The ZRC will be starting back up with the good ol’ zombie film reviews soon. We would also like to hear more about your opinions on zombie films, so submit your reviews to the ZRC! Any zombie film, even if we have already reviewed it, we’d like to see what you think! You might even see it on the ZRC! Send them to: nate@zombiereportingcenter.com
You can now read a review of the pilot script for AMC’s The Walking Dead over at Corona Coming Attractions. But here’s your warning- if you want absolutely no spoilers, no matter how minute, read on cautiously.
Netflix, Xbox Live & streaming video; with their powers combined,
I’d like to present to you, my zombie-loving friends, “AWESOMELY AWFUL ZOMBIE CINEMA!”
Each month I want to share with you a diamond in the rough (a rough pile of dook). A zombie movie that you may have not seen or maybe forgot after you watched it in order to save what was left of your apocalypse fighting prowess. I want you to experience the same bewilderment, befuddlement and the unbelievably mind-blowing, enjoyment that I get viewing such an awesomely awful zombie film.
On with the show.
I have to compose myself to find the words to describe our first film.
Okay. I’m ready.
INSANE IN THE BRAIN
Description from Netflix:
“An army of lascivious zombies is awakened by the pheromones coming from a nearby brothel. When word of the new brain-eating clientele reaches police headquarters, Goldie (Rhynell Brumfield) and Sloan (John W. Sloan), two pimped-out cops, are sent in to take care of business. A cross between Night of the Living Dead and Dolemite, this campy neo-exploitation flick is written, directed and edited by Chad Hendricks.”
The only things I can share with you have to be conveyed using single words and/or phrases followed by a period.
Wal-mart Afros. My nephew’s Halloween costume. Royalty-free music loops.
Zombie boners.
You read me correctly. Zombies who have BONERS. Who could refuse taking a peek at this!?
I could not make this movie up even after being held captive in a cave by the Wolfman while on a 48 hour coke binge.
It gets better…
This was their SECOND FILM! I added their first film, “Kracker Jack’d,” to the top of my Netflix Instant queue; a crazy white guy with a chainsaw…in the hood. I applaud Netflix for their shear magnitude of selection and giving a film like Insane in the Brain, a chance to find it’s audience.
I found the trailer on YouTube.
Insane in the Brain – Extended Trailer
Watch this movie. It is streaming live on Netflix or you can get the DVD with snail mail.
Comment and lemme know what YOU think.
Just a quick head’s up on a new zombie comedy webseries called American Heart. I just watched the first episode and it was pretty damn funny. It revolves around a small group of survivors consisting of the town sheriff, his younger sister, her “secret” boyfriend, an aging ex-tv sci-fi actor, a reality TV host and her camera man. While the whole “mockumentary” style has been beat to death recently, the creators of American Heart do a great job at keeping their first episode fresh, with good pacing and humorous dialogue. There’s a second episode up, which I will be watching tonight. I suggest everybody check this webseries out and let us know what you think of it.
Brian Cronin over at Comic Book Resources (CBR) lists his top five Marvel Zombie stories:
5. The Fantastic Four (Black Panther, Storm, Human Torch and the Thing) versus the Marvel Zombies
Man, looking back, Marvel really undercut the whole “new Fantastic Four” idea, didn’t they? It was kinda sad that Reginald Hudlin was still telling stories with the new Fantastic Four when the actual Fantastic Four title had already gone back to the original team.
In any event, Hudlin had a great plot device for a fun bunch of stories as he has King Solomon’s Frogs teleport the Fantastic Four all over the place for a few arcs. In this one, they are taken to the Marvel Zombies universe for a fun little free for all set after the events of the first Marvel Zombies series.
4. Marvel Zombies: Dead Days
This one-shot was an engaging origin for the Marvel Zombie situation.
3. The Ultimate Fantastic Four and Magneto versus the Zombie Fantastic Four
The introduction of the Marvel Zombies came in this cute story by Mark Millar where Reed Richards thinks that he has contacted the Reed Richards of the standard Marvel Universe, but in reality, it is the Reed Richards of the Marvel Zombies universe who wants the fresh meat. This leads to a cool story where Magneto fights the evil zombie Fantastic Four.
2. Marvel Zombies 3
Fred Van Lente and Kev Walker combine for a fun series starring Machine Man and Jocasta, who are sent to the Marvel Zombies universe, while meanwhile the Zombies are planning an invasion of the “real” Marvel universe!
1. Marvel Zombies
Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips did an amazing job with this fun series, as Phillips makes the book look amazing and Kirkman fills the book with amusing gags as well as some actual good character work, including the notion that the Zombies become cogent right after eating, so, say, Spider-Man feels tremendous amounts of guilt.
Look at this poster – holy crap it looks awesome! Unfortunately Dead Moon Rising fails to live up to its ambitious advertisement.
Dead Moon Rising is the story of a couple car rental clerks in Louisville, Kentucky, who happen to have the zombie apocalypse come right through their front door (literally). As chaos ensues, they start wandering the streets (for no apparent reason) and pick up a few other survivors along the way. Luckily Jim, the main character, has a brother who conveniently owns a gun shop so everyone heads over there. Finally the group settles on taking and holding a building to escape the undead. They even go through the trouble of creating a moat around the building. Once inside, they find a custom motorcycle shop and for no good reason they decide to take the motorcycles out for a ride into the sunset (it is never explained how they get the bikes across the moat). At the first stoplight, a huge hoard of zombies spill out onto the street, and for a moment things look grim. But as the crew turns around they find an equally large group of bikers who join in a gargantuan battle, ending the movie.
Dead Moon Rising is really only notable for the fact it contains the self-proclaimed world’s largest zombie scene (which would be the motorcycle scene at the end), which was clearly filmed in conjunction with a zombie walk type event. They’re actually in the process of filming Dead Moon Rising 2 and will have another zombie gathering this Halloween for that movie, so if you’re interested in that sort of thing you can go be an extra. The problem with the scene is that it’s absolutely terrible. I’ve been to many zombie walks and typically you get a mix of convincing zombies, really poorly done zombies, people who aren’t taking things seriously, zombies with poor acting skills, etc. Oh yeah, and about half the people who show up for these things wear a white t-shirt presumably because it’s cheap and you can splatter blood on it and it looks gory. This theory breaks down when every other zombie you see is wearing a plain white t-shirt. Anyway, my point in this is that using a zombie walk as part of a scene is a bad idea, because instead of the director’s vision you get 500 other people’s visions.
The direction was terrible. The backstory of some of the characters is told by Jim, who will break role and talk directly into the camera. It’s a technique that’s been done before but writer/director Mark E. Poole is not able to pull it off, and it doesn’t help that the characters were so shallow I had no desire to hear their history. With these independent features I often wonder if bad writing causes some of the bad acting, but here I could tell that both writing and acting was bad. Fortunately for a low-budget film the sound quality was generally good.
The special effects were decent. Squibs were used throughout the film for nice bullet wound effects. There is a little CGI here and there but thankfully they knew the limitations of it and used it in small doses. The makeup was all over the place – I have a feeling for the most part the directors just asked people to come dressed like a zombie.
I don’t know if Dead Moon Rising was meant to be a horror movie, but it falls far from it and is more of an action flick than anything else. Mostly though the plot is what killed this movie. I just didn’t care about the characters and what they were doing. Much of it seemed like aimless wandering from point A to point B. That’s not to say it’s unwatchable – it’s a decent attempt and I’ve certainly seen far worse. It seems to be stuck in that no-mans-land between “so bad it’s good” and mediocrity.
I’d never even heard of this comic before I came across it at my favorite local comic store’s recent issues shelves. There it was, the only copy, with a post-it note stuck on the front that read “2nd best horror comic this year”. Second best comic of the year? With zombies? I had to read it!.
Holy shit. What a shocking, gory and sick comic…I loved every minute of it! Pieces of Mom: A Tale of the Undead one-shot was a pretty heavy read for a zombie comic. Touching on issues of abandonment and the breakdown of the family system. What you have here is a story of two brothers, one a very abusive older brother and one a younger passive brother, and their mother- a zombie. The younger brother spends most of his time trying to find food to keep his mother’s “unnatural” hunger fulfilled, while his brother spends his time bossing him around and wasting all of their supplies. Their father? He never came back one night from gathering supplies. Everything is “normal” until one day on a “food” run for his mother, the younger child comes across “something” he thought they had lost…forever.
This was a great read, written by Steve Niles (the popular horror comic writer, mostly known for his vampire comic 30 Days of Night), who seems to have finally hit his stride with this comic after a number of less than stellar, unoriginal horror comics over the last few years, and art by Andrew Ritchie that fits perfectly into this story with it’s scratchy rawness and muted colors. I welcome this creative teams chilling storytelling abilities and hope for more like this one.
When Zombies Attack!! (2001)
Running Time 24:52
When Zombies Attack!! #3, published by Red Maverick Publishing, was a really fun read. Unfortunately, I missed issue #2 of this series, while reading issue #1 a few years back when it first came out. Honestly though, I didn’t feel as if I couldn’t take in this whole issue without the prior one. The art on this issue is a complete 180 from the first issue (again, not knowing the art style of issue #2), which really didn’t throw me at all, considering it had been so long since I read the first issue. Which comes to my only complaint about this comic. It takes forever between issues. Sometimes more than a year or so. But it’s still worth reading.
The story: When Zombie Attack!! is like the reality show COPS, but with zombies (with occasional vampires and werewolves). The reader follows the nightly routines of Officer Frank Hadely and his rookie partner Chet, of the Post Mortem Animation Control (P.M.A.C.) of Burke County. There’s always of good amount of action and gore, mixed with an ample dose of humor. I should really find a copy of issue #2. Overall, I would suggest this comic for sure for zombie comic fans looking for something a little bit different than other zombie comics. Just get ready to wait between issues. Each issue also has a great cover by comic artist Mike Huddleston.
Tokyo Zombie is completely ridiculous. This comic is so over the top, I’m not even sure where to start. The zombies? The awkward sexual moments? The bond between student and master? The sheep? Creator Yusaku Hanakuma, master of heta uma (”bad, but good”) manga, has made one of the most original zombie stories ever created. It starts out with Fujio and Mitsuo, two warehouse workers practicing their martial arts on their break, but slowly turns into an all out zombie apocalypse as the two make a run for it. Mitsuo falls victim the zombie hordes, while Fujio manages to escape and go on to become one of the nation’s most famous zombie ring fighters. The wealthiest members of society have taken control of what little sanctuary the humans have left and have turned the poor into their slaves and throw out whoever disagrees to the outside world of zombie mayhem. While this is a very silly book, it also seems to contain some very heavy underlying comments on the social-political nature of class warfare (seriously!). Politics, slap-stick and gore! Perfect! This has definitely become one of my new favorite zombie comic of all time.
Tokyo Zombie was just published this year in English for the first time ever by the awesome people at Last Gasp. You can get this at any local comic book store or at your local book dealer. I can’t recommend the book enough. Everybody who loves zombies should read this.
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