101 Zombies aka. Broken Springs (2010)

I’ve been watching a lot of comedic zombie movies for my most recent marathon. I thought that I’d mix things up a bit and check out a low budget flick. There are a lot of them but I found 101 Zombies on Amazon Prime and after checking out the reviews decided it was the movie for me. The filmmakers must have a lot of friends with IMDB accounts…

There are several story lines that eventually intersect. One follows a waitress who gets trapped in the freezer at work. She has a son, who along with a couple of friends, is another story line. They fight their way to save her. There is also a truck driver, a zombie prepper, a moonshiner, and a cameraman for a local cable channel. They all get caught up in a zombie outbreak that is caused by some contaminated moonshine that immediately turns anyone who drinks it into a zombie. Stuff happens, people die, bingo is played, and lots of shitty CGI goes down. The end.

I now remember why I quit watching independent zombie movies. Most of them are miserably awful and this is one. Let me start off with my biggest complaint and it is something that so many of these damn things do. Don’t have your characters watching Night of the Living Dead. I get that it is in the public domain so you can legally do it but you shouldn’t. Why remind the audience what a low budget zombie movie made by someone who has talent looks like? We will immediately compare it you what you shot and realize how bad it is! Don’t do that to yourself or to the viewer.

Next up is a huge problem that I have with independent filmmakers and not just those shooting zombie movies. Write a script please. Having shit happen for no reason and characters that appear to be ready for the apocalypse just because they are might seem mysterious and cool. This isn’t your zombie fan fiction being posted on a message board. You’re making a movie and you owe it to the people who pay to see it to at least put some effort into character development. I know that actually writing a script is hard, but for the love of God do it before grabbing your camera. Here we have uninteresting characters with no story arc that do nothing.

This is one of the better effects shots in the movie.

Once you have your script you need to read it. After reading it think about if you have the resources to shoot what you have written. If you don’t then you end up using awful CGI to cover the scenes of your characters driving their car with the zombified head of their friend as a hood ornament! A car that keeps running the undead down in increasingly bad CGI effects. I’m not even going to go into the overuse of CGI generated heads exploding every time you shoot a zombie. As annoying as that is it pales in comparison to the other garbage you have spewed on the screen.

I’ll finish with this. Learn how to stage a scene and use your extras. I get that a low budget movie can’t exactly recruit people that can act. This is particularly so for those who are background fodder for your zombies. But at the minimum I ask that you at least have them run and not calmly walk away from the undead. More than once it appears that in the middle of a supposedly horrible attack that your cast could barely be bothered to briskly walk away from their doom. You are shooting on digital so it isn’t like you were running out of film. The fact you used these scenes just shows how lazy and/or inept you are as a filmmaker. I know that I’m sounding mean here but you put this out in the hopes that people would spend their hard-earned money on it. Show the audience some respect.

This is a terrible movie that no one should ever watch. Remember this comes from me, the guy who watches and enjoys some really bad flicks. My standards are not that high and if you can’t reach them then that alone should tell you all you need to know. I’m done wasting time on 101 Zombies or whatever the hell they want to call it.

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer

Cooties (2014)

The Zombie marathon continues with this undead/infected flick. Well now I know what happens when children are fed contaminated chicken nuggets. They turn into rabid infected/zombie killing machines that only want to eat the flesh of those they find! Yeah, this movie is awesome. But I’m getting a head of myself so before I continue let’s check out Cooties.

Clint is back in his hometown after failing to get his novel finished while living in the big city. He is going to spend his summer as a substitute teacher, but on his first day things get strange. The children at the school eat some bad chicken nuggets that turns them into flesh craving zombies! The infection spreads quickly and soon the surviving teachers are in hiding. They need to escape, but this is complicated by some of the zombie children being smart enough to cut the power and phones. Will they escape and find help? Will Clint admit that he isn’t a very good writer? Who cares I just want to see them smash some more evil zombie children!

I feel the need to point out right away that this is a comedy. If you are looking for a serious take on zombies this isn’t the movie for you. I would expect with the title of Cooties and a cast filled with actors best known for their comedic roles that would be obvious, but after a quick look online I guess not. Rainn Wilson (The Office), Nasim Pedrad (SNL), and Jack McBrayer (30 Rock) are all very funny and again should have tipped people off as to what kind of movie they were going to watch.

With that established I have to say that this is a very funny movie. It takes the absurd situation of zombie children eating their teachers and runs with it. The dialogue is filled with some very funny lines, including one character referring to Clint, played by Elijah Wood, as a hobbit. There is also a reoccurring bit with the Rainn Wilson character where he can’t say dual rear wheel when referring to his truck. And we have a stoner in a van thinking that he might be on a really bad trip while watching the playground turn into a bloodbath. Oh and if you ever wanted to see Elijah Wood do “bodily function” humor then this is the movie for you! There is a lot of laughs to be had in Cooties.

Kids man... they freak me out!

I really liked this movie but I feel the need to manage expectations a bit. When talking about a comedic zombie movie the gold standard is probably either Return of the Living Dead or Shaun of the Dead. To be fair Cooties doesn’t come close to either of them for different reasons. The gore here is light and too much CGI is used. So, in that way it doesn’t compare well to Return. And while there are a few nice scenes between the characters Cooties doesn’t have the emotional impact of Shaun of the Dead. I mean when Ed got bit we were all sad. Cooties had a chance to do something like that but went for a couple extra laughs and a bad ass one-liner instead. For me this is the difference between liking and loving a movie.

Obviously, I’m going to recommend checking this one out. I think it is a fun way to kill some time. If you are in the mood for some laughs and zombie kids grab yourself a copy of Cooties.

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer

Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009)

More zombie movie goodness for the blog. This time I revisit a movie that I covered when it first came out, Zombies of Mass Destruction. I remember liking it and giving it a positive review, but I’ve not bothered to check it out in the last seven or eight years. I guess it is time to revisit it.

Zombies attack an otherwise peaceful island town in the Pacific Northwest in this attempt at a comedic horror flick with a message. There are two main storylines in the movie. One has to do with Frida, the daughter of an Iranian immigrant, who has returned to the small town after attending a college back east. She has to deal with the casual racism and general stupidity of the rednecks that seem to make up most of the town’s population. She also has to deal with a strict father that wants her to be religious and marry one of “their” people. The other characters that dominate the story are a couple of gay men, Tom and Lance. Tom is from the island and has returned to come out to his mother. We again get to see how the ignorant rednecks and bigots react to that. Toss in a cable news show blaming terrorists for the outbreak and all hell breaks loose.

I don’t think that I like this movie as much as I did on first viewing years ago. Maybe I’ve just gotten tired of how political everything has gotten. I can’t escape the endless debates in my daily life and don’t want to see it in my zombie flicks. At least not like this. Zombies of Mass Destruction isn’t subtle about what axe it is grinding. The locals don’t know or care to understand the difference between an Iraqi and an Iranian. They are all terrorists in their eyes! Frida even gets tied to a chair and tortured to confess her involvement in the release of the zombie virus. And yes, Abu Ghraib is mentioned, as well as someone pointing out that torturing someone will only get them to tell you what you want to hear.

The gay characters end up fighting with Tom’s mother, who has turned into a zombie. I will admit the scene with her trying to kill him and him thinking it is because he is gay is funny. The dialogue is cleverly written and there is a joke about Lance’s father that pays off with a great one liner. Later on, they lock themselves in a church where of course the dumb locals try to cure them and save their souls thru the use of a special chair. They are able to escape their captors because you know they are stupid. Lucky for them they are saved when Frida shows up with a shotgun and blows the zombie horde away that was waiting for them when they opened the door to their jail.

I do like the zombies

Let’s talk about the zombies. The makeup is pretty basic and consists of a lot of blue and green faces. But considering they are all pretty fresh I was okay with that. Disappointed that we couldn’t see how many of them were killed, but still it was okay. We do get some decent gut munching, an arm gets ripped off, eyeball pops out only to be eaten, and a wicked knife thru the face. When it comes to the gore this is a solid movie. Oh, but the best kill is very funny and unexpected. Never ever tell someone that nothing bad will happen. That is just asking for trouble.

I understand that this is supposed to be a comedy and to be honest the non-political stuff still works really well. And I suppose if you are more liberal or still interested in shouting at the “other” side you might find Zombies of Mass Destruction to be funnier than I do. Still I have difficulty recommending this one.

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer