You’ve Found All the Miscellaneous Zombie Crap!!!
…and I bet you feel like a real winner for it. You should. This is where you’ll find all my favorite zombie movies, Happy Hour of the Damned set lists, links to fun games and eventually some book extras (like scenes that didn’t make the final book).
This Month’s Playlist is from Road Trip of the Living Dead: Honey’s Superhot Electro-Newer Wave Mix!
I know it’s early, but since the book comes out this month, figured I’d throw it out there!
10 Bomb Ass Horror Flicks, Undead Version!
Dead Alive (Brain Dead)
Peter Jackson’s zombie splatterfest is both hilarious and gut-wrenching. You’ll be laughing your ass off thinking about all the saps that picked this one up because of the director’s sweeping visual narrative on such awesomeness as oh…I don’t know…The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Honey! I loved Aragorn. Then you’ll love this!
The finale is possibly the goriest sequence ever burned onto celluloid. And dinner with mom is classic. Pick it up. And by all means, drop back by and let me know what you thought.
Dawn of the Dead
Okay. So just because that’s the original 70s movie poster, doesn’t mean I didn’t love the remake. In fact, I recommend them both. Just for different reasons.
The first Dawn is such clear satire that it made me fall in love with zombies for the metaphor of it all. Commercialism, group mentality and malls? I couldn’t get enough. But for some the movie drags, you know what cures a pacing issue?
Remake! The new Dawn is an instant classic, the opening scene is as riveting a piece of zombie cinema as you’re likely to see and the hopeless ending slipped in during the credits just to ruin Pollyanna’s night? Priceless.
Return of the Living Dead
Holy crap. I was in high school when I saw this gem for the first time and I must have seen it ten times since then. Return is the first mention of Brains! Before this flick zombies just ate. They weren’t particular. Any old limb would do, the occasional tripas, a spleen, whatever!
A couple of bumbling medical supply warehouse workers accidentally release the plague to end all plagues, disrupting the plans of some punkers in a nearby graveyard. There’s sentient zombies in this one folks, so I sure as shit didn’t make it up.
Also famous for the line, “Send more paramedics!”
Demons
My wife and I just watched this recently, she’d never seen it and I barely remembered it. While not technically a zombie movie, the demons move through bodies like a zombie plague and they’re pretty hungry for the flesh, so damn close. It’s Italian Gialo, near the end of that era. It’s gory for the gores sake and absolutely unintentionally funny, which means it’s outright hilarious.
Some chick is stalked in a foreign subway (it’s impossible to tell where you’re at in these flicks) and is given a ticket to the opening of the Metropol theater. Masks and weird movie dialogue turn the audience into flesh eating ghouls.
Also, you’re not likely to see zombies attack to Go West in any other film. It’s an all out 80s zombie trip. Loved it.
Shaun of the Dead
You know I love Shaun. How could I not? And I doubt I need to tell anyone reading this what it’s about or that it’s a comedy. I think what the filmmakers did so well was capturing the ridiculous similarities between zombies and our current lackadaisical culture. Jesus, when they come out of the Winchester singing White Lines and the zombie moans and they just incorporate it into the song. I peed myself a little bit.
While the ending is a little obvious, the epilogue is hilarious.
And now, who doesn’t love Simon Pegg? I would have never seen Hot Fuzz if it weren’t for Shaun. And THAT would have been a frickin’ shame.
28 Days Later
I had reservations about the legitimacy of these “zombies,” I’m not going to lie. But Danny Boyle pulled off an awesome revisioning.
London without a soul walking around but the incredibly odd looking Cillian Murphy? Awesome. And then you see that first group of zombies and they are not just fast. They are FAST. Which freaked me out, because now we’re looking at numbers (cuz with zombies it’s always the numbers) and speed. Who’d have a chance? Nobody.
Luckily these monsters can starve.
Fido
…is a charming little zombie movie?
How is that even possible. I don’t know. But it is. The zombie war is over and a corporation has made a device that turns your average brain muncher into a harmless pet, butler or ever…gasp…companion.
I didn’t find it “madly funny” as the poster suggests but by the end, I was sort of warmly affected. Like after a hot chocolate or a hug. Only from a flesh eating ghoul instead of say, your spouse.
Zombi 2
Okay. So Lucio Fulci is a master of what’s called giallo (a super gory cinematic style originated, I think, by Mario Bava or Dario Argento) and this flick is certainly hyper violent. Witness the slowest eyeball skewering in the history of cinema. The title is confusing, because officially Zombie was the European title of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, so when Fulci went to release (did that sound dirty?) he cashed in on that going with Zombi 2.
This is the only movie on the list that actually occurs on a carribean island and mentions voodoo. Weird, I know. You’d think more filmmakers would venture down that path, Serpent and the Rainbow not withstanding. Also a good movie.
Night of the Living Dead
This was the first zombie movie I’d seen and the first time zombies were depicted as flesh eating monsters. It was a movie with lots of firsts. First black hero in horror, too.
My mother actually checked Night out from the library for my birthday party. The other kids parents weren’t at all pleased. But I sure as hell felt loved.
Dare you not to cringe when the little girl grabs the trowel.
Planet Terror
Okay. So I think the whole Grindhouse experience was lost on a couple of generations of film-goers. I, for one, was awestruck that Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarentino could pull off a spot on replica of what it was like to go see trashy movies in the seventies.
Planet Terror was definitely trashy from it’s strip club opening to the horrors that can befall paralyzed hands. And 100% awesome. When the screen burns out during the sex scene and that Missing Reel sign jumped up on the screen, I nearly lost my shit.
Though, I don’t recall whether anyone else was…hmm.
Let’s Play Zombie!!!
I’ve not really kept up with the zombie video game trend, I’m almost ashamed to admit (considering the wealth of material out there). In fact, I haven’t played Resident Evil in well over three years, about the same time I put down the retractable gun to House of the Dead. But that doesn’t mean I’m not intrigued. I keep seeing billboards with Left 4 Dead on them and am tempted to upgrade our game system and pick that shit up. Till then, and because I can’t seem to embed any games on this thing, follow this link to an awesome video/game Choose Your Own Adventure Styleeey!
