pretenders

Catching up on the Walking Dead comics recently and was reminded of something from Max Brooks World War Z.  In WW-Z there are people who aren’t actually dead, but run around like zombies trying to feed on the living. I don’t mean they are cannibals per se, but that they are humans who are acting like zombies. Maybe their minds snapped or they just like the idea of being zombies but they run about like the dead.

In TWD comics characters very like this were introduced recently, called whisperers. They carry knives and whisper to one another to keep quiet. But what’s special about these rotten bastards is that they wear the dead skin of other humans over them so that they look and smell like walkers. They move and blend in with the walkers. This isn’t so unlike what we’ve already seen with Rick and company covering themselves in dead muck to blend in. But living like that seems impossible to me. Who knows what we’ll see from the whisperers on TWD but I’m sure whatever it is won’t be fun.

(It never is.)

Note: I actually wasn’t sure how to classify these guys at first but I think the belong firmly in the survivors category. They aren’t really dead, just pretending. Like Bill Murray in Zombieland. They might look dead but they aren’t.

I Was a Teenage Zombie

What a great title! It’s an awesome 80’s throwback to the 50’s horror schlockfests that we all sort of love and hate. If you’ve ever watched goofball horror movies on a Saturday morning you’d probably get a big kick out of this movie.

The Poster
I’m not actually sure if this is the poster or the VHS cover but here it is. As covers go it’s pretty cheap. A single image with some text. The makeup on the character in the photo is pretty . . . well . . . it’s cheap. And his expression is pretty . . . well . . . it’s boring.

What the hell about this poster would ever make me want to actually rent it? Nada! That’s what. Fortunately I didn’t see this cover until after I started watching the movie. (Also because it has a massive spoiler right there.)

The Good
The Premise
Having lived in New York I know how NASTY the rivers are and you may know the sort of reputation they have in pop culture. In this case, they are so bad, so horribly polluted with radiation that the water manages to bring back a murderous drug dealer from the dead. In order to stop him a group of teenage guys drops their dead buddy into the river to bring him back as a “good” zombie to fight the “bad” zombie. These are the living dead but not the flesh-eaters variety. These are the murderous kind.

Let me take a step back and explain that this is a CHEAP horror comedy. It’s along the lines of Animal House and other similar comedies of the 80’s. If you ever liked anything by Troma you might like this. It’s the sort of thing that would have been HUGE if Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd,  Harold Ramis and all those guys had been teenagers when the movie was made and were cast in it.

The Setting:
What we have are a bunch of kids in a so-so movie with some pretty bad editing, incredibly cheap effects and goofy ass acting. The one thing I love about it is that it REALLY feels like the time it was produced. The places and people somehow remind me of people I remember from growing up and it feels genuine even when it’s so obviously staged. You can kind of feel after every take everyone just standing around laughing having fun.

The Music
The music really seemed too good to be true so I had to look this up and credit where credit is due. This comes from Wikipedia:

“The film’s title track was recorded by  The Fleshtones, and the subsequent video was given rotation on MTV. Other bands and artists appearing on the film’s soundtrack include: The Del Fuegos, The dB’s, Dream Syndicate, the Violent Femmes, The Waitresses, The Smithereens, Los Lobos, Alex Chilton and the Ben Vaughn Group. The original soundtrack record is out of print but used copies can be purchased online.”

That’s a pretty awesome line up of music for a movie of this scale. It goes a long way towards making me like it and helping make the “cheap” elements seem more fun. Like going to see your friend’s band or reading his zine. It’s cheap, fun, raw adventure.

The Bad
The acting is pretty subpar. As much as I like the guys in the movie, they aren’t winning any academy awards any time soon. The guy playing the evil drug dealer zombie is particularly bad. And although I love the way it’s bad, it’s still pretty horrible. It reminds me more of kids playing around on the schoolyard than real actors making a movie.

This really gets me in the fight scene at the end of the movie. Reactions, staging, everything is sooooooo badly done. It’s almost impossible to believe they were really making a movie and not just screwing around with a camera on them.

The Ugly
Seeing one kid get his face ripped off was in every way amazing. Even though it was clearly fake as hell it was still fun and it was one of the best effects of the movie particularly when compared to the straight green goblin makeup for the “zombies.”

Zombieland

This is one of those movies that is super easy to sum up in a short way and if you don’t like spoilers avert your eyes right now.

This movie got two things right:
– The rules
– Bill Murray

Let’s get into the details.

The Poster:
It works.

The Good:
Zombieland follows a small group of survivors as they wander around the US looking for safe haven, someplace to call home and twinkles! It’s a light hearted but gory horror comedy and it’s one of the better mainstream shots at the genre.

For my money this movie did two things right as I mentioned above.
The rules were introduced as a fun way of getting the audience into the heads of the characters and explaining how they manage to get by in a post-apocalyptic America. They are brilliantly done because they appear on screen as well-placed text within the scenes even when you aren’t looking for them. They are also just silly enough to be believable. Cardio; it’s a great rule for getting by even in the real world anyway. As a cardinal rule of survival in Z-land it’s not what we elected at first. We were maybe thinking avoid being bit, shoot them in the head, standard parts of the genre. But the rules in this movie are more about life lessons, like enjoying the little things.

Bill Groundhog-Day, Ghostbustin’-ass Murray!– GZA
This basically made the movie. Zombieland without Bill Murray’s amazing cameo is just a goofy adventure with some fun gags. When our survival group gets to Bill Murray’s house and he’s walking around pretending to be a zombie everyone watching the movie lost their shit. It was tongue-in-cheek crammed with the best jokes of the movie, and validated the actors. I wasn’t familiar with the kids in the movie and wasn’t really buying into them but if they were good enough for Bill Murray, they were good enough for me.

So, you know. They’ve got that going for them.

The soundtrack is also surprisingly good. Almost too good. Like they actually got someone who knew what they were doing to pick the music. It’s a soundtrack I could actually listen to.

The Bad:
Ok, so this is really me picking nits but early on there’s a scene where Columbus lets a hot neighbor into his place. They fall asleep and when he wakes up she’s about to eat him. For some reason she is suddenly covered in blood and guts even though she fell asleep clean. That always bothered me. I can understand her being sick on herself or if her wound started bleeding and festering but the filth and blood on her seemed inconsistent and it made me  feel like a lot of the gore effects in the movie were really just a lot of rubbery strings and corn syrup.

One area where I’m not picking nits though is the lights. Why are all the lights on? I mean the power stations aren’t going to keep running and there aren’t that many backup generators laying around for all the lights to constantly be on wherever they go. That being said I think it’s just a thing with the movie that they hope we just accept and move past. It’s suspension of disbelief and I’m willing to let it go. This is a comedy after all.

The Ugly:
Remember that time Woody Harrelson attacked a guy and blamed it on thinking he was a zombie?

Click here for the story on CNN.

And after reading that I can only say good on you Woody! I’m not into the whole celebrity cult that lets people like paparazzi follow people and their kids around and generally act like human leaches. It’s a slightly ugly incident but the paparazzi are the ugliest.

And finally I have to mention:


He’s an ugly bastard and acts as the final villain for Columbus to overcome as he’s afraid of clowns. It’s an obvious plot device that pretty much works because most people hate clowns. They are scary as hell!

Rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse

I’ve heard rumors of a sequel to Zombieland coming out soon? But at this stage there are rumors about who’s going to be in it and what it’s all going to  be  about. Two things stand out about that movie, Bill Murray and the rules. Whether it’s keeping up with your cardio, wearing a seatbelt or making sure to double tap a zombie so you’re sure they’re really dead the rules make a lot of sense.

This got me thinking, maybe I should come up with my own set of rules for how to survive in an apocalyptic situation. So what do you think? What’s top of your list as far as survival strategies go?