Zombies. If you are reading this site you should be well aware of the fact that I love the hell out of some zombies. So given that obsession I thought I’d share a few thoughts on some of my recent zombie themed consumptions…

First off I just finished all three hardbound editions of The Walking Dead graphic novels and they turned out to be as awesome as I’d heard they were. I’ve actually been wanting to pick these up for a while but it wasn’t until a gift certificate I got for xmas that I just threw down and grabbed them. These are quick reads as you might expect but the storyline doesn’t suffer from that at all. Like any good zombie story the interactions between the non-zombies is the real focus and theres some top notch storytelling going on here. The one complaint I’d heard was that the artwork made some of the characters hard to tell apart, but honestly I didn’t notice that as a problem. The individual characters are extremely well developed and you understand how and why they react in some situations the way they do and while some of the story lines have been seen before (friendly survivers vs not so friendly ones) the little twists make them still completely enjoyable.

I finally picked up the final chapter in David Wellington’s triology, Monster Planet. I loved the first two books (Monster Island & Monster Nation) and while I’m only halfway through this one it’s a perfect continuation of the story. While the first two books take place almost simultaniously, this one is set 12 years after the fact and picks up right where you’d hope it would. If you haven’t been following the story it’s totally worth picking up the first book and seeing how Wellington takes a new angle to this by telling part of it through the eyes of some of the zombies that managed to maintain some bit of consciousness. With the first two books I could barely put them down and only my current hectic schedule is preventing me from doing the same with this one. I’m kinda sad this is the final piece of the story, but super glad to have this series in my library.

Well. I finally got around to seeing this. I meant to see it in the theaters, honestly, but for some reason I just didn’t make it. Even with all the talk of it being one of the best horror movies made in years and breaking new ground and all that. Turns out that’s not quite the case. This movie is easily one of the most referential things I’d ever seen in my life, almost swiping entire scenes from a whole hand full of movies. If you saw it you know what I mean, if you didn’t, here’s a quick run down of just the first bit…

The “ripping the tubs out at the hospital” scene is totally 28 Days Later
The “driving through windy hills shot from above” scene is totally The Shining
The “creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere” scene is totally Evil Dead
The lake they keep driving past looks like it’s straight out of Friday The 13th
Every forest scene is straight out of Deliverance
Once they are in the caves they alternate from Alien to Blair Witch. And they do it with supper attention to details, all the way down to the dripping slime from the Alien Mutants mouth while he’s watching them and they don’t know it and the shaky camcorder vision.
And the mutants themselves, was it just me or were they just the orcs from Lord of the Rings sans armor.
And finally, The blond girl covered in blood running around getting revenge is so Carrie it hurts.

I know this is a British film originally, but do people there not notice this kind of shit?

I’m going to leave the remake discussion out of this because the people who hate remakes are never going to be swayed and it’s not even worth trying. I know people who refuse to watch the new Dawn of the Dead even though it’s an entirely different movie, and arguably a damn good one. That said, Wes Craven’s original Hills implies a lot, while this version actually shows it to you. But that’s what you expected, right?

First off – there were far too many, force scares in the first part of it. You know, building tension and then a cat jumps out and makes the audience jump kind of stuff. This is a scary idea, and a scary movie and I’m not sure why those kind of carnival pranks were thrown in. It made it really hard to get into the groove of the flick. However once it got past those, and into the meat of the story things improved considerably. Some of the stranded family members were so annoying you actually wanted them to get killed, and when they did it was rather satisfying. Watching it you could definitely sense that they were being watched and they knew it. And the mutants were fantastic.

What wasn’t fantastic and where the whole thing fell apart in my perspective was when Doug finds the town. A town full of mannequins that has been through a nuclear blast and abandoned for at least 50 years is creepy. A mutant family living in the midst of it is really creepy. A mutant family living in a house full of mannequins that has been hit with a nuclear blast and abandoned for at least 50 years who never touched or changed anything is bullshit. Especially when one of those mutants (who looked like Chunk from The Goonies) has already shown that the littlest think will set him off and cause him to smash everything in sight. In one scene when they run through the living room the table still has a picture perfect place setting that was clearly from the testing days. O RLY? This mutant family has been living here for all these years and they never moved a single plate? Sure they rig up generators and fill one room with a hundred TV, they install a meat cooler to store chopped off body parts but they don’t move a stupid mannequin off the stairs so they don’t have to walk around it to get to the second floor?

I found myself thinking “Oh come on” and “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me” more times than I’d like to during a horror movie. Of course blood drenched Doug does turn it around the beat some serious mutant ass so I can’t really complain too much. I also liked that this version didn’t show as much of the mutants chatting each other up as the original which made them seem a bit more mysterious and a lot scarier. Except for the Chunk looking one, I just wanted someone to give him a Baby Ruth.

Is it bad that I rented Feast the other night entirely based on the coverart but once I got it home and saw that it was a Project Greenlight movie I kinda lost interest in watching it? It’s weird because Project Greelight seems like something I should be all excited about but after watching the first season I was totally put off by it. Or maybe I didn’t like their decision to avoid writer/directors because some of my favorite movies were directed by the writers. That and I just don’t know about Matt Damon and Ben Afleck as horror movie producers…

A few days ago I saw a commercial for the remake of Bob Clark’s Black Christmas and realized I hadn’t seen the 1974 version since not too long after it came out. Then today at my daily trip to the video store it was sitting there on the shelf staring at me and I knew I had to rent it. The DVD jacket heralds that this predated Halloween by 4 years making it “the inventor of the modern slasher film” and actually dares the viewer to watch the movie alone. So that’s exactly what I planned to do. Now, Halloween in genuinely scary but my very fuzzy memory of Black Christmas is that it’s a bit more on the campy side. At the checkout counter the clerk echoed my thoughts and we talked for a little about older horror movies that hold up years down the line and those that don’t.

As soon as I hit play I remembered the last time I saw this, it was mid to late 80’s and on a USA Up All Night or similar program. It had been edited heavily to take out all the sex references although I think they left in all the blood. So I watched it alone like the cover dared me to do – and I’m not scared at all. My memories of it’s campyness were pretty valid. I’m not saying it’s bad, but a caller saying “bleh ahh ugh errr uugh I’m gonna lick your cunt, then kill you!” then hanging up just isn’t as scary today as it might have been in ‘74. Plus while this movie might have pioneered the “the call is coming from inside your house!” genre, it’s been done much better since. Perhaps it’ll even be done better in the remake?

A few months ago some reporter started poking around the gallery asking question about zombies and popular culture and Caryn dropped all kinds of science on the subject. The article finally came out and is worth giving a once over. Here’s the goods:

Horror movie fan Caryn Coleman, who owns a Los Angeles art gallery called Sixspace, recently hosted an exhibition by local artist Chad Robertson that focused on the concept of the zombie in popular culture.

“The public’s fascination with zombies has to do with the fact that zombies represent the regular person more than other typical horror monsters and … zombies reflect the monster within each of us,â€? she said.

“The zombie outbreak we see in films shows us how just one single cause can create a rippling and life-altering effect,” Coleman said. “Take, for instance, post-Katrina in New Orleans. That is a perfect example of a devastating event bringing out the intense need for survival and utter chaos.”

The Friday night film on TCM Underground just got a lot better with Rob Zombie stepping up to host the show. I’m not sure how much say he has in picking the movies but the current schedule is not a bad start at all. I’m actually pretty excited to see some of these as some of them I haven’t been able to find on my own up to this point.

I’ve said it before but I’m not really sure why Rob and I aren’t best friends because as far as I can tell we have identical taste in movies, and we both used to spend way too much money at The House Of Monsters in Chicago. And that’s what it’s all about right? Is it bad that I’m actually considering canceling my Friday plans indefinitely to make sure I don’t miss any of these?

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