Tag Archives: canada

Dead Before Dawn (2012)

July 25, 2021 BagpiperDon Leave a comment

A CURSE IS UNLEASHED in Dead Before Dawn!

A group of college friends — some of whom play football and wear cheer leader outfits for a high school, because that isn’t confusing — accidentally break an evil urn in an occult gift shop. As the dust settles they inadvertently create a horrible curse — is there any other kind — UPON THEMSELVES!

SPHS — yeah… usually HS means High School — so how are they college students?!? Is it possible that these “college” students attend St. Paul’s High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba?

As a result of the malediction, everyone they make eye contact with will kill themselves and then become “Zemons” — a combination of Zombie Demons — and the high school college kids only have 24 hours to reverse the curse! With the fate of the entire world resting on their shoulders, our heroes race through the night armed with a slew of homemade weapons, avoiding eye contact and hickeys, and filling their shopping list of items needed to reverse their curse. Will they be able to reverse the curse and save the day, or will all of humanity be Dead Before Dawn?

spawn from Hell seeks loving gentleman — This gave me flashbacks of some of my ex-girfriends … oh yeah, good times.

Dead Before Dawn is not a serious zombie film.

If you come away from DBD thinking, “You know, as serious films of the zombie genre go … that sucked!” I read reviews that essentially said this, and those people MISSED THE POINT.

Spoof – A humorous imitation of something, typically a film or a particular genre of film, in which its characteristic features are exaggerated for comic effect.

Dead Before Dawn is similar to Z Nation — they’re intentionally trying to be goofy and make fun of comedy zombie films (see “parody“). For me this was an unexpected film and looked like what films of this sort should be — fun to make. It made me feel like I was watching Fido for the first time again.

Give this blood-soaked adventure horror–comedy a watch — it’s an unexpected fun zombie-demon flick from Canada, great for a laid-back kick-back chuckle with friends.

Written by Tim Doiron and directed by April Mullen, it stars a bunch of folks I’m not familiar with and presume are Canadian along with Christopher Lloyd — who I will always think of as Emmett “Doc” Brown. 88 minutes long, this is the first ever live-action, 100% Canadian feature film to be shot in Stereoscopic 3-D. Filmed in 20 days in and around the Niagara Falls region of Canada in 2011, it features occasional adult humor and it achieves being a fun film without revealing adult body parts frequently found in zombie films.

I rate Dead Before Dawn — drum roll please — Green Ooze! Maybe moderately green, but definitely green — good job Canucks!

Night of the Comet (1984)

January 16, 2018 BagpiperDon Leave a comment

Raise your hand if you are personally familiar with how much the first half of the 1980s sucked. If you’re not raising your hand, watch this film. Oh, and by the way, I rated Night of the Comet as Yellow Puss.

Robert Beltran as a cowboy — Robert Beltran — YEEE-HAWW!!!

I’m not sure if this film was supposed to be a serious Z-horror flick in its day or if the producers were taking a bit of a jab at the period — commercial music, warmed-over 1970s fashion, big bad hair, excess consumerism and narcissism, and … like … valley girls! Still, ya gotta love the superficial cult-film line of “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis!” and seeing Robert Beltran cut his teeth before he was the respectable Chakotay on Star Trek’s Voyager.

Street party aftermath — Okay, who’s gonna clean up this mess?!?

A comet from deep space passes through Earth’s atmosphere while everyone — not just Eddie Murphy — wanted Michael Jackson’s red leather jacket. Bright red dust from the comet pollutes the atmosphere, vaporizing people who were directly exposed while turning those with little exposure into cognizant talking mutants (er, I mean, zombies), and probably inspiring the survivors to start neon fashion that came soon after.

Refreshingly…

"Daddy would have gotten us Uzis." ~ Samantha Belmont — “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.” ~ Samantha Belmont

… Night of the Comet is devoid of nudity &/or depicting sex. In place of that the under-age sister-character is viewed twice in undergarments, which when you think about it feels pervy. Still, the romantic relationship in Hard Rock Zombies is WAY more disturbing.

Officer Friendly gives you a hug — This doesn’t actually make me feel better about cops in dark places

This Z-film falls under the it’s-so-bad-it’s-good classification, and I suspect could be great if it got the Dawn Of The Dead remake treatment, but in present form doesn’t particularly hold my attention. While watching this flick I tend to wonder “If this was shot in LA, how did the production get empty streets? And if most of the population died instantly due to a passing destructive comet, it sure was nice of everyone to park their cars first … except for that one jerk with the Mercedes. Maybe this didn’t take place in LA but in Canada where everyone parks their cars before a comet causes an apocalypse.”

So there you go — Night of the Comet — put that in your coffee and drink it!

Night of the Comet LINKS

Movie, Review, Zombies

Exit Humanity (2011)

November 13, 2017 BagpiperDon

Film by Bloody Disgusting
Notes by DPScobie

Okay, so here’s the explanation to hopefully un-confuse this review…

Usually I write my reviews as a film is ending or right after I watched it. Sometimes I’m busy and just write notes, maybe because the ‘what’ to write wasn’t flowing for me. It’s been long enough since I watched Exit Humanity I don’t remember what the situation was. A year ago (2016) I had a hard drive crash, and of the data I lost these notes (from 2014) survived. I didn’t go back and write these notes into essay form then and I’m not doing it now — so you figure it out.

The short of this is as IMDB puts it about Exit Humanity “A young man’s struggle to survive in the aftermath of a deadly undead outbreak during the American Civil War.”

Fighting zombies with a bad chest cold is unadvised

Starting out this makes me think of Asylum Films — ripping off other films and being screen-tests for wannabe actors … but better than Asylum … and better than SciFi channel films.
This particular story makes me think they’re ripping off the book version of World War Z … I haven’t read it all yet but I have listened to some of the spoken-book featuring a number of actors/artists/famous-voices … just this is a whole film that focuses on a historic occurrence of zombies outbreaks.
Not an ideal first date…
Think of it like this … you’ve seen films that feature the lone person surviving in the aftermath of a zombie-outbreak — living off of what remains from civilization, running from the undead and slaying zombies to stay alive. This film is that but set in post US Civil War period. There would still be certain problems, at least with the people of this film, they’d run out of bullets to scrounge.
Interesting that there is only narration for the first 23 minutes of the film, no actor lines/dialogue
The film looks like some that I’ve seen on YouTube — but then I’ve seen some rather well done DIY shorts there.
Surviving would be easier in a period where people already live closer to the land.
I like the personal experience this film gives.
SSSHH — I’m a Ninja!
There are period-incorrect details that become immediately obvious — clothing being the big one, the ninja poncho the main charactre makes for himself, gas can, and I am in question of the rifle (less obvious detail) the main charactre has following the Civil War.
Not to be confused with Rocky Horror Picture Show
Something about the start of this film made me think of the 1999 film “Ravenous” with Robert Carlye (IMDB and Wikipedia).
This is one of the few films I’ve seen without a sub-title option … but then that saves you from screwed up sub-titles … like my copies of Star Wars Episodes 4, 5, and 6 where Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker talk about their “life savers” — mmm, tasty! I wonder if it doesn’t have sub-titles because it is a low-budget film.
IMO some of the pacing or mood lacks making scenes drag.
I like that the film was able to go from a narrated personal account into a story-line, however I think I enjoyed what I was seeing as the narrated film and would have liked to seen the whole story experience carried in that same way.
I’ve noticed the lack of Indians and blacks — only white zombies and survivors. This is not an equal-opportunity zombie film.
The book and the Eve’s house makes me think of Evil Dead I & II.
Had this been kept as a narrated piece it would have made for a unique piece — period film and zombie theme prose. Frankly, I did what I often do while watching a film — kept myself busy with a project — so I did not give my full attention to this piece. Had this been the narration-only driven piece it could have been, as with the sections it does feature, that would have better commanded the attention of the viewer in my opinion. This film could be re-made into a stronger piece with more feeling and horror, however using this film as an example to a remake I’m sure someone with the money for a project would say that it’s not worth spending the money because you’d only be making this a bit stronger ultimately … but then it wouldn’t be the first time the wheel was re-invented and only slightly improved.
I don’t believe I have seen a z-film where there are people who have immunity to the z-virus
The ‘witch’ Eve could be more convincing … I think the problem is the charactre needs to be played by an older actress … maybe it’s just that her hair is too black … as-in dyed black not a natural ‘black’ … so if she had some gray hints or her hair was not as smooth, that might help me to buy in to her charactre. (This is peculiar to say seeing as this actress is the most experienced out of the whole cast – to clarify, my issue is with her appearance, it doesn’t match with her acting or the profile of the character.)
Despite this film’s short comings, I would strongly encourage zombie enthusiasts to see this piece.
Dinner will be ready in a minute….
The source of the zombie outbreak was a bit predictable but does have a slight twist that I haven’t seen before — SPOILER — this has zombie-virus coming from witchcraft or as they elude to Vodou. Once this is revealed the film takes a bit more of a World War Z touch.
I can think of 2 z-films I’ve seen that are ‘zombies in the old-west’, I would say that this one is arguably better than the both.
As zombie make-up goes I’ve seen better and I’ve seen much worse — for what this film is the zombies look great.
Something I really appreciate about this film came from the watching the making-of piece (titled “Blood Sweat And Tears”) in the special features — this film is low budget and very DIY. It was shot in a matter of weeks and many of the crew personnel were volunteer, including family members of the director. I’d be surprised if the Civil War solders at the opening of the film weren’t volunteer reenactors. (When you watch the film with the director’s commentary he indicates that these actors were reenactors, more interestingly they’re Canadians.)