This weird 1973 creep-out is directed by Willard Huyck, co-written with Gloria Katz. If you don’t recognize those names, they were George Lucas’s (alright, calm down everybody) friends from USC who went on to write TEMPLE OF DOOM and write/direct HOWARD THE DUCK. But back in the early ’70s they helped him write a treatment for AMERICAN GRAFFITI, then turned down the job to write that script when they were given a week to come up with an idea for a horror movie and then write it. They went and made this and got done in time to go back and write AMERICAN GRAFFITI after all.
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Posts Tagged ‘zombies’
Messiah of Evil
Saturday, October 8th, 2011
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT is a semi-clever and watchable but also not all that great or original supernatural detective type deal. It’s like CONSTANTINE but not as well directed and with more jokes.
Brandon Routh plays the title character (well, the “Dylan Dog” part of the title; the “Dead of Night” part is played by various undead creatures). I’m not really clear if “Dog” is his last name or if it’s just a cool nick name. Nobody ever calls him “Dylan Doggy Dogg,” but it might be short for that. Anyway he’s a private eye who is in on the secret information that there are vampires, zombies and other monsters living among us. (more…)
Survival of the Dead
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
“Hey, I didn’t think SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD was all that terrible. Just not very good.” That’s what I told my buddies who had seen it before me. They were surprised and appalled.
The word was abysmal on George Romero’s latest, especially from the guy I saw DIARY OF THE DEAD with. He agreed with me that although that one was an embarrassing failure at least it had some good parts. He offered no such mercy for the new one. (more…)
Night of the Creeps
Monday, October 26th, 2009
Man, I knew everybody loved NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, but the way people talked about it I always figured it was some nostalgic grew-up-in-the-80s thing like GOONIES or heavy metal. No, it turns out NIGHT OF THE CREEPS is truly fucking great! You guys should’ve been more clear!
It’s a movie with a really unique feel. The only thing it reminds me of is RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, but for nerds instead of punks. It has a similar tone of funny-but-serious, similar stylishly cartoonish effects and puppet zombies (see thumbnail), similar confident visual style and storytelling. It lets the horror unfold a piece at a time (aliens, ax-murdering escaped mental patient in the 1950s, cryogenics, zombies, space slugs) and it just seems to know what it’s doing so I never questioned that it would all come together and make sense. And it did. It’s just great writing and directing – Fred Dekker, I forgive you for ROBOCOP III. (more…)
Zombieland
Friday, October 9th, 2009
Man, ZOMBIELAND was just begging for me to hate it. You know how picky I am about the balance between horror and comedy. And who the fuck makes a zombie comedy now? It feels exactly like that moment when somebody’s dad makes a reference to their favorite band from three grades ago, like he’s just catching on but he thinks he’s on the cutting edge. I was already sick of people talking about zombie movies back when SHAUN OF THE DEAD came out, and to be frankly honest even that one I didn’t really see what all the fuss was about.
I would’ve been even more skeptical if I had read up on it before seeing it, because I would’ve known it was written originally as a TV show by reality show producers trying to cash in on the “fast zombie” love during that couple weeks after the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake came out. It’s two writers and one of them says he’d only seen a couple zombie movies before (didn’t specify which ones), the other one had only seen SHAUN OF THE DEAD. And the director isn’t big on them either and had only done commercials before.
Plus the title is kind of cheesy, I don’t know why, I just don’t like it.
And not just that! The main character Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has a numbered list of rules he always talks about, just like I hated in TRANSPORTER. And these ones are cuter because they appear as text on the screen whenever they’re mentioned.
But you know what, I have some rules of my own, tenets I believe in, and one is that Woody Harrelson is always pretty good, even when he’s in crap. Plus the projector was broken for the movie I came to see, so I switched my ticket for this one. (more…)
Diary of the Dead
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008Dear diary,
I saw George Romero’s new movie DIARY OF THE DEAD. It’s basically “NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets BLAIR WITCH PROJECT” or “CLOVERFIELD with zombies” or “CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST – cannibal + zombies but not ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST.” It’s not a sequel to the living dead movies but kind of a do-over with the zombie plague beginning in the present day and depicted in documentary form. Some film students are working on a crappy mummy movie (come on George, this is 2008, only Rob Cohen makes mummy movies) when they start hearing news about the dead coming back to life, and their director is compelled to keep filming. We’re told at the beginning of the movie that his footage was edited by another character along with clips they downloaded from youtube, some news and security cam footage. Also she admits that she added music. And, I’m afraid, she narrates it.
I feel bad saying this but since nobody is reading this and it’s only a diary I will come out and say it: this movie isn’t very good. I enjoyed watching it and will list many of the good things about it right here on these pages, in the interest of balance. And in case Harry reads this because he got real mad at Quint for not liking it and I pretty much agree with everything in Quint’s review. But in my deepest, most personal secret opinion this is a failed experiment for old George.
This is Romero back doing low budget independent movies, but it looks real nice. Especially in the parts that show the larger world outside of the documentary, the clips from the news and youtube where there is total chaos going on, cars crashing into each other, zombies hanging on nooses from freeway overpasses, and various madness. In NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD the characters were constantly trying to listen to news reports to get some kind of information about what’s going on. In DIARY we see news reports (sometimes edited to hide the truth), we hear talk radio, CBs, all kinds of communication. All those different fuzzy broadcasts add a realistic texture to the movie and I think Romero is right that if something like this were to happen now (God forbid, because I bet it would be a huge pain the ass) the young people would in fact be the ones spreading information about what’s going on. Because they have all their god damn cell phones and little handheld video games and all that stupid shit they always play with, and they spell worse than me because they write in some kind of moronic gibberish from writing on phones and they also wear their pants too tight now and wear those white belts and they look almost as stupid as their older brothers did wearing those giant clown pants. (more…)
Day of the Dead (2008)
Monday, January 28th, 2008Man, I try to be a nice guy. I try to be an optimist. I was ready to burn the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake at the stake, but then I saw it and it wasn’t too bad. It’s a hollow action movie version of the original, but it’s a fun one, and it’s pretty well executed. I’m not too much of a hardliner to admit that.
So if they already remade that and did okay I wasn’t gonna be too up in arms about a DAY OF THE DEAD remake. And I was rooting for Steve Miner too. He’s the director and I’ve seen people talk shit about him here, but I have a soft spot for him. He directed my two favorite FRIDAY THE 13THs (parts 2 and 3) which are fun and have a good energy to them. And he still had some of that spark when he did HALLOWEEN H20: H20 STANDS FOR HALLOWEEN TWENTY YEARS LATER. Nobody seems to like that movie, and to be honest the Michael Meyers mask looks terrible, but I think it’s a pretty good movie. The ROCKY BALBOA of the HALLOWEEN series. And it has that great chase at the end, you gotta at least enjoy that. Ignore that bullshit in the next one about how Michael Meyers switched clothes with a paramedic. That’s for conspiracy theorists. Anyway because of those three movies I figured if they had to do a fast running DAY OF THE DEAD then maybe Steve Miner wasn’t a bad choice to do it.
Well, nope. I was wrong and the proof is called “DAY OF THE DEAD” and coming straight to DVD on a date which I will not specify because you should not watch it. And don’t look it up, either. Just forget about it. The cover shows a zombie projectile vomiting a bunch of green slime and eyeballs into the air. This doesn’t happen in the movie but is a good description of how you will feel watching the movie. (more…)
House of the Dead 2
Sunday, January 29th, 2006Hey boys,
I know you guys follow Dr. Uwe Boll around all the time so you’re interested in all his movies and their mysterious sequels. I know alot of people like to talk shit, but I will say this for Dr. Boll. The medical profession is a noble one. If he healed somebody some time in the past that is to be commended. If he is one of those pervy doctors that drugs ladies and feels them up or something like that, I’m against that. And if he makes bad movies like everybody says, I’m not gonna defend that either. George Miller M.D. heals people, that didn’t stop him from making MAD fucking MAX. So it’s been established that you can be a doctor and still direct great movies. Anyway that’s not important because this is not by Dr. Boll, but it’s a sequel to his movie HOUSE OF THE DEAD, I guess. I never saw any of his movies or played video games so I am uniquely unqualified for this review.
Maybe it’s better than the first one but who gives a shit. Basically what this is is another shitty movie that you will flip past on the Sci-Fi Channel. For something like that it’s surprisingly watchable if you’re being charitable. But if you remember it two days later you must’ve had a boring two days. Of course I said the same thing about WEDDING CRASHERS and people still love that movie so far so maybe this will be a runaway hit.
The movie starts out like a moronic 1980s fraternity comedy, with a bunch of annoying non-actors running around with squirt guns stealing panties. This is a way to get some tits into the movie before the plot begins. Now in case there’s anybody out there who is too young to know, the 1980s were a dark time for American culture. I don’t care if you’re nostalgic for the days of Webster and Rubik’s cube and Deaf Leopard or whatever stupid shit you remember liking when you were a kid. That’s no excuse. There is no reason to bring back the 1980s. I don’t care if have fond memories of jerking off to fraternity movies when you were a kid. We as a society should move on and progress and learn from our mistakes. There are all kinds of better things for you to jerk off to in 2006. Like that movie PIRATES, I heard that was pretty good. (more…)
Land of the Dead
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005Fellas -
Well the Batman fans have their good Batman movie to get excited about, the Star Wars fans have their good Star Wars movie to complain and make rape metaphors about*, and now comes the actual, genuine most anticipated movie of the summer. In my opinion.
[*and no, this is not a license to talk about Star Wars in the talkbacks. you even THINK about mentioning Hans shooting whatsisdick the hutt or what have you, even in a relevant comparison to the works of George Romero, you're fuckin fired]
There’s not much of a rumbling in the media, there doesn’t even seem to be as much excitement on the internet thing here as you’d think there’d be. But some of you out there know what I’m talking about. We’ve been waiting for this movie a long god damn time. I mean how many false alarms can you live through over the years, the guy saying he almost has the money to make another Living Dead movie? It starts to seem like a pipe dream. How many Resident Evils and 28 Days and Haunted Mansions can go by with us saying “fer chrissakes you morons, just give George Romero some money for a living dead picture and make the world a better place for all creeds, colors and stripes.”
Yes, 28 DAYS LATER was pretty good for a sloppy digital video retread of DAWN/DAY OF THE DEAD but with a virus instead of zombies so really its almost like they made up a new idea for a movie. And yes, DAWN OF THE DEAD remake was amazingly good for a remake of a perfect movie that should never be fucked with. And yes SHAUN OF THE DEAD was a funny zombie sitcom that I would’ve enjoyed even more if I hadn’t heard so much ridiculous hyperbolic bullshit about it being great. And yes, HOUSE OF THE DEAD was, well I didn’t see that one not sure about that one. But no matter how much we enjoyed any of those we always had that question in the back of our heads: what about the REAL George Romero zombie movie? The one actually directed by George Romero, in the style of George Romero, with authentic George Romero zombies and non-zombies? The one we’ve been dreaming about. Praying for. Begging for. Give it to us. It is our birthright! (more…)
Deathdream
Saturday, January 1st, 2005Like ROLLING THUNDER and FIRST BLOOD, but before both of them, this is a genre movie about what happens to soldiers when they come home. Andy is a soldier who dies in Vietnam (well, they never actually say it’s Vietnam). And his family gets a letter and they cry and they deny it and his mom says it’s a lie and wishes it wasn’t true and sure enough that night they find him downstairs, back from the dead.
Even though he’s a zombie, he’s also a metaphor for people who survive war. They come back changed and nobody knows what to do to help them. Andy doesn’t get his hand in a garbage disposal like in ROLLING THUNDER, he doesn’t get bullied by the sherriff for being a longhair like in FIRST BLOOD, he doesn’t get spit on by protesters like in the urban legends. On the surface people treat him real good, like a great hero, but they just don’t understand him. They don’t even try.
At first the family thinks it’s a miracle, the state department made a mistake. But it’s immediately clear that their son has come back different. He barely talks, he stares off into nothingness, he smiles worse than Dick Cheney, he strangles a dog in front of a bunch of little kids. Also he’s been going around killing people, draining their blood and shooting it up (a little vietnam drug reference for you there). And then he starts to rot. Andy never had maggots crawling out of him before Vietnam.
But nobody seems to notice that Andy is different, or at least they don’t want to admit it. They welcome him home and ask him questions and then answer them for themselves and don’t notice that he’s not talking to them and maybe not listening. They tell him anecdotes about world war 2 and act like they’re his buddy and don’t notice that they aren’t connecting with him on any level, or that he literally doesn’t have a soul. Or a pulse either. (more…)
