Fear Flashback Friday: The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue

The return of Fear Flashback Friday! I'm hoping to do reviews on most Fridays and they'll tend to be of the horror variety. Not all, though - and we'll have Film Flashback Fridays and New Film Fridays as well. Didn't quite have the time I'd hoped for this first week, but I've 'dug up' a neglected classic for 2018's inaugral film. So without further ado:

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
This is one of those movies I always wanted to see when I was younger (I’d first heard of it under the title Let Sleeping Corpses Lie), but just never found at any of the video stores I frequented. Somehow I forgot about it completely until I read Jamie Russell’s Book of the Dead. He positions the film as the transitional successor to Night of the Living Dead, sitting somewhere between that film’s anti-establishment nihilism and the later Dawn of the Dead’s explicit, gory violence. Well, that was enough for me to want to track it down! Luckily it was at that time available on Netflix (DVD) and it has become one of my favorite zombie movies.

The Medium

I was lucky enough to find a used copy of the Blue Underground blu ray edition at my local Bull Moose store recently, so when I found myself feeling the urge to watch some gut-chomping action it was a – pardon the pun – no brainer to pop it in. Picture quality is as decent as you can expect for a low-budget exploitation flick and there's a decent selection of extras (no commentary track, though).

The Movie

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue starts off in a London that is represented as crowded, filthy and jaded. Smokestacks and cars belch noxious fumes everywhere; people do drugs on the street and walk around with cloth over their faces. At one point a buxom young woman strips down and races across the street (this is the 70’s, dontcha know), but no one seems to care. George, our hero, is taking his motorcycle out to the country for a working holiday, trying to escape the poisonous congestion.

At a gas station he meets Edna when the young woman backs into his motorcycle. With the repairs taking all weekend he browbeats her into giving him a ride (and letting him drive!) as they’re heading in roughly the same direction – he to a house on a lake and she to visit her sick sister. Unfortunately they’re quickly lost.

"Douchebagsayswhat?"
"What?"

When George stops at a farm to ask directions he comes across an experimental machine that the Agricultural Ministry is using to try and combat insect pests. It uses “ultrasonic radiation” to excite the primitive nervous systems of insects, inciting them to violence against each other. You would think George, as a bit of a hippie, would applaud something that at the very least doesn’t dispense poison or noxious fumes, but he’s pretty set against ANYTHING that goes against the natural order. And in this case his suspicions are dead-on.

"Sir, give me the colander. You're drunk."

Because within minutes of the device being switched on Edna is attacked by a strange man who is dripping wet and has strange red eyes. Her description matches that of a local tramp (maybe not the red eyes), but of course it can’t be – he’s been dead for several days.

Things spin rapidly out of control from there in traditional zombie flick fashion. Edna’s sister and brother-in-law are attacked and he’s brutally murdered. The local police suspect the wife and Edna and George are dragged into the ensuing investigation. The bigoted and bitter police sergeant distrusts them both and when the evidence at various killings seem to link to their presence he jumps to conclusions, putting everyone at risk.

"Don't think about getting into an 'who's the bigger asshole' contest, punk,
cause I guarantee you'll lose."

TLDaMM is just a really well made film, especially for a 1970’s zombie picture. Yes, there are huge plot holes, but at least one of them leads to one of the more eerie moments in the film. It’s established pretty early on that the “ultrasonic radiation” is affecting the decaying nervous systems of the recently deceased (and the developing nervous systems of newborns, in a weird nursery scene), but those dead for longer don’t seem affected. Then comes a sequence in a crypt where one of the zombies dabs blood on the eyes of a couple of corpses – a moment that’s almost religious in its presentation - and those older bodies also rise.  It makes NO SENSE, but is effective nonetheless.

"Okay, just like we practiced, and a one, and a two..."

And the zombies in this movie are quite a bit more capable than Romero’s walking corpses. They use tools, they plan, and they’re capable of strategic retreat. This is probably the only movie I’ve scene in which zombies use a gravestone to knock down prey! They also make this creepy whining noise, like a pre-vocal child. It’s quite disturbing in spots.

Oh, come on, the selfie stick isn't that bad.

The actors do a great job for the most part, despite some dodgy accents. Arthur Kennedy as the police sergeant does a particularly good job of making us hate him, doing the almost impossible job of getting us to root FOR the zombies by the end. Cinematography is also quite good, with some excellent shots of the city, village and countryside. Pacing is good with very little drag.

The Bottom Line

This is a definite gem, and one that I think isn’t as well-known as it should be. If you get a chance, give it a shot.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead

I feel like it's not really Halloween season if I don't watch a Romero zombie flick, but I'm rapidly running out of ones that I like. In fact, this is really the last one I'll probably watch for 31 Days. (I didn't much care for Diary of the Dead or Survival of the Dead.) Not to say that I was completely happy with Land of the Dead when it came out - in all honesty I was pretty disappointed.

And yet, I'm now hard pressed to say why. It may have had something to do with the release of the Dawn of the Dead remake the year previous . I enjoyed the hell out of that modernization, even if the film failed to make much use of Romero's deeper themes. I was, perhaps, expecting a little of that edge, that frenzied, more modern pace. Maybe I was expecting a bigger budget - and Land was Romero's only studio-produced Dead film - to create a bigger film than what we got. Maybe... ah, hell, it doesn't really matter. The bottom line is that I was disappointed - but I still liked the movie.

The Medium
I've got the "Unrated Director's Cut" DVD - just never got around to the blu-ray, and I'm not sure it's really necessary. The unrated version adds back in a few choice bits of gore - like a zombie ripping out someone's naval ring - but nothing that adds to the plot or backstory.

The Movie
Set several years after the events of the previous Dead films, the primary action takes place in and around Pittsburgh's "Golden Triangle" - a real feat, since it was shot in and around Toronto, Canada. Protected on two sides by rivers the city provides enough safety from the dead ('stenches' in this film - why does every zombie franchise have to use a different term?) to allow for civilization - of a sort - to reassert itself. The city has stratified into the haves and have-nots with the rich living in a luxury high-rise called Fiddler's Green and everyone else living in abandoned buildings, shacks and tents in your standard post-apocalyptic ghetto.

Top-drawer entertainment, however.

In a lot of ways Land of the Dead feels like an eighties film - a thematic cousin to movies like The Running Man, They Live and Robocop. Romero's always used his films as a way to talk about larger issues - consumer culture, urban alienation, societal nihilism - and with Land he's focused primarily on class struggle and wealth stratification, something those 80's films were also concerned about. It's also pretty simplistic in its concerns - the poor are good, the wealthy are bad, and those who attempt to elevate their station betray both their roots and their own survival. I've got no problem with the message - I just wish there had been a bit more subtlety. Of course when you've got Dennis Hopper as your big bad that may be asking for too much.

"Waterworld 2? Yeah, fuck it, why not."

The biggest addition to Romero's Dead cannon here is actually a logical continuation of Bub, from Day of the Dead. The zombies in this film are starting to remember who they use to be - and they spend much of their time acting out old habits and behaviors. An undead band struggles to carry a tune in the old bandstand, a long-dead couple still holds hands as they stagger around town, and Big Daddy, a former gas station attendant, shambles to the pump as if it was still working. In some ways it's almost an idealistic society - nobody wants, nobody struggles and best of all, nobody dies. Again, that is.

"Hey, Mr. Tambourine man..."

Except the zombie society and the human society end up in conflict. In order to maintain the human community, groups are sent out to raid surrounding towns for resources. Their leader is the clean-cut Riley (Simon Baker) - a man whose do-gooder nature is juuuust this side of saccharin. (I mean, he brings antibiotics for the preachers ill son.) His second in command is the more pragmatic - if not mercenary - Cholo (John Lequizamo), a man for whom death is part of the job description - as long as it's not his. We join the story on the night of Riley's last job. He's bugging out - leaving the rat race (and the rats) for the quieter climes of Canada. All he wants is for things to go smooth on his last job.

And of course it doesn't. Cholo isn't out getting food or medicine for the community - he's getting cigars and liquor for the guy who runs things, Kaufman (Hopper). His inattention leads to the death of a young man, which is bad, but the behavior of the group as a whole - running roughshod through the town, shooting zombies and setting fires - inspires the ire of Big Daddy. And this is one zombie you do not want to mess with.

Lequizamo's Cholo is actually my favorite character, primarily because he's the only one that shows any sort of complexity. I like Baker as an actor, but he's so straight-laced in this I'm surprised he's not wearing a white hat. Hopper is just as bad on the other side of things, but he hams up the sleazy CEO shtick so well I tend to cut him some slack. Cholo, on the other hand, is mercenary and self-centered and ambitious to a fault - but he also tries to help people (Kaufman's neighbor), inspires a twisted sort of devotion in his men, and is genuinely hurt that Kaufman doesn't consider him 'worthy' of the Green. He just wants to live the American dream, man!

*Insert Girl From Ipanema Muzak track here*

With his dreams of "movin' on up" quashed, Cholo steals a military truck called "Dead Reckoning" and threatens to shell Fiddler's Green with missiles unless he gets the money Kaufman owes him. (The whole idea that money still means anything in this wasteland is laughable - but hey.) Riley is drafted to take him out before he can do it - which Riley agrees to only to save his friends.

Meanwhile Big Daddy and his growing army of zombies moves steadily towards the bright lights across the river. And they're learning as they go.

Learning just how cold Lake Ontario is in the winter, primarily.

Things get apocalyptic, of course. It's a Romero zombie film. Though the zombies actually have a bit more agency in how things go down than is usual. (I expected more direct human screw-ups to be the cause of zombies getting in.)

The supporting characters are thin, but well handled by Asia Argento and Robert Joy. Eugene Clark as Big Daddy is also a standout - you don't often see outrage, grief or satisfaction in a zombie, but Clark manages it through an iconic makeup. He's no Bub, but he's still pretty good.

My main complaint about Land of the Dead is in how small everything feels. Even when they're shooting exteriors it all feels... claustrophobic. I don't feel the scope or sense of place - if it wasn't for the occasional establishing shot of the Pittsburgh skyline it could be anywhere. Maybe that's the point, though...

The Bottom Line
Out of the first series of Dead films (Diary serves a sort of re-boot to the series) this is my least favorite. I feels too small for the scope of the story and too broad in its message. There's still plenty to enjoy, however - it's a Romero zombie movie, after all.

31 Days, 31 Horror Moves: Horror Comedy Double Feature: Return of the Living Dead/Tucker and Dale vs Evil

Another October gaming weekend down (10th/11th), and I'm behind on writeups as usual. Was only able to watch a couple of movies (and not What We Do in the Shadows), so at least I'm only a couple back. The theme was still horror/comedy, however. I could have stuck with a zombie comedy theme and done a triple feature of Return of the Living Dead/Fido/Shaun of the Dead - but I promised my aunt Theresa that I'd review Tucker & Dale vs Evil, so...

Return of the Living Dead

I can't believe I haven't watched this for a previous thread. It's a classic, a staple of my horror watching when I was young, and still freakin' hilarious. It's technically an 'official' sequel of Night of the Living Dead in the sense that the original story was by John Russo, co-screenwriter of the original Night. (Though, really, the only official sequels are Romero sequels, right?) It also kicked Day of the Dead's ass at the box office in the summer if 1985. Is it a better movie than Day? I dunno - but it's a helluva lot more fun.

So we've got these two guys, Frank and Freddie, who are working late at a medical supply warehouse. In an effort to impress his younger co-worker Frank shows him some canisters in the basement that contain the REAL corpses from the incident that Night of the Living Dead was based on. Why are they in the basement of a medical supply company? Well, typical Army screwup - they shipped them to the wrong place! There's also some workmanship issues with the canisters, as one knock by Frank releases a burst of toxic gas into the place, overwhelming him and Freddie and sending a flood of the stuff through the building.

Meanwhile, Freddie's incredibly 80's group of friends decides to wait for him in the abandoned cemetery next door. Because, yeah, that's totally a good idea. (Serious about the 80's thing - it's like The Breakfast Club as done by Troma.) Punk music and inappropriate nudity ensue.

Back at Uneeda Medical Supply, things are not going well for Frank and Freddie. There's the smell, for one thing - definitely gag inducing. Frank in particular doesn't seem to have a strong stomach. There's the aftereffects of the gas - neither of them feel well. Oh, and there's the whole bringing-the-dead-back-to-life thing. Yep - the gas also revives the dead, including half-dogs (for veterinary schools) and the one cadaver they've got stored in the freezer (for medical schools). This is definitely above Frank and Freddie's pay grade, so they call the owner, Burt.

After a brief interlude in which they try and put down the cadaver and fail - despite putting a pickax through its skull, leading to one of the best sets of lines in a movie rife with them, "It worked in the movie!" "You mean the movie lied?!" - the three men take the corpse and the half-dogs (all in pieces) over to the mortuary. Ernie knows the owner, Burt (yes, Burt and Ernie), and thinks he'll help them burn all of the unliving pieces in the crematorium.

Things go horrifically awry, the substance goes into the atmosphere, rain sends it into the ground, corpses rise from their grave in some awesome special effects sequences. There's running, screaming, tar zombies growling for brains, more paramedics are sent for and the army decides nuking the city may be the only option.

It's so good, so full of awesome lines - "Send more paramedics." "Brains!" "Watch your tongue boy if you like this job!" "Like this job?!" This is where pulp culture got the idea that zombies like brains specifically. This is where Linnea Quiggly got her first big break. This... this is not really the first zombie horror comedy (probably Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things takes that spot), but it's the best. I'm sorry Shaun of the Dead - I dearly love you too - but Return is still the rotting corpse at the top of the heap.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil

Alan Tudyk can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. Well, Transformers, Dark of the Moon... nah, he killed in that as well. Anyway, when I heard Wash was doing a horror movie I knew I'd have to see it. When I heard Tyler Labine was going to be in it... I was confused. I like his work and have since I first saw him on Invasion (and Reaper), but to have him in a horror movie was weird. What kind of horror movie was this gonna be?

And then I saw the trailer and all was made clear.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil is a horror comedy that uses the very narrow sub-genre of the hillbilly slasher flick as its template. Our titular heroes fulfill the hillbilly role and our first view of them - passing the car of our requisite teen victi... er, protagonists, all dead-eyed and slow-mo'd - make them seem like they could easily dismember a corpse or make someone squeal like a pig. It's all about perception, though, and Tucker and Dale are really the most sweet-natured, nice guys you could imagine.

They do have some hygiene issues and an over-fondness for Pabst Blue-Ribbon, however. Dale also suffers from social anxiety and self-esteem issues, problems his friend Tucker does his best to help him overcome. Like when Dale sees Allison - one of the group of college kids they passed earlier - at the local gas station. Tucker urges Dale to go talk to her - but his approach is, of course, interpreted as threatening. (Next time, Dale, leave the scythe back at the truck.)

Really, all Tucker and Dale want is to enjoy a weekend at their new vacation cabin - a bit of a fixer upper, but with potential! Just needs some tender care, which is why they have all the chainsaws, axes and... still not sure why they need the scythe, actually. The woodchipper makes sense, though. The kids, for their part, just want to party and hook up and have an occasional creepy-ass story around the campfire.

You can see these two groups are on a collision course and eventually the kids skinny dipping runs smack into Tucker & Dale's night fishing. (You'll note that I never really learned the kids names - except for Allison. Honestly, I just never saw the point. Although I do remember Chad...) The two men startle Allison, who falls off a rock and knocks herself out. The other kids just see the two men hauling her unconscious form out of the water into their canoe. "We got your friend!" Dale calls out, trying to be helpful. Screaming and running ensues.

The kids assume Allison has been kidnapped by murderous hillbillies and go to some pretty crazy, and unlucky, extremes to try and save her. Tucker and Dale can't figure out why the kids would do such horrible things as impale themselves in a shitter hole - er, outhouse hole - or throw themselves headlong into the woodchipper. Misunderstandings all around, really.

Allison gets to see the other side of the duo, though - primarily Dale - and realizes they're just good guys, a little more blue collar than she's used to, but decent, hard working folk like her own family (she grew up on a farm). The college kids, urged on by the murderously preppy Chad, stumble, flail, react as if Tucker & Dale are monsters, and as a result end up offing themselves in a number of increasingly gory (and hilarious ways).

Unlike Return of the Living Dead, which achieves a lot of its humor through dialogue, most of Tucker & Dale's best bits are almost entirely physical - watching Tucker struggling to pull the poor kid out of the woodchipper as blood soaks him completely could be depressing and stomach churning. Instead, Tudyk turns it into a three-stooges bit, ending with the hopeful "You okay?" The whole bit with the kid running from Tucker (swinging his chainsaw at the hornets chasing him) is completely wordless - even the wasp landing on his nose. Not to say there aren't good lines - "Hideyho officer! We've had a doozy of a day." remains one of my favorite things ever said in a film.

The best parts of the film are the in the first two-thirds - poor Tucker - and things bog down a bit with some Chad oriented stuff in the last third. It's not that its bad, it just requires more setup and dialogue than the rest and as a result just doesn't have the energy (or gore) that really elevates the earlier parts of the film.

The thing about Tucker & Dale that lifts it above films like, say, Zombeavers, is that it has some heart to it. You get invested in Tucker and Dale (and Allison) and actually care about what happens to them. The comedy is earned and, while often pointed, isn't really that mean-spirited. It's a weirdly warm-hearted slasher/hillbilly horror comedy.

Last year Tudyk mentioned that they were working on a script for a followup. Tucker & Dale vs Satan, maybe? Or vs Frankenstein? Doesn't matter - I'm on board, either way.

 

Fear Flashback Friday: Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

I have a confession to make: for the longest time this was my favorite Romero zombie movie. It was the first of his films I saw, which probably has something to do with it -though I'd definitely seen bits of Night and Dawn, probably through Fangoria. It came out when I was still in high school and video rentals were just getting going. The one movie theater in town had closed - not that they would have shown an unrated movie to begin with. While Evil Dead was the very first movie I rented, I think Day was in the very next batch of tapes.

I don't think it being the first was the only reason, though, as it remained my favorite of the bunch for a decade or more - long after I'd see the others. There was the gore, of course. The effects remain some of the most well-done of any horror movie - from 'Dr. Tongue' through the exposed brain to Rhode's disembowlment. Tom Savini is at his peak in Day and you can see his influence in every zombie productions since. (Particularly in The Walking Dead - special effects supervisor/co-executive producer Gerg Nicotero's first film was Day of the Dead, where he worked on both special effects and in front of the camera as Private Johnson.)   There was also the dark, introspective, almost nihilistic tone - particularly attractive to me as a depressive, introspective, and nihilistic teenager.

...down the halls of my local high school. Oh, wait, that's me.

But if I'm honest there's really only one reason why Day held the top spot in my affections for so long - and that reason is Bub.

The 80's had a lot of what I call 'character monsters.' In the 30's you had Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolfman, Mummy, and others - protagonists as well as antagonists. In the 80's there was Jason and Michael and Freddy. Monsters that had their own agency - and fan followings. And there was Bub - a zombie, yes, but also a fully realized character who is also arguably one of the heroes of the movie. Out of all the 80's movie monsters, he was my favorite.

As I got older my tastes widened somewhat (though they remain relatively shallow), and Day has fallen out of favor. Night is now my favorite of the Romero films, followed by Dawn. I still love Bub, though. Even as I type this I've got the Amok Time Bub figure staring at me, his reward bucket at his side.

The Medium
I've got the two disk DVD (DiviMax) Anchor Bay release from 2003. It was an excellent release for the time - with a ton of extras, including two commentary tracks, hundreds of stills, a documentary and even a PDF of the 'first draft' script. It still looks very good for a DVD, but if you're thinking about picking the film up in HD, the new Scream Factory release seems to be the way to go, if only for the new feature length documentary. (It also includes the commentary tracks from the Anchor Bay release.)

The Movie
A woman wakes in a white, cinderblock room. On the far wall is a calendar with the month of October showing. All the days have been crossed off. It's October 31, Halloween. She approaches and holds her hand out to touch the picture, an idyllic presentation of a family in a sunny pumpkin patch. Suddenly numerous rotting hands burst through the wall to grasp at her. And she wakes again, this time she's in a helicopter flying low over what appears to be an abandoned coastal city. But appearances can be deceiving...

I want to make a 'watch the hands' joke here.

In some ways this is my favorite section of the movie. The opening bit with the white room/zombie hands is cool and startling, but it's the all-too brief exploration of the abandoned city that really sticks in my head. All those empty streets, the abandoned vehicles, the debris, the alligator. I think this was really the first time the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse was presented - so many films before and since are occupied  more with the apocalypse itself, rather than the results (though I'm sure there are exceptions). The Walking Dead has been great at following up on this, though - and the early episode scenes with Rick in the remains of Atlanta remind me of this sequence in Day.

Zombie apocalypse or San Francisco after the Giants won?

Of course the city isn't really abandoned - it just doesn't belong to the living any more. The new occupants respond to the sounds of people shouting over a megaphone and the dead spill out into the streets, looking for fresh meat. (Amongst these zombies is one of the greatest zombie effects on film - the so-called 'Dr. Tongue' zombie, who has apparently had his face blown away by a shotgun blast - his lower jaw almost gone, his tongue flicking about in the breeze. (I ran an All Flesh Must be Eaten game that included a jawless zombie - one character was gummed and the others almost shot him, thinking he'd been bit.)

Faced with the obvious - that there are no survivors in the city, or at least none that can respond - the helicopter leaves and returns to the military instillation that is their base of operations. It's an underground complex set in a old mine, a place where a ton of things, including boats and old government documents, are stored. This is where the movie settles down into its real story - about a military that wants control, scientists who want to understand, and two guys who want to just enjoy the last dying embers of a world that's already burnt to a crisp.

On the military side we have Captain Rhodes, a high strung commander with only the most tenuous hold on his men and his sanity. His second in command is Steel, a blowhard and a bully. A number of other soldiers round out the unit, including the barely-holding-it-together Miguel.

This is the least shouty picture of Rhodes I could find.

 For the scientists we have the extremely tough and capable Sarah (the woman we met earlier) and Fisher (played by John Amplas, who was also the title character in Romero's Martin). I'm... not exactly sure what it is they do, exactly - supposedly they're looking for whatever caused the outbreak of undead. The lead scientist is a man named Logan, though all the soldiers call him Frankenstein. I know what Logan does - he experiments on zombies. Sometimes he carves them up - there's a memorable scene in his lab that includes a brainstem still attached to a body and a zombie that literally spills its guts - and sometimes he trains them.

"And the good news is... well, there is no good news."

The third group is in some ways the most interesting, but is also the least active in the plot. John, the pilot, and Bill McDermott, the radio operator. They're outsiders both figuratively and literally - they even live outside the underground complex, instead setting up a homey trailer deep within the mine itself. While the other groups struggle to find meaning and reason in a world gone mad both John and Bill are just trying to get by - doing their jobs, but nothing more.

"Why is there no food on this plate, mon."

Most of the film is about the conflict between the soldiers and the scientists. Rhodes wants answers - really, what he wants is a solution to the problem they have, which is that the dead are coming back to life and civilization has gone down the toilet. The scientists are struggling with more basic questions - like HOW the dead are coming back to life and WHY. That is, except for Logan - who really is trying to figure out a solution, unfortunately his research requires a steady stream of 'subjects' from a corral of zombies the military keeps in the mine, and that leads to the inevitable collapse of structure and the deaths of (almost) everyone involved.

I actually skipped a group, and it's an egregious error on my part. The zombies themselves form a distinct fourth group, represented by the one zombie that Logan has managed to train - Bub. The other zombies do what zombies do, mill about aimlessly until a living brain ambles by and then they get real focused. Bub has regained some contact with what he used to be before he died. He tries to shave with a razor, read a book - he even listens to Beethoven with an expression of surprise and, maybe, joy on his face. Bub, in some ways, represents a hope for the future- the possibility of human experience living on beyond death.

Though you can tell he's not quite there because he's skipping to the end of the book.

All the other characters don't seem to represent anything but hopelessness, really. The military just want to shoot their way out of everything, a physical and military solution that has no chance of succeeding. But the scientists are just as deluded - they're looking for an answer where there may be none, assuming that answering a hypothetical WHY is more noble and useful than just trying to get on with HOW. And John and Bill are really the worst - though their point of view seems to be the one Romero favors. And that point of view seems to be "we fucked everything up and even if we didn't God hates us so let's just give up." The sum total of human civilization, achievement and history should be dumped and forgotten. Yeah, there's a lot of absolute crap saved away in deep places as if it should mean something, but there's a lot of good as well. Baby. Bathwater. Whatever man, let's just get high and have babies that we never teach about anything. (And how offensive is John as a character, looking back at it - a lazy, weed-smoking black man from Jamaica? )

As long as I'm aimlessly ranting, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THAT CLOWN?

Man, there's just something about this movie that provokes me to ramble about nothing - I guess because that's what most of the movie seems to be about, rambling about nothing. Luckily we get a lot of gory zombie-related goodness in between the shouty bits and an extended zombie assault on the base that provides some of the only comedy available in the film. Bub is awesome and Sherman Howard just kills with his performance - bringing more life and humanity to a zombie than most of the other human characters provide.

The Bottom Line
On one level Day of the Dead is a depressing shitstorm of violence, nihilism, pseudo-philosophical bullshit and indictments of both the military and science. On another it's a thoughtful, introspective look at what humanity means and what, if anything, is worth saving about it. And on yet another level it's a gory zombie romp with a fantastic zombie character and fantastic effects sequences.

I feel like I've been overly hard on Day while writing this - and the truth is it's only in the dissection of the film that I get annoyed with it. As a whole, I still very much enjoy the film - and Bub forever, man. Bub forever.

No, we salute YOU, Bub. We salute YOU.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Zombie

Zombie (aka Zombi 2, aka Zombie Flesh Eaters)

It's not October if I don't watch a Lucio Fulci movie.

I love Italian zombie movies. They're almost all terrible, with incomprehensible plots, incredibly bad dubbing, over-the-top gore that is also really fake looking, and more casual rape/misogyny/nudity than you can shake a stick at. And yet, they tickle me. As I've said before, I can almost always find something to enjoy in them - even Burial Ground. (Though what it was I enjoyed in that movie escapes me at the moment...)

Zombie, or Zombi 2 as it was released in Italy (to take advantage of the popularity of Dawn of the Dead, which was released as Zombi in Italy), is the king of them all. It's the template on which they're all based and is - in energy, creativity, technical skill and complete over-the-top gonzo-ness - the best of them. Does that mean it's a good movie? Well, I guess it depends on what you're looking for. A plot that holds together, realistic characterizations, good acting? You're out of luck. Inventive makeup effects, shocking thrills, an atmospheric location? Now we're getting somewhere.

I came to Zombie pretty late in my horror viewing. I distinctly remember that I was browsing the horror stacks at a local music/video store and coming up empty. It was pretty late in the day and I was looking for something - anything - that would scratch that itch for a new horror movie. I think this was in the 90's, a decade that was a little rough on horror fans. Down in the corner of the last row I saw a black-case DVD with an awesome looking zombie on the cover. Dude - there are WORMS in the guys EYE! And the tagline - 'We are going to eat you' - that's pure gold. This was the Anchor Bay release, which I still have somewhere.

Worms! In his EYE!

I was hooked. There was the general low-budget feel (and look - that was a pretty muddy transfer) of 1970's Italian horror movies. There was the synthesizer music that might or might not fit the scene. There was the over-use of bright-red blood. There was a pretty excruciating eye-impalement (something of a signature for Fulci). There was a zombie fighting a shark. A real shark, mind you. How could I not love it?

The Medium
I've got the Blue Underground Blu-ray release. I almost didn't pick this up, as I wasn't sure Zombie was a movie that would benefit from high definition. The poor video quality was part of the charm for me. However there were a bunch of extras on two disks, so I bought it (used).

Man, am I glad I did. The picture quality is improved enough that it almost looks like it's been restored. Colors are bright and the image is sharp and clean (as much as it can be for a low-budget zombie flick, anyway). It was enough to make me revise my opinion of the cinematography, anyway - it's a pretty good looking film now.

The Movie
Zombie has two openings - in the first a shadowy figure points a gun at us (the screen) while drums pound out a tribal beat on the soundtrack. A figure tied into a sheet slowly rises. The gun fires. Blood and brains spurt out of the sheet. The shadowy figure the speaks, saying that "the boat can leave now." After the titles we get another opening, wherein an abandoned sailing vessel wanders into New York harbor.

At this point new viewers may be forgiven for thinking there's some depth to the film. We've got a dramatic opening shot - literally - that connects directly to the next sequence and raises all kinds of questions. Is this the same boat? Where did it come from? What happened to the crew? There's also the chance that maybe the director is deliberately echoing that scene in Dracula when the Demeter arrives in England with only the captain's corpse aboard.

But no, it's really just an excuse to tie the film to Romero's by shoehorning an opening and a closing sequence in the US. It's effective, though, and the corpulent zombie that attacks New York's Finest is memorable and lets us know we're in for some rough treatment.

A three hour tour, a three hour tour...

We're introduced to two main characters in short order - Peter West, a reporter, and Anne Bowles, the daughter of the owner of the abandoned boat. Ian McCulloch does okay as West - though he's an 70's Hero of the comb-over variety - but Tia Farrow is completely lost as Anne. She spends a good portion of the film staring into the middle distance with a slightly dazed expression. The two are quickly on their way to the Caribbean to try and find Anne's father and hopefully an explanation for what happened on the boat.

Once there they charter a boat - or hijack someone's vacation cruise, I'm not really sure. Anyway, they meet up with another couple and start looking for the island that Anne's father was supposed to be on. The other woman - Susan - goes scuba diving, which leads to that zombie-vs-shark extravaganza I mentioned earlier. Repeated viewing of that scene has dampened some of my amazement, but I remember clearly being bowled over by it the first time. I mean there's a real guy in that zombie makeup under water wrestling with a tiger shark!

A little to the left, little more... perfect!

Meanwhile, on the island, Dr. Menard is struggling with an outbreak of disease and his wife. She wants to leave, he doesn't - though he's awfully vague about why. He goes to the hospital (after slapping no sense at all into her) where he'll practice medicine via pistol shot (he's the figure in the very first scene). His wife, meanwhile, will take a shower and then get attacked by a zombie. This scene involves an incredibly graphic sequence in which the poor woman's eyeball is pierced by a splinter. It's pretty tough to watch even now.

Not as tough for us to watch is it is for her.

Our heroes have drive-shaft issues (with the boat, you sicko) and get marooned on the very same island. People run back and forth, there's talk of voodoo and people abandoning villages. Then there are some really gross zombies that may or may not be conquistadors, risen from their graves.

Any real plot has gone out the window long ago, but there's still some really effective shots to be found. A single figure shuffling down the abandoned streets of a village. The red, red blood contrasted with the white, white linens of the hospital. The zombies themselves, all rotting and mud-covered, some with worms dangling out of their eye sockets.

Eventually our heroes are cornered in the hospital and must do battle with ravening hordes of the undead. Things go badly, but not as bad as you might expect, as people actually survive (though not everyone, of course). The tacked on ending with a horde of zombies making their way across the Brooklyn bridge is surprisingly effective.

Just another Monday in the Big Apple.

The cinematography varies wildly in quality. Much of it is simply workmanlike, with the characters generally in frame and focus. Sometimes, however, Fulci surprises you with shots of almost poetic beauty - the abandoned ship against the old New York skyline (the Trade Center towers towering in the background), dust-blown streets with oddly still figures, zombies shuffling around with their eyes closed like sleepwalkers.

Richard Johnson lends things a bit of gravitas as Dr. Menard, but he's all gravelly voice and darting eyeballs, sweating his way through scenes of vague import. At least his voice fits, unlike some of the other characters, whose dubbing seems half-hearted at best - particularly the second male lead, Brian. Tisa Farrow is so vacant at times that you could almost see one of the characters shooting her as a zombie in the melee - it would be an easy mistake to make.

Brains... must have... brains...

The Bottom Line
Zombie is an experience. As a horror movie it provides the gore if not the scares - you cringe more than you jump. The barest thread of a plot satisfies only so much as it serves to get the characters to where they can be attacked. But as a Fulci film it satisfies by being a little stylish, a lot gory and a bit crazy.

Fear Flashback Friday: Shock Waves

Shock Waves

This is the best Nazi zombie movie ever made.

A bold claim, I know. I’ve seen more than a few Nazi zombie films, but I haven’t seen them all. How can I judge this the best? Well, for one thing, it is actually pretty creepy at times – I’m a fan of Dead Snow as well, but that’s not a scary movie. Zombie Lake is frightening, but mostly because of how crappy it is, not the zombies ("AAAAGGGHHH! He got green makeup on me!  ARRRGGHHH!!"). Oasis of the Zombies? The less said, the better (though I have an old review of that piece of cinematic excrement that I should post sometime.) For another, it stars Peter Fucking Cushing. That’s right – the same year he was Moffing it up in Star Wars, he was putting on a German accent and fake scar for this little beauty.

I have yet to see Outpost or Frankenstein's Army, so I’m ready to change my opinion if either of those ups the ante. There are a few other films with Nazi zombies in them, but either they’re not the focus or the movie is terrible. (Like Revenge of the Zombies, which features another Shock Waves cast member, John Carradine.)

Shock Waves is one of those movies that I had heard about, but never gotten a chance to see when I was younger. None of my local video stores had a copy when it was The Time of VHS, though I saw trailers for it on some of my horror movie rentals. ("Shock Waves! The deep end of horror!") The trailer pushes a certain exploitation feel and I got a weird impression that it was a low-budget gore-fest, something on the same level as Italian zombie cheapies like Burial Ground.

Because the original negative has mysteriously disappeared (what DON’T THEY WANT US TO SEE??!!) it took 20 years for a DVD to be made available (produced from the director’s personal print). I didn’t have huge expectations – I’d heard Zombie Lake was awesome, but I’m no longer friends with that guy. So I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah, it's a low budget ($200,000) film, but it's no gore-fest - there's surprisingly little in the way of gore. It's also a fairly effective, atmospheric horror movie with characters that are a little above your usual cookie-cutter victims - and of course it's got both Carradine and Cushing, and the movie uses their brief appearances to good effect.

The Medium
The copy I have is the Blue Underground release from 2003. The disk includes commentary by director Ken Weiderhorn, makeup artist Alan Ormsby (of Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and Dead of Night) and Fred Olen Ray (because why not), and the commentary is pretty fun and worth a listen. The picture quality is, to be fair, about as good as you can get given that it's a blown-up 16mm print - and not from the original negative. It's grainy and blurry and washed out, with plenty of scratches and small defects. Somehow, that adds to its charm for me. 

Looks like there's a Blu-ray release scheduled for late this fall. I hope they've found a better print to build from, but I'll probably pick it up anyway, 'cause I'm a sucker like that.

The Movie
The movie starts off with a voice-over talking about special Nazi squads that were never captured and “fought with their bare hands.” I don’t usually like voice-overs, but this sort of reminds me of In Search Of and I let it pass.

After that we get a scene where a father and son on a fishing boat rescue a girl who has been floating in a small dinghy on the open ocean. She's incoherent and dehydrated and can barely interact with her rescuers. Another voice over (I know), apparently by the girl, talks about how she's only just now remembering what happened. I'm guessing it's nothing good.

Then we’re introduced to a group of vacationers on some sort of Caribbean cruise in a dilapidated boat that’s constantly breaking down. The captain is John Carradine – doing his ‘crotchety old man’ routine. The young first mate sporting the awesome 70’s ‘stache is apparently the kid from Flipper, if that matters. The girl in the bikini is Brooke Adams, who you might have seen in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Is that... a missing plot element?

I have a bit of a crush on Brooke Adams.

Anyway, there’s some kind of confusing event that turns the sky orange. I say confusing, because later on the captain explains it away as something to do with cold currents and hot sky combining to bring stuff up from the depths. I think I missed something. (Actually, it's the movie that's missing something. According to the commentary, a scene was shot with in which debris floated up. There was also a corpse, created by Ormsby, but the footage was unusable.) Unfortunately, it throws you out of the narrative for a moment, as you try and figure out what they're talking about.

Later that night they run into a wrecked ship, causing them to have to evacuate everyone to a nearby island. On the island they find an abandoned hotel and a former Nazi officer (Cushing) who invites them all to leave - or get shot.

Meanwhile, the earlier event has apparently thrown up a ship full of… NAZI  ZOMBIES! The Nazi officer explains that they’re the results of experiments to create the perfect soldier – and that these are designed for underwater assaults. They proved unreliable (really?) and, as the war wound down Cushing brought them out here and sunk the ship they were in. He’s watched over them ever since. Now they’re out – and in surprisingly good condition, given how many years have passed while they were underwater.

The zombie designs are really nicely done, especially for such a low budget production – pasty, swollen skin, eaten away slightly, with SS uniforms and smoked-glass goggles. They don’t make a noise as they appear – usually rising from the water in synchronized formation. Some of the creepiest moments of the film are of the zombies lying quietly in the water, waiting. The director uses them sparingly and manages to make it look like there are dozens of them. They also seem to use tactics, something you don’t find in most zombie movies. One will rise out of the water near a victim, driving them into the waiting arms of the rest.

"I knew we should have taken a right turn at Albuquerque."

As I mentioned earlier, there's very little gore for a zombie move made post-Night of the Living Dead. The zombies seem to prefer to drown their victims – one even going so far as to use an aquarium. There's a little bit of rotting going on with the zombies, but it's pale and the only real blood I can remember involves one of the cast getting his hand jammed in a door.

The zombies do have one weakness – if you can pull off their goggles they seem to de-animate after stumbling around a bit. However, this seems to only work during the day – one zombie who has his goggles removed and begins to rot a bit shows up later, after night has passed.

Most of the attacks are quick, surprise assault sorts of things. Lunges from deep or dark water, with plenty of tense buildup. There are a few longer chase sequences, though, including one where Brooke Adams flees a zombie who just keeps coming, even through a wooden fence. There's a particularly tense scene with a character trapped in a half-filled swimming pool. You know there's one of the zombies hiding in the water - and so does the character. Other zombies circle the edges, and I was reminded of a deer being circled by wolves.

The acting is decent, especially given how low-budget the production is. Having veterans like Cushing and Carradine help give a level of respectability to the proceedings. They only had the actors for a few days apiece, but they sprinkle the appearances (Carradine in the first half, Cushing the second) so that there's always a scene with one of the more famous faces every 5 minutes or so.

The shirt is filthy, but the kerchief is immaculate.

The movie is surprisingly moody and tense in spots. The zombies are menacing, especially in shots where they stand in the distance, then slowly turn as one and disappear beneath the waves. There’s a certain feel to the film that I tend to associate more with Italian horror films from that era, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s a sort of rawness that makes everything creepier than modern, slicker films. The score helps a lot, with weird, atonal sequences and deep, off-kilter sounds. The first time I saw the movie I thought the score was a little annoying, but this time around I found it very effective - it actually reminded me a lot of the score from Forbidden Planet.

As is zombie movie tradition, it’s the problematic behavior of individuals that causes everything to fall apart. We’ve got the selfish, loud asshole who leaves Brooke behind and pays for it. We’ve got the muscle-guy (who isn’t played as a jerk, which was refreshing) who can’t control his claustrophobia. Even our nominal heroes – the first mate and Brooke – leave one of the characters, blinded, to fend for herself while they hide. 

In the end, their only option is to try and escape the island in a small boat - but we already know how that ends, given we see the sole survivor at the beginning of the movie. At that point it's no longer about who will survive, but how will they die?

"Time to get up already? 5 more minutes!"

The Bottom Line

It’s a 1970’s horror film made on a budget of about $200,000. It’s not high art cinema. It IS a surprisingly atmospheric horror movie, with above average script and acting, some decent makeup effects and a couple of horror's all-time greatest actors. Yeah, they're slumming it a little, but they class it up, rather than the movie dragging them down. It's also got some of the best and spookiest zombie Nazis you'll find on screen. Well worth checking out if you get the chance.