Gangnam Zombie (2023)

The movie opens with a man and woman, who we later find out are Hyeon-seok and Min-jeong, fighting a running battle with some zombies. He tosses her into a car before kicking some zombie ass. Though it doesn’t take long for him to be overwhelmed so it doesn’t seem to end well. The action then jumps back twenty four hours. Here we see that the outbreak starts when some criminals are breaking into a shipping container to steal some jewelry. There is a cat that scratches one of them and he turns. So, I guess it was a zombie cat?

Here we meet Hyeon-seok and Min-jeong as they both work for the same YouTube company. Is that a thing? Basically, they make prank videos, although not well since the boss hasn’t paid them or the rent in a while. We also meet the landlord who is obsessed with her building. So much so when the zombies attack, she has security lock the building down and refuses to allow anyone to call the police. You know because it will hurt the property values and stuff… The rest of the movie are the zombies killing folks until we catch up to the opening scene. After that the zombies kill folks until the survivors make their escape. That is pretty much all we got.

This is clearly a very low budget Korean zombie movie. The filmmakers do a few things correctly. They hired actors that can deliver dialogue and our leads have some chemistry. They also understand that they don’t have a large budget so other than a few scenes at the beginning the majority of the movie takes place in a single office building which I’m assuming they had during off hours. They kept the zombie makeup basic with black or bloodshot eyes with a bit of blood around the mouth. These are all good things.

Though the lack of a memorable kill or two is a hindrance. Despite a lot of people being attacked all of the bits are offscreen and what we do see is the zombie or zombies looking up with blood coming out of their mouth. When I sit down to watch a zombie movie I’m expecting some gore and here we get nothing much in that area. But the biggest issue that I have with Gangnam Zombie is the dreadful pacing. This movie is only an hour and twenty minutes long. Other than the one brief post cat zombie attack nothing much happens for over half an hour. Well, I mean we get some drama about Hyeon-seok having a thing for his co-worker Min-jeong which seems unrequited. We also find out that it is hard for a woman to work in their field as there is some inappropriate touching of her by the boss. There is even a bit of class warfare in the way that the lady landlord treats the “poor” people. All of this is set to a Christmas background that feels right out of a Hallmark movie… a bad one.

Notice what is missing? Zombies! I signed up to watch a zombie movie not some lame ass Korean drama about modern society and the challenges of those living in it! Now you might be saying “well at least things get better when the zombies attack” and you wouldn’t be totally wrong. But between scenes of Hyeon-seok karate kicking the crap out of the shuffling dead we get periods where the characters talk to each other. These “getting to know you” bits of dialogue slam the brakes on what was already not a fast paced zombie story. This seems like a movie that decided to shoot itself in the foot whenever the chance to do something entertaining came up.

Throw in the inexplicably odd plastic vampire teeth on the zombies (think Sprit Halloween level costume here my friends) and the non-ending conclusion to the story where they escape the building full of zombies and leave the giant garage door behind them dooming the city to the fate they narrowly escaped and you have a movie that made me feel like I wasted my time. I don’t recommend that you also waste your time on this one.

 

© Copyright 2024 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday – The Gathering Dead by Stephen Knight

note: This is another book review that I wrote a decade ago. I did read more of Knight’s books after this one and remember enjoying the heck out of them. That said I don’t think I reviewed any for either my website or any other projects I worked on. At least there aren’t any in my archives.

The dead have risen and are quickly overrunning New York City. An elite team of soldiers is sent to bring a man named Safire and his daughter out of the city and to safety. Safire has some research that might help control the plague that is threatening to destroy the world. The team manages to get him on a chopper, but the dead still take them down (in a most gruesome and clever way…). The survivors end up trapped in a nearby building and looking for a way out. The bodies continue to pile up as the zombies take their toll on those still alive. Do they get the man and his precious knowledge out in time? Well I’m not going to spoil that.

Okay so this is one that I took a chance on. It had great reviews on Amazon and the Kindle version was really inexpensive. I do love some zombie fiction and am always on the lookout for a new series to dive into. Most of the time I'm disappointed, but it is a book like The Gathering Dead that makes the other misfires worth it.

The pacing is insane. It opens up with the rescue team making their way across the city to Central Park where the helicopters are waiting to get them out. Right from the start you can see that the characters are going to be heartless when the leave a woman and her child to the zombies. They have a single-minded purpose and that is to deliver their package to safety. This is a slightly different spin from most of the zombie fiction that I’ve read with survivors just trying to stay alive and sometimes hold onto their humanity. Not to say that there isn’t some hesitation and guilt in their decision. The characters are well developed and given unique personalities. The military characters could have easily been caricatures but instead Knight gives them some definable personalities within the limits placed on them being soldiers. This also leads to a backstory which itself provides some tension as the group moves it way across the city. 

The gore and zombies are presented in a way that I think fans will like. They shamble around in large groups and are dangerous with their sheer numbers. That is a very “Romero” approach which I dug. We get some suitably “sticky” deaths, but the author doesn't linger on them. Though I would have liked him too it does serve to keep the action moving along. Since that is one of the biggest strengths to the book, I can’t argue with that and it keeps the reader engaged. Staying within the framework of the traditional zombie as a monster Knight does toss in a few twists of his own. One of which is a nightmarish idea that had never occurred to me. Again I don’t want to spoil anything but lets just say skyscrapers won’t ever look the same to me again!

To sum things up, great pacing, fun characters, satisfying zombies, and some good twists on the genre make for a good read. With the current zombie craze I’d love to see this book made into a nice and bloody movie. Then again they would probably put a pretty boy like Brad Pitt in it and ruin a perfectly good story.  That said I highly recommend The Gathering Dead.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Zombie Town (2023)

I’m a bit older than many of you who frequent the site, so I was never a “Goosebumps kid”. Though I totally understand the sense of nostalgia that many of you have for the book series and the Saturday morning show. Anything that introduces the next generation to the spooky stuff gets a big thumbs up from me. That said I actually really dug the first Goosebumps movie with Jack Black and those Fear Street flicks that Netflix did from another R.L. Stine property were pretty good as well. I had hope we were going to have some more fun when I saw this movie based on one of his books show up to stream on Hulu.

Mike hates horror movies and can’t wait to “escape” from his small town life. His friend Amy and most of the folks who live in the small town are huge horror fans. That is mostly because a famous director of zombie flicks, Len Carver, is from there. Since he is the most famous resident folks are all about his movies. Though he is a bit of a recluse and hasn’t made any new movies in many years. That is until he decides to premier a new flick, Zombie Town, at the local theater. Mike works there and decides to show Amy the movie early. When the do though something happens and most of the townsfolk turn into zombies.

Why not Amy and Mike? There is something about an ancient curse and the symbols on the film cans they were inexplicably using as trays for their popcorn and soda. The rest of the story has them running around town trying not to get turned into zombies while at the same time sorting out how to save their friends and families. Along the way we learn the big secret of director Carver and why he has been a recluse for so many years. Not to worry though when we get to the end credits it all works out.

Honestly, I was disappointed. The story is very slow with little happening and what we do see has been done much better elsewhere. That surprised me. Now I’ve never read the book but what few things I’ve read from Stine always struck me as at least entertaining. Sure it might be watered down and tamed for a young audience, but it still had some meat on the bone. Most of what happens here are the main characters running from location to location stopping long enough for a zombie to show up and do something before they flee again. There isn’t a single memorable sequence or scene. This is further complicated by what I have to say is a terrible cast who bring nothing to the screen. This includes Dan Akroyd who seems to be sleepwalking thru his scenes for a paycheck as well as Chevy Chase who is barely in the movie.

While I wasn’t expecting anything too disturbing or horrific being a PG-13 movie based off of a tween book I had hoped for more than I got here. The zombies are all rather tame and don’t bite or even menace folks too much. In fact, some of them, like zombie Landro, are played for laughs. We see zombies doing pratfalls and one acting as a chauffeur. But even some of the Saturday morning shows had a bit of a creepy edge to them and at least one scare. We get none of that here not even a cheap jump scare. The creature design is okay and if there were any real attempts to make them creepy or threating it might have worked. Sadly we got neither so the creature part of Zombie Town falls flat for me as well.

Bad story, bad acting, bad creatures, bad movie. I’m not sure much else needs to be said here. If you are wanting to check out something much better Hulu also released a Goosebumps limited series with Justin Long. I’m a couple of episodes in so far and it is way creepier with a better cast. It makes me feel like the filmmakers here didn’t do justice to the original material. When done right Stine’s work translates well to the screen. Check out the show and skip this movie.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Dead Meat (2004)

This isn’t my first time watching this movie as I think I checked it out fourteen or fifteen years ago for my old website. I don’t remember anything about it so that is probably a bad sign. And this is another low budget zombie flick, which of course I said I wasn’t going to do again. But I think we all knew I wasn’t going to stop. What did draw me back to this one is the director, Conor McMahon. This was I think his first feature film and later did some movies that I really dig. Check out Stitches (a clown back from the dead for some murders!) and Let the Wrong One In (silly vampire comedy) if you get the chance. Also, this isn’t just a indie low budget zombie flick but it is an Irish indie low budget zombie flick. Don’t see many of those. Now onto the review. 

The movie opens with a farmer hearing some strange noises outside and going out to check on them. He gets attacked by a zombie cow. Let that process for a second. Movie you have my attention. Then the action moves to a couple driving along while an announcer on the radio talks about a farmer who was illegally feeding dead animals to his herd. They are distracted and hit a man in the road killing him. Or did they? I mean he was already dead and proceeds to tear the man’s, Martin, throat out. This leads to his lady friend, Helena, to head off to the creepy farm nearby for help. After poking around a bit zombie Martin shows up and she has to dispatch him and then flee when more zombies show up. 

Later she runs into local gravedigger and all around good guy Desmond. The pair of them head off to his house but keep getting waylaid by more zombies. Eventually they meet up with a little girl, never ever trust kids in zombie movies, and another couple Cathal and Francie. This group decides to head to a rescue station but again keep running into zombie problems. This includes the return of the zombie cow from earlier! The survivors are eventually cornered in a castle and have to do battle with the horde of undead that surround them. 

Finally it happened I found a filmmaker that is able to make a movie that doesn’t try to exceed the resources available at hand. This movie, both directed and written by McMahon, has a small cast and simple story. Get from point A to point B. Along the way we get a few set pieces with some local undead attacking them. The locations are simple and were what was available to them. They don’t use some terrible CGI to make giant hordes or try and shoot scenes on busy city streets while onlookers watch. The characters crack a few jokes, deliver their lines well, and do a fine job in the action sequences. The story moves along at a brisk pace never slowing down from the opening scene to the final scene. There is always something happening during the entire hour and twenty minute running time. Now what that hard to do? Apparently so since most of the folks in the almost twenty years since this was made have failed to achieve it. 

Being a zombie movie, we should talk about the special effects work. I don’t think that there are any “featured” lead undead that will stand out. But overall the makeup is good enough. I mean these are all supposed to be pretty fresh, so it works. Most of the kills are actually inflicted on the dead folks. We get a smashed head, another is run thru, there is a stick to the eyeball, a jaw is knocked off a face, and we get a zombie head lopped off with a shovel complete with some brains spilling out. Though my favorite is a kill that I’ve never seen before. A zombie is dispatched with a vacuum sucking out an eyeball! I’ve watched a lot of flicks in this shuffling subgenre and I can honestly say I’ve not seen that before. All of the work is practical and occasionally shows the low budget but that is part of the charm here. 

As an added bit of extra fun keep an eye out, pun not intended, for the road zombie that chomps on Martin. He is played by Ned Dennehy who would later go on to appear in much larger roles in flicks like Guns Akimbo and Mandy. He has also appeared in shows like Outlander (a favorite of my lovely wife) as well as The Walking Dead franchise. Just cool to see someone near the beginning of their career or at least notoriety in the genre. 

Dead Meat isn’t perfect, but I had fun with it. This is the sort of good time on a budget that I’m always hoping to get when I dive into the shallow end of low budget zombie flicks. It worked out for me… this time. You can find this one on YouTube as well as a few other spots on the internet. Give it a shot. 

© Copyright 2023 JohnShatzer

Plaga Zombies: American Invasion (2021)

Why do I keep watching these independent zombie flicks? Well, okay it is totally for content here at the website. Don’t get me wrong I do keep hoping to watch something decent and find that hidden gem in the pile of cinematic doo doo. This flick is a sequel to a movie that I’ve never heard of, which itself isn’t a good sign. Then again with a second bite at the apple maybe they got it right? Hell, maybe the first movie was itself a good flick! I suppose the big question is was Plaga Zombies: American Invasion that diamond in the doo that I’ve been looking for? 

Time for the plot synopsis. Be warned if this makes no sense you can’t blame me. The movie opens with a dude getting abducted by aliens who proceed to drop a worm in his ear Wrath of Khan style. This turns him into a zombie. But don’t worry about this too much since we never see the guy again and worms are never mentioned again. Got it? Cool! Then we see a guy named Nash give his lady friend a fancy necklace. Before things get too sexy the aliens show up to cock block him with some zombies. They also steal his girl away. Nash swears to get her back. But don’t worry about this because she is never seen again. Got it? Cool!

You know what this movie needs more of? Right, we need more characters. Now we meet “professional” wrestler Sammy. Well, he has been trying to live his dream of being a professional wrestler, but it isn’t working out. We see him get booted from a big show, buy a bottle of Busch beer, and then get home in time for his lady to dump him. So he sits down to watch television. Just to be clear we watch him watch… so exciting… Eventually Sammy looks out his window and sees a zombie apocalypse. How did that happen? Don’t know. Must not be important. But this does lead to him and his only fan, Manny, to suiting up to do battle with the walking dead. Here we find out that Nash is his neighbor when they meet up with him. 

The now trio head off to escape the island. Oh crap I forgot to mention that the government blew their small down off of the North American continent setting it adrift in the ocean. Yeah, the science checks out. I mean you can find flat Earther websites so really anything is on the internet if you look hard enough! The rest of the movie is them getting split up, annoying adventures happening, we meet an assassin and a terminator style robot. And then nothing! More on that later. 

Why is this movie an hour and forty five minutes long? That isn’t a rhetorical question. Even I realize that I’m sounding like a broken record, but what I’m saying isn’t wrong. Here we have a story that jumps from scene to scene seemingly at random. It very much feels like a project where folks were sitting around a table saying things like “you know a zombie wrestling match with a zombie audience would be funny” or “we should totally put a terminator style robot in the movie”. Someone also seemingly though aliens with laser guns would be a good idea. When we do see our main characters trying to get to the objective (looking for a boat to escape the island) it comes down to them, a location, some extras in zombie makeup, and poorly done fight choreography. 

This entire movie is nothing but a series of disconnected bits loosely tied together with far too many characters. Sammy and his sidekick are one group, Nash by himself and then with the bounty hunter are another. Even Sammy and Manny separate for a bit. This feels like a project that was shot on the weekends with whomever was available. It is choppy and there isn’t a cohesive narrative. There seems to have been a plot outline rather than an actual script. Almost everything they shot feels like padding rather than a story. This brings me right back to my initial question. Why the hell is this movie an hour and forty five minutes long? There is no reason for it. Nothing is critical, there is no story. I’m being generous in saying that there is maybe sixty minutes worth of material here. If that isn’t enough for you and as yet another example of them not having a script the movie has no ending. Seriously a spaceship hovers, zombies come out of the ocean and the damn thing just stops. They didn’t have an ending!

Time to talk about the filmmaking and special effects work. The big zombie fights are staged awkwardly, and the choreography is terrible. That is when we can actually see anything since most of the fights are shot with the shakiest camerawork you will see. Probably someone realized how bad the action was looking and thought they would cover that defect up by making it completely unwatchable. The zombie special effects work is them painting faces blue (a standard low budget approach) as well as red and other even brighter colors. We even get some cheap ass looking wigs as well as other zombies dressed in obvious Halloween costumes. I guess someone hit the Spirit Halloween on November first. The kills and gore are mostly CGI… and badly done. The only nice thing I can say is we get an occasional rubber limb probably also purchase on clearance when they were picking up wardrobe. 

Now I can already hear what sort of reaction my review is going to generate from a certain demographic of reader. Let me head off those angry emails right now. I get that they weren’t trying to make a serious movie. I in fact not only love indie horror but indie horror comedy is my jam as well. I love the work from guys like Kevin Strange and Chris Seaver. A lot of their stuff is really funny. I have also covered the work from Steve Rudzinski (CarousHell rules). So I’m not some no fun having stick in the mud. The difference is those movies are funny and this one isn’t. If you want to make a comedy, then it had better have some laughs. If it doesn’t then it is just bad. Plaga Zombie: American Invasion is incompetently made (bad zombies, worse camera work), lazy (no script), and generally just a miserable waste of time. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

13 Eerie (2013)

Some college students are headed out into the middle of nowhere. By middle of nowhere I mean an old prison where their professor has setup scenarios involving dead bodies. They are in an advanced forensics class or maybe trying to get into a program. Not quite sure about that but they all seemed to be stressed out. We see cameras being setup so that they can be watched on the staged crime scenes and then they get to work. 

After some gooey gross stuff with the dead bodies one of the students notices that there are more than were expected. Not only that but some of them get up and move around! Seems like the prison was used for experiments in the past, which is briefly explained in some throw away dialogue, and the black goo that is all over the place has turned some of the dead prisoners into zombies. They bite some of the students, who then also become zombies. There is a siege with the survivors, actors appear and disappear at random (more on that later), until we get to an ending that isn’t really an ending but a freeze frame without resolution. 

I don’t hate 13 Eerie, but it is also not a good movie. The story is weak with the whole unexplained prisoner experimentation explanation of the black goo and zombies feeling tacked on at the end. Sort of like the filmmakers decided “damn we need to let the audience know why this all happened”. Combined with the first half hour being spent getting to know the characters, who honestly aren’t that interesting, it gets really slow. After the zombies show up we still get some people walking thru the woods unaware what is happening scenes to continue padding things out. This is one of those flicks that feels like they didn’t have a finished script rather just an idea and maybe a location or two. That is not a formula for success. 

I was especially bummed by the weak writing due to them having a solid cast. Brendon Fletcher (Violent Night), Brendan Fehr (Bones), Michael Shanks (Stargate SG1), and Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) all appear. This is a solid cast of “B” movie and television actors that are good at their jobs. Sadly, they are completely wasted. It also seems that they only had certain actors for briefly as there are just a few scenes where they appear together. Especially Shanks seems to come and go seemingly at random. Not sure if that is the case of if the editing was just that bad. 

Where the movie does a good job is in the creature design. The zombie makeup is decent looking though I did notice that while we get several different zombies running around, they do tend to look the same. There are a few kills on screen with the highlights being the first one where a girl gets caught up in brambles and not only gets some fingers chewed off but ends up with a thorn to the eyeball! There is also a bit of gut munching, but it is poorly executed. I give them props for including it but wish they had done a better job. The rest of the kills are sort of meh. Some of the violence done to the zombies is cool. We get a nifty sawing thru a neck and an awesome gag with a cheek. 

Again, I don’t hate this movie. The story is a mess, but there is a bit of gore, and the zombies look decent. At best 13 Eerie is a mediocre by the numbers effort that is forgettable. While not as horrible as some of the recent zombie movies I’ve watched there are much better ways to kill ninety minutes of your time. I can’t recommend it. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Zombies of the Living Dead (2015)

I did it again. I was poking around the internet… this time Tubi TV… and found an independent zombie movie. Somehow I haven’t learned my lesson and thought to myself “how bad could this be?” Well my friends it could be very bad indeed.

There is a cop telling us what is happening in a voiceover. There is a science guy in his garage who figures out how to revive the dead using radio waves. This causes a zombie apocalypse and then the credits roll. Then we see a parking lot which is an establishing shot of a guy sitting in a cubicle… I mean radio station broadcasting about poodles being aliens. What the hell does this have to do with anything? Nothing at all. Then we are treated to a bunch of local businesses in establishing shots. Then some random attacks with characters that aren’t really characters as they appear long enough to die without ever being given names. Cool, I guess.

All the above happened at night. Then it is daylight and zombies are shuffling in front of the camera while folks are going about their business in the background. I mean couldn’t you have at least framed the scene so we don’t see someone loading groceries into their car during the apocalypse? I guess that was too much effort. Fifteen minutes in we finally meet our main character, the cop who has been narrating, as he bumps into and flirts with a girl named Mary. Some random shit happens while generic rock music blares over the dialogue. They run into some survivors, figure out that it is radio signals, go to the garage and unplug the equipment. Then inexplicably we find out that didn’t work and that the survivors are making a training video on how to survive.

I have to stop watching these movies. Clocking in a barely an hour long this movie clearly doesn’t have a script or any idea of what the story is supposed to be. It has the choppy feeling of something pieced together from random bits shot on various weekends until they could get it long enough to get away with charging people for it. Think about it we don’t even meet the main character or get to his story until a quarter of the movie, which is again an hour long, is over! It isn’t like that time is used to set the narrative up either. It is nothing but random characters getting attacked. After we meet the cop the rest of the movie is him and the others getting attacked at random locations. Really there is nothing going on here at all.

The special effects work is terrible. You get lots of CGI for the kills including the bane of low budget horror the fake blood on the screen effect as if it was sprayed on the backside of the television. Guys really this is just a dumb effect that never works. The zombies border from cheap ass white makeup from the costume shop to even worse plastic masks. Other technical bits to point out are the already blaring generic music, plastic cap guns as props, and audio that drops in and out during dialogue making it impossible to hear what the cast is saying. Though based on the lack of script I’m thinking that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Finally, there is a drive-in scene that looks like someone had a twenty year old copy of iMovie and a green screen. It is terrible.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know what some of you are already thinking to yourself. ‘John this is a low budget movie. Cut them some slack.’ Well first thing they are charging money so when you want people’s hard earned cash then you had better put some effort into your project. Second, and I’ll never stop beating this dead horse, make sure you have a story/script before grabbing the camera. A lack of budget is no excuse not to have a script ready to go. Not only that but make sure you have the resources to shoot whatever story you have on paper and if you don’t (the drive-in scene) then move off of it and go for something you can do. I also understand that this might have been going for laughs. Well nowhere the movie is listed is it categorized as a comedy and more importantly it isn’t funny.

Zombies of the Living Dead is a terrible movie and a prime example of someone tossing some crap at the wall and calling it a zombie flick. I don’t know why folks keep making these. I suppose there is some money to be made selling them. I mean I keep watching. Please don’t make the same mistake and stay far away from this turkey.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

The Curse of the Screaming Dead (1982)

Also known as The Curse of the Cannibal Confederates this Troma distributed movie opens with us seeing some zombies crawl out of their graves. Well sort of since the movie is so poorly light that I couldn’t see much of anything. Then we our treated to a group of hippies or at least as hippy as you can be in the early eighties driving in a camper van. The guys are up front and talk about hunting and camping while ripping on each other. The ladies in the back talk about not liking hunting and camping while also ripping on each other. I guess these couples were meant to be.

They park the camper van, talk some, grab backpacks (guess they are leaving the camper behind) and start walking. Then they talk some more while walking. Along the way we find out that one of the ladies, who is clearly looking around, is blind. She likes the most unlikeable guy in the group, which I suppose is sort of realistic. That unlikeable guy wanders off and finds an old graveyard with a box full of Confederate stuff. He steals a diary and later that night after more talking the zombies crawl up out of the graves. It is the same footage from the beginning of the movie which I supposed was used to get your attention. The hunters/campers get chased, meet up with some cops, get eaten, and then return the diary that was stolen from the box. The movie mercifully ends though that is ninety minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. 

It was only after I watched this that I did some research and found out that Troma’s own Lloyd Kauffman considers The Curse of the Screaming Dead to be one of the worst movies in their less than illustrious catalog. Sort of wished I knew that before watching it. Aw who the hell am I kidding I’d still have sat thru this. I have some sort of mental deficiency that makes me go looking for crappy movies like this and this certainly fits that bill. 

The pacing of the movie is awful. If you don’t count the footage being stuck before the opening credits in what I suppose was an attempt by the editor to make this not as miserable nothing happens for the first fifty minutes of the movie! Okay we get to see some zombies at the thirty five minute mark, but it takes them another fifteen minutes to walk to the campsite. Seriously there is a bunch of improvised dialogue and inane character chatting sandwiched in between scenes of them walking and sitting around in tents. I think the movie was shot on 16mm film but being in the woods means there is little to no attempts at lighting. You can see a spotlight on the character’s faces but everything else around them is impossible to see. 

If the terrible dialogue isn’t bad enough there are clearly sequences where they either didn’t shoot with audio or it was unusable. That means we get some lines clearly dubbed in at different audio levels or music blaring out of nowhere to cover the fact that you no longer hear them stomping around on leaves. This is one of those flicks where you will want to have the tuner handy as you will be fidgeting with the audio throughout. But at least that gives you something to focus on since the movie itself is tedious. 

The zombies look terrible and again we can barely see them. The uniforms of the Confederate zombies are clearly Union Blue. For you non history nerds that means they are from the other side of the Civil War. When not in uniform some of the zombies are wearing flannel shirts that look right off the rack at the local Sears department store. Oh and who knew that they had tube socks during the eighteen sixties. Don’t Google it… they didn’t. The makeup effects work is slapping on as much pancake makeup until they look “clumpy” and not caring if you see only the hands and faces are covered. Not like anyone will notice the necks. I get that this is a super low budget movie, but I will continue to shout at the top of my lungs. Indy filmmakers make sure you have the resources to tell the story you are going for. Then again that would have required them to have an actual script to determine that which clearly they didn’t have. 

I could go on with the day… night… day… night continuity errors between shots. The gore being red stuff laying on the top of t-shirts and not on the skin of the actors (I guess it must have grossed someone out…). But why waste anymore time on this one. Don’t watch The Curse of the Screaming Dead. Just don’t.

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday - Return of the Living Dead by John Russo

note: I wrote this for my old website about a decade ago. Unlike many of my other Throwback Thursday posts I did go back and polish this one up a bit. The opinion didn’t change at all I just clarified what I was saying better.

Like I mentioned in my Night of the Living Dead review this is the second Russo novel to be republished recently in a large volume called Undead. Just to avoid confusion this book has nothing in common with the movie Return of the Living Dead. I mean the filmmakers started with Russo’s story, but took it a totally different direction completely rewriting the plot. Other than a character named Bert they are completely different.

The story picks up ten years after Night of the Living Dead. Apparently that rising of undead was brought under control and the dead just stopped coming back as quickly and mysteriously as they started to. The action takes place in the same county and follows Sheriff McClelland (from the movie) along with several other characters. These include a farmer named Bert and his three daughters, a couple of state highway patrolmen, and a group of looters. Over the period of one night they all have to deal with the walking dead as well as the brutality of man against his fellow man. 

There is an interesting germ of a story here. The looters holding everyone hostage and killing as they please was an interesting twist on zombie fiction. Remember this book was written in nineteen seventy seven so it is early in the rebirth of the zombie as monster and again focused on the humans are the real threat. Many of the characters were sort of interesting and could have been very memorable. Unfortunately, Russo doesn’t develop either the characters or story to take advantage of it. Instead we get a rehashing of Night of the Living Dead, literally. There are several chapters that are the same news reports from his novelization of Night of the Living Dead. And I do mean word for word… Then instead of fleshing out (pun not intended) the characters he has already created he just introduces more so that they can be victimized. It all feels like a missed opportunity to add to the world in which this story takes place.  

I will point out that I did get interested in Bert and his daughters’ story. They have a rocky relationship and don’t get along. But instead of running with that human element he kills Bert off and has the looters show up. Okay cool then make the story about that. Nope they leave and we pick up the story of the highway patrolmen trying to survive. About the time that this gets interesting he kills one of them off, introduces another family of oddballs (that also have potential). This continues until he has killed off most of them without really getting us engaged or caring about who lives and who dies. This sort of lazy attempts at story telling is a common theme in much of Russo’s work and after having read this novelization I can see by Dan O’Bannon tossed it in the trash for the new story that became the Return of the Living Dead movie. Thank goodness he did.

Back to the book though. Zombie fiction that focuses on setting up characters to knock them off is boring. What makes a movie like Night of the Living Dead, or a book like Reign of the Dead good is that they take the time to establish characters that the audience/reader likes and will root for. That makes the dying and living all the more engrossing. Just like every other type of fiction the reader needs to care about the characters for the story to work. I didn’t and because of that I simply didn’t care for this book. While I did enjoy his novelization of Night of the Living Dead I have to say that this one is a pass for me. Even for Romero completists this will be a disappointment as it doesn’t feel like it fits with the franchise.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday – Reign of the Dead by Len Barnhart

note: I wrote this review ten years ago and still love Barnhart's books. Sadly the fourth part of the series that I mention looking forward to never came out. I've also never had the chance to find out what happened as Barnhart sort of disappeared from the internet. I had met the man years ago at a convention and had stayed in touch. Len if you are out there email me and let me know how it is going. Now on to the review. 

When Jim Workman returns from his isolated cabin after a three-week vacation everything has gone to hell. A mysterious virus has caused the dead to rise and begin snacking on the living. Quickly Jim meets up with a group of survivors and falls into the daily routine of trying to survive in a world that has gone mad. There he also meets up with a woman that he falls in love with, and meets a scientist named Susan who claims she may be able to figure out a cure for the virus. That is with the right equipment and time, which they don’t have. 

At the same time that Jim is meeting up with the survivors a reverend by the name of Peterson is trying to make sense of a world seemingly abandoned by God. When he is eventually forced to flee his refuge in the church it strikes him that God must be punishing them all. Of course that is everyone but him, so after finding a group of followers he can manipulate he starts his crusade to start society over the way that God would want it to be. Eventually the two groups clash and many bad things happen. Most of them are zombie related. Who lives and who dies? Is there a cure to be had? Will the crazy reverend get what is coming to him? Read the book and find out damn it!

Every time I pick up a zombie themed book or pop in a zombie movie I’m looking for another experience like I had the first time I saw Night of the Living Dead. Most of the time I’m disappointed. In the case of most of the books the author has tried to tinker with the undead, or make some large supernatural force behind the outbreak. I guess that is okay for some, but those stories don’t interest me. What I find interesting about zombie stories (movies or books) are the sorts of things that Romero dealt with in his movies. The survivors and how they interact with each other is what drives the narrative. I think the reason that I enjoyed this book so much is that Barnhart spends his time focusing on the survivors. The early part of the book is split into sections and explains how each of the main characters has survived to the point that they all meet up. By the time they all are together their interactions make sense and their motivations are understandable. 

So the main characters are well developed. Why does that make for a good piece of zombie fiction? Well let me explain. First of all the tension and actual fear for the characters comes not from the zombies themselves, but the readers fear for these characters. The same can be said for why I found myself smiling when the good reverend gets what is coming to him in the end of the book. Second this is a zombie story, so Barnhart is going to have to kill off a lot of minor characters. It isn’t possible for him to establish all of these characters with back-stories, so what he does is show their deaths thru the eyes of the characters we are invested in. We may not care that X dies, but we will care how it affects say Jim or Susan. 

This is a great book that will grab the reader and keep them interested until the very end. The characters are well developed and realistic, which makes what happens to many of them so disturbing. This is the first book in the series of four, and this is also the third time that I’ve read it. I’ve wanted to reread this one and the second before I dive into the third book of the series (which I just got my hands on). As an added bonus this is a copy of the new version of Barnhart’s book that he polished up to make it fit better with the new stuff he is writing. So this makes an excellent time to jump into the series. This is hands down one of the best bits of zombie fiction that I’ve ever had the chance to read and can’t recommend it enough.

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Bridge of the Doomed (2022)

What do they say about doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results? Well, I decided it was time to check out another low budget zombie movie in the hopes that it was going to be good. Want to guess how that turned out?

The movie starts with some soldiers guarding something when zombies attack them. They aren’t necessarily surprised by this so I’m guessing the outbreak has already happened. They shoot a bunch of zombies and then we see a general in a tent yelling about stuff. He wants the National Guard to send reinforcements, but they are out of gas. Being out of gas is something that keeps coming up in this movie. Until that it they need to drive away and then it is all cool… But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Then we see some civilians fight zombies and die. Why? I guess they needed to pad out the runtime. Then there are some generic news broadcasts in front of a greenscreen. Here I thought they would give us some details on what happened and how the world is dealing with it. Instead we get one talking head after another telling everyone to stay home. I’m not kidding it is like the same dialogue from five or six different actors. Well, that didn’t help things at all. Though we do finally get some idea what the story is supposed to be about when a small group of soldiers are sent to guard a bridge. There is a large group of zombies that will overrun the camp if they can’t keep them from crossing. Because that tiny ass creek is going to stop them.

It was at this point I realized the “screenwriter” had basically played a lot of first person shooters with zombie mods. Instead of scenes moving the story along we get stages where the characters have to shoot zombies before getting eaten. This idea is furthered by the monster or maybe super zombie that keeps picking them off. What is it? Why is it there? Is it intelligent? Who cares it is just there to be the boss fight. Most of our characters are killed off, but then despite the IMDB page they really aren’t given names much less backstories so who really cares. Eventually the National Guard shows up to reinforce the bridge and saves the survivors.

Here we go with the "boss" fight...

If you aren’t sure of it yet I hated this movie. The story is complete garbage and is paper thin. As I’ve already mentioned it feels more like stages in a game rather than a script with characters and plot. Nothing much happens here except for some zombies show up and get shot repeat until we get to a feature length and send it off to the internet for streaming. I can deal with incompetent filmmaking and lord knows I’ve seen a lot of it in my years of watching independent movies. But lazy filmmaking is just a bridge too far… heh see what I did there? That line is far more clever than anything in this damn piece of cinematic trash.

In case you were wondering the zombies are generic, the movie is filled with CGI bullet hits and blood. The cast is phoning it in, including Michael Pare who shows up for a hot minute to collect a paycheck. The pacing is awful with character introduced solely to be eaten by zombies, in most cases not even being given names before that happens. Honesty if you want to watch something this pointless I can direct you to some YouTube channels that stream games with zombie mods. At least the stream of profanity from the middle school kids is slightly entertaining which is more than I can say about Bridge of the Doomed.

It is here that I normally swear off watching low budget zombie movies that my various streaming services (here it was Amazon Prime) recommend to me. But I think we all know that I will eventually watch another one and be pissed off by it. Honestly would it kill the filmmakers out there to at least put the tiniest amount of effort into writing a script before heading into the woods to shoot your “masterpiece”? Stay far away from this turkey.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

The Dead Don’t Die (1975)

This made for television movie completely surprised me and was a real find. The story is set in the thirties where we see a man named Don Drake visiting his brother in prison. It is the night before he is to be executed and Don has just made it back in town. His brother convinces him of his innocence and while they can’t stop what is about to happen asks him to prove it. This leads Don to Chicago where his brother lived and where he meets the various characters in his life.

Up until this point The Dead Don’t Die plays very much like a film noir. It is a murder mystery where the cops have already punished the man they think is responsible for the killing. Here is where things get interesting thought. When Don starts to dig he is approached by a mysterious woman named Vera who warns him to leave town. Almost immediately after that he chases a man that looks just like his dead brother into a nearby antique shop and accidentally kills the proprietor in a scuffle. He wakes up in Vera’s apartment and starts to piece together the mystery. Turns out it was his brother, who is now a zombie, and that there is a zombie master plying his craft in the city! Yeah, it went from mystery to horror just like that. All of this leads to a big finale where Don faces the man who framed his brother and has been trying to kill him.

I can’t say much more than I have without spoiling things. I loved this movie, so I really don’t want to do that. The story is quick paced clocking in with a seventy four minute runtime that was typical of made for television projects like this. There isn’t a wasted scene as we start with the brothers in the jail cell and quickly move to Chicago and the zombie plot line. Characters pop in and out of the story but none seem throwaway and all move things along. This is a well written script, which considering it was from the legendary Robert Bloch isn’t that surprising. When you have Psycho and The House that Dripped Blood I guess you know what you are doing.

Creepy zombie

The way that they present the undead is very simple with some old school makeup (dark circles under the eyes) and acting (shuffling with moaning dialogue) but it is effective. This isn’t a gorefest, but instead an old school voodoo inspired take on zombies. Overall I got a very Val Lewton vibe from not only how they were brought to the screen but also with the reliance on camerawork and lighting to set a spooky mood. I’m a huge fan of old school horror like Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie so this movie checked a lot of boxes for me. Damn I really need to cover those for the site.

Finally the cast is excellent. Our main character is the always reliable George Hamilton who we just saw in The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver. Here he is solid as the brother trying to unravel the mystery of his brother’s framing for murder. The filmmakers double down with an excellent supporting cast as well. Ray Milland (The Uninvited) is helpful dance hall owner and ally Jim Moss. The always welcome to see Ralph Meeker (The Food of the Gods, Without Warning) is the local policeman. Hollywood legend Joan Blondell and genre favorite Yvette Vickers (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Attack of the Giant Leeches) have supporting roles. We even get a pre-Kurt Barlow Reggie Nadler. There is a lot of talent in front of as well as behind the camera.

I could keep gushing but is it necessary? This is why I love these made for television flicks. They allowed creative folks to cast old school actors and because they had to work within limited budgets and under the watchful eye of television censors, they had to lean into quality writing and acting. I highly recommend The Dead Don’t Die.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday – Dead Sea by Brian Keene

Keene ventures back into the realm of the Zombie with this book. It really isn’t a follow up to The Rising, and the zombies are a bit more traditional here. This time around there is Hamelin’s Revenge, which is a disease that is passed thru saliva and blood, rather than demonic possession. Initially it only seems to affect a few species, but then it starts to jump into previously immune creatures. Before you know it there are zombie pets, horses, cattle, and God knows what else wandering the streets looking for a meal. The central character in the book is Lamar. After being forced from his home by the fires sweeping thru the overrun city he ends up on a Coast Guard ship with a few other survivors. Deciding the sea is their best chance they get the vessel seaworthy and get away from the land. But when Hamelin’s jumps into the fish even the ocean isn’t safe.

I really enjoyed this book, much more than his earlier efforts at zombies, The Rising and City of the Dead. It isn’t that those books aren’t good, they are. But I just never really got into the idea that the zombies were reanimated when they were possessed by demons. Call me a purist, but I prefer my zombies old school. With Dead Sea Keene changes things up and has the cause of the uprising a bit more traditional, Hamelin’s Revenge. Get bit or blood on you and soon you will be shuffling around looking for someone to gnaw on. Keene is a great writer and this more traditional take really turned out a great story. He does a wonderful job of making the characters, even the minor ones, jump off the page and be very real. This is key to making it work because then the reader cares about them as he picks them off one at a time, which is really one of the things that zombie fiction is all about. Characters are introduced, we like them, and then bad things happen. 

The book starts off in a familiar setting with Lamar hiding out in his barricaded house, but then moves to the ship at sea, which I thought was neat change. The zombie nerd in me always thought that a ship would be a safe place to hang out if the and when the zombies showed up. Though this proves not to be such a great idea in Keene’s version of a zombie apocalypse. The idea of the plague jumping species was a fun twist with zombie dogs and horses wandering about. But the best are the Zombie whales swimming around the ocean! Yes you heard me correctly there are zombie whales!

Bottom line if you dig zombie fiction and haven’t read Dead Sea you are really missing out.  This is hands down one of the best pieces of zombie fiction that you will ever read.  Brian Keene is the man.  I highly recommend this one.

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday - Dead City by Joe McKinney

note: This is a book review that I wrote for the old Gutmunchers website. As I was always looking for more zombie stuff to cover the work of McKinney caught my attention. I suppose this is a spoiler but while this was my first dive into his work it certainly wasn’t the last.

The book establishes that there has been a series of hurricanes that have battered the coastline of Texas as in introduces us to our main character. Eddie Hudson is a police officer in San Antonio Texas working the evening shift. Responding to reports of a prowler he runs smack dab into an uprising of zombies. While the book never explains why there are zombies, it does hint that it might have to do with some new illness related to the devastation from the storms. After establishing the dead are walking around eating the living the rest of the book is Eddie trying to survive and find his wife and young son. 

Let me say something right here at the beginning of this review. Dead City follows a familiar and predictable story that anyone who has ever seen a zombie movie will recognize. But I still enjoyed the heck out of this book. I like the main character of Eddie, as well as the other characters that he runs into as the plot unfolds. McKinney does a wonderful job of making him likeable and as a result bringing the reader into the story. I was completely invested in the character and that kept me turning the pages wanting to know what happened next (it was a long night without enough sleep!). Another thing that McKinney does very well is the structure of the story. Most of the book takes place during a single night. I’m not sure how he pulled it off, but when I was reading Dead City it felt like it had a manic pace. As a reader I was getting as exhausted as the main character was. Though again the book kept me hooked and up way past my bedtime, so that might have played a part in this.

I wanted to get back to what I had already mentioned about the plot being familiar. This book is an excellent example of what a writer or even a filmmaker can do when they pay attention to the pacing of a story and the characters. A talented author can jump into an established genre like zombies and still have fun with it while entertaining their reader. This is the only book that I’ve read from Joe McKinney, but if it is any example of what I can expect from him it won’t be the last. 

Lets talk about some gore. While McKinney doesn’t linger much on describing the terrible things done to the living and the dead in this book, I did find it satisfying.  Don’t get me wrong we are treated to plenty of headshots, teeth gnashing, and a bit with a baby that is disturbing. As I’ve already touched on the pacing of the book is part of the fun, so if each zombie and kill were described in great detail the pacing would have suffered. 

I’m a sucker for all things zombie and Dead City is a great zombie novel. If you like your monsters shuffling and deceased, you will enjoy this book. I recommend taking the time to track down a copy.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday - Night of the Living Dead by John Russo

note: This was originally published ten years ago for another website. To make it fit here at Crappy Movie Reviews I had to make some format changes. The contents of the review remain unchanged.

Okay so Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite movies ever. It launched the zombie genre that is obviously important to me. I mean I ran a site called Gutmunchers! A few years after the movie was made someone came to Russo, who was involved in the movie, and asked him to write a novelization. That book is what I read for this review. Now that we have some of the history out of the way lets talk about the book itself.

This is a pretty faithful adaptation of the movie. The setup is the same with Ben and Barbara arriving at the farmhouse, both looking for shelter from the undead wandering around outside. They board up the house, deal with zombies, and are surprised by the other survivors in the basement. We still get the conflict between Ben and Harry Cooper (one of the basement survivors) and things end the same way that they do in the movie. For the most part if you have seen and enjoyed the movie (how could you not?) then you will like the book.

That last sentence was a huge relief for me to write. As a fan I’ve had a difficult time dealing with Russo. On one hand I think that he is a very nice guy who I’ve met several times. He is very kind and generous to the fans. He also had a lot to do with the formation and creation of Night of the Living Dead, which is a huge plus for me. But I’ve also had issues with Russo. All his post Romero movies have been either terrible or barely passable. I also have disliked his attempts to go back and live off of Night of the Living Dead. For example, the comics or new footage he shot for the classic movie. I won’t even go into his attempts to continue the zombie story without Romero and the resulting legal wrangling.

This novelization is maybe the best thing that I’ve read from Russo. He follows the movie plot closely and when he does deviate it is to add things that they couldn’t have shot. There is a bit more gore and the deaths of the characters are way more gruesome. From Johnny being eaten to the barbeque at the pickup things are way more graphic. Russo is also able to share the thoughts of the characters and explain their actions or lack of them to the reader. While this doesn’t change anything it does make you more sympathetic to a Harry Cooper. Sure he is a coward, but he does care about his daughter. 

For me this is exactly what I wanted when I sat down to read this book. Russo is spot on and does a wonderful job with the story. I’d say that this is a must read for any fan of the movie.  t is available in a book called Undead, which also includes Russo’s Return of the Living Dead novel. It is his original idea for the story and is dramatically different from the movie. Instead of the familiar characters we get a sequel/follow up to the events of Night of the Living dead and is worth checking out. I recommend all fans of the zombie genre as well as Romero/Russo fans track themselves down a copy of Undead.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer