This week’s list is the Top Ten Places You Don’t Want To Be During the Zombpocalypse. Each place will also be supplemented with a zombie movie featuring a scene in that location.

1. Planes:You know that SkyMall catalog they put in the seat pockets on planes? They make money by taking advantage of an idle audience who are stuck a mile in the air. Much like a group of hungry zombies would treat the average commuter flight like a buffet lunch.
   Movie reference: Flight of the Living Dead
2. Hospitals: Access to medical supplies and food in a large sturdy building seems like an idealistic safe haven. But hospitals are also the last stop for many people who are about to die. Will they come back from the dead?
   Movie reference: Diary of the Dead
3. Government Shelters: The government doesn’t have a terribly good track record when it comes to providing shelter for victims during natural disasters. One only needs to look back at Hurricane Katrina to find out how inept our government can be in a crisis. If you can’t trust them in a hurricane, can you trust them in a life and death situation?
   Movie reference: 28 Weeks Later
4. Underwater: Imagine being on vacation in the Caribbean, going scuba diving, and viewing a shark in it’s natural habitat… followed by a zombie. If that doesn’t make you pee in your wet suit I don’t know what will.
   Movie Reference: Zombi II
5. Your Favorite Bar: Everybody has their favorite hang-out, but you can’t necessarily sustain yourself on booze and peanuts for very long.
   Movie Reference: Shaun of the Dead
6. Zombie Convention: In other words, “Dinner is served.”
   Movie Reference: American Zombie
7. Train Station: Any place where people are trying franticly to escape, there are bound to be mistakes made, mob mentality, emotional contagion and a crowded place where infection can spread like wild-fire.
   Movie Reference: 28 Days Later
8. Church: All to often, people go to church in a time of crisis. If we learned anything from the original Dawn of the Dead, we learned that zombies go where they know. With the statistics showing that 96% of the world is religious, you have that much more of a chance that any church, synagogue, or mosque will just turn into a death trap.
   Movie Reference: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
9. Cemetery: This might seem like a no-brainer, but it definitely will be if you stumble upon an open casket or mortuary while the recently dead are returning.
   Movie Reference: Return of the Living Dead
10. Military Complex: While this may seem like a good idea, countless movies have shown otherwise, being that the zombie infection may even start because of the military or they may just be bone-headed enough to think they’re invincible.
    Movie Reference: Day of the Dead

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It’s Undead Monday where we bring you an article from ZRC’s short history that you may have missed the first time around. This week we bring you an interview with zombie comic book artist Guy Davis – originally published in November of 2007. Click the links to check it out!

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For the month of October, each Saturday we’ll be taking a break from our normal 24 hour zombie news and reviews and bring you a different classic horror film review. Each of these films is an established icon of the genre but for one reason or another has never been seen by the reviewers.

Halloween is the classic John Carpenter film that jump-started the whole 80′s slasher movie sub-genre. It’s the story of escaped murderer Michael Myers who exacts a gruesome series of killings in a suburban neighborhood. Myers escapes from a mental hospital on a cliche’ dark and stormy night and heads to his childhood home where he begins stalking high school wallflower Laurie (played brilliantly by Jamie Lee Curtis). Over the course of Halloween night he kills several of Laurie’s friends leading to a big fight scene at the end.

What I like about Halloween is that it’s so simple. There’s no over-complication of plot or character – in fact you pretty much know right where this is heading from the beginning. It’s fairly obvious that Myers is after Laurie and the supporting characters exist just to be killed off. But where this movie succeeds is in leading you on that journey. John Carpenter can somehow take a predictable outcome and still make you tense. In fact, perhaps it is the existence of this prescience that causes that tension.

Carpenter uses some interesting techniques in making the viewer see the film through the killer’s eyes. He sets things up early in the film to make it it clear that Myers is watching these kids from afar. Later, he employs long shots that make it seem as though you’re just peeking in on a day in their lives. Once the big fight scene starts, however, things change and you’re all of a sudden in tight with the victims. You can’t always see what’s going on and it sets a very paranoid tone. I think that Carpenter clearly borrowed from Texas Chainsaw Massacre (released 4 years earlier), but he also perfected what he took.

The movie does have it’s problems. The suspension of disbelief required in some of the scenes may be difficult for some people to get over. For example, at point Myers endures 4 bullets to the chest, falls off a balcony, and then just runs away. And the sound quality hasn’t aged well – clearly there was a lot voiceover work and it sounds like it was done on the cheap.

Overall this an excellent study in how to do a scary movie right and I’m glad that I was finally able to see this movie.

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It’s FX FRIDAY, where we bring you a brand new how-to video every week throughout October. In this episode, Jef Porkins shows us some of the fundamentals of makeup FX then demonstrates how to create a “freshly dead”.

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It’s finally October and all kinds of new Halloween candy is debuting this year – all of it stuff you can only get this time of year. Like last year we sort through the good, bad, and ugly of these seasonal confections.

First up is Jones Soda Dread Apple. Every year Jones Soda comes out with several special edition sodas for Halloween in both cans and bottles. The bottled ones are a little more difficult to get and we happened upon this Dread Apple flavor on one of our searches for strange candies. It tastes almost exactly like someone was trying to make an apple cider flavored soda. It’s not overly sweet like many fruit-flavored sodas tend to be and is the first Jones Halloween soda I would consider drinking an entire bottle of. Which is a good thing because I had to buy and entire 4 pack of it. Erin didn’t care for it, but admitted she isn’t a big fan of apple-flavored products in the first place.

We were expecting SweetTarts Squeez Cherry Gooey Blood to be a runny, sticky mess, but instead it is a squeezable paste-like candy. It tastes just about like a liquid SweetTart with a remarkably similar texture or grit to it. It’s also extremely sour, but Erin found it’s balance between sweet and sour to be just about perfect. It’s strangely addicting. We’ve both been eating it occasionally outside of this review so this is one Halloween candy we both would like to see come back next year.

Big Stuff Lip Pops is a candy with a gimmick. I’m sure marketers think “If we make it like a toy maybe more kids will buy it!”. Because trust me no one is buying this lollipop for it’s flavor. It’s a very weak green apple flavor with a really weird texture to it. It was just… weird. And what kind of toy is this? It’s just another way to make fun of kids with braces. Nonetheless I must take the obligatory stupid picture.

Rounding out this week’s candy are Hershey’s Kisses Pumpkin Spice. After all the fruity flavors we were looking forward to some simple milk chocolate. So imagine our dismay when we unwrapped our first kiss to find no hint of chocolate. I guess the idea is a small candy with the flavors of pumpkin pie. It does remind me of pumpkin pie long enough to want to get this crap out of my mouth and eat the real thing. There is a soft, creamy inner center to these candies (perhaps the whipped cream for the pie?) but there is no denying the unpleasant lingering taste they leave in your mouth. A younger girl at the store we purchased these from raved about them so perhaps they’ll strike your fancy but we can’t endorse these ourselves.

That’s it for this week! Have you tried any of these candies? Let us know in the comments!

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As a special Halloween treat to our readers we are now offering these two zombie propaganda style posters in our store. Previously the only way to buy one of these was to visit our table at conventions, but with the recent postponement of HorrorHound Detroit we are offering them up to all of our readers.

Created by artist Matt Talbot exclusively for the Zombie Reporting Center, these zombie propaganda posters are a great addition to any room! Professionally screen printed by hand on artisan paper, they measure 12 by 18 inches and are strictly limited to 75 pieces of each design. Act soon before they’re gone!

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This year’s Treehouse of Terror episode of the Simpsons (the name for the annual Simpsons Halloween special) will feature the dysfunctional family turning into zombies after eating some bad meat at Krusty Burger. The episode will air later this month on Fox.

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It’s October 1st again and that can only mean one thing – it’s time 31 Days of Halloween of Halloween on ZRC! This means that in addition to our usual ’round the clock zombie news coverage, we’ll also be be bringing you special posts each day to help you celebrate Halloween in style.

Here is what you can expect to see in the coming month:

Sunday Salutes: Our semi-regular ZRC Salutes feature made a weekly feature for the entire month of October.

Undead Monday: We’ll go into our archives and resurrect one of our older posts you may have missed the first time around.

Top Ten Tuesday: We’ll bring you a new Top Ten list each Tuesday.

Wednesday-ween: Trick or treat?

Halloween Candy Thursday: A continuation of last year’s theme where we put our palettes to the test in an exploration of the good, bad, and ugly side of Halloween candy. If you missed this the first time around you can go check our archives from last year: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4.

FX Friday: Jef Porkins shows you how to create special zombie makeup effects in a special video post each Friday.

Saturday Drive in: A special edition movie review every Saturday night.

Let the countdown begin!

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Happy Halloween from the ZRC!

What are your plans for tonight? Partying it up? Passing out candy? Let us know in the comments! I’m especially looking forward to the Ghost Hunters Live marathon on the SciFi channel…

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By now you’ve seen us taste the good and bad from the world of strange Halloween candies. Today we have the truly UGLY side of candy. In fact as I type this now my stomach is still in knots from tonight’s tasting.

As usual, every week we’ve been tasting a strange Jones’ Soda flavor and this week was candy corn flavor.

Jones Soda Candy Corn had a nuclear yellow color to it. After pouring it we were both really regretting this one. It just couldn’t be good. I took the plunge first. I’ll say this – I didn’t immediately throw up. In fact, although it wasn’t GOOD, it also wasn’t the most disgusting thing ever. Almost like cream soda if you closed your eyes. Erin thought it was completely disappointing after the bold tastes of all the previous Jones’ Soda flavors we tried. The flavor seemed muted.

The Jolly Rancher Lollipops with “Creepy Tattoo Inside” were the next candy tasted, and easily the best of them. The flavors of the suckers were strong and there was a “mystery” factor in that you didn’t know flavor you were getting until you licked it. Apparently removable tattoo technology has come a long way since the days of those Cracker Jack tattoos that you had to wet and press against your skin. These were detailed, easy to apply, and seem pretty durable. Here’s Erin looking tough and showing off her black cat tattoo:

The Russell Stover Carmel & Marshmallow Pumpkin can be summed in one sentence: Where’s the carmel? We had to hunt for it.

Unfortunately we accidentally lost the pictures to the next item so you’ll have to use your imagination for the Bubbagum Candy Vampire Teeth. Here’s the idea: you chew the included gum and then use it as a denture adhesive to affix the candy teeth to yours. It’s a sure-fire way to get a cavity! The gum was soft, and the teeth were edible as well (sort of a gumball type material but more waxy). The idea of eating realistic looking teeth and gums still makes me a little queasy.

Finally, if you run a blog about zombies, sooner or later you’re going to have to eat some brains. And we managed to find this – Chef Ghoulicious Pantry of Candy Abbie Normal Bag of Brains.

This is a LOT of gummy. I can’t imagine eating the entire thing in one sitting. It’s a very realistic gray color and berry flavored. The big turn off however is the texture. It’s more airy than a normal gummy bear, but EXTREMELY chewy. Here’s me trying to bite off a piece:

The dogs were strangely interested:

Erin feels a little sorry for zombies because as it turns out gummy brains just aren’t that good:

That’s it for this week! If you missed our previous Halloween candy reviews, you can check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

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