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My reply to detractors of Survival of the Dead

George Romero's Survival of the Dead is starting to make its rounds in the festival circuits and On Demand networks and it is receiving some mixed reviews. I loved this movie. Its his best since Day of the Dead, which so happens to be my favorite GAR zombie flick. Since I am in the minority on this film, I thought that I would address some of the common issues that I have read that many horror fans have said....

A lot of what I have heard is that people have problems with a few specific elements.

1) A Zombie cant ride a horse. Ya well the dead cant walk and eat people either. And when yur talking about the activities of zombies... well... This is GAR. He made the rules, he can add to them if he wants to. PLUS if you take into consideration BUB from Day it is completly plausible to believe that a zombie would retain the ability to ride a horse. BUB remembered how to open a book, the motions of shaving. One might say, but this is something common place to our society. Okay, lets look at the gun. He cocks the gun and takes up a sloppy, but manageable firing stance. I think he may remeber that!

2) There are no islands full of people of foreign descent off the coast of the US and if there were they sure as hell would retain their thick accents. Okay, maybe there isn't an island off the coast of the US like this, but ya know what, again, it comes back to the fact that a person can suspend disbelief enough to accept zombies, but an accent... Oh hell no. If anyone has ever been in cities with huge ethnic populations, it is conceivable, nay common, to have accents remain.

I think a lot of what it comes down to is a feeling of ownership, especially with horror movies and their fans. So many feel that since they have grown up with these movies and worshipped the reels that they play from, that they have a feeling that they own a bit of it and therefore if it isn't something that they expect... or want for that matter that they feel betrayed by the filmmaker and the films they generate. Trying to tell Romero what a zombie can and cannot do, well that's just like telling Robert Englund that hes playing Freddy wrong or telling Uwe Boll how to make a shitty movie.

What I liked about this movie is the human element. The stubborn refusal to let go old grudges to take the proper steps and do what must be done. The seething hatred of a name and a family by the other is something that we see all the time in today's news. Oh it may not be a family, but certainly religions.... nationalities..... political parties. Tha'ts what I think Romero was aiming at when he made this movie. Tackling the old grudges of political camps that are so entrenched in making sure that the other side doesn't get anything accomplished that they fail to see that they are indeed stalling and killing our economy. And Im talking BOTH sides of the coin, Democrats did it to Bush, and Republicans are doing it to Obama. And that, I find, is what makes this such an effective movie, and what makes all of Romero's dead flicks effective movies. I have liked them all with the possible exception of Diary, and tha'ts just because my stomach doesn't take to the queesy-cam photography that was used. At the end of the day these aren't movies about zombies. These are movies about people and society that happen to feature zombies.

Lets not loose focus on what these movies are trying to get across and why Romero makes his movies. He has a message to tell. Maybe that's what the problem is. Maybe, when we saw these films in our youths we couldn't grasp what Romero was doing, oh so slyly and as grown ups we gloss over the story and focus on the zombies. That is what we are obsessed with isn't it. The gore, effects. makeup, all that wonderfully goopy stuff we cheer for.

Sadly I think that the horror viewing audience anymore, including myself on many occasions, are just to tired to think and to quick to hate. If we look at Romero's history, Day was hated by the general zombie fan public when it was first released for its decided lack of zombie action, but look at it today, and it is hailed as one of his best works, not only in zombies, but his entire filmography. Maybe time will be just as kind on Land, Diary and Survival. And to close out this little dissertation, lets face it people, we begged and begged for more Romero zombie tales and now we cry foul because we didn't get exactly what we want. There's a lesson in that somewhere.

Zombie of Mass Destruction

Hello good librarians, DarkwingMantis back again after a lengthy hiatus. Im sorry its been so long since Ive had a reviw for you, but with school and Dont Look In The Podcast, life has been quite busy, but its the summer, and Im back! This time im going to be looking at 2009 release called Zombies of Mass Destruction. Now just from the get go this is one of those movies, much like Snakes on a Plane, where you just know what the movie is going to be about simply by the title. And surely enough, it doesnt dissapoint. This is a zombie movie with a political message. Ill get to that in a moment.

Zombie of Mass Destruction (Or ZMD) come to us from the 2009 edition of 8 Films to Die For: The After Dark HorrorFest. AfterDark is known to show case some of the most mediocre movies ever seen. I give the fest a lot of respect however for bringing us some wonderful indie directors and giving them a shot to shine. ZMD is one of the exceptions to that rule however. This is one of Afterdark's better selections along with 2006's Wicked Little Things and 2007's Tooth and Nail.

Zombies of mass destruction was written and directed by Kevin Hamedini. This is the only flick hes done anything for with the exception of being a boom mic operator on two other flicks that I have never heard of. From Kevin's IMDB profile, he definatly looks like he is from a Middle Eastern descent which I believe plays largely into this film, especially since the events of 9-11. ZMD has a lot to say on prejudice and racial and sexual tolerance and racial profiling. This seems all the more timely since the recent law passed in Arizona giving police free reign for racial profiling, however this movie was made a good year before the law.

First off we have the simple town of Port Gambill. A small north eastern island town filled to the brim with good god fearing people. Right from the bat we know something is going on, because we get to see a blind man mistake a zombie for a whale. Thats something I never thought I would see. Next up we introduce our beautiful Iranian heroin, Freida. She has a conversation with a local redneck who mistakes her for being from Iraq and starts making small talk about how horrible the war is. Wow, it gets political from the get go. Hamedini has a message and hes going to use all 90 minutes he has to get it across. It seems Freida's dad runs the local diner and has been very upset with his little girl for attending Princeton university instead of taking over the family business. It seems that young Freida has gotten a little liberal in her time at college and daddy dearest doesn't like it. One thing here. Im not sure what kind of accent that Freida's dad is trying make, but i'm pretty sure it isn't an iranian accent.

Next up we meet Lance and Tom, a gay couple that has come to Port Gambil so that Tom can finally come out of the closet to his mom. Apparently the last time a gay man came out of the closet he went away for a year and came back changed. They dont quite imply how he was changed, but that it wasn't for the better. This is where the zombie mayhem begins. During the dinner Toms mother makes mention that someone in the town randomly bit her, not knowing of what is sure to come. Well dinner goes well, mom steps off to get desert and Tom finally, after much wrestling with it, comes out. Mom emerges from the kitchen zombiefied and attacks her son. Tom and Lance thinks that she is just angry at tom.

The movie starts to develop its sense of humor here. During the attack Lance yells that if it makes a difference, Tom is the top and Lance is the receiver. We get a few more gay jokes, when they realize that poor momma is dead. The flick the TV oin to find the gratuitous news anchor talking about a terrorist attack on port gambill and then shows a Bin Laden like tape from the previous year claiming a viral attack on a US town is comming.

From here we get the normal zombie movie untill that is Freida is rescued by her neighbors, the same couple that confused her for being an Iraqi.

From this moment on the films turns into a political satire, racially profiling Freida for being a terrorist and the local church goers attempt to cleanse Tom and Lance of their homosexuality.

Zombies of Mass Destruction seems a but confused on the tone of the film. At some points it seems like a very serious movie, especially the scenes withe Freida and the neighbors, but then it turns into a kind of satire when we have scenes with the gay couple. Its almost like the film was written by two different people who couldn't come to terms with  the tone, each one taking a different story arch that's happening and making their own film, then put the two together without reconciling the tone the other wrote. However, this is a fairly good film. The special effects are quite good and goopy, very little CGI is used and when it is, its not to terribly intrusive. The funny scenes are fairly funny and the tense scenes are tense. The acting is quite good for having a lot of actors that haven't done anything in the past, with only a few scene chewers in fairly small parts. The thing is, is that you believe thees characters and each one is different enough to be recognizable. I didn't get confused as to who is what character as I do in a lot of the crappy horror flicks that have come out in recent years.

All in all I really enjoyed this movie. Yes it is flawed, yes there are no surprises and yes this isn't a genre busting film, but you know what, I had a damn good time watching it and not once did i check my clock and wonder when this is going to end.

So at the end of the day, i'm going to give this 3 1/2 flaming queers out of 5. But you don't have to take my word for it, try it yourself!

Ninja Assasin

I have always believed that there are really only 2 kinds of movies out there.

1) The kind of film that has something to say. Films like Forest Gump, Miracle on 34th Street and Peaceful Warrior. These films have something dynamic in the story, that uplifts us, that teaches us and most importantly, inspires us.

2) The kind of film that does nothing but entertain. These films do not rise above any kind of preconceived notions about what it is, accepts that and runs with it. Many, today, call these movies "Popcorn" fair. You know the type. A movie that you sit down with friends and watch over a tub of popcorn, shut your mind off, and enjoy the ride.

Today I have found a movie that falls into the second catagory, yes, but it does something more.

Ninja Assasins, a movie with a title much akin to Snakes on a Plane, is simply that. A movie about Ninja Assasins. What this movie does, though, is takes the Popcorn mentality and revels in it. Hmmm, Maybe revel is to soft of a word. Wallows? No, that doesnt do Ninja Assasins justice. Soaks? No. Parties? That sounds about right. This movie takes popcorn fair and throws a party around it. The kind of party where you wake up 300 miles from home, next to some hot person that you may or may not have had the best sex of your life with, and you discover that you have gotten a tattoo when you finally crawl your ass out of bed and look in the mirror.

The plotline is quite simple. For thousand of years a secrect society of ninja's have provided assasins for governments, with the payment of 100 pounds of gold, or the monetary equivelent. Raizo is stolen from his family and trained in the way of the ninja assasin. After watching his friend die at the hands of his "father", the head of the assasin clan, Raizo vows vengeance, saving their targets from certain death.

Flash forward a couple years.

Mika, a forensic investigator working for the government, is hot on the trail of this ninja clan, when she too is targetd for death. Mika may be the only person who can bring Raizo to his goal of destroying the clan once and for all.

Thin plot? Hell ya. But really, thats all it needs.

Think of this movie as The Terminator with Ninja's and you have a basic outline of what this movie is.

But thats just the start.

The action sequences is where this movie lives or dies, and let me tell you, it lives a beautiful (albeit bloody) life. The action is fast and furious, rarely letting you take a breath between ninja battles, and when it does, you better get that breath, because youll be holding that one for a while again. The sheer physicality of this film staggers me. This movie also has the best use of Ninja Stars i've ever seen 

My one complaint, and this is tryly becoming a trend, is the CGI blood. HOWEVER... this movie handles it well, in most spots. Since a ninja thrives in the dark, this is where they use the blood, wich covers it nicely.

And the blood. Oh my fucking god, is there a lot of it. This movie almost rivals Dead Alive for the sheer amount of blood spilled, limbs removed, and ninjas disemboweled.

The final battle between Raizo and his father is one of the most beautiful fight scenes ever put to the screen. However, when I said the film handles the CGI blood well in most spots, here is where it can be the most detracting, but fuck it, the fight is too cool for that to bring it down to hard.

Ninja Assasin is sheer beautiful violence, and really, thats all it needs to be.

Ninja Assasin gets a great 4 1/2 Ninja Stars out of 5

 

 

Halloween 2 (2009)

    Halloween 2 is the follow up to Rob Zombies remake of the John Carpenter Classic. Much like the original Halloween 2, the movie picks up right after the original…. Well…. Sort of. Kind of… Maybe. Ya. So well it actually takes up in a dream that that picks up right after the first one. The actual “REAL WORLD” events pick up about 2 years later just days before Halloween and Laurie Strode, is well, a touch fucked in the head. Naturally Laurie is having problems dealing with the events of the  first movie. Shes moved in with Sheriff Brackett and seeing a psychotheripist. Loomis, meanwhile, is capitalizing and profiteering off the Myers murders. All the while we are receiving info about Myers  drive to murder his sister. Theres something about a white horse and his dead mom. Im never really sure about what this is supposed to mean. Something about Myers wanting to be a family again.
    This is one of those movies that reaches and strives to be something better, to rise above the conventions of the genre that it is so trapped in. Unfortunatly the reached too high and went way past the atmosphere and got into the realm of  incomprehensible art house bullshit. HOWEVER…. There is some VERY good points in the film, and that’s when Myers is doing his thing. When Myers is being Myers, the movie shines bright. The horror elements work and the work well. And sadly Zombie didn’t just take what was working and run with it. The first movie was thought provoking enough with the story behind the mask fetish and his first murders. With this one, the bits with his mom haunting him, driving him to kill just makes him seem like Jason Voorhees.
    My other huge gripe with the film is the direction Zombie took with Loomis’ character. The originals loomis was obsessive compulsive, hunting Myers with everything he has. He was held as a bot of a crackpot, yet he was the only one who truly understood the evil of Michael Myers. This Loomis however is greedy, manipulative, and blind myers survivability, even though no body was ever found.  Loomis is not likeable in anyway throught the majority of the film, though Malcolm McDowell’s performance is amazing.
    Oh, and the grunting. Myers grunts…. a lot.
    All in all a big dissapointment. I loved the first (remake that is). And though I still love the directing  of Rob Zombie, maybe he shouldn’t have written this one.

2 ½ Out of 5
    

Night of the Giving Dead - A Charity Project

Okay, todays entry isnt a review.

Night of the Giving Dead is a recently announced charity project from Library of the Living Dead publishing ( www.libraryofthelivingdead.lefora.com - official website of the comapny and podcast)

Dr. Pus is looking for authors and stories of the zombie persuasion. Any stories are considered "Donations" to the book and 100% of the proceeds for this book will go to First Book, a group dedicated to getting books into the hands of less fortunate children. You can check out the website here http://www.firstbook.org/site/c.lwKYJ8NVJvF/b.674095/k.CCA8/First_Book_Homepage.htm . If anyone reads this i would challenge you to tell all your friends to keep an eye out for this when it is published, and if anyone is a budding author, contribute a story of 6k words max. this is a wonderful charity and one worthy of our attention....

please, if you visit any message boards or forums, please reprint this post and spread the word around!

Thanks in advance!

Star Trek - A Spoiler Free Review

Star Trek

I have but one question... When did Star trek stop being a nerds wet dream and enter something resembling Mainstream. When was it okay for those weird, fake ear wearing fanboys to leave their mother basement and step boldly into the modern day world? When J. J. Abrams got his grubby little mits on it, thats when.

I will absolutly NOT go into the plot details at all, considering any fan who hasnt seen it would probably track my IP address and lynch my fat ass, but I will go as far as to say this....

J. J. Abrams has BALLS! Abrams balls are huge, the left one the size of Texas, and the right approximating the landmass of indo-China.

Many movie remakes have touted themselves as "Re-boots" of a franchise, when they turn out to be little more than remakes of the original. Star Trek is the FIRST such example of a TRUE re-booting. Think about that in computer terms for a few miutes... Ill wait.....

.........

.........

Okay, now that you have that in your head, ill continue.

Since Im not going to talk Plot, ill focus on the acting. Its FUCKING amazing, even the typically wooden Karl Urban. His Dr. McCoy is a dead on representation, with flavors of his own thrown in. Spck, perfect and Kirk... well... Kirk is that swaggering, bullheaded in your face captain as he always was.

The film manages to do a lot of things to your emotions all at once. Rollercoaster doesnt seem to cover it, for once. In the same scene i felt sorrow, laughed my ass off and bit my nails to stubbs. The movie assaults your eyes, your emotions and your ears, and completly defines the term Summer Blockbuster.

In addition to all this, there is plenty of inside jokes and nods to the original Trek to keep every trekkie still satisfied in their weird geeky smugness that they are the only ones in the theater that getting all the jokes and visual references.

Now that Trek is fun again, Im SERIOUSLY looking forward to the next installment because, lets face it, you know there is going to be.

So, my final judgement? Im giving Star Trek 5/5 Phaser set to kill.....

But as always, you dont have to take my word for it, try it yourself!

Automaton Transfusion

So far the Dimension Extreme label has been a let down. Not only are their movies NOT extreme, they do a piss poor job of getting the word out to the horror public.

Thats what I was facing when I first heard about Automaton Transfusion, a freshman outing by filmmaker Steven C Miller. Automaton is your run of the mill zombie apocalypse movie with a nice bevy of teen eye candy that at times I was wondering if I should feel like a pedophile admiring them.at the start of the movie (wich starts off with a bang I will admit) our intrepid heroes of nameless and faceless teens are traveling to th next town to see a local punk band. Upon arriving at said unnamed town they find it overrun with zombies and it is up to our intrepid band of teen super stars to return to town to save the ones they love.

Okay, thats the plot... now for the bitching. The film makes no sense geographically. First they are in a major city, then they are in the woods, then a garage, then a house then a school. The problem is that they dont set up the locations, suddenly appearing in the garage after escaping the hordes of zombies in another location, with no warning of the location shift, wich at times left me wondering what the fuck was going on. The special effect are so so, pretty good actually for a low budget film made for 30.000 dollars, but again, the special effects make no sense. At one point one of our teens is in the water (how he got into the water, going back to my previous gripe, is beyond me), saves a cheerleader only to be dragged down into the murk, to then arise again and have both legs ripped off. Im okay with NOT seeing the effect but the effect didnt make much sense at all.

My second gripe and be warned

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Like my review of Feast 2, I dont like to see brutality against babies. In fact for the most part it is a total turn off for me. At one point we see a zombie punch through a pregnant woman's stomach, remove the unborn baby and begin chowing down on said fetus. Now I know that a movie under a label that decries itself as EXTREME, it should be pretty extreme, but this sort of thing goes beyond extreme and into the realm of just plain old bad taste.

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Okay... take a breath... dont get worked up....

Now that ive done my bitching, this movie does have a few very fine points.

First off is the special effects. The effects are VERY well done, despite its budget. The blood flows thick and red and freely at many points throughout the film, with many ICK moments to make me happy.
Secondly, the acting on several actors behalf. Especially comming from our Token black man. William Howard Bowman has a bright future in Hollywood if he can get better roles, and according to his IMDB profile, already has two more films post Automaton under his belt with another in production. William delivers some very funny deadpan lines with an ease that belies the Material.

And thirdly, we actually get an explanation for the zombie apocalypse wich pisses you off emotionally. I wont give it away because it is a major plot point in the film, but lets just say my blood pressure rose a few points thinking about the possibilities.

One final gripe about the film is its length. The movie only comes in at an hour and fifteen minutes, and thats including the credits so lets say an hour ten.

All in all its not that bad of a movie, but its not the genre defining and generation changing movie it claims itself to be, and I dont blame the filmmakers for that, I blame the advertising company. Steven Miller is a good filmmaker that is just getting his feet wet and i look forward to what he has to offer us in the future, wich again, according to IMDB is a sequel to Automaton, wich may clear up a few things left in to the imagination in the first movie.

So what odes this all mean, well it means Im gonna give Automaton Transfusion 3/5 geographical confusions. But you dont have to take my word for it.

Repo: The genetic Opera

Im a softy when it comes to musical and theater. However im not a fan of the classics, they are old and kinda boring, taking no risks. Im sure for the time show like The King and I and State Fair had something to sya, but those messages are now lost on today's culture. That's why whenever a musical comes along that pushes the boundries of what theater is, what it has to say and the way it makes us think, I tend to stand up and take notice.

Movie musicals are making a fast comeback, sadly due in part to Disney's High School Musical series. Despite Disney's constant interfering and pandering to the teeny bopper crowd, a few movie musicals have graced the scene in recent years, and when a musical that touts itself as a horror musical, well you can bet that im gonna chek her out! Thats where todays revfiew comes in. Today im going to take a look at Repo: The Genetic Opera.

Repo the Genetic opera is set close to 15 years in our future and through the first song, we set up our world from the lyrics "Industrialization has crippled the globe / Nature Failed as technology spread / And in its wake a market erected / An entire city built on top of the Dead.

With the setting in place, we follow along for the story of a company named Geneco who managed to save the world after a rash of organ failures and disease spread around the globe, killing millions. Only through complicated organ transplants could mankind survive, and for those who could not pony up the steep fees for the transplants, geneco issues a financing plan. Much like cars and homes, when you make payment plans, if you are late, a repo man is sent to reclaim the comapanies property, and Geneco is no exception. An army of legal assasins called the Repo Men work for Geneco, repossesing your organs after 90 days missed payments.

Our hero, if one can call him that is a man named Nathan, who, in an attempt to save his pregnant wife from a blood disease accidentally kills her.Left with a choice of whom to save, the unborn child or his wife, Nathan removes the baby hastily leaving Marni to die. Marni, the dead wife had at one time been set to Marry Rotti Largo, owner and CEO of Geneco, and to help clear up the rather messy, and slightly mysterious death of Nathan's wife, enters into an agreement with Rotti. He will become his Repo Man if Rotti keeps the secret of his child and his wifes death from those around him and those in authority.

Thats just the tip of the iceberg of the story line of love, betrayal, drugs, family and revenge. And told entirely through song, the story line moves fast and furious.

The music itself is something to behold. At one point during the epilogue, our Narrator, The Graverobber, calls it a Goth Opera, and it seems to be a very appropriate title for the style. heavy rock, love rock ballad, and punk music are the trends that run through the entire score with the lyrics being belted out by a very talented cast including Anthony Stewert Head (Giles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Bill Mosely (Otis Firefly from Devils Rejects) and.... ahem.... *gulp* Paris Hilton.

Now I know what your gonna say, how can I say Talented and Paris Hilton in the same sentence. Well believe it or not, she is very good in her role as Amber Sweet, the surgery addicted daughter of Rotti Largo.

Not allof the music, however, works. One song in particular called "Seventeen", a post Pop-Punk song about Shilo, the Daughter, no longer wanting to live under her fathers rule, a feeling every seventeen year old has.

Despite its few flaws (not every movie is gonna be perfect) this has become one of my favorite movies of all time. Darryn Bouseman (director of saw 2,3,4) has purt together on a very tight budget and amazing cast and crew, with a feel all its own.

Im going to give Repo the Genetic Oper 4/5 repossesed Kidneys...

But ya don't have to take my word for it.... try it yourself

Otto; or, Up With Dead People

Brokeback Mounatin was a landmark movoie for our day. Not only did it star two of Hollywood's greatest young male actors but it presented homosexuality in a loving and touching light through the forbidden love affairs of two friends in a southern community. Since Brokeback's release a slew of lesser known Gay Interest movies have been made, rarely seen by the common person.

Night of the Living Dead was a Landmark movie for our generation, introducing the zombie genre we now know and love, and it dealt with the paranoia, racism, and hostilities that plagued the 60's.

Gay pornography was NOT any kind of landmark in any stretch of the imagination.

Now, imagine if you will a filmmaker wanting to combine these three genres into one film.

Thats what we get with Otto; or, Up with Dead People.

Otto; or Up With Dead People is a German import, and as you can guess as many movies comming from germany, I really had no idea what it was trying to convey. I don't know if it is my American sensibilities or what, but I just dont fucking get it!

Why was this movie made? Who felt the need to make a nihilistic, german Expression gay zombie porn movie is beyond me. i cant think that there is a large market for this sort of thing. I mean seriously, what zombie fan would want to watch a bunch of gay zombies going at it, and what porn fan would want to do the five knuckle shuffle to this kind of thing. I dont find intestine removal stomach hole sex in the least bit arousing.

WHERE? Where on the fucking planet will you find an audience for this. Maybe this is made for the same people that gather in coffee huts doing spoken word beatnik style poetry, snapping their fingers instead of clapping and living in their self smug fuck world, believeing themselves to be the only people that get it and any of those that differ from their Nihilistic opinion nothing more than machines for the corporate devil.

This film was stupid. There was no fucking point at all to it. Otto walks around, eats a bird, walks some more, gets naked, walks some... then some more..... then some more.... OH LOOK! Ottos walking!

Dont buy it, dont rent it, dont watch it!

1/5 confused nihilistic beatniks....

heres the part where I usually say, dont take my word for it, but this time DO take my word for it. If you do watch it I dont want to hear you bitchin at me for it, cause you've been fucking warned!