Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Zombex (2013, directed by Jesse Dayton)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the residents of New Orleans are suffering from PTSD.  Chandler Pharmaceuticals introduces a new pill called Zombex that they claim can conquer the symptoms of PTSD.  Because of the crisis, the pill is given rushed approval by the government and introduced to the citizens of Louisiana.

Zombex has one unfortunate side effect.  If you take too many of them, you turn into a zombie and start eating all of the people around you.  With New Orleans besieged by zombie drug addicts, the government closes the airspace.  Even though there are reports of a cure that has been developed in Austin, no one can catch a plane.  A group of people, including an annoying talk show host named Aldous Huxley (Lew Temple), get in their cars and head off for Austin.

Zombex is a zombie film with a message.  Don’t trust big pharma.  Don’t trust mood-altering drugs.  Don’t trust the government.  They’re all good messages but the film’s execution is lacking, with thinly drawn characters and action that moves slowly.  The character of Aldous Huxley is especially hard to take, as he never stops talking, even though all of his talking often seems to slow down the effort to get to Austin.  Since the only cure for the zombie apocalypse is in Austin, it seems like our heroes should be in more of a hurry to get there.  Instead, they stop ever chance they get.  Even though they always seem to get attacked by zombies whenever they stop off somewhere, they still keep doing it.  It doesn’t make much sense.

As is typical of films like this, there are plenty of familiar actors in small roles.  Malcolm McDowell plays the man who developed the drug.  His name is Prof. Soulis, which is pronounced “soul-less.”  (Tell us how you really feel, movie.)  Corey Feldman shows up for a minute as one of Soulis’s co-workers.  Sid Haig plays a big bad army man.  Kinky Friedman plays a guard.  Even Slayer’s Tom Araya gets a blink and you’ll miss it appearance.

Zombex takes on Big Pharma, which it should, but the film doesn’t live up to its intentions.

Music Video of the Day: The Earth Dies Screaming by UB40 (1980, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Though the song’s title was taken from a 1964 B-science fiction film, the song itself was about the very real fear of nuclear war.  To understand this song, it is important to remember that, in the 1980s, nuclear war was viewed as something that was destined to happen eventually.  Teachers and school counselors were even specifically trained on how to talk to children who woke up one morning, saw the wrong story on the morning news, and came to school terrified that the bombs were going to drop at any moment.  I guess the nearest equivalent of that today would be the fear that we only have ten years left due to climate change.

Luckily, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it looked like nuclear war had been avoided.  Over the past few years, though, I’ve seen a return of those earlier fears as more and more nations brag about developing their nuclear capabilities.  As a results, songs like this will always feel more relevant than we may want them to.

The Odds (2018, directed by Bob Giordano)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In a nearly bare room, The Player (Abbi Butler) sits at a table.  The Player is taking part in what she had been told is an international challenge.  The Game Master (James J. Fuertes) tells her what task she is expected to do.  If The Player accepts the task and is not the first person to drop out of doing the task, she’ll move on to the next round.  If The Player refuses the task or fails, she’ll be out and who knows if she will even be allowed to leave the room.

The challenges start out as simple things, like holding her hand over an open flame for as long as she can.  But as the game progresses, the challenges get more and more extreme.  Burning her hand is nothing compared to chopping off her fingers.

The Game Master remains in the room with the Player the entire time, occasionally encouraging her and sometimes taunting her.  With each challenge, he dares her to drop out of the competition.  But is The Game Master in charge of the competition or is he just another competitor?  The Player only has the Game Master’s word that there’s even a competition going on in the first place.  With each escalating round, the Player and the Game Master attempt to manipulate each other and psychologically break the other one down.

Featuring a small cast and only one location, The Odds is stagey and sometimes draggy but it is redeemed by the performances of James J. Fuertes and Abbi Butler.  Even though some of the dialogue feels overwritten, the movies does keep you guessing about what is actually happening in the room and what the Game Master is actually trying to accomplish by forcing The Player to torture herself.  The final exchange between The Game Master and The Player is an effective mind screw that makes you reconsider everything that has happened up until that point.  The Odds is uneven but it holds your attention and keeps you thinking.

Music Video of the Day: Devil Woman by Cliff Richard (1976, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In a song that was a definite change of pace from his usual work, Cliff Richard sings about how he became cursed after seeing a black cat with yellow eyes.  Cliff went to a fortune teller, asking her to lift the curse but it turned out that the fortune teller was the one who cursed him in the first place!

This song was Cliff Richard’s biggest hit in the U.S.  It undoubtedly helped that the song came out while America was still in the grips of Exorcist fever.

The ultimate message is that if it can happen to Cliff Richard, it can happen to anyone.

Enjoy!

Blood Vessel (2019, directed by Justin Dix)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In the waning days of World War II, a group of Allied soldiers and reporters find themselves floating in a lifeboat, having survived the torpedoing of the troop transport on which they were previously traveling.  A mix of Australians, Brits, Russians, and Americans, the survivors are on the verge of giving up when they spot an apparently abandoned German boat floating in the middle of the ocean.

The survivors board the boat and discover that the crew is missing or dead.  The only survivor on the boat is a little girl (Ruby Isobel Hall) who hungrily eyes any open cut.  The survivors discover that the boat was supposed to be shipping art that had been stolen by the Nazis but that the boat instead picked up some unexpected passengers who wiped out the crew and who are still hungry for blood.  While one weaselly survivor resorts to trying to contact the Germans for help, the others try to stay alive in an environment that they can’t control.

Blood Vessel owes an obvious debt to the Alien franchise, with the survivors roughly corresponding to the space marines who failed to stop the Xenomorphs in Aliens and the ship acting as a water-bound version of the rickety spaceships that have appeared throughout all of the Alien films.  There’s no real surprise to the nature of the monsters that have taken over the boat.  The film’s entire premise is right there in the title.  But Blood Vessel is claustrophobic and the monsters, when they do make their eventual appearance, are frightening in both their ruthless savagery and the mocking joy that they take in their activities.

All the more memorable for having been shot on an actual boat, Blood Vessel is effective low-budget horror.

Music Video of the Day: Candy by The Killer Barbies (2002, directed by Oliver Sommer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day comes from the Spanish punk rock group, The Killer Barbies.  Silvia Superstar buys a comic book featuring an animated version of Dracula who starts to speak directly to her.  Not coincidentally, this video was released at the same time that the band was preparing to star in a film called Killer Barbys vs. Dracula, which was directed by Jesus Franco.

(For the film, the band changed their name from the Killer Barbies to the Killer Barbys to avoid being sued by Mattel.)

This video was directed by Oliver Sommer, who is one of the busiest and most prolific music video directors out there.  At this point, it would probably be easier to keep track of who, in Europe, Sommer has not worked with than with who he has.

Enjoy!

Ghost Track (2022, directed by Jason M.J. Brown)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Years ago, a teenager named Morris died when he was run over by a train while five of his friends helplessly watched.  Even though they did not mean for him to die, Morris’s friends grow up feeling guilty.  Years later, all of Morris’s now-adult friends find themselves being stalked by a ghostly presence who slips notes under their door telling them that they are going to die.  Marcus (Adam Probets) thinks that Morris is responsible for the disappearance of the school bus that was carrying his son (along with many other children).  Can Morris’s friends put his soul to rest before he kills all of them?

I will give this movie some credit.  Considering that it wasn’t made for much money, the scenes around the train tracks are effectively shot and feature vivid cinematography.  The inside scenes are too darky lit but the movie looks fine whenever the action moves outside.  Ghost Track also had one good twist towards the end.

For the most part, though, Ghost Track was poorly acted with some of the least convincing death scene that I’ve ever seen.  I think part of the problem is that I never felt like a knew who the characters were either before or after the accident with the train so I never knew how their lives had been effected by Morris’s death.  Plus, the subplot about the missing school bus felt like an unnecessary distraction.  Maybe if we had actually seen the kids on the school bus before it disappeared, it would have been different but instead, the school bus is something that we hear a lot about with really having the context to know what to think about it.

Ghost Track felt like a feature-length version of one of those public information films that the BBC used to air, warning children not to play on the railroad tracks. It’s just not as scary as The Finishing Line.

Music Video of the Day: Push It by Garbage (1998, directed by Andrea Giacobbe)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Push It was the lead single off of Garbage’s second studio album, Version 2.0.  The video was directed by an Italian photographer named Andrea Giacobbe, who was selected after the band saw and was impressed by his video for Death in Vegas’s Dirt.  Though Shirley Manson said that the songs lyrics were intentionally meant to be surreal and that the song was about, “the schizophrenia that exists when you try to reconcile your desires and demons with the need to fit in,” even the band was surprised by the bizarre storyboards that Giacobbe prepared for the video.

What’s happening in the video is definitely open to interpretation, as the action goes from three nuns assassinating Shirley Manson’s rotoscoped “partner” to Manson living in the suburbs with a man who has a light bulb for a head.  Demonic children and aliens also make an appearance.  In the end, the video feels like a throwback to the early days of MTV, when it was more important to be weird and challenging than to craft your image for the adolescent Total Request Live crowd.  It certainly feels as if it’s taking place in a separate universe than the one where MTV is now the exclusive property of Rob Dyrdeck.

What does it all mean?  It doesn’t really matter.

Enjoy!

Murderbot (2023, directed by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“Blow harder!”

— Val (Lauren Parkinson) in Murderbot

In a remote army base, three busty scientists create a busty robot named Raquel (Melissa Brasselle).  General Griffin (Arthur Sellers) is impressed that Raquel has mastered all forms of combat but he is not happy by her dominatrix outfit because, according to him, America’s enemies don’t fear cleavage.

One night, while the scientists all have hot dates, Raquel escapes from the base and goes to a nearly deserted desert town, where she kills a leering gas station attendant and a busty diner owner.  Meanwhile, a group of busty teenagers and their boyfriends run out of gas while driving through town and find themselves being stalked by Raquel.

This is a Jim Wynorski film so you know what you’re going to get, a lot of cleavage (though, for once, no actual nudity), a splattering of blood, and some deliberately corny humor that is sometimes self-aware enough to be funny.  Murderbot was originally named Killbot, a reference to Wynorski’s first film, Chopping Mall.  Murderbot even duplicates that film’s famous exploding head scene, though it’s the entire body that explodes this time.

This is pretty dumb but Wynorski fans should be happy.  Even though no one will be watching this movie for the acting, I actually did like the performances of Walker Mintz and Sylvia Thackery, playing respectively a trumpet player and the girl that he likes.  As Raquel, Melissa Brasselle is no Arnold Schwarzenegger but she still handles dreadful one-liners like “You’ve been deleted,” with enough aplomb to make them tolerable.

Murderbot is proof that, no matter how much things change, Jim Wynorski will always by Jim Wynorksi.

Music Video of the Day: Anything by The Damned (1986, directed by Gerard de Thame)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Technically, it is debatable whether or not this is really a horror video but it does have all the hallmarks of the genre, from a gratuitous shower scene to a decadent dinner being held in what is either a gothic castle or the most ornate sewer known to man.  It’s close enough for me.

Director Gerard de Thame is best-known for his work on commercials but he has also directed music videos for Erasure, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, and Sting.

Enjoy!