The first official day of San Diego Comic-Con 2011 saw the release of an exclusive Season 2 poster for AMC’s The Walking Dead series. Last year at this same comic-con saw this series release a first season exclusive poster painted by Drew Struzan which was a hit with fans of the comic book and the show. This time around another fan favorite artist was tapped to paint the second season poster for Comic-Con.
Tim Bradstreet is one of the well-known comic book illustrators whose comic book covers have become favorite of comic book fans everywhere. Whether they were covers for Vertigo’s Hellblazer series or for Steve Niles’ wildly popular Cal McDonald series his covers had a unique horror-noir look to them. This Bradstreet style really lends itself well to the Season 2 poster for The Walking Dead.
Today also saw a couple new production stills from Season 2 which looks to have Rick and the gang breaking down on an interstate full of wrecked and abandoned vehicles and most likely attracting all sort of zombies to their presence.
Just a little under four months ago the announcement trailer for the Techland and Deep Silver zombie survival horror title, Dead Island, premiered to much acclaim. The trailer was like a short film and really tugged at the emotions of those who saw it for the first time. The trailer itself didn’t show what the game was all about other than a paradise resort becoming the setting for a zombie survival horror game with open-world gameplay.
A couple more trailers using gameplay scenes came out since then, but it’s now E3 and gamers want more info on just how the game plays. Techland and Deep Silver didn’t disappoint. In addition to a new trailer made exclusively for this year’s E3, the game also was available in demo form for attendees to check out and play. The two-part video below is one such example of someone playing the demo.
From what I could tell from the gameplay demo this game seems to be a much more serious version of the campy and over-the-top Capcom zombie horror title Dead Rising. Weapons seem to be mostly melee types like machete, knives, steel bars and such with the random rifles and pistols to be found during the game. Dead Island looks great from what I could see from the demo. Hopefully, more details about the gameplay and the co-op multiplayer will be released between E3 and the game’s release.
Dead Island is set for a September 6, 2011 for the U.S. and September 9, 2011 for the rest of the world.
Sometimes, you watch a movie and there’s a line that will jump out at you so brightly that you have to stand up and take notice. You carry it with you and find that even if it didn’t mean to be, it just comes across as cool or funny. My family watches tons of movies, so at any given time you can make the room smile by screaming something sudden like “They cut the power?! How could they cut the power man? They’re animals!!”
I give you the awesomeness that is Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. In this scene, which was both shocking and funny, a priest takes offense to zombies causing trouble in the cemetery behind his church. I laugh every time I think of this. Enjoy.
When Marvel Zombies was first announced I had been away from reading the superhero titles from DC and Marvel. I’d gone fully into non-superhero titles. One such title is Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. Kirkman finally created a story which really tapped into what Romero was talking about in his Living Dead films. Kirkman’s zombie series continued where the film end credits began. To suddenly find out that Kirkman was to pen a “What If…?” style miniseries for Marvel telling the tale of what would happen if the Marvel Universe (well on of its alternates at least) and all its heroes and supervillains had suddenly all turned into flesh-eating zombies was great news indeed.
Marvel Zombies continues where the Ultimates Fantastic Four “Crossover” story-arc left off (story-arc where we’re introduced to the Marvel Zombies alternate universe). The Ultimates Fantastic Four has made it back safely to their Ultimates reality through the assistance of an unzombified Magneto. In the very first pages of Marvel Zombies we find Magneto on the run from those superheroes and villains turned zombies gunning for him. With these super-powered zombies having devoured the planet’s population within days they’re now set to hunting down, and at times, fighting with each other for the last few remaining people left on Earth for them to feed their hunger.
This being titled Marvel Zombies and not Magneto should give a hint as to the fate of the Master of Magnetism. No, this book deals with how the Marvel Zombies solve through their problem of not having anymore people to eat. It’s a good thing that in this reality Galactus and his herald, the Silver Surfer, have decided it was time to add Earth to the Devourer of Worlds’ menu. Unbeknownst to the Silver Surfer and Galactus, a planet they once thought to be teeming with life and energy to be consumned has become a death world where only the zombified Marvel heroes and villains remain.
The scenes once the Surfer and Galactus arrive were both action-packed and also full of some very dark humor. It was very difficult trying to root for anyone since in the end everyone left in the story were the “bad guys” but where the Surfer and Galactus were the serious villains in the story the Marvel Zombies themselves were funny enough in their need to take down Galactus and his Herald to feast on. The aftermath of the battle between the remaining Marvel zombies and Galactus makes for a great twist and also makes sense in a darkly humorous and wicked way.
Kirkman doesn’t dwell too much on the nature of the zombie plague’s effect on people’s humanity and feelings. He goes all-out to tell a fun, rip-roaring story. It shows in that there’s a little less depth in the book’s story than in Kirkman’s Walking Dead series, but what the story lacks in dramatic depth was made up for in some very funny and witty dialogue between the zombies themselves. The artwork by Sean Phillips (been a fan of his style since his work on Ed Brubaker’s Sleeper) complimented well with Kirkman’s zombie writing. I also like the fact that this graphic novel collected all the Marvel Zombies issue covers (both first and later reprintings) by renowned artist Arthur Suydam. His zombified alternate covers of classic Marvel issue covers was something of a great treat for comic book fans everywhere.
So, while Marvel Zombies doesn’t rise to the dramatic depths of The Walking Dead what it does do is tell a fun story of zombies versus Cosmic beings with plenty of flesheating and bloody good action. I’m glad that as great as Marvel Zombies was I’m even gladder that Marvel decided to re-visit this oft-kilter universe with some follow-up miniseries like Marvel Zombies vs The Army of Darkness and Marvel Zombies Volumes 2 thru 5.
(Hi! This is actually a review that I wrote a while ago for an anthology of B-movie reviews that a “friend” of mine was planning on self-publishing. Much like this site, the book would be made up of different reviewers giving each film their own individual spin. We were going to call it Dinner and a Cannibal Movie. I came up with that title, by the way. Unfortunately, the project was eventually abandoned but not before I’d written a handful of reviews. Here’s one of the shorter ones, for Umberto Lenzi’s Black Demons. Oh, and be warned: Because of the nature of the project it was written for, this review is full of spoilers.)
My ex-roommate Kim and I have a long-standing argument concerning this film. I claim that it’s an Umberto Lenzi zombie film that was made in 1991, long after Italian zombie cinema had run its course. It is also my contention that we saw this movie in October of 2004. Admittedly, we were performing our own private pagan ritual during most of the film’s 90-minute running time but we still paid enough attention to not be impressed by it. Kim, on the other hand, argues that we never watched Black Demons and that, furthermore, there is no such film as Black Demons. I suspect that a combination of her own rather prodigious liberal guilt and the film’s own utter banality has led her to repress the memory of it in much the same way as the protagonist of a Dario Argento thriller will often forget a key detail of a murder he has witnessed.
Black Demons tells the story of five young people who find themselves on the bad end of some black magic. For reasons that are never really made all that clear (largely because the entire cast has a bad habit of mumbling their dialogue), English Kevin is in Brazil with his American girlfriend, Jessica. Tagging along with them is Jessica’s half-brother, a morose young man who is recovering from a nervous breakdown and who has the rather unfortunate name of Dick. Along with having a vaguely incestuous relationship with Jessica (whether this was intentional on Lenzi’s part or just a case of bad acting is up for debate), Dick is also fascinated by black magic and has a tendency to wander off by himself a lot. This leads to a lot of scenes of Kevin and Jessica repeatedly shouting, “Dick! Dick!” as they search for him. This provided both me and Kim a lot of giggly amusement if nothing else.
Anyway, Dick attends a black magic ceremony that he records on audio tape and then proceeds to obsessively listen to whenever the movie needs an excuse to bring on a few zombies. The morning after the ceremony, our threesome’s jeep breaks down out in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, two hikers – Jose and his girlfriend, Sonya – come along and invite everyone to spend the night at Jose’s villa. As luck would have it, there’s a big cemetery located right behind the villa and idiot Dick decides to play his little audio tape right in the middle of it.
(I think Kim may have exclaimed, “God, what a dick,” at this point but she denies it along with the movie itself.)
Needless to say, this causes six zombies to rise from their graves and the usual hilarity follows. It turns out that these zombies were, in life, African slaves who rebelled against their white masters and were put to death as a result. Their eyes were plucked out as they died, though this doesn’t seem to keep them from being able to see once they come back to life. It turns out that the mission of these six black zombies is to kill six white people to even the score. Unfortunately, most of this is explained by Jose who has such an incredibly thick accent that it is next to impossible to understand a word he says. Therefore, the plot may actually be a bit more complex than I realize.
Though, I doubt it.
As Kim and I immediately realized, the zombies need to kill six white people. Yet there are only five white people in the film. Whether this was a case of lazy writing or maybe an actor walked off the film at the last minute, I do not know. However, Lenzi ingeniously handles this problem by killing an anonymous, never-seen white guy offscreen and then having our heroes hear about it on the radio. Still, you have to wonder why these zombies, seeking vengeance for being slaves in their past life, would only feel the need to kill six white people. Sure, it works out in the sense that there are six zombies and this way they only have to kill one person apiece. But still, it seems like they’re letting the white race off a little bit easily here. Indeed, if the solution to all of the world’s racial strife is simply to kill off the five, uninteresting losers in this film, then I have to side with the zombies on this one.
Unfortunately, Kevin and Jessica aren’t willing to sacrifice themselves for world harmony and insist on surviving until the end of the movie. Kevin eventually figures out that the zombies can be stopped by a well-thrown Molotov cocktail. How exactly he figured this out isn’t really clear. Perhaps he saw it in another, better zombie film. (Like Lucio Fulci’s Zombie 2, for instance. Unfortunately, beyond the Molotovs, the bad acting of the female lead, and a grisly fetish for showing eyeballs getting damaged, these two films have little in common.) Kevin’s plan works though not before the tragic ends of Sonya, Jose, the phantom sixth white guy, and yes, even Dick. Leaving behind a bunch of smoldering slaves, Jessica and Kevin flee the villa for a world still torn apart with racial strife and anger. Thanks a lot, guys!
Almost all good horror is to be found in subtext. Such as, Dracula may be pretty intimidating with his fangs and his blood drinking and all, but it’s as a symbol of unbridled lust and secret fantasies that he’s been able to become and remain an icon for over a century. And while Frankenstein might be frightening to look at, his true power comes from being a sign of what happens when man attempts to play God. In an admittedly less literary vein, what else is a truly scary slasher but proof positive over how little control we truly have over our own future? Strictly on paper, Black Demons should be a film awash in powerful subtext. After all, these zombies wouldn’t even exist if they hadn’t been enslaved and treated like property by the ancestors of the film’s heroes. In a world that is still struggling (and failing) to deal with the legacy of racism, a film in which a bunch of slaves come back to life and seek vengeance on only whites should have quite a bit to say. Perhaps if Black Demons had been directed by Fulci or Deodato, it would have done just that. However, this film was directed by Umberto Lenzi which means that it ends with Kevin assuring Jessica that their nightmare is over with the camera ominously (and, quite frankly, obscenely) pans over to a bunch of black children playing on the side of the road, basically equating those living children with a bunch of bloodthirsty, vengeful zombies on the basis of the color of their skin. Whether Lenzi realized what he was doing or not, this one camera movement manages to be a hundred times more offensive than anything found in Cannibal Apocalypse.
The zombie fps survival game that seem to be blowing up the interwebs with it’s “official announcement” trailer was a title that was initially talked about several years ago when Valve’s Left 4 Dead first came out and become a massive hit. Zombies were back in force in gaming (not that it really left) and every no-name studio was announcing a zombie title to try and take advantage of the sudden craze for the walking dead in games.
Techland was one such studio and their title was to be called, Dead Island. It was to be a first-person shooter for the Xbox 360 and PC. Set in an unnamed resort island, the game was received by the gaming community who followed such news with some interest. That interest soon waned when nothing new and concrete about the game came out in the last couple years. It’s now 2011 and, after a couple brief tidbits about the title in 2010, it looks like the game is going to be a reality (fingers crossed).
The trailer has been getting major praises since IGN first premiered it. People were soon hyped to see the game become a reality. Those who still were guarded with their reactions still thought the trailer was well-done and, some even said, it was artfully done. One thing that seem to have everyone in agreement is how heartbreaking the trailer ends up being once the whole sequence plays out. It’s true what some have said. Children always seem to be taboo as zombie chow in films and most games (novels have been more ahead of the game when it comes to children becoming zombie food) and it looks like Techland decided no one will be safe in this game.
I, for one, have been one of those who have been following this title since it was first talked about years back and if this announcement trailer really means the game will be made then my faith in the title has been rewarded.
There’s not much to say about Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave other than it’s actually worse than the movie before it. Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis was really bad and not in the so bad it’s funny. What had been a cult horror franchise which had fun with the zombie genre in addition to putting some genuine scares in people, these last two Return of the Living Dead films should pretty much kill the franchise just when the zombie revival is still going on strong.
Ellory Elkayem does directing duty for this fifth installment. He also directed the fourth film. I had thought that not everything should be laid at Elkayem’s feet when it came to who to blame for the lackluster and awful film that was Necropolis, but after sitting through Rave to the Grave I have to say that whatever good will Ellory Elkayem built up with his funny take on the giant creature feature, Eight-Legged Freaks, has been wasted with his back-to-back filming of Necropolis and Rave to the Grave. Elkayem films both films one after the other and I am going to assume this was more to save on the budget than any sort of continuity with the actors hired to play recurring roles. If saving money was the main reason then it sure didn’t look like it. Except for a few hero-zombie (zombies given more screentime than most thus given a better make-up effect) scenes the film clearly shows it’s ultra low-budget pedrigree. I don’t have problems with low-budget horror movies as long as there’s a sense of energy and enjoyment by those making it, but neither Necropolis and Rave to the Grave showed any one of the two.
Rave to the Grave occurs one year after the events of Necropolis and the teenage survivors of that film have now graduated and attending college. The film never really makes it clear if they’re in back in the U.S. attending college or still in Eastern Europe where the previous film was set. Either way the survivors from the previous film seem to have moved on quite well from their horrific experiences in Necropolis. The fact that they don’t seem to recognize the newly found containment barrel marked with the label of 2-4-5 Trioxin just adds to the weird and huge plot hole between film four and five. One would think that these kids would have it etched forver in their minds that containment barrel with 2-4-5- Trioxin equals horror. Instead they naively investigate and research the barrel with one of their friends realizing he could turn the chemical leaking from the barrel into a new form of rave drug whose extreme hallucinogenic effects also hide a side-effect which basically turns anyone who partakes of the drug into a zombie.
The rest of the movie deals with the survivors finally realizing the crisis they’ve unleashed and instead of calling for police or military help decide to go to the same outdoor rave party where everyone is taking the drug to try and find the person who made the drug Z and stop him from taking them. Like I said earlier, the film really has major plot holes and most of the time doesn’t make much sense. What we get in the end is an excuse to have a huge set piece where the survivors get to shoot as many zombies as possible while at the same time allow for the random raver to suddenly become a zombie out of the blue. There’s also a subplot of a couple of bumbling Men-in-Black type agents whose job it is to recover the Trioxin barrel while remaining inconspicuous. The secret organization they belong to must be global since I could barely understand their lines with the heavy Russian accent used by both “actors”.
My disappointment in what could’ve been a nice follow-up to the first three Return of the Living Dead movies was compounded by the sheer Z-movie level of Rave to the Grave after the awful work that was Necropolis. For those wanting to see a good b-level zombie movie that’s bad but enjoyable at the same time should check out House of the Dead 2. Yes, the sequel to Uwe Boll’s rancid and awful House of the Dead ended up being better than the original and way more entertaining than Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave. I wouldn’t even accept this film as a free dvd if someone gave it to me. In fact, I may end up punching that person as a reflex action.
I remember watching the original Return of the Living Dead in 1985. That zombie movie played on the premise that Night of the Living Dead actually happened. It was a great twist and interesting idea. The zombies in that film weren’t shambling and dumb like the one’s in Romero’s film. Instead these zombies were pretty quick and could talk and formulate plans and traps. Also these zombies couldn’t be killed by destroying the brain. It was the birth of the superzombies and it made for a fun experience. One thing it also had was a nice dose of comedy mixed in with the horror.
A few years later they had a sequel to Return of the Living Dead that was a good second helping. Nothing to write home about but it was a fun gory flick. Then came a second sequel which dropped the comedy and instead tried to be Romeo and Juliet meets brain-eating zombies. Other than the usual gore and bloodsplatter this second sequel was an utter failure. It took over 10 years for someone to try making a couple more sequels, but sure enough someone found a way to do it. They even found a good enough director in Ellory Elkayem (he directed the fun, campy giant spider monster flick Eight-Legged Freaks). There was talk that this third sequel will return the ROTLD franchise back to its roots of horror mixed with comedy. I was stoked about the news. Then when it came time to see Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis, I found out that it was going to go direct-to-cable. This usually means bad news all around about the overall quality of the finished film, but I was still going to give it a chance.
I finally saw its premiere on Sci-Fi channel in 2005 and all my low expectations weren’t even reached by the what I saw on the TV. The movie starts off well enough and right from the get-go they don’t hide the fact that the film is taking place in some Eastern European country. Peter Coyote the — only actor with any sort of talent — makes his appearance in this scene and there’s not even any attempt to make his character abit mysterious of whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy. Coyote’s scientist role in the film screams evil mad scientist. The rest of the cast seemed like it was randomly picked from a college campus and from the streets of Romania. The dialogue was bad enough but having them read out loud by amateurs just made it all worse.
The whole premise of the film outside of reintroducing newcomers to the zombifying effects of Trioxin seemed like the writers were trying to emulate Resident Evil instead of Return of the Living Dead. There’s the mega-corporation which deals with everything known to man and also research and develops illegal biowarfare technology like zombies armed with hi-tech weapons. Resident Evil did this better (thats not saying much) so it goes without saying that ROTLD4: Necropolis just didn’t know what it wanted to be. There wasn’t any of the comedy that made the first two films in the franchise so fun to watch. It looked as if they tried to make a serious zombie movie and instead it turned out to be seriously bad.
Even the zombies themselves ended up being inconsistent with the zombies from the first two films. Some seemed smart enough but most were of the Romero kind which goes against everything that is ROTLD. Their feeding habits even changed from eating nothing but brains but to eating other parts of the body. Then the filmmakers made it so they’re not indestructible anymore. Shooting these zombies in the head will drop them like a sack of bricks.
There really wasn’t anything fun about this sequel. Zombie movies are suppose to be dumb, gory fun but instead Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis just ends up being dumb, horrible and awful. I had alot of hope in Ellory Elkayem as an up-and-coming genre director, but cranking out this film after making such a fun one in Eight-Legged Freaks is a mystery and saddening. I wouldn’t recommend this film as a rental on dvd. Just go rent the original trilogy of films in the series and leave this one alone.
In 1993 horror fans were greeted with the release of Return of the Living Dead 3. This third film in the Return of the Living Dead series produced by John Russo ends up being a very good zombie movie and actually has genuine horror that the second film lacked. What ROTLDIII, its writers and directors seem to have left behind was the comedy side of the series which made them cult-classics to begin with.
Taking up directing duty this time around was genre-veteran Brian Yuzna (Beyond Re-Animator) who films this third entry purely on a horror standpoint. This film is serious horror from start to finish. This time around the military is still trying to find a way to use 2-4-5 Trioxin as a way to create zombie soldiers, but ones that could be easily controlled by them. To say that this project hasn’t met with success is an understatement. But it’s the story of the son of the military project director and his girlfriend who dominate the film’s plot. As portrayed by J. Trevor Edmond and Melinda Clarke, these two star-crossed lovers find themselves enmeshed with the dark secret of the project being held in secret. Son soon uses the Trioxin gas to try and ressurect his girlfriend who gets killed early on during an accident. What he gets instead is an undead girlfriend whose hunger for live brains (for some reason the zombies in this ROTLD sequel also feed on other bodily parts) can only be controlled when she causes herself bodily pain through extreme forms of piercing. The rest of the film deals with the father trying to save his son not just from himself and his undead girlfriend but from the hordes of escaped zombies in the facility.
The horror in the film was actually pretty good and this was helped a lot by the gore effects work which surpasses anything the first two films in the series had. The acting was decent enough with Melinda Clarke as the zombified girlfriend putting on a sexy, albeit creepy performance. If it wasn’t for the brain and flesh-eating she sure would’ve made for quite a poster girl for teenage boys.
In the end, Return of the Living Dead 3 continues the series admirably. Despite not having much humor and comedy in the film, this third film in the series more than makes up for it with high levels of gore and a definite sense of horror the first two didn’t much have not to mention a bit of romance which seemed to work.
1988 saw the release of Return of the Living Dead Part II. This film is a sort of sequel/reboot of the first film in that the story and even some of the characters bear too much of a similarity to the original film. Ken Weiderhorn both writes and directs this “sequel” and it shows. The film reuses alot of what made the first film a cult-classic amongst horror fans. Weiderhorn seems to be of the philosophy that if something ain’t broke then don’t fix it. What this does is make the film feel like a deja vu and maybe that was his intent since two of the main characters in the film say pretty much the same thing. Despite all this the film itself is pretty good and stays true to the original, albeit with abit more humor and better effects work.
Reprising similar roles they had in the first film are James Karen as Ed and Thom Mathews as Joey. Both work as in the post-burial industry and moonlight stealing valuables from the privates crypts and mausoleum in the cemetery they’re working in. Their characters act and almost have similar lines from Karen and Mathews’ characters of Frank and Freddy in the first film. Karen as Ed goes over-the-top once the 2-4-5 Trioxin gas is let loose and the dead bodies in the cemetery begin to come back to life seeking live brains. It’s these two characters who really keep the film from spiraling down to awful status. Even though their characters are similar to the original film, Karen and Mathews still bring a dose of great comedic timing and horror to the situation.
This time around the town has been safely evacuated by the military except for a few people who lived on the newly-built suburban housing area in the outskirt of town. It’s these survivors who must try and find a way to defeat the zombies and at the same time convince the military blockading the town that they’re not infected. There’s more action and comedy in this sequel. I think the comedy part of the film got way too much attention, but as I said earlier, Weiderhorn seems to think that if it worked in the original then it should work with more in this film. The effects work looks a bit better and probably due to an increase in the budget.
In the end, Return of the Living Dead Part II never brought anything new to the original it was following-up. The film pretty much reuses the same characters and situations. Weiderhorn does this to good effect and the finished product was an entertaining enough horror-comedy. Who knows how this sequel would’ve turned out if Russo had written it and O’Bannon back directing.
Through the Shattered Lens 