as-much seem to know where they were going. My understanding is that the film had a limited budget, but the cast/crew did a good job making it look like it had some money behind the production.

The Crazies (2010) at IMDB