For starters, I have to say that I’m surprised that this tile wasn’t already used by some previous zombie film. Maybe it was and I’m just not aware of it, but let’s get into it, shall we?
RATING – Yellow Puss, nearly Green Ooze – The Dead is an interesting film among Z-films.
Somewhere off the coast of war-torn West Africa a plane-load of American soldiers are evacuating. The plane crashes in an area where the night before a horde of zombies attacked villages through the area — and US military engineer, Lieutenant Brian Murphy, is the only survivor.
With no other options and limited resources, Lieutenant Murphy starts to walk his way out of the country. Yeah, it’s The Journey, but for this film it works rather well. Amid a country of zombies there are very few humans — often called ‘survivors‘ — and our engineer finds and teams up with a regional soldier, Daniel, who is gone AWOL and looking for his son. In time, Daniel asks Brian to locate his son. And that’s all I’ll tell you about this as to not give any spoilers….
Here’s the thing about this film and my review — call it a confession if you will — I did not get to write my review after watching it, and I had a lot of good things to say during the viewing. Once I got around to writing I got very busy with Xmas holiday stuff and touring the state of Washington as a guest player with a Celtic-rock band — I did not have time to re-watch and better-write my review, but I will tell you this …
This film has an unexpected element and rather different charactre among Z-films. It wasn’t a great film but it was a good film, and frankly it was hard not to give it a Green Ooze rating. It also gives some beautiful views of parts of Burkina Faso and Ghana. If you are a zombie film fan, The Dead is a must-watch.
Links
Addendum
Yes — an ADDENDUM! Why? Because I wrote and published this before, and somehow it survived a hard drive crash I had, but it didn’t originally get posted when I moved my website. ANYWAY… Take a look at the Wikipedia page for this film regarding the production — it’s nearly amazing the film even got made…
The cast and crew encountered many problems. Shooting was planned for 6 weeks — it took 12! First there was a delay in shipping the equipment to Africa which added 3 weeks. The lead actor, Rob Freeman, contracted malaria and almost died in the middle of filming. Additional delays were caused by major damage to camera equipment. Howard J. Ford — one of the directors — later published a book, titled Surviving the Dead (2012), that detailed the troubled production.
Well, I listened to some metal today — Zombie (EP), the 2010 release by The Devil Wears Prada. Frankly … not my thing. I’m cool with metal but I think Sesame Street is a much better gig for 
The first time I heard Tom Petty – and I mean REALLY heard Tom Petty – was at a ski condo where I spent many winter weekends during high school. If you consider a lot of his songs being in high school could not have been a more fitting time.
One night during the winter of ‘89/90 some folks down the hall at the condo building had a party. They put on 
Every week the concert would pick up where it left off, and over a number of weeks I caught most of the performance. Something about the music and the presence the musicians had caught me. To this day I don’t know what the specific concert was or much reference to make for the footage – and I would love to see it again. All I recall was that there was this HUGE tree prop behind the band on stage, and I think chandeliers hung from the branches. Their performance was engaging, electrifying, authentic, and the roots of rock’n’roll were palpable.
I get the impression that some folks think that because I play bagpipes that I’m not a musician, that I don’t tie in with the rest of musicians the same. While I hold the opinion that there is a vibe every musician experiences that comes with their genre of instrument, there is a vibe that all musicians share. I didn’t start out as a bagpiper, I’m not now only a bagpiper, and with that I’ve always viewed myself as a musician first. When you appreciate the work of another musician both from an audience standpoint and from musician standpoint …. when someone who’s work was incredible and they move on … it hurts in two ways. You lose a star in the night who was a point of great creation, and you lose someone you understand because of the vibe you shared with them.