Category Archives: Review

Movie, Review, Zombies

Severed: Forest of the Dead (2006)

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Severed: Forest of the DeadI found Severed: Forest of the Dead to be Green Ooze most of the way through turning to Yellow Puss around the end.

…Summary…
In a remote forest a genetic experiment has gone wrong.  Loggers and protesters are forced to band together after tree sap incident turns the locals into bloodthirsty zombies.

What follows is a review I wrote while watching the film….

Zombies - the wrong kind of people to hang out withIt appears that Severed: Forest of the Dead has sufficient money behind it, and not stars but instead budding actors who I have previously seen laying the ground-work for their careers.  From what I have read and can tell so far, in this film once again something that people have been doing scientifically had an unforeseen accidental consequence that upon a 1 in 100 chance occurred and started causing people to turn into zombies.  The film seems to have good visual quality and works suspense and horror — at the moment I’m only 20 minutes in but it looks to be a good one.

– UPDATE –

If you're going up against zombies, a 4-shot shotgun is a poor choiceI am now around the last fifth of Severed and it is somewhat dragging.  The story-line goes into ideas that do not get completed … as though the editor started to loose their attention to detail or cut out part of a scene that could have been mostly or completely cut.

My ex-girlfriend
Hey baby — give us a kiss!

….Okay…. and I just finished the film — maybe I missed something since I was working on a small project while watching, but the film ended on a bit of a nothing note.  Still, it’s considerably better than a lot of the zombie films I have seen to date.  I would say watch it so long as you know the piece stumbles at the end and has an incomplete wrap.

Patrick Gallagher
Patrick Gallagher

Severed: Forest of the Dead is a Canadian zombie horror film directed by Carl Bessai.  If you have seen enough other material made in Maplewood you will probably recognize…

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Survival of the Dead (2009)

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garbageLet’s make something absolutely clear up front — Survival Of The Dead is garbage.  I rate it Red Blood, and it is on my List Of Zombie Films To AVOID.

What’s worse than that is that it clearly had a chunk of money behind it — not loads, but more money than many zombie films — which in my mind was money that could have been split to make at least 2 other cleverly-made lower budget better films.

The Core Problem — No Story

My impression of Survival Of The Dead is that someone — maybe their name was George — had a stack of admittedly clever zombie gags written down and sitting in a pile.  This person wanted to use these in a film, but didn’t otherwise know how to pull it off — which frankly is what they should have done and just left well enough alone.  However, they got together with their buddies — possibly there were a few beers in the room, possibly a few too many — and they had a brainstorming session that amounted to… “Okay, we’ll use the military ’cause that always flies in zombie films — oh, and to help it sell, everything Irish is popular right now, so let’s throw that in too!”  Having concocted a shoddy story-line they got their funding and started rolling.

grape smuggler
Close but … NOPE!

My guess is that’s how Survival Of The Dead got its start.  But what, no gratuitous possibly-future-famous Z-film breasts to further sell this potboiler?!?  I like bad film, but in this case I would prefer that whoever green-lighted this project read my review:  don’t waste your company’s money and don’t waste the audience’s time.

The Story — Lacking Though It May Be…

Kenneth Welsh hugging some other man on the ground
Uh … this isn’t what it looks like.

Zombies have taken over the world.  A ragtag band of soldiers roams the countryside to scavenging to survive.  The unit is intrigued when they hear of a safe haven on an island off the coast of North America.  Expecting to find a paradise, they instead find the island is torn apart by a wannabe Hatfield–McCoy family feud.  One family wants to exterminate the zombies while the other thinks everyone can peacefully coexists with their undead relatives hoping for a cure to return their relatives back to their human state.

BOOM!
Who want’s a birthday candle?

This turd is directed by George A. Romero.  At least you’ll recognize Kenneth Welsh.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Quick and The Undead, The (2006)

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You can't tell me that this doesn't look like an angry cowboy monkey
!!!ANGRY COWBOY MONKEY!!!

So far as I’m aware, The Quick And The Undead is one of two movies that combine the themes of zombies and cowboys — the other one being Undead or Alive (2007), which is a much better film.  As for this one . . .

A viral outbreak has turned three quarters of the world population into the walking dead. In the old west, bounty hunters are humanity’s only salvation.

So I’m watching The Quick And The Undead while writing this review.  I’ll be finished in about an hour, and I predict I’m going to say two things:

1) It’s impressive what a person can do with their friends as “actors”, a $20 digital video camera from a liquidator store, a used Macintosh, and a few spare weekends.  But who knows, maybe there’s someone in this before they got famous.  Heck, Marisa Tomei had a no-nothing part in The Toxic Avenger — it wasn’t seen until the release of the director’s cut was released 20-odd years later, but look where she got.

 . . . AND . . .
If I just do this one film I'll be FAMOUS in HolloWood
Best friends

2) I’m glad I watched The Quick And The Undead before Undead or Alive.  The Quick And the Undead would probably be a bigger roach to watch following Undead or Alive.

So how did this gem come to be?

This is worse than it looks
Sneakers, t-shirt, arm band tattoo, a town that’s not old …. REALLY …. did ya guys even try?!?

Written, directed, and acted by people you’ve never heard of with a movie poster that looks like an angry cowboy monkey.  The main character is based on (read “ripped-off”) Clint Eastwood and the characters he played in westerns.  Yep, it’s a turd — I rate The Quick And The Undead as pure Red Blood, and it made my List Of Zombie Films To AVOID.

CONCLUSION

Instead of watching The Quick and the Undead, look at this Angry Cowboy Monkey … and then go re-watch Firefly (TV show, 2002) and Serenity (follow-up film, 2005).

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Undead or Alive (2007)

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Undead Or AliveI rate Undead Or Alive as Green Ooze — and apparently the actual title is Undead or Alive: A Zombedy.  So what’s the story…?

When a soldier on the run from the Union Army (James Denton) and a cowboy with a broken heart (Chris Kattan) rob the corrupt sheriff of an old west town, they have no idea that a plague of zombies is sweeping the country, or that Geronimo‘s sexy niece (Navi Rawat) may be their only hope of survival.

James Denton, Chris Kattan, and Navi Rawat
James Denton, Chris Kattan, and Navi Rawat

This film was fun — not necessarily a good film but it was decently made and fun to watch.  A comedic zombie film that takes place in the old west … yeah, that sounds different!

So now that I’ve seen it following Quick & the Dead,
what do I have to say…?

1) I was right, Undead or Alive is considerably better than Quick & the Dead and I’m extraordinarily glad I saw Q&tDead prior to Undead or Alive.

. . . AND . . .
Navi Rawat in buckskins
Navi Rawat in buckskins … really, what more do you need in this world?

2) Navi Rawat somewhat scantily clad in buckskins acting as a vindictive Native American woman — what more needs to be said abut watching this film?!?  I’m not a male chauvinist, I’m just a healthy heterosexual man and I know what I like.  Navi, if you’re reading this, if you feel as so motivated please click on my Contact page.
(PSST! By the way, Navi Rawat is East Indian and German in descent, not Native American — chalk this casting up to the brilliance of HolloWood.  Oh, and in writing this review I learned that “chauvinism” doesn’t mean what we’ve come to associate it as meaning — it actually more or less means “patriotic” — you might benefit from studying up on it yourself.)

sheriff and deputy zombies

Remember, in the old west “Guns don’t kill people. Zombies kill people.” …. or at least that was the film’s tagline.

Navi Rawat ... lovely

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Movie, Review, Zombies

The Vanguard (2008)

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Yellow Puss

I’m not sure if this is a Z-film.  Mashing together a few online summations of this film (mostly from IMDB) consists of … Zombie

The year is 2015.  Overpopulation and famine have plunged our planet into chaos.  One desperate survivor — an enigmatic man — journeys through this apocalyptic world hunted and pursued by hordes of rage-crazed zombies.

Frankly, that sounds like a pretty cool film — not to mention that we’ve seemed to survive that 2015 issue — but my perception was …. different. Zombie

In some respects The Vanguard seems to be a psychological abstract art-house film with black comedy bits — not to mention the presence of humans who have been medicated by some controlling corporation which turns them into mindless wondering killers, which strikes me as a possible different approach to ZOMBIES.

Mind you, the zombies are on the peripheral to the story and they look like they were created using left-over make-up from either of the Evil Dead films.  And what the heck the story of the film has to do with its cool name …. I haven’t a clue! Zombie

Frankly, this looks like another DIY flick.  Looking at IMDB …. it’s written and directed by Matthew Hope,  it’s classified as a low budget film … it appears to have been acted using friends and volunteers, and possibly assembled on a used iMac — but this was well done.  I liked it and I’m happy having seen it only once.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Beast Within (AKA Virus Undead) (2008)

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Beast Within is rated Green Ooze and is one of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.

This film should be watched at very least because it’s directed by two people with the names Wolf Wolff and Ohmuthi.

From what I can tell it’s a German Z-film made for American audiences.  It looks & feels a bit like 28 Days Later where an alternate version of the avian flu transmits a zombie virus.  Add to the mix Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic “The Birds” — and don’t forget the college slasher film element, which of course means we also see Z-film breasts — but I gotta hand it to Wolf Wolff and Ohmuthi, what is displayed isn’t gratuitous as with most Z-films.  The display of gratuitous Z-film breasts is tastefully done, but don’t watch this with your kids or your parents … or my parents.

Oh, and how about this — NO JOURNEY — even though the main charactres are at the epicenter, they feel that where they’re at is the best place to be.  Also, I gotta like the zombie cop who still eats doughnuts even though he’s undead, and I dig the recording of the grandfather’s voice that reminds me of The Evil Dead I & II.  The birds in “The Birds” were better than the digital birds appeared often enough in this film … which is saying something because I’ve never seen all of “The Birds“.

Beast Within AKA Virus Undead – IMDB and Wikipedia

Movie, Review, Zombies

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

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Shaun Of The Dead is rated Green Ooze and is one of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.  This film is fun — period!

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and at the end of the film you might be encouraged to be a better person.  It’s amusing to think that this could be another occurrence that’s part of the 28 Days Later outbreak, although they say in the film that it isn’t.

If you enjoy this film, be sure to also catch Hot Fuzz (also with Nick Frost) and probably Run Fat Boy Run too — but I’d skip Big Nothing if you’ve seen Fat Boy and think that something else with Simon Pegg and David Schwimmer is guaranteed to be good.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Fido (2006)

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Fido is rated Green Ooze and is one of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.

I would have enjoyed this film had I not enjoyed it simply because Billy Connolly played the leading zombie.

Oh yeah, zombies in the fifties with a cute fun story line where zombies are controlled and function as servants for humans and the main charactres have reckonings in their lives about love and happiness — good fun!

I watched Fido the second time with my parents — how often do I say that about these films, huh?  It might be okay for kids too with parental supervision.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

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The Girl With All The Gifts immediately
makes the viewer begin to ask questions…

The Girl With All The Gifts
If you found this movie poster disturbing, it’s supposed to be

A 10 year-old girl wakes in the cell of a seemingly military controlled facility, possibly underground.  She rises from her bunk, dresses in a set of faded red sweats, then voluntarily sits in a wheelchair.  Moments after two soldiers enter her cell at gunpoint to strap her arms, legs, and head to the chair, followed by rolling her in to a classroom with similarly secure children.

As class begins you find that all of these kids are very intelligent … and seemingly happy … but soon you find out why these children are so closely controlled. In a post-apocalyptic dystopian future, society has broken down after a fungal disease has infected and all but destroyed humankind.  This mysterious fungus turns its victims into flesh-eating “hungries” – fast moving, mindless, and ravenous zombies.  They are capable of running over long distances, and quickly transferring the infection through their bites.

Let's roll!
I don’t know about you but being strapped to a chair  could have helped me to get through some of my college classes…
RadioTimes.com said that The Girl With All The Gifts is “The best zombie movie since 28 Days Later”
… and BagpiperDon is inclined to agree!

The bar for zombie films
Has Been RAISED.

You know when you hear an album that’s so good you play it twice in a row?  Have you ever had that with a movie?
That was this film for me — I watched it back to back!

Sennia Nanua and Glenn Close
Sennia Nanua and Glenn Close

The Girl With All The Gifts is the most unique and original Z-film I have seen since 28 Days Later and World War Z.  BRILLIANTLY acted by Glenn Close (yes, six time Academy Award-nominated actress Glenn Close is in a zombie film), along with Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, and staring new-comer Sennia Nanua as Melanie, the little girl.  What is it about Brits and Z-movies – The Girl With All The Gifts is SPECTACULAR!  And if Sennia keeps acting like this … she’s going to go FAR — what a treat to see such a future talent!

act 2
The gang hangin’ out up on the roof

By the way, this was directed by Colm McCarthy, one and the same as Peaky Blinders — unbelievably for £4 million, which is about $5 million.  Filming lasted seven weeks in The West Midlands, taking place in Birmingham city centre, Cannock Chase, Dudley and Stoke-on-Trent.   Aerial views of a deserted London were filmed with drones in the abandoned Ukrainian town of Pripyat, which has been uninhabited since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

book cover
Book cover

The Girl With All The Gifts is rated dark Green Ooze and is one of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies.

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OH YEAH!

I even plowed through the book!

The original science-fiction novel, The Girl With All The Gifts, is by M.R. Carey.  Published in June 2014 by Orbit Books, it based on his 2013 Edgar Award nominated short story “Iphigenia In Aulis“.

And now, every e-thing you want about Pripyat…

Movie, Review, Zombies

The Return of The Living Dead (1985)

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Okay, here’s the crazy thing about The Return of The Living Dead from 1985 . . .

I’d rate it as a Yellow Puss film. While it’s kind of a cruddy film, I’d also have to say that as zombie films go, it’s kind of an important film of the genre.  Crazy, huh?!?

 

So here’s the gist . . .

Fifteen years ago a medical supply warehouse was contracted by the military to store some specialized barrels containing cadavers preserved in an experimental gas.  While two employees are in the basement — a young buck new hire and an old pro — they accidentally release vapors from one of the barrels which reanimates the corpse into a flesh-eating zombie.  After fighting off the zombie, they illicit help cremating the body at the mortuary across the street.  As smoke and ashes are expelled through the chimney, rain begins to fall outside … onto the cemetery … where a group of punk rockers (friends of the warehouse new-hire) are screwing around and killing some time.

From here the film turns into something not often seen in a zombie film….  MANY zombie films have what I call ‘The Journey’ — the human survivors have to get from Point-A to Point-B for one reason or another.  They can survive in the other location, the cure for the outbreak is at Point-B, whatever the reason they have to travel from one place to another usually failing to work together, occasionally being attacked by zombies to move the story along, and the survivor group loses its numbers through attrition. This doesn’t have The Journey.  In place of that, the punks and the professionals retreat into the warehouse and mortuary to try and stave off the attacking zombies.  Instead of a journey story line this film works in a siege setting, where there is B-film corny-ness and constant action.

Without giving anything more away, I’d like to touch on why this film is important…  Simply, it stands as an icon of the genre.  For a budget of $4M it was actually decently made in that it actually still looks pretty good.  I’ve seen The Return of The Living Dead II (1988) recently, and comparatively it was poorly made.  The original also has two of the biggest icons of the Z-film genre…

WHAT — you didn’t think I was going to post a graphic picture did you?!?! That’s a different website — look through your search history…

The Return of The Living Dead quite frankly has The Most Iconic Zombie Film Boobs … or in this case a completely naked dancing woman — delivered by scream queen Linnea Quigley playing a punk rocker girl named Trash dancing naked at the cemetery and selling loads of tickets at the box-office.  DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM WITH YOUR KIDS … or your parents.

Remember that cadaver in the experimental barrel I mentioned above?  The zombie that comes out of it is known within the zombie genera as “Tar Man” and made a distinct play on the zombie desire in saying “BRAINS!”

Okay, now, things I’m not so good with from this film …

The zombies are fast moving — I’m cool with that. The zombies are cognizant, and 90 times out of 10 I’m not cool with that. In this film they can also talk and problem solve …. I’m not just talking about beating their way through doors and windows, I mean they can open doors, apply tools to barricades, it just doesn’t work for me…. But It Could Have…

The ‘How’ part of the zombies being cognizant wasn’t developed. Watching the film, I saw how this could have been done within the story but I’m not going to take the time to propose this about a decades-old film because what’s the point? I have better things to do. Seriously, were I to put that time and thought into this film I’d be no better than the people that claim to be major Star Wars fans and yet spend LOADS of time complaining about how wrong and poorly-done Star Wars is.

The way the film ends it should have created an unstoppable world zombie outbreak. The Part-2 film doesn’t start based off the ending of this film but it does draw from the military chemical barrels — but at least they did bring Tar Man (or another Tar Man) back onto the screen.

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