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Movie, Zombies

The Battery (2012)

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Wow — sometimes I really hate this hobby … reviewing zombie films.  Today I’m reviewing “The Battery” from 2012.  According to All Things Horror on the cover of the DVD, this is “The first must-see zombie film in a hell of a long while.”  If that’s the case, then we’ve been far more desperate than I was possibly aware.

So before I lay into The BAD-tery, let’s figure out a few things … more over, fail to.  I can’t find who “All Things Horror” is online because the name is way too general.  And when you cross your search-terms with “Battery” …. well, you get all-things horror and every brand cell in double-A, triple-A, C, D and so on.

What I can find is the usual Wikipedia, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes pages.  So here’s the score …  The film had a budget of $6000.  It was shot in 15 days in Connecticut*, and the scenes were not planned in advance.  There are only 6 zombies for the first hour of the film — that’s 1 zombie for every 10 minutes — so little that I’m not sure this can be called a zombie film.  The film stars debut  director Jeremy Gardner and co-producer Adam Cronheim.  Allegedly their characters are two former baseball players trying to survive a zombie apocalypse — but they’re both so far out of shape clearly they were more likely T-ball coaches trying to hook up with single moms.  Oh, and let’s not forget the gratuitous Z-film breasts …
(* For the record, I have nothing against Connecticut … at this time.)

Watch the extras — this actress said she hated doing the scene, dislikes the name her zombie is know by, and pretty much regrets the role …. and now there are pervy pictures and videos of her all over the net. Given the budget of the film … I doubt she even got a hundred bucks!

So let me give you my rating of The Battery, then tell you what is redeeming about it …

Long & Short, “The Battery” is lucky to get a Yellow Puss rating from me — think more of that putrid orange colour between yellow and red.  It’s dull, it lacks zombies, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere for an hour, and I’m not sure if it went any where 41 minutes later because I skipped through that part then shut it off.  Frankly, you’ll find this on my “Zombie Films to Avoid” page.

Adam Cronheim and Jeremy Gardner

The Battery isn’t completely garbage —
here’s what I liked about it …

If you’ve read my other Z-film blog posts you’ll know that one of the things is dislike is the constant use of The Journey story arc.  This film doesn’t show the start or reasoning behind the “We have to get from Point-A to Point-B” — it just shows that the main characters are traveling through the zombie apocalypse (that mostly lacks zombies).  Also, one of the characters is frequently making a bid for the duo to stop traveling — to stop being on pointless Journey arc.  This is characteristic of what’s going on in The Battery — it is showing the human side of the experience, the relationship between the two men, that some people (understandably) seek normalcy.  For me this is the redeeming part of the film, what makes watching the first hour bearable … er, I mean, vaguely worthwhile — not much other zombie media offers this.

Outside of that, I skipped the last 30 or 40 minutes of the film — and I think you’d be just as well off to skip all 101 minutes of this film.  But … High Fives to Jeremy Gardner and Adam Cronheim — they got to live their dreams of making and staring in a zombie film and pretending they were baseball players.  Whoopie-Doo!

Here … if you really have to, you can watch The Battery on Tubi.

Commentary, Movie, Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

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It seems that this is a review I lost with my hard drive crash nearly 2 years ago.  Here’s news — you’re not missing anything — nothing in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and nothing with my review.  If a film doesn’t register with you, it’s hard to review it — so what would you read from that?  ANSWER – me, annoyed.

Anyway, I’m working from memory here, so let’s get started…

Colour Rating — Yellow Puss or Red Blood … whatever …

I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, I have had no plans to, and after this film I am further not interested.  It’s amusing that Seth Grahame-Smith could write a quirky parody mashup (published 2009) combining the 1813 Jane Austen‘s classic novel with elements of modern zombie fiction, but mostly I just found it snooty and boring — I couldn’t get in to it.  When they showed the action stuff, it worked for me, but all otherwise it was the whos-in-love-with-whom Jane-Austen-junk my mother warned me about.

Not a gore-fest, this Z-film was a SNORE-fest!

There was clearly a lot of money behind this film, and one good thing I can say about it is that I’m sure it will perturb the Jane Austen purists.  Hopefully, it will be at least a little fun that it was re-envisioned.  For me though, coming from the zombie-film fan perspective . . . something was lost with this to capture the the zombie-fan demographic.

Conclusion…

If you’re a Pride-Prejudice/Austen fan and you’re open-minded — go for it.  If you’re a zombie-fan and you want to make sure you’ve watched EVERY zombie related film, well … good luck.  If you’re a die-hard zombie-film fan …. don’t bother.

LINKS to help you sleep

Movie, Review, Zombies

Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)

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It should be no surprise that that Day of the Dead 2: Contagium  rings in as another Yellow Puss.  Probably it should be Red Blood.  I’ll tell you what I have to say about this film, but first please read these which I found under “Reception” on Wikipedia….

Peter Dendle called DOTD2 Contagium a “boring, transparent feature” that was “forgotten almost as soon as it was released”.

Steve Barton of Dread Central rated it 0/5 stars and wrote, “This is a sequel in name only, created solely to generate revenue from ill informed fans.” Contagium

Joseph Savitski of Beyond Hollywood wrote that the film “is not only an exercise in incompetence, but also a blatant attempt at false advertising.”

Dennis Prince of DVD Verdict wrote, “There is no warning too strong that would urge you to avoid this DVD at all costs.”

So what does BagpiperDon think of Contagium?

Bearing in mind that this film hand a whole whopping $1M budget in 2005 — that should already tell you that this is a nothing film.  It was confusing as to the significance in light of the 1985 “Day of the Dead” not to mention the “Day of the Dead” from 2008.  It seems like a film that wants to have a few good new ideas to the genre.  Also, it had the fun of being a simple, low-budget Z-film ….. but in the end… it’s a waste of time.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

The Zombie Diaries (2006)

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You NEVER see this guy in the film, which is too bad because the cover looks like it should actually be a pretty cool film.

WOW, where to start?  How about my rating for the 2006 film “Zombie Diaries” … Frankly, I’ve flip-flopped.  Originally I gave it a yellow puss — very pale yellow puss.  When I started watching the 2011 sequel I dropped it to a red blood.  And then I saw more of the sequel and boosted the original flick back to yellow.  Yep, that’s right, the first film is better than the second in this humble bagpiper’s opinion!

The back of the DVD case cites The Dark Side (whatever that is) as having said that this is “The best zombie film ever.”*  If that’s the case, I’m giving up on zombie films.  Fortunately, the are patently wrong in this regard.
(*I tried to find the specific article on their site without luck… did they change their mind, delete their review, and disassociate themselves with this film entirely?)

THE GOOD NEWS

This film could serve as insights to people’s different experiences before Jim wakes up in 28 Days Later — although this isn’t possible according to Wikipedia since “The second chapter, “The Scavengers”, takes place one month later.“, and the third chapter presumably takes place later still.

THE BAD NEWS
The truth is in a real zombie situation, you and your friends are going to only be as awesome as these folks …

Imagine if you will Blair Witch Project (otherwise known as the worst bad film ever) but with the actual presence of a horror threat — in this case smatterings of amateur-actor zombies.  Instead of a couple of Blair Witch guys screaming at nothing and pissing themselves like millennials, you get the audiobook version of World War Z giving insights to various people and their experiences as things fell apart due to the outbreak or mass presence of zombies.  All of this is done in a you-are-there found-footage hand-held-documentary filming format … which I often find annoying because the filming is overly jerky and the audio is incredibly noisy with hyper yelling. In this case this looks like a an amateur film with decent execution

HEY YOU GGUUUUYYYYYYYSSSSS!!!

The film doesn’t begin to get interesting until 14 minutes in.  It possibly starts to interconnect around 37 minutes.  Perhaps one of the best things about it is that it gets an interesting look around 39 minutes when the visual switches to night vision.

Otherwise, what do you have in this film?  Bickering Brits, who, if not for zombies taking over the world, would be complaining about Americans and claiming that they’re SO much better and nothing like us …. except for the bickering, complaining, and conceitedness, all-in-all failing to acknowledge that everywhere you go people are just people.  Yep, everyone sucks just as much as everyone else everywhere else, including English people and even Canadians …  but especially people in France.  In truth, between the rigors of long term survival along with death and fighting off zombies, the stress level in such a situation would be pretty high so bickering seems realistic.  The other thing that’s bogus — and common in movies — is that the characters are complaining about not having enough guns in a country where guns are highly restricted, and yet they’re instantly pretty damn good shots for people who are unaccustomed to firearms.

THE YOU-ARE-THERE PROBLEM
When you see zombies this badass, you’re dealing with a home-spun Z-film production

One of the things I keep thinking over and over which applies to this film and any you-are-there hand-held film — and I’m sure I’m not the first to ask this — why would anyone film all of this stuff?!? Everyone one of these types of films need to justify this, few if any of them do. Similarly, particularly a story that takes place a number of months, a year, more than one year, whatever — why are these folks bothering to still record, especially when they must be running out of film or disc storage space, how are they continuing to power their devices, eventually why would they bother? While the hand-held you-are-there style film making has a certain feel and effect, to a degree it is also cheaper to make, which may also be a motivator behind writing/creating a story in this fashion. Mostly, I just don’t think it works all that well or at least to say as often as these films come out.

Hopefully the 2011 sequel — World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries — is better.  But then you got to wonder about a crummy film that gets the juice behind it to make a sequel … Did other audience members think it was good enough to support a second film?  Are the film makers deluded or trying to fix their errors from the first film?  Did I leave the stove on?  Is the redhead at work flirting with me or does she flirt with everyone?  Instead of using gel I wonder if I could use wood glue in my hair and then only have to style it once a week?

Links

A List Of Words Not To Believe Relative To This Film
  • Best
  • Powerhouse

Movie, Review, Zombies

Day Of The Dead (1985)

Whaddayaknow — George A. Romero wrote and directed another zombie film!  And I’ve rated it as Yellow Puss.

What’s the significance of Day Of the Dead?  I’m still trying to figure that out myself.  Heck, 30 minutes into the film I asked “Where’s this film going?”  After an hour and thirty-seven minutes I asked myself that again and then the credits started rolling.

  • Music that was used in Shaun Of The Dead, which SOTD did intentionally drawing from a number of Z-films to pay homage to their predecessors
  • Yelling “Hello?” that sounds like the same delivery I first heard in 28 Days Later and suspect that Day Of The Dead was the original
  • Experiments with cognizant zombies – most notable in the film is “Bub”, a male zombie who at a base level shows memory of things from when he was a human (ex applying a disposable razor to his face for shaving)
  • In some cases over-the-top campy acting, which can be characteristic of B/Z-films, but in this case struck me as poor acting &/or directing choices. I think the film could have had better execution & resonance in the same scenes (ALTHOUGH I NOTE – it was only the military AKA government characters that acted in this ‘ridiculous’ way, which may start to make some sense when you understand that this is supposed to be representative of a conflict between the public and the government.)
  • Questionably gay straight guy or straight gay guy
  • Oldest private in history, Private Steele – so did he join late, has this zombie conflict been going on that long and there was no one around to promote him, or is that he joined young and remained a career private?
  • Better make up and effects than Dawn Of The Dead
  • Instead of being held up in a shopping mall (Dawn Of The Dead) with a helicopter they’re holed up in an underground facility of some sort with a helicopter
Bub just got the latest BagpiperDon album.

I happened to have a collector’s edition of this film when I viewed it, so I also had all the extras — including the ‘interviews with the cast members X#-of-years later’ AKA ‘today’.  One of the things said (by Romero) was that the two parties of people in this film — scientists & military — stuck in the underground bunker was meant to represent the public and the government of the time (mid-1980s) and how there was a distrust between the two.

Some zombies are more handy than others.

Perhaps this film had that significance then (in 1985) but viewing it in 2017 it has no staying power.

This film could probably be good with a re-write & re-make, not unlike how Total Recall was grossly improved.

Day Of The Dead at IMDB

For those about to rock, we salute you!

 

Movie, Review, Zombies

Cemetery Man (1994)

This is perhaps one of the worst reviews I could give.  I put this DVD in my player, watched the trailer, and popped the disc back out.  The preview looked so-so, but being a zombie film my think is to watch it still — because if I only watched the well-made Z-films then I’d only have about a dozen reviews and all of them would be on my Favourites List.  The issue that I had with Cemetery Man was that it was subtitled and did not have a language over-dub option, and at the time I didn’t have time to watch a film that required me to read (I usually work on something while I watch a film at home, usually my laptop).  I’ve been told that an over-dub version followed the 1994 release a few years later — so I may try to get my hands on that and give this film another go.  Still, IMDB indicates that this film had a $4-million budget (which is not just low but it is LOW) and grossed $253,969 at the US box-office ….. so how much of a film am I missing here really?!?

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz (2013)

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Right up front, I want to be abundantly clear about Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz, I rate this film Red Blood.

As far as I’m concerned Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz does not deserve the honor of a review or a comment on my webpage.  HOWEVER, I bought a copy, I’ve seen it, and I’m fairly thorough …. and I’ll share my opinion for other film fans of a genre so they know to avoid this terrible addition to an otherwise great series.

Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz = AVOID

So there are a few things that happen in HolloWood that really stink up art, films, creative ideas …. and I mean stink up like the scrapings from the dog park at the end of a July weekend.  One of them is excessive creative liberties …. “I paid for the license on this story, and now regardless of whatever that story is I can do what I want — and I do!”  Another one is the thought that world federation wrestlers, extreme fighters, or ultimate weight lifters can act …. instead of putting them out to pasture once they’ve body-slammed their brains out or whatever, someone tries putting them into film.  Sometimes that works — a great example would be Dwayne Johnson — not only did we get lucky there, we got a real gift.  Usually what’s done is they put them in high-action/low-story roles, and because there’s a bunch of action it must be a good film.  WRONG!

Sneaky!

This film takes the setting of Outpost and tries to give the back-story — the origins of the machine and the experiments — and strings along a battle-royal with some Russian Special Forces soldiers who come off more as resistance fighters and ultimately does nothing to establish the subtitle of the ‘Rise of the Spetsnaz‘.

Please, lob a grenade at this turd.

The opportunity for a quality, meaningful, story-establishing prequel to Outpost (2008) was entirely missed with Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz.  As my understanding goes, there was more money wasted on Rise of the Spetsnaz than there was spent on making Outpost: Black Sun (2012).  Black Sun is in my mind a superior film to Rise of the Spetsnaz.  Black Sun derivatives from the character of the original 2008 film but stays enough within the universe.  Rise of the Spetnaz just took the setting and did whatever it wanted for the sake of making some meatheads an acting career.  In Black Sun the world is being threatened by the machine and the un-dead phase-shifting Nazi super soldiers, and had the money that was thrown away in making Rise of the Spetsnazbeen put to Black Sun it could have delivered this world-threat development better.

FULL … METAL … JACKET — oh, whoops, wrong film!

I now own the 2008, 2012, and 2013 Outpost films.  I’m glad to have seen all three to know all the ground covered with the original idea, but had I known what was done with Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz I wouldn’t have paid ten cents for a copy.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Outpost: Black Sun (2012)

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The short writing about Outpost: Black Sun is this …. at one time I had a longer writing …. it’s relative to that time that I thought I didn’t need to back-up my hard drive.  Lesson learned; now I back-up like a mad-man.

More or less to say, Outpost: Black Sun is the Yellow Puss-rated additional film that should have been made to compliment the original 2008 Outpost.

The story for Outpost: Black Sun works; you get to revisit the dangerous location found in the original film and yet go further in.  The phase-shifting zombie-Nazis are now more of a threat — in this case, to the whole world!  There are some creative liberties I could have done without.  The sad thing is that this film has less money behind it (or at least to my understanding) than Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz and did far more to carry the story line.  Had only the wasted Rise of the Spetsnaz money been put to this film, then Black Sun could have been even better.  If you liked the original Outpost, see Outpost: Black Sun —  skip seeing Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz.

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Catherine Steadman as Nazi-hunter Lena … WOWIE!
Movie, Review, Zombies

Outpost (2008)

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Outpost was my first exposure to the concept of zombie-Nazis. I found a copy on DVD at a liquidator store for $3.  Figuring that it was going to be a roach, I was just too amused at the combination of zombies and Nazis, and had to get it.  What I found out that it was a fantastic film!

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

Oh, and if you get really opinionated about Outpost, you can debate as to whether or not the Nazis are zombies, phase-shifting zombies, or humans transformed into ghosts. Regardless, in this humble Highland bagpiper’s z-film opinion, this flick kicks ass!

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Billy Elliot (2000)

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At first blush Billy Elliot appears to be about a boy in Northern England who trades his boxing gloves for ballet toe-shoes, and is otherwise absolutely grossly devoid of zombies. However, I am fairly sure the sick grandmother charactre is in the beginning stages of turning into an undead person. I predict that the film “Billy Elliot 2 – The Years Between” will be made.  Billy Elliot 2 will reveal the zombie outbreak, teen-Billy’s epic trials of battle and survival, and rebuilding of society where we rejoin Billy at the end of film 1 having freed himself from his zombie-apocalypse PTSD through ballet. Oh yeah … mark my words, Billy Elliot 2 will be made … any day now … I’m sure of it.

I rate the zombie film Billy Elliot as Green Ooze!

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