Avatar Press, along with George A. Romero, John Russo and Russ Streiner are gearing up for the 40th anniversary of Night of the Living Dead, which will kick-off in February 2008. A tour is planned, along with a ton of new merchandise, including a new 40th Anniversary NOTLD DVD (which will have a new documentary), t-shirts, toys (in the vein of the old 70′s Mego action figures), statues and a new comic series.

Keep reading the ZRC for up-to-date details on this tour!

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Stay in the know (at least time wise) with this zombie clock, by Tony Moore, original illustrator and co-creator of The Walking Dead. Available here for only $10.99.

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The Return of the Living Dead 
They’re back…They’re Hungry…And they’re NOT vegetarian. 

This is one of those films that just blew me away the first time I saw it. It was my first experience seeing, what has today become commonly refered to as, a zombedy (a term that I loathe). But, at the same time it was gorey and violent and I had to have more. From the half-dog to the punk rock zombies, I just ate it up. I dug the first sequel to this now classic zomble flick, but from part three and up, the series turned into a big mess a of uninspired plots and bad, bad, bad acting. So…here are my very short reviews for Return of the Living Dead, parts 1-5:

	The Return of the Living Dead Awesome…classic…you’ve probably heard this a million times. Send…more…paramedics…
	The Return of the Living Dead II Decent sequel with a nice amount of gore. Not as fun as the original, but still pretty good.
	The Return of the Living Dead III This is where it starts to slide downhill. This is like Prom Night meets Saved by the Bell. Blech.
	The Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (part IV) The first (of two) direct to DVD sequels that came out in 2005. I tricked myself into thinking this would be great, for the simple fact that I wanted this to make up for part three. Not true. I thought it could not get any worse, until…
	The Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (part V) Pure shit. Don’t watch this unless you truly hate yourself.

 

And don’t forget…

MGM Home Video is releasing a special collector’s edition of  The Return of the Living Dead on September 11th and it includes:

- Cast and crew commentary
- Remembering The Dead: Cast Recollections featurette
- From The Underground: The Rise of Horror in the 80s featurette
- Zombie subtitles

Now they just need to release a special edition for Part II and while they’re at it, burn the negatives for III-V.

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Oh, and I had such high hopes for this one.  Undead or Alive: A Zombedy is a zombie western that’s been filmed and done for several months now… only the problem is no distributors will pick it up.  The movie seems to have had a somewhat decent budget (it stars both Chris Kattan from Saturday Night Live and Desperate Housewives’ James Denton) so it’s already off on a better foot than a lot of independent zombie movies.  Denton told Sci Fi Wire why Undead or Alive may never see the light of day:

They shopped it around at festivals and such, but no one has picked it up,” Denton (Desperate Housewives) said in an interview. “I’m not sure it will ever be out for the public, but it was a real fun way to spend the summer in Canada during my last hiatus.”

I guess there’s always a DVD-only release.  If the film is done and just sitting there I don’t see why you wouldn’t try to re-coup the costs.  But then again, I’m not a film executive :)

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Vince Locke has been illustrating comic books for over twenty years now. Some of his work has included the zombie epic Dead World, A History of Violence (which was made into a film in 2005 by director David Cronenberg), American Geek, The Sandman, and Judge Dread/ 2000AD. He has also done illustrations for dark-fantasy author Caitlin R. Kiernan, record covers for the death metal bands Cannibal Corpse and Rademassaker and numerous pieces for the role-playing game company White Wolf. His newest book, Junction True, will be coming out from Top Shelf next year. I had a chance to catch up with him this month to ask him a few questions about his work…and zombies.

ZRC: A lot of your work is geared towards horror and gore. What draws you to these?
Vince: Even as a kid I was interested in “strange things”. I would copy the dragons, skulls and monsters my dad was drawing as tattoo designs. But I think most kids like that sort of stuff. Now I just want to create art that is intense. Something that catches your attention and holds it. And monsters are just fun to draw and paint!

ZRC: What projects are you working on at the moment?
Vince:I’m working on a 5 page sci-fi/zombie story for Judge Dredd Megazine. Some more illo’s for White Wolf. Once a month I do an illustration for Caitlin Kiernan’s Sirenia’s Digest. Those are really fun. I’m working on Junction True, a painted graphic novel for Top Shelf and written by Ray Fawkes. I did some artwork for a zombie card game, and I have been taking on quite a bit of commissions lately.

ZRC: You have had an almost twenty year gig doing record covers for the death metal band Cannibal Corpse. What’s it been like working with them over the years and how did you feel about your latest cover for them, 2005′s Kill, not being on the actual cover of the record?
Vince: It’s been great working with the band. One day I hope to meet them! I was very disappointed that they didn’t use the cover for KILL. It’s one of my favorite paintings. I think it’s really disturbing without being gory. They called me up to let me know that it wasn’t going to be used. The liked the cover, but the band and record label thought that retailers would have problems with it. They wanted to be able to have the CD in as many outlets as possible.

ZRC: You illustrated, and even for a short time wrote, the comic Dead World, most recently for Image in 2006. Do you have any plans for doing any more Dead World stories in the future?
Vince: Nope. I’ve talked to Gary Reed (the writer -ed.) about a few things, but I don’t know if they will ever pan out.
ZRC: What other zombie/horror artists/writers inspire you?
Vince: I love the old horror movies, Bride of Frankenstein, Vincent Price, etc. If you lived in the Detroit area, you might remember Sir Graves Ghastly. He hosted a Saturday afternoon TV show that showed all those old horror movies, with skits in-between. I watched it religiously as a kid. I even sent in a picture for the art gallery they showed every week.

ZRC: What’s your all-time favorite zombie film?
Vince: For a long time it was Dawn of the Dead. I think now it’s 28 Days Later. I hadn’t heard anything about it before I saw it. It took me by surprise; I thought it was great! It was really intense and even made me jump in my seat a few times.

ZRC: What’s 2008 have in store for you?
Vince: Junction True will hopefully be coming out next summer. Other than that, who knows?

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Zombie Bazooka Patrol is a band hailing from Nashville.  They dress like zombies, their songs are about zombies, and their sound is something like folk-punk with a bit of rockabilly influence.  I’m actually quite digging the music!

Unlike the band in Hard Rock Zombies, Zombie Bazooka Patrol is going places!  They were recently flown out to Las Vegas to be on the upcoming television show The Search for the Next Great American Band (by the same people who produce the American Idol show).

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Earlier this month we brought you news of the upcoming Dead Island video game which has you fighting off zombies in a tropical paradise. Today Techland released this teaser trailer at the Leipzig Games Convention in Germany. It’s short but sweet!

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Of Corpse, A Zombie Guide is a coffee table book set to be released sometime this year. It is said to cover “all things zombie” include history, an index of films and video games, artwork, and a listing of zombie types. The book will retail for $20 but you can pre-order a copy through the author’s website for only $15 and it comes signed.

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Last week I made a snarky comment about Dead Heist being worse than Hard Rock Zombies. I hadn’t seen either movie, but thanks to Netflix I can check out some little-known movies without taking a chance on buying a DVD that may or not turn out to be good.Wow. I am so sorry I ever made fun of this movie.Hard Rock Zombies is one of those movies you watch with your friends and years later while at the bar someone says “Hey, remember Hard Rock Zombies?” and you’ll say “Oh yeah, that movie was sweet! We need to watch that RIGHT NOW!”.

I have to admit the first half hour of this movie was not getting me sufficiently pumped for the ensuing zombie fest but payoff at the end of the movie is huge. Here’s what little of plot I can try to describe:

A band on tour stops in a small California town where they pick up a hitchhiker and some underage girl. Also there’s something going on with a man with binoculars and two little people and some girl who likes to drown dudes and cut off their hands and keep them in jars. And the little people like to watch old folks doin’ it. Only the old folks turn out to be Hitler and Eva Brown (who is also a werewolf). Hitler kills the members of the band, who come back to life because earlier that day one them recorded a song that he found in an old book which happens to bring dead things back to life. So the Hard Rock Zombies kill Hitler and the little people, who in turn become zombies. The undead band plays a bitchin’ concert and soon the whole town is zombies. The movie ends when all the zombies get locked in one of Hitler’s gas chambers.

Oh yeah, and the one midget tries to eat a cow, and other one eats himself! And that one chick who carries around her boyfriend’s head? See there a lot of those kind of moments in the movie that will fill your drunken conversations for years to come, provided you can find someone else to talk about it with. The wifey and I had a great time watching it.

Amazon has Hard Rock Zombies for only $6.98 which is an absolute steal for this much fun. If you are able to watch it with a sense of humor and overlook some of the poor production values you’ll have a good time.

On a more personal note, the songs were for the most part terrible but the latin song they sing to raise the dead is SWEET and my band MUST cover it.

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Learn how to survive a zombie attack while still looking good in this zombie t-shirt from Threadless. One will run you $15-17.

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