The Zombie Diaries is shot in First-Person view from three different groups of people that cross paths in small ways. All three document a zombie outbreak set in rural England. The first group is a news team going to interview a farmer in a small rural village. Soon after hearing of an outbreak in the city, they lose contact via phone with anyone. When night falls, panic sets in as they begin seeing the dead walking about.  The second group is seen scavenging a small town for supplies and trying to find a place where they can hole up or possibly other people join up with. The third group is living on a farm and routinely defending it from zombies coming in through the fields and trying to search and destroy all zombies in the surrounding area. All three groups find that it’s not just the living dead that threaten their livelihood, but the ignorance, stupidity and insanity of the living too.

While the first-person view gimmick may be getting played out, The Zombie Diaries uses this simple tool as a plausible was to make a low budget movie look like a million bucks. In fact, The Zombie Diaries did such a good job with it that I didn’t even notice that this could even possibly be a low-budget endeavor until it was over.

There’s not a whole lot to the story in The Zombie Diaries, but there’s enough action, suspense and zombies to keep you riveted to the screen. The pacing is decent and the acting very good and natural. There weren’t any times when I stopped to question the reality of the movie.

The special effects make-up in The Zombie Diaries was great. The camera crew worked well with the special effects crew in that the camera didn’t linger on the special effects long enough for you to question there reality.  The zombies exhibited a wide range of decay and several different stages of infection. All of them looked really cool and definitely added to my enjoyment of the film.

What The Zombie Diaries lacked in story, it definitely made up for in action, suspense, special effects and zombies. I enjoyed watching it the first time, I enjoyed it even more watching it the second time. Any zombie fan should enjoy The Zombie Diaries as much as I did.

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In Night Of The Creeps, an alien experiment crash lands on earth in 1959. A couple head to the site of the crash. One of them is brutally murdered by an ax-wielding maniac, the other is attacked by a mysterious alien life-form. In 1986 a pair of nerdy college boys lament there lack of love and plot to join the Beta frat to impress a girl. They are charged with the task of stealing a corpse form a local lab and leaving it on a rival frat’s doorstep. During the course of carrying out their prank they unfreeze the cryogenically frozen man from the afore mentioned couple letting him loose, and the alien life form inside him, upon the town. Together with a curmudgeon of a detective they must stop figure out and stop the alien life-forms from infecting the whole town and turning them all into zombies.

Night Of The Creeps has everything you’d expect from an 80’s movie set on a college campus: white elitist jocks, their beautiful, virtuous dates that don’t yet know that they would be better off with nerds and charming nerds that lust after beautiful women that date elitist jocks. Aside from that, it’s also a suspenseful horror film.

The zombie is Night Of The Creeps look pretty cool. They have whitened eyes and prosthetic face pieces to give them that evil sunken eye look. Some of the special effects work leaves something to be desired, but it’s all pretty on par for 1986.

Night Of The Creeps is pretty enjoyable as an eighties college romp and as a zombie movie. It has a certain amount of comedy to it which balances out with the horror aspect and makes a fairly well rounded film. It’s no Gone With The Wind or even Night Of The Living Dead, but a good watch with a bucket of popcorn or a six-pack and friends.

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In Redneck Zombies, a family of moonshiners acquire a barrel of “chemical warfare nuclear waste” and convert it into a moonshine still. One sip of this toxic cocktail turns them into zombies, but not before one of the brothers starts his deliveries to the entire town.  A group of suburbanite campers, with an endless cache of witty T-shirts, happen upon the still (and a few zombies) and quickly assess the situation: toxic moonshine has turned the town into redneck zombies! Who will be left and what will be left of them?

Redneck Zombies is rife with stereotypes to keep the laughs rolling, but instead kept my eyes rolling. All throughout the film there are little scenes where they pay homage to films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance in a really ham-fisted way. It was as if they wanted to give back to the movies that had set up all the redneck stereotypes that they were now exploiting.

The actors in Redneck Zombies were like high school drama students acting out a cartoon. They didn’t quite have the chops to deliver the Kevin Smith-esque “witty” dialogue, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Luckily they die one by one and spare you the agony.

The zombies were pretty simple from the make-up standpoint. They used gray make-up with black around the eyes and a bit of gelatin to give it texture. The last 30 minutes of the movie was an all out gore fest where the special effects team used every trick in the book to make the bloodiest ending possible.

The quality (or lack thereof) is not surprising considering given this is a Troma Film, but I can’t necessarily recommend this movie for fans of the zombie genre. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but I think it would be easier to laugh at it rather than with it. It might be entertaining with a friends and beer, but other than that, Redneck Zombies is just another bad zombie movie.

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You can head over to Telltale Games right now and get a free demo of the latest game episode of Sam & Max: Night of the Raving Dead, or buy it for $8.95. Here’s the description from their site:

Zombie attack! Droves of undead are converging in the streets. Now Sam & Max must confront their leader – a Eurotrash vampire with a style all his own. Are the Freelance Police cool enough to outsmart this emo before his flesh-eating army usurps the western world?

You can see more screen shots there, and watch a video about the game, all at Telltale’s sight. Also, you can read a review of the game at Words About Games and Anime.

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In Zombie Aftermath, astronauts return to earth to find that it has been ravaged by nuclear war. With no space program to guide them in safely, they crash land in the ocean off the coast of Los Angeles. The two surviving astronauts set-up a home in what used to be a lush mansion. They soon meet a young boy being raised by a dying museum curator and take him in. Then they meet an attractive young woman who’s sister and niece are being held captive by a brutal gang led by the vicious Cutter (Sid Haig). Their mission to rescue the woman’s family starts a bloody rivalry that can only end with the complete destruction of one of these tribes.

In my description above, I tried to make Zombie Aftermath sound really exciting, because it wasn’t. The whole thing moves at a snail’s pace. The “zombies” in the movie are more like nuclear mutants that kind of look like zombies, are logical enough to organize attacks and communicate with one another. The “zombies” are only in the movie twice, whenever there is a lull in the movie. The fact that this movie is called “Zombie Aftermath” is fairly offensive to me given the lack of any real zombies and the fact that the title given at the end of the movie is simply “The Aftermath”. The word “zombie” was obviously added to bolster doubtlessly crumby sales of such a sad excuse for a movie.

Sid Haig was great in the movie, nonetheless, as a diabolical gang leader. He could have used more screen time and a little more character development (as well as everybody else inthe film), but I’m sure he did what he could with what he was given. The rest of the cast seemingly just showed up and delivered the lines that they had memorized.

Zombie Aftermath was definitely designed as an action movie. They used every outdated action cliche possible to build this movie into what it is - bad guys that go down in one punch, people jumping off roofs, behind their victims and laying them out with the weight of the blows on their backs, bad guys being hurled through the air by tiny explosions, bad guys with the worst aim in the world, good guys that are crack shots even from the hip, the list goes on indefinitely. The fact that the hero, Newman, shows little to no emotion makes his feats of daring-do have absolutely no impact.

Newman has a partner, Getman, that is in the movie whenever it is necessary for the movie to have someone else in the scene. When Newman first arrives on shore, he washes up amidst the rockiest beach imaginable. He goes through all sorts of inner monologue about being alone and find skeletons on the beach and all this, then Getman just washes at a point inthe movie when it’s convenient. Later, Newman meets the young boy, Chris, and developes a father/son relationship with him, while Getman is inexplicably absent. Then, Newman meets Sarah and their relationship developes without the nuisance of Getman cock-blocking him. Once they finally seal the deal and get it on, here’s Getman helping them plan the rescue mission. Later in the film after Newman storms the gang’s compound solo, Getman shows up to help him out of a pickle and promptly gets shot while they talk about how he saved the day, further fueling Newman’s rage of vengeance.

The special effects were fairly pedestrian and unremarkable. The “zombies” wore little more than regular clothes and paper mache masks. There were a few gunshot wounds, but they were pretty much just blood packs exploding through clothing.

If you’re a fan of Sid Haig you might enjoy seeing him in this flick, but don’t be fooled by it’s bullshit title. Zombie Aftermath has almost nothing to do with zombies at all. It’s not a particularly good film either. This movie might go good with friends and beer for a laugh, but serious viewers should avoid it at all costs.

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Die and Let Live is the story of a couple of regular high school guys just trying to do what high school guys do – endlessly fuck with their friends and try to make out with girls. Benny is trying to impress a girl that he likes by throwing a party and his best friend Smalls giving him all the help that he can. Too bad for them that a local medical testing facilities re-animation experiments have gotten out of hand and zombies are heading for the party too. It’s up to Benny and Smalls to save the party, win the girl’s heart and keep their friendship and themselves alive.

I didn’t have many expectations for this movie. From the start you can see that it’s a pretty poor quality production at least in respect to most Hollywood releases. The opening scene is one of a security guard being attacked by zombies in a parking garage (somehow a staple setting for most no-budget productions). He’s wearing a dress shirt that’s kind of a light royal blue with a security badge hanging off of its limp fabric. The effects in this scene are pretty obvious, but they do the trick to tell the story. I thought it could only get worse from there, but I was dead wrong.

Despite its low-budget and the acting skills leaning toward the poor side, at least in its supporting cast, Die and Let Live is a fucking hilarious zombie comedy. The actors seemed like they were just playing themselves and having a fantastic time making up goofy shit to do on screen.  It’s well paced and well scripted. Sometimes the timing on the jokes drag out to the point of being really unrealistic, but it doesn’t interfere with how hilarious or enjoyable the movie is and actually adds to its comedic charm.

As I said, the special effects in Die And Let Live aren’t all that spectacular, but they work for this comedy very well. For the most part the zombies are just all bloody, but some time was taken, for a good number of them, with some easily accessible effects make-up.

The people behind this movie should definitely go on to produce many comedic films, for this was definitely the aspect they were good at and trying to concentrate on. I think any fan of zombie or comedy or low-budget movie will howl with laughter when viewing Die And Let Live. It’s totally worth seeking out for a viewing with friends.

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Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker is the story of an annoying pop culture junkie and her escapades on Halloween, with some zombies thrown in. Mulva meets some strange characters while trick or treating, and for reasons never fully explained, zombies attack.

This review is especially difficult for me to write. I just don’t want to think about Mulva anymore. Clocking in at just 60 minutes, I watched it during my lunch hour. It was so much work watching the damn movie I was relieved when my break was over so I could return to my job.

Based on the cover art for the Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker DVD, one might think that Mulva is a stylish, mini-skirt wearing zombie ass kicker, but the truth is the woman on the box art is nowhere to be found in the movie. Instead the “real” Mulva is a short, irritating, syrup-drinking girl with a voice more annoying than Borat and Napoleon Dynamite combined.

The plot is a loosely strung together set of events so mind-numbingly stupid they make my head hurt. The opening scene is about 10 minutes of Mulva waking up, eating breakfast, and having a telephone conversation. I’m certain most viewers give up on the film before Mulva even leaves the house, and I really can’t blame them.

Finally Mulva and her friend Cassie leave to go trick-or-treating and they run into their neighbor, who is absolutely the worst stereotyped African-American man I’ve ever seen on film. Obviously they couldn’t get any real black people to act in this piece of shit so he is played by a white guy in black face makeup with a Don King wig. Classy.

Then, a Benny Hill style montage of zombies in fast motion set to “Yakety Sax”… for NO REASON AT ALL.

If you still have the will to live and haven’t turned the movie off yet, you’ll watch Mulva meet a couple of strange people at a house (to be honest I had no clue what was even going on at that point in the movie) and meet up with what are apparently her arch-nemeses. The voice for one of them doesn’t sync up properly like in a kung fu movie. This is done for seemingly for comedic purposes, but it’s not funny.

Eventually the zombies start attacking, and there are more montages of zombies shambling around and doing things like break dancing, hand stands, and other non-zombie things. A few low budget gore effects later the credits roll.

Please don’t mistake my review for one of those “so bad it’s good” films. I could get into the bad lighting, terrible editing and poor camera work but even a professional film crew wouldn’t be able to save this disaster of movie.

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In Oasis of the Zombies, a caravan of Nazis shipping gold is attacked by allied forces in a desert oasis. The shipment was never recovered and the locals say that the dead soldiers still guard it to this day. When the sole surviving soldier from the battle, a British officer, is killed after disclosing the location to a treasure hunter, the officer’s son and college friends venture out to the oasis for the untold millions and find strange happenings. By strange happenings I mean the remains of past treasure hunters and zombies guarding the oasis.

This movie bored me to sleep at 5pm on my day off. What little action there is is few and far between. With such a slow pace, I’m amazed by the amount of story I was actually able to pay attention to.

The camera work is deplorable. They seem to like doing these dramatic zoom-ins of virtually nothing, but can never seem to quite get the targeting right and always have to adjust it once they zoom all the way in. So, they’re zooming in on whatever is next to what they want and have to move the camera over to see what they actually wanted to zoom in on. It’s actually so bad it’s amusing after awhile. A person could get smashed making a drinking game out of it.

The editor obviously decided to get a lot of mileage out of his filler footage as you see the same zoom up on the the same crap in the oasis over and over again. When you see the mounted machine gun poking out of the pile of leaves, take a drink. When you see the pristine skull sitting on the ground, take a drink. When you see the jeep panel on the ground with the white swastika painted on it, take a drink. When you see the zoom-up on the spider’s web take a drink. When you get blood alcohol poisoning halfway through the movie, remember that I warned you this would happen.

Most of the time it’s difficult for me to judge someones acting ability when their voice is over dubbed, here it was no problem, the actors were hokey and bad. The voice-overs just made it worse. Some of the scenes just don’t add up. There’s actually a scene where there’s a good 15 second gap between when the voice-over stopped and the lips and hand movements of the person talking have stopped.

If you like your horror movies with nudity, your out of luck. Oh, they put nudity in there, they just did such a poor job of it that it’s more frustrating than prurient. This is due largely to the camera work. The guy just didn’t bother to point the camera at the boobs. And it’s not even like they’re trying to be coy and keep the boobs tastefully hidden behind their lovers arm, they just flub it all together. The one love scene that they have is ridiculous. This boy is interested in this girl, they’re in a tent and he asks her if she really wants to go all the way. She responds positively and takes off her shirt. They kiss with their shirts off for 30 seconds and the boy says “I have to get back to my friends now” meaning he’s gotta go sleep in another tent. This is all just a set up so he can see a zombie or something.

The zombies were pretty gruesome, but the camera lingers too long and tends to reveal the man behind the curtain. The special effects team seemed to be happy with the camera trick where everything happens off screen and it either cuts away just before it happens or cuts in just after it happens. Doing this once or twice in a film is kosher, but every time is just down right insulting. The fact that the zombies were supposed to be Nazi soldiers is a little hard to swallow when you see them. They all have very dark and longish hair unbefitting of a soldier or someone of a white-bread Aryan background.

It would take lots of beer and friends with an outstanding sense of humor to make this movie watchable. If you like watching how bad a movie can be, by all means rush out and snag a copy of Oasis of the Zombies, I’m certain it will not be checked out already. But, if you want a zombie movie with even the faintest shred of quality, look elsewhere. I don’t know what language or country this was originally made in, but the term “steaming pile of bum shit” would easily translate into almost any language and would adequately be comparable to the quality of this film in any culture.

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Mulberry Street follows the close knit tenants of a small New York apartment building as they endure an outbreak on New York’s Manhattan Island. A single father awaiting his daughter’s arrival home from the army prepares a small welcome home party with his neighbor as he and the rest of the tenants begin to see the strange effects of this outbreak. The outbreak begins with reports of rat attacks that stream in from all over the city. Soon the victims of the attacks exhibit odd behavior that accumulates into a thirst for blood. The tenants on Mulberry Street hole up in their apartments and try to help one another survive the night against the blood thirsty, rat infected people.

Mulberry Street is not actually a zombie movie, but from any loose description, it could be mistaken for one readily. The infected slowly turn into rat people, but their behavior and motivation are similar enough to the infection zombies of movies like 28 Days Later, that I believe that fans of the zombie genre could easily enjoy this movie.

Mulberry Street doesn’t break any new ground being that it’s so close to a zombie movie, but as a survival/suspense type horror movie it does very well. The gore was excellent and the pacing of the story was exceptional. The story was intriguing and kept me interested throughout the whole movie.

The special effects make-up was effective, but sometimes the man behind the curtain was visible. The zombies, as I said, aren’t zombies but rat people, but look good just the same. The blood and gore are very well done, but were likely produced on a small, but effective budget.

Mulberry Street contains well written characters, an evenly paced story and good special effects. Although not technically a zombie movie, I think fans of the genre will enjoy it the most. Pick it up, if you get the chance.

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In Shock Waves, a charter boat hired by two couples for recreation bottoms out near a deserted island which once housed a resort. When the crew and passengers of the boat seek help and refuge on the island, they encounter a hermit of sorts (Peter Cushing). One by one the castaways are killed in unexplained manners as the hermit’s past as an SS commander in charge of an immortal platoon of Nazi commandos comes to light. The surviving crew and passengers run from the undead Nazis in a futile attempt to stay alive and leave the island.

I was pretty disappointed in this movie. Once again, Nazi Zombies piqued my interest only to leave my hopes of a great film dashed on the rocks. With star power like Peter Cushing and John Carradine in a horror movie, and a hook like Nazi Zombies, you’d think you’d have horror movie gold, but Shock Waves is just plain boring. Every single victim dies by being drowned. You just see them go under water all scared and then find them later, dead. No gore, no interesting kill scenes and not a whole lot of suspense.

What little special effects make-up their was was pretty effective and cool. The zombies looked good when there was a close up for detail, but for the most part they were just blond haired dudes with goggles and SS uniforms.

The acting was good and the cinematography was interesting, but the story just lagged and never really went anywhere cohesive. There was one scene that stirred my emotions **SPOILER** when the sail boat gets away from the pilot despite his attempt to swim after it **END SPOILER** but other than that, it was work to finish this movie. This is supposedly a classic horror film, but I guess that it’s more because of it’s alumni than actual quality. If you see a poster for Shock Waves, pick it up, it’s bound to look frickin’ sweet, but go ahead and pass on actually seeing it.

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