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
Ever wonder what would happen if the living dead invaded a 1970s blaxploitation film? That thought never crossed my mind, and unfortunately now I know.
Insane in the Brain starts with several zombies rising from graves. One of them stumbles into a brothel and engages a lady of the night, killing her in the act (sadly this is not the only movie I’ve seen featuring a zombie fellatio.) Several other prostitutes are found dead in mysterious ways, and two jive-talking cops are called in to solve the murders. They deduce that sex acts somehow must be attracting the zombies, and come up with a plan to cover bullets with condoms in order to take them down. Yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds. A posse is formed with a few cops and some prostitutes, and the group patrols the cemetery in search of zombies. They find some, shoot them, end of movie.
Gah, where to even begin with this waste of time? I should mention this was intended as more of comedy than a horror film, so I won’t knock it down for not being scary. But it’s not very funny either. One or two exchanges between the cops were kinda funny, but outside of that it was mind-numbingly dull. All the shots were far too long and the action was so interesting I wanted to shut it off.
Everything else aside, Insane in the Brain explored new lows in FX makeup. The zombies were literally made of leftover halloween masks and afro wigs and they they constantly groaned, “Brains… more brains!” despite not a single zombie in the film actually eating a brain. I really don’t want to even think about this film any longer so I’m gonna end this review here. Just don’t waste your time or money on it.
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.
When I was a kid I was obsessed with Freddy Kruger. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released I was only 5 years old so although I knew who Freddy Kruger was I never got the chance to see him until now.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a story of a group of teenagers who are chased by a psycho who is killing them in their dreams. As the deaths start killing off her friends, Nancy becomes increasingly anxious and stays awake for days on end to avoid dreaming. Finally she develops a plan to take Freddy out of the dream world so that he can be captured.
This movie plays with the idea of how nightmares can feel so real and employs various techniques to make the viewer feel like they are in a dream world where things don’t always make sense. At times this works and it is scary, but other times in the movie it just comes across as corny. I didn’t find it terribly frightening but Erin said it was one of the scariest movies she’s ever seen. However I rarely remember my dreams whereas she frequently experiences nightmares. Your own experience may also determine how scary this movie is.
Overall I felt it was an OK movie, but if I was younger I think it might have had more of an impact on me. Erin loved the journey it took her on and how it played into the nightmares she already experienced.
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.
The Revolting Dead starts as a recent couple discuss their predicament of having become pregnant. This discussion ends in Duke storming off amidst Jenny’s decree that she will leave town if he leaves her. Duke somehow avoids the Crains‘, the local morticians, nocturnal mission to recycle caskets from the cemetery. Jenny is not as lucky and ends up hit over the head with a shovel and buried along with the former resident of the casket, one Jonathan Drue. When Duke cools off and comes back, he misconstrues that Jenny has made good on her word to leave town. 6 Months later, Marissa Drue is in town to pay her respects and finds her brother’s grave unkempt. Outraged, she confronts the Crains only to find that one of them is sporting an amulet that her brother was buried in. She vows to help the dead have their revenge on the Crains with the use of her Druidic magic and save a little time to make whoopie with her new found friend, Duke. The Crains, in dire need of business, show their true colors by drumming up mortuary clients the hard way – good old fashioned murder framed as a suicide. But with the dead having their chance at the Crains’ fresh flesh, their new business model will be broken in due time.
The first impression that you get from the lack luster, basic movie computer program-style title sequence is an apt indication of the level of quality to follow. The simple 1, maybe 2, camera angle coverage of every scene is painfully boring. A great deal of the scenes look as though someone is filming their high school drama class practicing for the school play. The sound of the movie is the reverberating sound of a cheap microphone in an empty room with hardwood floors. The background noise often drowns out the poorly projected, poorly delivered and poorly written dialog.
The story in The Revolting Dead is not a compelling one. Once you find out who the players are, there really is no character development. Duke continues to be a dopey good guy, the Crains continue to be evil for no reason and “so fucked up and disgusting” which really is overdone and played out (I’m guessing these movie makers saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
The zombie make-up is adequate, although not very realistic, given that six-month-dead zombie Jenny looked as fresh and lovely as day-old-dead Pappy. Mostly a mix of grease make-up and ill-applied liquid latex. The special effects budget did allow for some cheesy magic lightning from our heroine Marissa the Druid.
Seemingly The Revolting Dead was put together on the cheap as filler for a flashy video box to sell, en masse, to national video rental chains in hopes that saps like me would pay a few bucks to make it worth their while to pick-up more video fluff from their distributors. If one of my friends had told me that they made this, I would have said “Good job”, but I would not have fostered ideas of mass distribution. This might be so bad that it’s good for the occasional masochist, but most folk should just avoid it outright.
In Shadows of the Dead, a traveling couple take a short-cut that leads to them beings stranded in the wilderness. They happen upon what they think is a dead body that ends up attacking the boyfriend and infecting him with a virus that slowly turns him in to the walking dead. The girlfriend decides to take care of her man and sooner than later he bites her and infects her with the undead disease as well. The couple fight with each other and fight their urges to kill people in order to sustain themselves. The outcome is tragic.
The dramatic nature of Shadows of the Dead really called for a dynamic cast of skilled actors, but sadly this was obviously not in their budget. At times their bickering was reminiscent of relationships past, but most of the time it just made for a boring watch. The fact that 90% of the movie took place in a single bedroom was less than exciting as well. This single fact makes for a pretty short review as well.
The make-up was rather lacking in Shadows of the Dead. The boyfriend gets infected and soon dons mummy-style wrappings on his head because he has become so hideous. They never show how hideous, which just seems lazy. The girlfriend gets infected and just looks rather pale for the rest of the movie. I guess they figured that watching two people in masks bicker in a bedroom for 92 minutes would be far too boring.
On the bright side, Shadows of the Dead seemingly sought to use the zombie genre as allegory, possibly for STDs transferred between partners. Allegory has always been my favorite part of zombie cinema and is seldom used, although Shadows of the Dead’s use of allegory was rather far fetched and lacking, in my opinion. You could do worse on a Tuesday night than to watch this movie, but you could do better.
Vampires vs. Zombies is an entirely huge piece of crap! I usually start my reviews with a brief description of the story, but this tanker had me stumped. The makers of Vampires vs. Zombies were seemingly more interested in creating plot twists and lesbian sex scenes than making an actual plot. It was incredibly difficult to know what the hell was going on in this movie, which made it terribly boring to watch. The story was just awful.
The acting was completely terrible. These actors had no sense of dynamic or nuance or realism whatsoever. It may not have helped that the dialog was just fucking childish.
The special effects were slim to none. When one out of ten gore scenes happen off-screen to allow your mind to imagine the worst thing happening without actually showing you, it’s acceptable. When 19 out of 20 gore scenes happen off-screen, you’re just skimping on the special effects budget and confusing the fuck out of your audience. Whenever anybody or anything was stabbed or shot or sliced, it happened off screen. It was over use of an old studio tactic that wore thin immediately. The zombie were completely crappy looking. They were just people with wigs and a bit of cheap latex and gray make-up.
With a title like Vampires vs. Zombies, you’d think there would be some sort of battle or difference to be settled between armies or factions of the undead. Well, you’d be wrong. It’s just about a few people fighting a some vampires, then fighting some zombies, then, in the end a couple vampires get killed by zombies, I think. There was really no clear indication as to what the objective of this movie was in the first place.
There kept being some dream sequences that ended up not being dream sequences or maybe you were just supposed to think they were dream sequences after they happened, but then they really weren’t…or were they? I DON’T KNOW! It was too poorly done to discern or even warrant further exploration.
Since when do vampires walk around in broad daylight? Well, since this crap movie came out, that’s when. Since when can you dispatch a vampire by elbowing it in the face? Since this dung pile of a movie came out, that’s when. In fact, the only rule of vampirism these movie makers felt like following was the one that said that vampires have fangs and were seductive, which worked well for their desire to have a shit-ton of gratuitous lesbian sex scenes.
Another ridiculous aspect to this crap movie was the driving scenes. A great deal of this flick takes place in moving cars that are obviously moving at a rate of 2 miles per hour. There are the long drawn out scenes of bullshit dialog that take place while a few people seemingly push the vehicle. It’s not as if the camera person took advantage of this snails pace to get better angles on the actors, they couldn’t be bothered but to shoot every scene from the back seat so you get this boring ass half profile view of the actors.
In all honesty, I think everyone should watch this Vampires vs. Zombies just to see how goddamn horrible it is. Just so when you hear people say “ Daredevil was the worst movie I ever saw!” You can say “ Watch Vampires vs. Zombies! That’s right! I was in the shit!” I’m not usually the kind of person that says “This soda pop taste awful! Here, taste it.” But I think I understand that type of person a little more.
This movie was complete shit! Here, look at it.
In Mutant, two city boy brothers are stranded in a rural town and keep running into the same rednecks that stranded them there. Agitated by their bad luck, the local Sheriff wants them out of town. But, when his brother ends up missing in the morning, Josh has found cause for concern and heads out on the town to find his brother and get his car fixed. Josh finds this easier said than done since a bug has hit the town and closed down most of the local businesses. Holly Pierce is a school teacher filling in for her uncle, who’s sick, at his bar when Josh come in to find help. Finding a mutual attraction, she decides to help take him to the service station across town. On the way Josh gets into more trouble with one of the rednecks, this time being framed for a murder. The victim ends up being a curiosity to the local practitioner who discovers a chemical that is changing the physiology of it’s victims. Josh, Holly and the Sheriff end up trying to get to the bottom of this illness and brought on by strange chemicals when all hell breaks loose and the zombie attack.
I would venture the guess that Mutant is one of the first films to try to unconventionally represent a zombie outbreak and could be considered the grand daddy of movies like 28 Days Later.
Mutant is chock full of actors with memorable faces that haven’t quite made names for themselves. Wings Hauser, who plays the lead Josh, can be found in movies like Dead Man Walking (not the Sean Penn vehicle) and appearances in every damn dramatic TV show you could imagine from “Air Wolf” and “A-Team” to “Third Watch”, “House M.D.” and “Monk”. Bo Hopkins is another familiar face without a familiar name with more TV appearances in the 80s on shows like “Fantasy Island”, “A-Team” and “Scarecrow & Mrs. King”. The acting by these cast members and the others are adequate if not well done.
The quality of the Mutant is of no question good, although the shadow of the boom-mic is quite prominent in one tender scene. The pacing on the other hand leaves something to be desired. Clocking in at 100 minutes, Mutant doesn’t quite make good use of it’s time, but is enjoyable nonetheless.
The zombies in Mutant are rather peculiar in that they transform from a healthy, fleshy pink color to a dusty, pale gray pallor, sometimes in seconds before your eyes due to contact with the chemical. Of course, when ganged up and charging after the camera, they do make a rather creepy visual. The special effects aren’t all that ambitious as this is not an overly gory effort, but what little effects they use come off rahter well. They make use of a straw yellow zombie blood that definitely took the gore level down, but did nothing to garner anything less than an R rating.
I found watching Mutant to be a pleasant experience, not only as a history lesson on the roots of the modern zombie “outbreak” picture, but as basically well crafted feature film. For 1984, Mutant is pretty good and original zombie flick. If you get the chance, take a look at Mutant.
Where do I start? What a piece of time-wasting, boredom inducing shit. Johnny Sunshine Maximum Violence is a total waste of time. Keep away from it like the plague. It’s a combination of bad acting, no real plot, horrible fight sequences, and some of the worst FX I have seen. This movie has no redeeming value to it. Okay, review…this movie has almost no zombies, but just enought to be able to call it a zombie movie. They kill the zombie by stabbing them in their shoulders, kicking them not-so hard in the guts, never once shooting them in the head, even though at the beginning of the movie the phrase “SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD” is flashed across the screen. Basically, porn companies make zombie porn (with people who somehow can’t get infected, “There’s maggots in my money shot!”), a lot of snuff porn and it’s all really stupid. There’s a conspiracy to do with the porn company owner, some fucking cop and Johnny Sunshine, the porn owners big female porn star/ zombie slayer/ snuff master. After a bad, uber-fake looking scene of a staple-gun shooting some breasts, the movie goes even more downhill. This movie is like a mix of everything bad about the Saw/Hostel films, mixed in with very low budget (in the bad way) filmmaking, a dash of zombies to exploit that market, and Shazam!, you have this piece of shit. I’m done wasting time reviewing it. DON’T WATCH IT. IT SUCKS. Go watch Enter…Zombie King instead to see how a fun movie can be made with a low budget. Stay away from this stinker at all cost.
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