Wrong girl. Never mind. Imagine tats, please.

Today, in between frantically packing my room away from the implacable builders who want to knock down my wall and acting as my brother’s enormous parcel receiving service, I escaped to a much warmer, less industrialised house for an hour’s coffee flavoured respite and a crafty bit of Star Trek: TNG (it’s on all the time! Digital telly is truly a marvel). While I was enjoying a bulgy headed woman telling everyone to be mates and explaining why the all basically look like humans with a dangerous self-modification fetish, up popped an advert (they have lots of these on telly). This advert was very keen for me to watch a program about these videogames that everyone is so keen on these days. They even showed bits of one! It had cowboys in it. And another, with soldiers. Can’t think what that might have been. The young lady who was trying to get me to watch this thing was very friendly, and had some tattoos and even some piercings! She clearly plays lots of videogames. She must be just like me. I’d be well in with a chance! I’d better watch.

Thoroughly impressed, I bent my browser towards the website for this awfully promising doohickey (and now, YOU CAN TOO), and read on. The following in particular caught my attention;

“GameFace is a new show we’ve put together with the simple intention of entertaining YOU…yes you who loves to play but isn’t gaming obsessed. Unlike other gaming related shows in the past, we’re not going to be interviewing games publishers or their developers, or ANYONE from the gaming industry to be honest. Why? Because they’re BORING! And we’re not going to bring you those all singing and dancing “exclusive looks” at games that aren’t even finished yet! There are plenty of hardcore gaming websites out there for that kind of hype creation.”

Hmm.

Games on telly, eh? Why is this so terribly difficult? People like games. People like reading about games. People like watching games (to an extent). We happily wander the internet looking at dreadful sites like IGN, Gametrailers, Metacritic. Why won’t this translate to telly-vision?

Games on telly has never worked. Never, ever. It’s always excruciating. I’m not ashamed of my fixation with impressing the laydeez in Outrun, but games telly always makes me feel subhuman. Am I one of the dreadful creatures that people are making this tripe for? Oh God I hope not.

Gameface’s answer to this is to claim that people like me (and you, I imagine) are cooler than that. We don’t want to see unreleased games! We’re not, like, obsessed or anyfing. We want to watch games on telly for the norks on the bird with the tats, innit? And pictures of CODMODWAR2, natch. Don’t talk to devs – they’re BORING. That’d be like someone talking to an author! Or a film director! Or an ACTOR. I mean, as if.

Clearly, this is the beginning phase of yet another humiliating failure for games on telly. Imagine how successful a film program would be if the producers desperately stressed to anyone with enough of an interest to check their web-o-site that the program wasn’t going to talk to all the boring people making films, and wasn’t being made for the saddos who were really into films. That’d pummel the X-Factor right onto sunday morning, surely.

It should come as no surprise to the morons who run Bravo that people are not keen on being treated as if they’re stupid. You can’t just fling a female at them and hope that woman+inane reviews = ratings dominion. It doesn’t work like that. But no-one in the mainstream media has the brass neck to suggest that games are anything more than brainless time passers for mentally inhibited adolescent psycho-pervs. Even Charlie Brooker (the man who could perhaps have made games telly work) shied away, fumbling explaining and apologising throughout his one attempt at games tv.

For games telly to work, someone needs to take games seriously. For this to happen, we need something that assumes that its audience is intelligent, interested in what games are and where they are going, and not just whether the new Medal of Honour has better guns/graphics/multiplayer than COD. Something like One Life Left, perhaps – but tellyvised. Gaming media needs to stop being embarrassed about its subject matter, and it needs to stop only talking to people who have had consoles since they were three and can finish Trials HD in six minutes.

Because good games are better by far than telly, or films. We don’t play them because we’re idiots. We play them because the good ones are great.

Have a gander at Josh’s new stress ball!

HONK HONK!! Lmao!

How best to discuss this unusual little number then? Shall I talk about the theme of unhealthy obsessions, and how such neuroses affects you and those around you? Should I approach it as a commentary on male teenagers and their dehumanisation of the female? Or shall I just take my standard approach and chat about this film as it really is : 3 kids finding a zombie tied up in a basement and using her as their own sex toy?

Yes, who hasn’t dreamt of finding a naked and rotting undead corpse tied up in an abandoned hospital and what you could do with such a Discovery? Obviously the last thing to cross your mind would be to report such a unreal scene the police. No, you’d decide to keep hold of it and visit ‘her’ every evening with your mates to play an elaborate game of hide the sausage. Heck, if you did find yourself in such a situation not only would you not be ashamed of your actions, you’d positively revel in it, so much so that you’d want your mates to stand around and watch while you violently defile the trussed up zombie.

It’s a strange situation our characters find themselves in for sure. Rickie and J.T. nip out of school to go boozing in an abandoned hospital. After getting smashed on one 6 pack of transparent beer between them they wander off exploring the building. Among all the smashed windows they discover a much more unusual sight : an unexplained bound naked zombie female on an operating table. Sure, they’re not the luckiest lads when it comes to love, and for our star who has pined over some ginger lass for his whole childhood it even crosses his mind that romancing the undead could be a valid lifestyle choice. Not so for J.T. – he doesn’t even need to think about it, this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for! His own sex slave, albeit slightly rotting and disgusting. Hell, there are worse lookers out there I suppose.

It all goes pretty gross as you’d imagine. People start to hear about this bizarre situation and want some of it for themselves. Dogs get eaten, teenagers lose their intestines, and our ‘heroes’ get beaten up by a tough lady after whacking her over the head with a tire iron on one of their rare excursions away from the freaky zombie.

Depending on how you look at it it’s either a very brave and unique zombie film with numerous fascinating underlying themes, or it’s a sick film of teenager-zombie rape. Either way it’s a great original movie that will certainly stay with you forever. Hmm, maybe that’s not such a good thing after all…

Gore Score C-
Norks Score D
Originality Score A
Overall Score B

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

At last, a decent Zombie Movie! After a few weeks of boring unoriginal zombie flicks I felt I needed a reboot so turned to Troma to help me out of the lull. Thankfully Zombiegeddon delivers the trash I have been craving, and more.

The plot of Zombiegeddon is just some insane nonsense about the Devil summoning up a bunch of zombies to wipe out the whole population, but it is basically just an excuse to get from set-piece to set-piece, with a bunch of b-movie celebrity cameos thrown in for good measure. We have Jesus Christ (Tom Savini) in bed with Brinke Stevens, Lloyd Kaufman as a cowardly caretaker and Linnea Quigley as a school principal. There is a zombie hunter who takes his son and his pet zombie-eating tiger out on patrol with him, some incredibly corrupt cops who just murder innocent people for kicks and a cop vs zombie kung-fu fight!

The highlights for me were Lloyd Kaufman’s homophobic janitor who mistakes the zombies for some homosexuals, and runs off to hide in a closet for the remainder of the film, as well as a scene where the 2 cops pull over a carload of boys using some very suspect interrogation techniques.

If it were to be judged on technical merit then it would fail abysmally. The quality of the filming here is pretty dire, with some bottom-drawer acting, terrible sound recording and laughably bad gore (seriously, I swear I saw the bucket come into view when a load of blood was spurted\thrown onto a wall), but none of this matters when you’re watching a who’s who of trashy horror complete with a zombie-eating tiger in it.

For extra laughs I highly recommend reading some of the user reviews on the IMDB site for this film. Seriously, some people just don’t get it.

Gore Score C
Norks Score B+
Originality Score C
Overall Score B+

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

So there I was, sat in a crummy hotel room in London on my own on the ‘lavish’ single bed with the TV’s On-Screen Program Guide covering up the whole picture so I can only hear the sound in the background. Oh well, why not get some wine in and watch the only DVD I have with me on my laptop. ‘Exhumed’. It turns out that I should have chosen to watch the static program guide instead, to be honest.

Exhumed is a turgid anthology of semi-zombie horror. 3 totally random episodes with nothing in common apart from a bizarre cobbled-together ending that pretends to tie the stories together. Firstly there is the dull story about some Japanese dude and a monk wandering in a forest looking for some artifact that can bring the dead back to life. Luckily it’s all in Japanese which masks how bad the acting really is, but it was far from classic – The fight scenes and the looks into camera were pretty dire. There are a few zombies dotted around the forest who get killed off, but there are no scares or even any excitement.

Secondly is a strange black and white noir-style film, which features some of the most appalling acting I have ever seen. It follows the adventure of some private detective lass who joins a seedy club to investigate a missing persons case, I believe. However I spent most of this section of the film with my jaw on the floor amazed at just how terrible the performances actually were while knocking back the wine that I missed out on most of the excitement, if there was any. Seriously, it was like watching a children’s school play rehearsal.

Long after my interest had faded into nothingness came the 3rd in the anthology. It seems to be set in the future with some vampires and werewolves fighting about something-or-other. This is the episode with some actual gore, but it was so amateur in it’s execution and I was so bored at this time that I couldn’t care less about any of it. Even when the chainsaw is brought out to slice up some fake body-parts I was thinking of turning this abomination off. However I stuck it out and was mildly amused when the vampire : werewolf lesbian scene kicked off, but it wasn’t enough keep me entertained and I turned the film off and curled up in the small hotel bed.

I did watch most of the final scene the next day on my train home, but was so embarrased to be seen watching it in public that I switched it off and went surfing for porn instead.

Gore Score D
Norks Score C-
Originality Score D
Overall Score F

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

I had to check once or twice that I didn’t already own this movie, as it seems suspiciously similar to one of my previous films ‘The Quick and the Undead‘. It shares a similar looking sleeve design, a Western setting, a terrible pun title and was also a cheapo supermarket-shelf bought DVD, but no, this is a different movie. Whether or not it is any better is debatable though.

I have mentioned before how I loathe the Portmanteau ‘Zombedy’, but at least that was only used by writers as a shorthand description for a zombie-comedy. However, when films start to use that term in their own opening credits then I know that I’m not in for a good thing. It is particularly annoying when the comedy present is about as funny as it would be to wear cowboy-boots with the spurs on the inside. Maybe I can coin my own term of “Painfulny”, or ‘Painfully-Unfunny’, for that is more accurate. Never before have I watched a film that tries with every single word uttered to be amusing, but fails so miserably it almost becomes unbearable after the first 10 minutes.

It’s not just the script that is disgraceful, but the comedy set-pieces too. A guy gets invited into a lake with a young lass, so cue the Benny-Hill sped up footage as he undresses! A zombie gets his foot stuck in a bucket and then stands on a rake which whacks him in the face! The heroes end up in a dark basement so to be able to see they light a match, only to hilariously discover there are loads of Dynamite barrels down here! Wow, it’s like Elmer Fudd humour here.

Anyway, the plot. Well a cowboy has somehow been infected with Geronimo’s white-man curse which caused him to turn zombie and eat his family. He gets locked up by the Sherriff, but managed to bite a few people in the process. The two heroes of the film have just escaped from this jail and the Sherriff and co try to track them down but get infected before even leaving town. The rest of the film follows these zombie sheriffs chasing the two heroes across the plains as they try to get somewhere or other. Oh yes, there’s a private-schooled Native American woman along for the ride too.

Without the painful comedy this would have just been a rubbish zombie movie, but the humour is so bad that it drags the whole film down by several notches. There is some potential here – a zombie sheriff who can track by smell and never slows, never stops until he catches his prey could be a genuinely unnerving movie – but that’s not how it pans out here. It’s just utterly painful from start to finish. The gore is mostly rubbish (when someone does get bitten the camera flashes and cuts so much that you barely see anything), the soundtrack is cheesy beyond belief (and not in a good way – we’re talking heartfelt ballads here) and it’s all just irritating. Maybe we’ll get a good zombie western sometime, but judging by this effort it’s probably a long way off.

Gore Score C
Norks Score D
Originality Score D
Overall Score D-

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

I can count the number of Czech films I’ve ever seen on the fingers of one stumpy fingerless hand. Well that would equate to zero, whereas actually I mean one. This film to be precise.  Naturally this makes it both the best and the worst Czech film I’ve ever seen, and in the grand scale of zombie movies this rates somewhere… in the middle.

A bunch of students shack up in a mostly abandoned hotel to discuss the meaning of life. Bizarrely a Porn Star / Jehovah’s Witness dude rocks on up at the motel by accident and gets wrapped up in all the metaphysical discussions, although I don’t recall him ever discussing how he can be both a Porn star and a Jehovah Witness at the same time. But hey, at least he seems passionate about both lifestyles.

Anyway, the film is not particularly scary, there is not much gore, and the nudity is also below par.  So what’s left?  Well the actual story, direction and plot are actually pretty decent. There are plenty of unusual scenes going on here – such as the electroshock zombie dance – which is as ludicrous as it is entertaining.  In fact the whole film is like that.  It’s pretty bizarre, nothing makes much sense, but it’s quite enjoyable none-the-less.  Nobody involved seems too bothered that Zombies have started attacking everyone, there are no reasons given for this outbreak, and nobody is remotely concerned about what will happen after this whole hotel zombie affair has ended.

Also I seem to have missed out on the philosophical viewpoints in this film, probably because I watched the (Czech language subtitled in English) film late at night and had a fair few glasses of wine inside me, but apparently the point is that the Religious get their heads bashed in while the Nihilists get to copulate with numerous ladies while filming it on portable cameras.  Well, that seems fair enough.  There were other worldviews on offer but I guess they weren’t as memorable.  I did like the zombie with a massive saucepan on his head that had a smiley face drawn on the front, but I don’t know what that means.  Probably something to do with Communism.

Gore Score C
Norks Score D
Originality Score D
Overall Score C

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

Zombies and Prisons have produced some reasonably decent films in the past. Well, I say ‘reasonably decent’ meaning that ‘Zombie Death House’ and ‘Dead Men Walking’ were not as poor as I had expected.  Surely these films could only have been improved by changing the location to a women’s prison?  And how about chucking in a famous horror actor as lead zombie?

Well, the women’s prison angle works just as expected, meaning lots of pointless shower scenes and chicks with obvious stick-on tattoos fighting and moaning.  It’s a pity that none of them are particularly easy on the eye, particularly the butch muscly woman ‘Mondo’ who seems to have modelled herself on Dennis Rodman.  Mmm, Attractive! Still, none of them are particularly modest and have no qualms wandering into camera shot with their norks on display, and so the first hour of the film is a pretty good laugh, although light on the actual horror.

After about an hour we get introduced to the star zombie – Tony Todd of Candyman fame – who is resurrected when one of the prisoners accidently gives birth over the spot where he was buried (although he had died due to spectacular exploding, so I’m not quite sure what was left of him to bury. Anyway…)  Candyman brings back a bunch of his zombie mates and they start to terrorise the prisoners while he hunts down the female ‘Solitare’ for a reason that doesn’t make any sense.  He killed her Mum apparently, and that forged a connection of some sort with the child.  OK then.

One of the great things about undead movies is that the Zombies themselves are never really the stars, they just represent a generic ‘bad’ that the heroes have to overcome.  Introducing a main zombie personality takes the focus away from the struggle against the zombies and focuses it onto a specific character, meaning that it might as well be a standard serial killer type movie, which is all this really is albeit with a dumb supernatural twist.  Chuck in some terrible acting, cheap fight choreography and a nonsense (even by zombie movie standard) plot and what do you get?  Well aside from the copious full frontal nudity, not very much.

Gore Score D
Norks Score A-
Originality Score D
Overall Score D

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

Wow, a zombie movie more-or-less based on a true story?  Made by a famous director?  Featuring a famous and ubiqutious lead star?  Oh yes, there are no toxic-waste spewing, brain-chomping undead rotters in this 1980’s flick.  Hot on the heels of the awesome ‘Spaceballs’, Bill Pulman kicks off his 3-random-films-every-single-year-from-then-until-eternity career with this Haiti set real life voodoo exploration.

Having been attacked, drugged by a creepy voodoo Bokor and then stalked by jaguars in Haiti just after the opening credits, Bill Pulman returns to the US only to be told that he has to head back to the country to root out some mystic death-faking (ie zombie) drug that could be used by the American government for some reason.  (Probably for misguided and unexplained military purposes, as is the way in zombie movies.)

Anyway, old Bill turns up over in Haiti and starts hanging out with some doctor lass who he surprisingly takes a liking too, even going so far as boning her under a waterfall. However, being the only white dude in the country he attracts suspicion from the local government and they take it upon themselves to attack, drug and then provide him a (slightly unwanted) scrotal body piercing service.  Still, at least it was free, eh?

Thankfully he manages to get up and about the place following this incident, and goes about his task of trying to find this magic zombie anaesthetic while still getting his end away with the doctor chick and hallucinating quite a bit on a daily basis.  He still gets chased around by the evil baddies though, it’d be boring if the just let him go and forgot about him.

The Serpent And The Rainbow was a really enjoyable affair. While a decent thriller in its own right, it’s also good to see a film that truly goes back to the roots of zombie culture, which this film does better than any film I’ve ever seen that’s not in black & white.  Educational, bloody, and a great ‘zombie rising from the grave to grab Bill Pullmans crotch’ scene.  What else could you wish for?  (Well ok yes, there are even Norks in this too).

Gore Score C
Norks Score D
Originality Score B
Overall Score B

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

I recently saw the multi-award winning ‘The Wrestler’ on the big screen, and loved all the OTT wrestling action, but I felt that there was just something missing from all the serious self-destructive character story-lines.  True, it had plenty of strippers but where were all the dudes in stupid wrestling masks taking on a trained army of the undead?  I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that this is the reason it missed out at Oscars.

Thankfully I discovered a movie that fills in all the blanks from The Wrestler, and removes all the boring plot.  “Enter…Zombie King.”

Featuring a cast of Mexican-wrestling-mask wearing heroes, (who wear their masks constantly, even when chilling out drinking beers on the veranda) who travel the country for some reason on another.  Ulysses is the main hero here, who rocks on up at an old mates house – who is also a wrestler – to stay for a few days.  He hears that there is a rival wrestler in town who is planning on wrestling a bunch of ‘live’ zombies in the ring.  Obviously thinking these zombies can’t be trusted he pops along with his crew to witness this event.

Unfortunately for all concerned, while inside watching the match a couple of chicks are attacked outside and one gets killed by some feral Zombies, and it’s the zombie wrestler Tiki who gets the blame.  However, Tiki’s zombies have been neutered so it must be another sort of undead that killed off the young lady, so the whole team of masked heroes set off to discover what’s been happening with these killer zombies.

Featuring copious amounts of nudity, loads of fantastic wrestling-action and a bad guy with possibly the greatest villain name in history ‘Murderliser’, “Enter… Zombie King” is outstanding from start to finish.  OK, the acting is pretty sub-par and the gore effects are mostly of the Plastic-Jokeshop-Limb variety but it all works so superbly together none of that matters, and in-fact it just adds to the enjoyment.  Why do they never take off their masks?  Who cares.  How come nobody seems bothered that zombies have roamed the forest for years?  So what.  Why would anyone sunbathe in the snow wearing a wrestling mask?  Pah!  Just go with the flow and enjoy the action.  Heck, if actual Wrestling was this exciting I’d start watching that instead of the UFC!

Gore Score C
Norks Score B
Originality Score A
Overall Score B+

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

What are the prime ingredients for my favourite Zombie movies?  Made in the 1970’s – Check.  Terrible overdubbing – Check.  Rubbish effects – Check.  Unnecessary nudity – Check.  Yes, everything in Vengeance of the Zombies is present and correct.  Infact there are even more ludicrous elements to this movie, of particular note the daft jazzy score which plays over many of the tenser moments, totally ruining any sense of suspense or horror.

Aside from these novelty moments, Vengeance of the Zombies actually has a reasonably decent story of a particularly old-school living dead nature.  A mysterious voodoo master dressed incredibly similarly to ‘V’ from ‘V for Vendetta’ – mask and all – is murdering a bunch of people using a few zombie ladies he’s resurrected and some wax voodoo dolls for good measure.

Elvira falls victim to these voodoo shenanigans but luckily manages to escape while her father gets killed off instead.  To come to terms with this bereavement she decides to get out of the city and head to a little English village to shack up with her Buddhist teacher, who she also has the hots for.  However it appears that the voodoo trickster has followed her there and the bizarre killings continue.  It probably doesn’t help matters that the house Krishna the Buddhist is living in has an infamous history for debauched Satanic worshiping and murder.  Oh well.

OK, so the story is reasonable enough and the acting is of an acceptable standard, but overall it’s not really that gripping.  Unless some back story was edited out of my really terrible ripped from VHS DVD version there is not a hope that you’ll ever guess who the voodoo master is or what his motivation is until the big reveal at the end.  Not that it matters really, these Eurohorrors are best viewed for the cheesy nonsense, of which this has plenty.  It’s worth watching for the soundtrack alone.

Gore Score D
Norks Score C
Originality Score C
Overall Score C

I want to find out who invented the idea of a Zombie Comedy (and more importantly who coined the term “Zomedy”) and punch them in their stupid face.  It’s probably the same person who thought that ‘Vampires’ and ‘Romantic Movie’ would be a great combination.  Oh. My. God.  Zombies are rotting corpses that eat people.  Vampires wear stupid cloaks and chew on peoples necks.  Where’s the comedy or romance in that?

Still I can’t complain too hard because, like everyone, I love Shaun of the Dead.

Anyway, let us depart from the irrelevant, dubious and obviously drunken grammar\punctuation and get back to the film in hand.

Hide and Creep is a comedy zombie movie, but despite all that it is one of the most enjoyable zombie flicks I’ve watched in a good long time, and possibly the most dead-pan zombie comedy I have ever seen.

Sure, there is not one iota of originality in the whole film. Rednecks, government agents, strippers…  They are all present and correct, but it’s all done so well and should be a lesson to all wannabe zombie movie makers out there.

Hey, if a film can open with a chubby ugly naked dude with his wanger on show and yet still keep me interested in the movie then there’s something going for it.  It’s a pity the director had to combine it with his own ego project and cast himself as a wannabe-Tarantino-dialogue-spouting hero, but hey, if it’s your film then do what you want.  At least he made a decent film, even though he was boring and predictable in it.

Oh yeah, the film itself…  Well, the plot from Plan 9 From Outer Space comes true, and a bunch of dead rednecks come back to life as zombies, and the living hicks have to defend themselves and the town from undead invasion.  That’s pretty much it, except that the script, characters, acting and even direction are amazingly good for such a low budget film.  Plus it has lesbian zombies in it, which cannot be a bad thing.

Gore Score C+
Norks Score B-
Originality Store C-
Overall Score B+

Apparently two versions of this film were shot at the same time, one in French and one in Spanish.  There is a different cast, different music score and various alternate scenes across both editions.  I believe that the French one is the most commonly available, and is the one that was dubbed in traditional ‘comedy’ EuroHorror style into English, and is the one I have in my collection.  This is the one with less gore and a worse soundtrack, but apparently it does have more nudity than the Spanish edition, so that’s something at least.

Jess Franco delivers a trashy eurozombie horror, with good old Nazi Zombies causing mischief, although this time they do not seem to live underwater, which is unusual for this particular undead foe. (For example refer to Shockwaves and the Franco penned Zombie Lake).

A bunch of Nazis are transporting an unseen amount of gold across some random desert in Africa, but are intercepted by a mustachioed army dude and his platoon. A big battle ensues involving much tank and explosion stock footage.  This ‘tashed chap gives the Nazis a right good ‘running away from’ leaving both his troop and the Germans dead on the oasis battlefield while he goes off to collapse in the desert.  He’s rescued by some sheik who lets his daughter revive him back to health.  To thank the sheik for his hospitality (and for saving his life) Mr Moustache takes the daughter out to the desert and promptly knocks her up good-and-proper before returning to war.

Cut to several decades later and we find that the offspring of this romp is living it up in some fancy school, when he gets a letter informing him that his father has died off (well murdered, but he doesn’t seem to concerned).  He decides to read up on his fathers war antics and discovers about the battle in the Oasis and the big fortune of gold that is probably left behind.  Now we begin a big adventure following this kid and his mates as they try to track down the Oasis and the loot.

Maybe it is something to do with the hot climate, but the oasis they are looking for seems to have turned all the dead bodies into flesh hungry (and in one case insanely googly-eyed) zombies.  When the kids stumble upon this oasis they have to deal with all these dead Nazis, but luckily they were all taught how to make Molotov Cocktails in school.  (Presumably they all did a course in homemade weapons instead of the more appropriate acting lessons).

Oasis of the Zombies is an incredibly boring affair.  The zombies are only ever on screen for about 10 minutes and the whole rest of the plot revolves around these kids going to local markets or wandering around and collapsing on a sand dune.  Plus there are the numerous dull flashbacks to the stock footage war.  The zombies are the undoubted highlight, as each one is hilariously made up with clay, fake skin and false eyes.  There are also a few nork scenes but nothing like the usual standard of Jess Franco movies.  It’s just a cobbled together and incredibly slow paced build up to the Zombie Oasis, which is quite decent when it happens but I’d long lost interest in the film by that point.  Next time I’ll get my Nazi Zombie fix from Zombie Lake.

Gore Score D
Nork Score B-
Originality Score D
Overall Score D

AKA Les Revenants

While many people view the zombie genre as pure low-brow trash all the way, those of us in-the-know are well aware that there is a lot more to the undead than just gore and nudity. Sadly, this pretentious French number is in the latter category, with not a trashy gore shot in sight, and nudity that is far too tasteful and ‘relevant to the plot’. Urgh.

‘They Came Back’ chronicles an unexplained phenomenon in a French city when those who have died within the last 10 years return back, and the effect this has on those they had originally left behind. Although there are hundreds of these recently deceased the story focuses on 3 of these characters – a young boy, a 30-something man and a crusty old lady. These dead chaps, along with all the other zombies are held in a refugee asylum-type building by the city council until the relatives come to collect them. The parents of the young boy come for him at some point, but the ex-wife of the gent isn’t too bothered so he just potters around and eventually decides to go back to work at what appears to be the town planning department. The old lady seems to belong to the city mayor or something, but he too isn’t too excited about her coming back either.

After a (long) while and plenty of council meetings it emerges these dead people are, predictably, pretty rubbish at more or less everything, which is a shame because the families of these people seem to be getting attached to them again. Actually, one thing the dead are reasonably good at is escaping their relatives in the middle of the night and going for meetings with each other. They’re all planning an excursion out to an unmentioned place, presumably back where they came from. How will the relatives that have just come to terms with the returners cope with this upheaval? Well the answer to that question, as well as all the others thrown up in this movie is… whatever you want.

Everything is so open to interpretation it makes the film almost meaningless. There is no discussion as to how the families actually feel about their relatives coming back from the dead, nor how they felt about them while they were still alive. There is no comment made about the relationships between the relatives of each of the returnees, and no analysis of death itself. The whole film seems structured to leave every possible question open to the viewer to decide. If the film makers didn’t have anything to actually say about death then why make the film in the first place?

It would have been better to concentrate on one of the families and the relationship between those still alive and the actual impact that the dead relatives’ re-appearance has on their whole lives, rather that the endless council meetings and irrelevant scientific discussions about body-temperature.

Gore Score F
Norks Score D
Originality Score B
Overall Score C-

Also posted at http://www.revenantmagazine.com/)

AKA Death House

Zombie films set in prison are not as uncommon as I first thought.  I earlier reviewed the reasonably decent Dead Men Walking, and also have “Shadow : Dead Riot” on my shelf awaiting a viewing.  There is great potential in the whole ‘locked in a large building filled with the undead’ idea, as was recently shown to great effect in the superb [REC]. 

Zombie Death House seems to be a mixture of the zombie prison idea combined with a truly awful mobster tale. 

Derek, driver for mob boss Moretti, has been boffing the bosses lady on the sly, which doesn’t go down too well with the boss and his cronies.  They decide the best course of action is too knock off the young lady and frame Derek for the crime.  Using handy quick edits Derek is framed, tried, convicted and sent to Death Row all within the first 15 minutes. 

Unfortunatly for Derek the prision he ends up in is one where the government are secretly trialing out some injections in order to breed a super soldier.  (Hmm. An original idea that one).  Naturally one of the test subjects breaks free during his own execution and starts a mass killing and riot spree infecting most of the prison population.

Derek, despite being a blonde prettyboy and only having been resident in the slammer for about a week takes on the role of the prisoner in charge and instead of trying to find a way to escape uses the riot as an excuse to get Moretti to come to the prison so he can get his revenge, all the while trying to help a blonde female scientist work on a cure for the zombie-ism.

It’s all pretty daft cheesy stuff, particularly all the scenes with Derek (Dennis Cole – who appears to be on some vanity ego project – bedding cliche 80’s blonde women, being both the bad guy and the hero, and then saving the day almost singlehandedly).

The zombies themselves take a while to appear, but when they do they put on a reasonable performance, although light on the actual flesh munching.

The film scores bonus points for a totally shoe-horned in dream sequence where Derek imagines one of the females naked in a field, all in slow-motion, just for an excuse to get some nudity on display.

Gore Score C-
Norks Score C
Originality Score D
Overall Score C-