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Movie, Review

Saint (2010)

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Okay — first — a few quick house-keeping things…

  • This not a zombie film, but it is relative to some of my zombie-film review — hence its being here.
  • It is a Dutch film and it has a couple of different names — Saint, Sint, and Saint Nick.  For the purposes of this post, it will be referred to as Saint.
  • If you watch this film and you say to yourself “Hey, these Christmas traditions are totally messed up!” — well, Xmas practices and winter traditions differ around the world.

When it comes to the winter holidays in the Netherlands, for many of the children the most important dates are in early December.  While St. Nicholas’ Day is on the 6th December, the major celebrations are held on the 5th December, which is St. Nicholas’ Eve — when the jolly old soul arrives and brings them their presents!

Apparently you leave these treats in your shoes — no joke.

On St. Nicholas’ Eve Dutch children leave treats out for Sinterklaas.  They also spoil Father Christmas’s horse (not reindeer) with water, hay, and carrots. In exchange, they get marzipan, chocolate coins, and hot cocoa.

The Saint takes a different twist on the popular traditions in the city of Amsterdam, portraying  St. Nicholas and his Black Pete helpers as ghosts who murder large numbers of people when his annual celebration night coincides with a full moon.

And now…
The Reason Why I Have Included This Film
In My Zombie Movie Reviews

This film is a hell of a lot better than A Christmas Horror Story (2015) or the mass liberty-taking Krampus (also 2015).  It has its scary bits along with being fun and funny.  It also plays accurately to Xmas traditions instead of taking total license and doing whatever they want.  This is cleverly done whereas IMO the other two are hack works.  If you want to pepper your holidays with a Christmas horror film, watch Saint.

Sint on IMDB and Wikipedia

Christmas in The Netherlands / Holland — Christmas Around the World

Zwarte Piet AKA Black Pete or Black Peter

Movie, Review, Zombies

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

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Christmas is drawing near and things are melting down in the town of Bailey Downs … and at best, I rate A Christmas Horror Story as Yellow Puss.

A Christmas Horror Story clearly resides among its own as a B-film.  It attempts to interweave four horror stories, each of which to varying degrees have little if anything to do with Christmas myth.

If you pay closer attention to this pot-boiler than I did, allegedly the framework of these stories are tied together by a character named DJ Dangerous Dan — a lonely late-night radio personality, waxing on about how he loves Xmas while hitting the eggnog while getting understandably abandoned by the radio station staff.

Hi Bill!

DJ Dan is played by none other than James T. Kirk — clearly a retirement job following his service as Captain aboard the infamous Starship Enterprise … who is probably the only actor you will recognize.

First Story – Three teens break into their school to investigate two murders that occurred the previous year. They mysteriously get locked in the basement  and then — SURPRISE — the horror begins!  This story has nothing to do with Christmas.

Second Story – A husband, wife, and their son go into the woods to chop down a Christmas tree.  The son wanders off and gets switched for a changeling who mimics him and then — SURPRISE — the horror begins!  Aside from the Pagany changeling and Christmas tree, this story too has nothing to do with Christmas.  In other words, these first two stories are just FILLER to justify bringing William Shatner into the film and to bolster the other two stories into a 107 minute B-movie made in Canada.

Third Story – A yuppie family of four visit their elderly aunt and behave poorly.  This attracts the attention of Krampus and while on their way home they are picked off one at a time.  This is the first portion of the story where the filmmakers take liberties with Krampus mythos …. but then HolloWood has given us far worse.   As a result this story has a little to do with Christmas.

Fourth Story – A fittingly Nordic-looking Santa Claus is at his workshop preparing for a busy Christmas when he discovers that his elves and Mrs. Claus have turned into zombies.  He manages to kill them all and then for an unapparent reason Santa is then forced to fight Krampus.  This is where the filmmakers quite unfortunately took the most gross liberties with the Krampus character (AKA Black Peter).  Krampus gets turned into a villain — white hats, black hats … everyone needs a villain — the problem though is that in Krampus mythos he is only a threat to bad kids/people.  In fact, Krampus and St. Nick have always worked together — on Krampusnacht (Krampus night) around December 5th he arrived to punish children who have misbehaved while of course Saint Nicholas would reward well-behaved children with gifts.  In other words, when Krampus became suppressed his tasks were given to Santa who would ‘make his list of who’s naughty and nice’.

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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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