Theatre of the Dead #14 - I am Legend (2007)

Director: Francis Lawrence Stars: Will Smith, Alice Braga

Review:

I am Legend (2007) is a movie adapation of the 1954 novel in the same name written by Richard Matheson, which is the inspiration of the whole zombie idea, and influenced even Night of the Living Dead (1968). It stars Will Smith and showcases some beautiful visual. But I hate this movie. To me this movie is pointless and un-necessary, and nothing more than a ATM for the production company to milk the movie-goers.

The only man around wandering on abandoned empty street?

I understand it based on the novel, but I couldnt help but feel it just captured the success of 28 Days Later, and the production said, "You know what, I can make a better movie with higher production value!" The main idea surrounds Will Smith being the last man on earth and his loneliness, which very much like the first half of 28 Days Later. It did nothing that hadnt been done, and despite that fact that the visual is better and it shows the whole New York city being abandoned, but I feel sick knowing there is no heart in it and the whole thing is solely for the production to cash in.

Will Smith's acting has always been screaming commercial to me. He is not bad and on the contrary, he is really good, but it makes you feel it is cold and calculated in every possible way for you to pay to get into the theatre. He makes everybody like him, and that is evidence of lacking personality. There goes the right word which I have been searching to describe this movie. This movie has no personality. It is carefully calculated that most of the crowd would walk in and pay, and that is all this movie cares.



The movie starts with some Dr. being interviewed on TV about her new vaccine or something. Apparently it's a virus that has genetically engineered to help human rather than do harm. It poses good theory that some experts actually praises the high possibility that it actually happens. I am no expert in bio-chemistry and all I care is what does it have to do with the movie. And you know what? Absolutely nothing. It can be the some research for new Viagra which went wrong and that would not make any difference. The zombies here are afraid of daylight, but does it matters anything? Nope. It just makes excuses for our hero to hang out during daytime.

You were hurt so bad that could get up? Damned!

The plot is alright with some moments that can be nitpicked. When Will Smith is trapped (and Yes, trapped by the zombies), and paralyzed his legs, he used his hands to drag himself away. But we have only seen him hurt in one leg. Cant he jump with a single leg or something? So he dragged himself for a while, under some screaming of the zombies coming, and after a while he finally jumped with a single leg. Why didnt he do that at first? Is he so hurt that he would rather be eaten by the zombies?

Oh so you can. Maybe you just wasnt in the mood back then.

Towards the end he met some other survivors, who told him there is a whole survivor's colony up on the north, since the virus wouldnt stand the cold. "How did you know that?" Will Smith asked. "God told me so." Oh great. Evangelicalism in "Signs" (2002) style. If God can be so specific to tell you the whole fact, why havnt he told you the cure of the virus directly? Oh right it is because Will Smith that should become legend, not you. Whatever.

"God told me." If I start praying now will God tell me the next lottery number?

And zombies can lay traps. Ok I can deal with that. But zombie that have a wife and cares about her? Remember all those moments a zombie bite off the flesh of its loved ones? Remember the gravity of one become a mindless corpse that have no feeling but hunger and eat anyone he sees, even his family? And now one that is emotionally comprised and cares about his women?

I am Legend (2007) is nothing about a trap to make us take our money from our pockets. It is so derivative that I despise it. And I know that it may be supposed to talk about nature and how wrong we are to alter it with science, and I call that whole idea bullshit. It is a block-buster movie and that's it. Zombie movies so far were low-budget and bold to display gore and violence, and this movie has no balls. That single fact could make it lame.

Theatre of the Dead #13 - Land of the Dead (2005)

Director: George A. Romero Stars: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo

Review:


After 30 years George A. Romero, the father of the zombie genre, comes back with Land of the Dead (2005). The expectation is high and critical response is generally good. However to me, some of the magic from the original trilogy is gone. The situation is ridiculous and it is difficult to suspend my disbelief on the whole premise.

Apparently this movie loosely picks off after the original trilogy. Now that people have developed a systemic way of dealing with the whole zombie apocalyze thing. Defenses have been setup and people barracaded inside, and life goes on for them. Some rich people can live in a skyscraper called Fiddler's Green, and poor people live on the skirt of the city within the blockage. Every once in a while some hired mercenaries went out in an armoured and armed vehicle to get supplies from abandoned supermarkets or other places. Our main characters are two of those mercanaries, on a final night out but for different reasons. Denbo (Simon Baker) wants to get out of the city, and Cholo (John Leguizamo) wants to have his own apartment in the Green, but they will both be pissed for not having their wishes come true.

The zombies are obsessed of watching fireworks. The smart zombie, like the audience, has no idea why.

Problem: what are these guys working for? Money. In a world that is full of zombies, and we havent seen them breeds any poultry or grow anything, food supply is gonna run out fast, and we have been told that they stayed like this for years. I am pretty sure food and water supply is in shortage. So what can they do with money? Buy supplies. Are they dumbs? They grabs supplies out in the jungle of zombies just to get money for some supplies that they would already have if not sold them out? Besides, money dont mean jack-shit without a operating issueing bank, and I dont think the banks are open under zombie days.

What have these stupid rich assholes contributed to the situation? Aint that obvious protecting them for money is stupid?

That being said, why is the people hired for money to protect the rich, that doesnt do anything but shopping. The residents in the Green, whom I imagine would be accountants, lawyers, or investment bankers, do nothing but shopping and having high teas. What do we need them for since clearly the stock market and court has been shutdown, and we do not even have an account.

Lastly, with that much of firepower, they could easily end the whole thing by killing all the zombies. You can just run it over with the armoured automobile.

Having an argument with the door wide open. Brilliant. Guess what happen next.

I understand it sort of address the problem of the contrast between rich and poor, but this scenario seems far-out for me. I imagine it more like in Mad Max 2 (1981), in which people trade supplies for supplies, and there is no rich man that can just sit down and enjoy art.

Now with that out of the way, we look at how Romero dealing with the zombie scenario again. In Land of the Dead we goes back to the Romero zombies, which are slow-moving, but like in Day of the Dead (1985), they can learn. A more intelligent zombie seems to learn how to use tool, shot a gun, and walk underwater. He leads other zombies to breach the perimeter of the city, and storm Fiddler's Green. I have already talked about how I do not like the learning idea, and while in this one they do not seems like retarded, it is closer to a point that we can reason with them. So are they even mindless zombies anymore...?

Tom Savini makes a cameo in this and it does kinda awesome to kinda suggest this is the same character from Dawn of the Dead.

The plot and characters are pretty standard. Money arguments and interest conflicts cause troubles, and Cholo wants to kill the richest by threatening them he would storm the place for ransom, while the good guy Denbo has to stop him for the innocient riches, pretty much like in many other movies such as The Rock (1996). We can have the story goes in other post-apocalyptic situations, like nuclear war, tsunami, epidemic, you name the rest. Zombie has nothing really to do with it.

Overall, I would not rate it good. Although comparing this to other movies at the time, it does take a bold step to make something different, but doesnt really work for me. On the entertaining level I would rate it more or less the same as the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004) gives me, and aint that a shame. George A. Romero would follow this with Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009), and things got worse. Maybe in all walks of life, we got it at some point and lost it.

Theatre of the Dead #12 - House of the Dead (2003)

Director: Uwe Boll Stars: Jonathan Cherry, Tyron Leitso, Clint Howard, Ona Grauer

Review:

Finally we come to this: the infamous Uwe Boll's House of the Dead. Aint that bad. It is so significant in the history of the zombie genre that it makes the new low that nobody had gone before, or even among movies in general. Definitely there maybe Z / zero-budget movies that were worse, but it may be the worst movie that travelled the distance over half of the earth to land on my videostore for my torment.

As other movies of Uwe Boll, House of the Dead is a movie adaptation of the videogame in the same name. I played the first House of the Dead at a very young age, probably 10 or 11, and I could remember nothing from the plot, just shot, shot and shot some more. So saying this movie has nothing to do with the game would be unfair. But indeed it is.

Zombie bitch flying over for taking a single shot. O wow.

A group of young people wanted to get on an isolated island for a rave party, but they were late for the ship. They hired a captain to take them on the island by his boat. "Forget it. Do you know what the natives call the island? Isle de Morte! Whichs mean island of death in Spainish." The captained said to the kids. "And if this is some lame attempt to hit me up for more cash..." "It aint. There ain't enough cash in the world to make us go back there." The captain firmly replied. "$1000". "Ok." O wow. So it is a lame attempt to hit for more cash afterall.

Zombie fighting Power rangers. 

So what do you know, there are zombies on the island and the kids try to survive. Havent we seen this somewhere before? Go to an island, where zombies are there. Hmm....Zombi 2? Yeah it would make more resemblance to Zombi 2 than to House of the Dead. It even have the zombie underwater fighting scenes just like in Zombi 2, but of course this is much lamer.

To tell how stupid the plot is, one needed to talk about the movie frame by frame, which I would not do that. I cant even analyse it under the framework of this review series since it is so stupid and inconsistent throughout the whole movie. So I may well talk about why this movie sucks so much.

1. Dumb characters. The movie always mention that one character "has a smile of Tom Cruise and the brain of Rainman." Firstly Rainman is austic but not stupid. Secondly that character is not much goodlooking. Thirdly he was not much dumber than any of the others. So at the end when he had his face ruined by zombie acidic saliva (o yeah), I feel nothing at all.

2. Stupid dialogue. The kids found an old house on the island, and one said "What is this....?" A house. You are too stupid to figure it is a house? When a pair travelling though the wood, one suddenly said "What is it!?" "I couldn't hear anything." "Me neither". Then what the fuck is what!? Such dialogue is throughout the whole movie.

"What is this...?" 

3. The action music. Whenever there is a chase scene or action sequence, there is techno or rock music, which does not adds to the tension but plainly annoys me. I did not found it cool or anything, but a lyric from Eminem pops in mind "Who listens to techno? Now let's go."

4. Game footage for changing scenes. Do I even need to say why?

The scene I hate the most is the action sequence in front of the house the kids find, in which they fight off a bunch of incoming zombies. It does a 360 degree camera close-up on each and everyone of the character, which stretches the sequence so long and so boring. It makes me feel like the power rangers, but even power rangers are more fun.

The camera spirls around her as she stands still. More like a catwalk show than a gunfight.

House of the Dead is one of my most hated movie of all time, and I was not even a fan of the original game. Uwe Boll really knows how to make shitty movies, and have done a really good job by far. When does the hurting stops?

Theatre of the Dead #11 - Resident Evil (2002)

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson Stars: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez

Review:


Resident Evil (2002) actually came out before 28 Days Later, but I do not consider that it is this film which revived the zombie genre. It just could not be.

Resident Evil is a survival horror video game first release on the Playstation, and spawned many sequels. Not being an extreme hardcore fan, I am still able to tell this movie adaptation is nothing like the game.

Naked Milla Jovovich is so memoriable in The Fifth Element (1997), they think she have to be naked here.

The movies opens telling us Umbrella is a super-power corporate that deals with military weaponry. A testube breaks and whole office were shut down by a fire-drill, which release poison gases to kill them. Later we see Milla Jovovich wakes up naked in a bathroom, and cant remember nothing. Gamers of the first game may think, so she is gonna explore the place, which is a mason, like in the first game. Nope. She met a self-claimed police officer outside, and a bunch of special forces arrive, and took them down to the lab, in which the mason is just a cover for an entrance. So 90% of the story went on in the underground lab, and the mason is just for show.

The A.I. killing the special forces with lazers. It killed several guys with a single beam and the leader with this.
Why not just the net beams at the first place?
Even better, why didnt you gas them like the others, especially after they take off their masks?

I am not a movie-watcher that usually nitpick plotholes, but I just could not stand this movie. Okay so the mason was a cover for a secret entrance to a highly confidently labratory? Why would you build such a big mason out of nowhere in jungle to cover it up? Why wouldnt you build something that nobody would be willing to visit, like a small wooden house or a public toilet maybe? The special forces found that the map was different, in which a place the map showing should be a dinning hall, turns out to be a place to store monsters. "Maybe Umbrella kept secret from you." Ok. So why they send the special forces down which they can just look and see for themselves? The supercomputer A.I. for the defense apparent enjoy playing pranks and watch people feeling they have a chance before kill them. The laser scene was always mentioned, but in the opening of the movie, when the women stuck halfway at the door of the lift, the computer could kill her moving the lift to the ground. But no. She stops right before the women hit the floor, then move up the lift so the ceiling could kill the women.

Why stop there? You were gonna kill her anyways. Why stop there and go up again?

And the most incomprehensible plot point is that, why does Spence break the T-virus in the lab? He wanted to steal the virus samples for himself. Just take it and leave and everything would be just fine. But he had to throw it to the table and broke it intentionally, just to activiate the security. Brilliant.

So this movie has nothing to do with the game. The game relies on solving mysteries and discovery, but this movie tells us right in the beginning that Umbrella is behind all this. So much for the mystery. When I first saw it I thought Millia Jovovich is Jill or Claire, but no, she is Alice. Who the hell is Alice!? None of the characters were from the game. One character dies and the Michelle Rodriguez character, who fond of him apparently, feels very sad and could not let go. The sorrow music sets in and I could not feel anything. Hell I cant even remember his name.

Day of the Dead reference at the end of the movie.

Also another bad horror movie omen: rock music during action scenes. It is not cool. It's just loud noises and means nothing. Stop putting rock music over anything. I have seen a video on Youtube which put rock music over Pokemon videos. It is stupid and not cool. It's just not.

Resident Evil movie also spawned many sequels, and like any other movies series it shunk deeper and deeper in stupidity. Comparing it to Silent Hill, the Silent Hill movie is superior in so many levels that it does resemble the game in some way. This one? It is just not Resident Evil.

Theatre of the Dead #10 - Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Director: Edgar Wright Stars: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield

Review:


Shaun of the Dead (2004) is a zombie comedy that not only make fun of zombies like its predecessors such as Braindead, but also plays around the cliches also. I would not say this is a spoof on the zombie genre, since apparently the director Edgar Wright like the zombie cliches and pays homage to them rather than makes fun of them.

Shaun is an everyday un-successful guy in london. He has a boring job, disrespected by his co-workers, have a friend that everybody hates, and broke up with his girlfriend because he goes to the same pub with his best friend on every date. And one day when Shaun was doing his daily routines, zombies rages.

The zombies are in the Romero type so actually they does not poses whole lot of threat to our heros. Shaun didnt even realize the street were occupied by the zombies when he went out to buy a bottle of milk. Besides the comic routines, we actually see more deeply of the characters as the disaster go on. Shaun's best friend is an unemployed bum, who is fat and dirty. However as disaster strikes he seems not affected and keep on his fucked-up attitude even to the end of him, which makes him somehow courageous. The male roomate of Shaun's girlfriend had always been despising Shaun and thought he does not deserves her. However now with the involvement of zombies he turns out to be a selfish coward, and cares nobody other than himself. All he has is his good mouth. Of course Shaun becomes the leader, tries to get the group out of trouble and gets the girl. That went without saying.

This movie contains references to other zombie movies everywhere, and I am not able to spot all of them. A obvious one would be a guy being torn apart by the zombies, which appeared in Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. Also there's the "We're coming to get you Barbara" line. As I have put it, these scenes reminded us of the classic zombie films, but not much of a parody or spoof of those.

As far as zombie comedy goes, this movie certainly contained some sad scenes. Most zombie movie ends up with most of the main cast being killed or turned into zombies and this one is no exception. Come to think of it, Shaun's stepfather died after resolving their hatred, his mother died in his own hands, his best friend was bitten and left for dead, and even the bartender of his favourate pub died. That is harsh man.

Shaun of the Dead would become an example on zombie comedies to come, rather than like the classic zombie comedies which mostly rely on slapstick humour.

Theatre of the Dead #8 - Braindead/Dead-Alive (1992)

Director: Peter Jackson Stars: Timothy Balme, Diana Penalvar, Elizabeth Moody

Review:

In the mid-80s to most of the 90s, horror comedies dominated the horror genre. Most horror movies at that time are horror comedies. I imagine the mentality goes like this: people getting used to gory stuff and instead of getting scared, they laughed at the scenes. Well, if you not gonna scare anyway, then laugh. Braindead is one of the slapstick horror comedies that came out at the time, but the gore scenes were so exaggerated that it really is the goriest movie ever made.

A manager (?) of a zoo brings back a rare rat monkey from Skull Island. If the monkey bites a person, the person will be turned into a zombie, and go bite other people. It did not really explain why but natives from the Skull Island believed it is related to black magic. Also judging from the theme, that includes a gypsy old fortune teller speaking about dark forces and a blessed necklace that gets our protagonist out of trouble numerous times, I believe the movie suggests it is black magic. A young man, who is not too good with people, go to the zoo for a date. His mom, which have a lot of presence from the mom in Psycho (1960), followed him and got bitten by the rat monkey. So there you go, zombies and more zombies.

Plot does not matter much here, since this movie is all about gore and comedic moments. The opening scene sets the tone of the movie. The zoo representative was accidentally bitten by the monkey on the hand. His workers, who possess native knowledge, screamed "Zingaya" and severed his hand. The workers then noticed he got another wound on the other hand. They screamed "Zingaya" and severed his another hand. The workers then noticed he got another wound on his forehand.

ZINGAYA!!!

There are so many memorable scenes: the Kung-Fu priest, the zombie intercourse and the zombie baby who can take a lot of abuse, and of course the climax party scene. The last 40 minutes or so is just all blood, severed limbs, intestines, and more blood. In the review of Return of the Living Dead, I said there is no way to kill this type of zombies. Well there actually is a way. You grind them into meat pots, which is what they do here. When you see a guy grind all zombies in a party into a mesh of flesh, your care for the plot goes out of the window.

The funniest scene in my opinion: this seemingly clumsy fat guy goes apeshit and chops up a lot of zombies.

It is not that kind of movie that contains satires or deeper meanings, but just plain entertainment from gore and slapstick humor. I am not a big fan of slapstick, but it do set a lighter tone for all the gore scenes here or else I would have puked. I did not laugh too hard nor did I scared a lot, but at least I am entertained. Peter Jackson of course went on and made the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which is hard to imagine after seeing this.

Oh god.

Up until now we have seen the slow moving Romero zombies, the immortal "Return of the Living Dead" zombies, zombies that can learn to play toys and zombies that just fell down and die to infects others as in Night of the Creeps. We have seen the dead rise up because of radiation from outer space (that's actually is the explanation in Night of the Living Dead), voodoo, re-animation medicine, chemical, alien slug, or it is because hell just full. In the late 90s zombie movies took a rest and when we come back we will jump into modern zombie apocalypses.

Theatre of the Dead #7 - Night of the Creeps (1986)

Director: Fred Dekker Stars: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow

Review:

In the late 80s and 90s there was not a whole lot of significant zombie movies. I checked with the Wikipedia list, and though a lot of zombie movies exist at that time, but none of them having IMDB score higher than 5. IMDB score does not represent an absolute rating, but if a movie have IMDB score less than 5, it's probably trash and I am yet to find a counter-example. However I found this little forgotten piece, Night of the Creeps.

The first half of the movie is a cliche teenage love story: young shy boy, dream girl, bullying boy friend, you know the deal. It is so typical and predictable that it bored out my tears. Besides the love plot, there is also a lot of nudity scene too, like they know this is boring and have to rely on some sexual appeal.

Love sub-plot. Bad omen. Very bad omen.

I generally do not appreciate horror comedies, besides I like pure horror genre better, I believe comedy is a very regional thing, and the jokes do not transcent well to foreign audiences. In a scene a hero and his crippled friend was questioned by the police since they were seen running out from a lab that has a dead body missing, "screaming like a banshee". In the next 10 minutes "screaming like a banshee" becomes a running gag.  All the characters add this phase as a supplement, but I dont get it. It is supposed to be funny? What is so funny about "screaming like a banshee"? If you saw a real cadaver in a dark laboratory that gripped your neck, you would scream like a banshee too.

That joke about loved one turned into zombies but too distracted to notice, again. Havnt laughed I'm sorry.

It is not until some people actually show up as zombies that this movie turns better. So some aliens that looked like naked midgets and have a face like Krang from TMNT, had an experimental creature escaped from their spaceship to earth. They look like slugs and jump into people's mouth. Once they were inside, they laid eggs in your brain and burst your head to come out. The plot is very similar to Slither (2006), and judging from the release date, Slither ripped this off. Though the director of Slither claimed to be influenced by Cronenburg's Shivers (1975) and The Brood (1979), I found that story seems to come from Night of the Creeps, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Fly (1986). I am not going to talk about Slither in the future, since except for the gross but well-made special effects, it does not have something really original.

Back to Night of the Creeps. The zombies in this movie does not really attack people, but just walk around till their head burst and spread the slug-like creatures. Our hero's crippled friend was trapped in the toilet while taking a dump, and a zombie just dead right outside. At first I could not understand why he did not pick up his cane and get out, maybe scream like a banshee if he wanted to. He was desperately try to reach a match that was lying on the floor. Oh so now I know he wanted to light the match box, activate the smoking alarm and wait for rescue. Clever move, but no. He lighted the match box, put it on the floor, a slug-like creature bumped into it and got killed. Ok so now I know he have read the script, or else why would one think a brief contact with fire, since the creature is moving in high speed, could instantly kill them?

Your head bursts to give birth to all those slug-like creatures.

Despite all the love subplot, un-necessary nudity, bad writing and unexplainable character reaction, there is some scenes that I do like. I do feel sad when the crippled friend died, and left his dead words as recording to his best friend. Their friendship is also interesting to me, and it was well established and effective when we see him die. And the scene when our hero stands off the zombies with his dreamgirl holding a flamethrower in her is also memorable. But I do not get why the shrieff have to kill himself in order to destroy all those creatures with an explosion. Couldnt he use some ways more clever? Grenades or fuses maybe?

Duck tapes to prevent the slugs getting into the mouth. Good thinking. But he took it off in the next scenes. Ah...why?

Night of the Creeps is a homage movie, that it pays homage all the time. The first encounter with the creature from outer space throws back to the 50s sci-fi movies, especially reminiscient of The Blob (1958). People watch Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) on TV and the character's first name are tributes to horror movie directors: Romero, Cronenburg, Carpenter, Hooper. But as Roger Ebert said in U-Turn (1996), I feel quizzed and distracted to found all these homages. So do I like this movie? Well it may not be a significant zombie movie, but still worth a watch just for good scenes in the second half.

Theatre of the Dead #6 - H.P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator (1985)

Director: Stuard Gordon Stars: Jeffery Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Campaign

Review:

For the definition of zombie we have been using so far, this one does not fully justify to be a zombie movie, but I just love this movie so much I could not leave it alone. It was included in the Wikipedia List of Zombie Movies, so it is justified in some sense.

Re-Animator is based on a novel written by H.P. Lovecraft, who is the most influencial writer on the horror genre up to this day. Ask Stephen King and he will tell you the same thing. He is always compared to Edgar Allan Poe, but I think Poe's stories are so dated but Lovecrafts' can happen even in modern days. Re-Animator was written upon request of the publisher to rip off Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, when it was in its peak popularity. Lovecraft hated Frankenstein since he did not like the idea that human can play God. He was always the believer that human is small and limited, and that is why his work was not popular in the Enlightment period which he lived in. But for the money he instead did a parody, and this is also what this movie is, a parody.

Herbert West is a genius medical student, that is recently admitted to the Miskatonic University. (Mistkatonic University is a fictional university which many supernatual incidence took place in Lovecraft's novels.) He invented a re-agent that can turn the dead back to life, but the re-animated corpse seems to be crazies. West asked another student, that is doing internship in the hospital apparently, to get him into the morgue for human experiment for his re-agent. However the professor knew and try to steal the discovery and claim as his own.

Re-animating a dead cat.

Therefore the zombie here is the re-animated corpses by Herbert West. They can be killed easily, in the way of killing normal people. The spotlight here is not the zombies, but Herbert West. I dare not to say this is a likable character, but I like him so much. I see a lot myself in him, or at least someone that I always wanted to be. He is intelligent, courteous but at the same time rude for he despises others for his pride of expertise. He shows no respect to anything other than his work, and kills feeling no regret or remorse. Have I fancy myself as a scientist, Herbert West is the role model, just a little mad. It is interesting for me to watch him get into argument when he heard someone is contradicting him in his study, and in any serious situations all he cares about is his work.

Counting how many seconds does it takes to re-animate the one he killed.

Another villain, considering West is not so righteous by himself, is a professor called Halls who wanted to claim the discovery as his own. He is not as classy as West, as we see he is stubborn, perverted, and wanted the girl for his own sexual aptitude. Halls is an old scholar, believes what he perceived and refuses new ideas. It is also interesting to watch he and West get into arguments since I have always wanted to say the dialogue, but I didnt just because I was afraid to fail my course.

The infamous scene of a head giving fellatio.

The opening credit is one of the best I have ever seen, with the tone which is a re-mix of the theme music from Psycho (1960), and shows diagrams in human anatomy from maybe the 19th century. It is fun, scientific and a bit scary from the crude science, and sets the tone for the movie. After the opening credits you understand what you expect, and loved it or hated it.

I know I have despised horror comedies, and this contradicts all what I have been said. But I despised it because it generally is silly and dumb, and Re-Animator makes jokes not from slapstick, but from the characterization of academic maniacs, and that is tastful. Take a look on West face and know that he despises you not because you dont have an iPhone or not wearing Guccis, but your ignorance and incompetent. That is the true upper-class.

Theatre of the Dead #5 - Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Director: Don O'Bannon Stars: Clu Gulager, James Karen

Review:

In the 80s horror movies took a change in pure horror to more of horror comedies. Generally I do not appreciate horror comedies for scary and funny are opposite emotions. Return of the Living Dead (1985) would be the first zombie comedy considering our more harsh definition of zombies, and to my surprise this is one of my favourate zombie film of all time.

Most scary looking zombie I have seen.

A newcomer employee Freddy of a medical supply warehouse was shown a tour. His supervisor Frank knows he likes the scary stuff, dead bodies and those thing told him a secret of the company. He said the movie Night of the Living Dead was actually based on true events, and the dead were contained by this company from the order of the military. The movie changed the facts for avoiding lawsuits and actually it was a chemical that is bringing back the life. They went to the basement to watch the zombies contained in cans, but the gas in the can leaks, and all hell breaks loose.

Zombie in a can. One tap of the can and the gas leaks. It's must be made in china.

The zombie formular have changed again and this variation of Romero zombies is the most power zombie species in zombie history. They can run, have some intelligence that are able to ambursh people, and eat only brains. The real major problem is that they can not be killed. Destroying their brains wont work and their brains were eatten by other zombies anyways. If you severed their limbs, their limbs will movie on their own to come after you. Burning them is an absolutely no-no. The smokes raise to the sky and come down as rain, which would resurrect more zombies. How do you kill it you may ask? You dont. You contain them in a can. But how do you contain hundreds of them out there with several teamate you got here? Well that is the trouble.

Girl dancing naked for she's feeling horning of fantasizing of being killed horribly.

This movie is parody of the whole death metal culture. Death metalist or fans always think death is cool, till they be eating alive by the dead. Freddy have a group of friend that is into death metal or something like that. They hang around the cemetary to wait for Freddy. One slut always wanted to being killed horribly, and get horny fantasizing "a bunch of old man...eating her alive". She got so high, that she started dancing naked. I said un-necessary nuditiy is a omen for bad horror movies, but here it is necessary for it opens up all funny moments that comes ahead, when the rain with zombie chemical falls and burns her skin, and not able to run with no shoes. Well what do you know? She had her dreams come true. Take that bitch. I hope that bitch in Nekromantik (1987) get the same treatment too.

Still horny now slut?

Another highlight would be they captured and interrogated one of the zombies. They asked the zombie why do they eat brains. The zombie answered that it is painful to be dead, feeling yourself rotting away, and eating brains relieves the pain. We get also from the people that is turning into zombie, as the formular stated, that it is painful for the rigor mortis. It medically makes sense. Pressure your legs for 30 minutes to block the bloodflow and see what happens. Imagine your whole body is like that. Now you know that pain.

The writer of this movie, John Russo, is the co-writer of Night of the Living Dead, together with George A. Romero. It is a shame that usually only Romero got remembered. He and Don O'Bannon gives interesting new ideas to the zombie genre and they need to be given credits. Return of the Living Dead spawned two sequels, but none of them were any good. After whole lot of conventional zombies, get some un-conventional ones. 

Theatre of the Dead #4 - Day of the Dead (1985)

Director: George A. Romero Stars: Lori Cardille, Joseph Pilato

Review:

In continuity of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead comes Day of the Dead, the third film in the series. In Night of the Living Dead we saw how the apocalyze begins, and in Dawn of the Dead we saw how people setting up resistance and try to survives. Now in Day of the Dead, the resistance failed. Everywhere is deserted and overrun with zombies.

We know this fact right from the beginning scene. A group of people flew over in a helicopter, and wanted to search for victims in the city down below. Nobody is on the street, newpaper which headlined the zombie incidence flying everywhere, a dried corpse eaten by inserts, money scattered around without any notice, and at last we see the zombies come out from the cry of the search for living human. This single scene bridges from Dawn of the Dead to Day of the Dead, in which zombies now rule the world and apparently the resistance have failed. This is a great scene in telling a story and also the best in the movie. It goes downhill from here.

The first zombie seen in the movie. Makeup is way improved from Dawn of the Dead.

A small group of scientists and military hid in a underground bunker in order to do research on zombie, in hope of solving the zombie apocalyze. Apparently the government ordered this research, and the military were given order to protect the science team. However the government went down in the incidence, and the main leader were killed. The military start to question what is the point of risking their life to protect the scientists that gives no result.

In the previous zombie films, the origin or cause of zombies are in mystics. We presume some magic or higher power that we could not comprehen caused the dead to walk once again. Day of the Dead maybe the first movie to bring science and military into the equation. The mad scientist, who is obsessed of why a decaying flesh would walk, found out zombies are motivated by only the brain. If we can seperate some parts of the brain, we could control their behaviour, and he thought that would be the solution to the zombie apocalyze. "I'll show them these creature can be domesticated even without the surgery."

Shot the brain and it's dead. What if just a brain, or even part of it? That is science.

In layman's term that means teaching them to play toys, like teaching a dog not biting its owner. I have the same reaction as the "villain" in the movie. What the fuck? We were all counting on you to make a device so that we could push a button and all zombies would just fell down, and you are telling me you can found out they can be taught to play toys? I personally would shot him on the spot, who's with me? 

"It's extraordinary isnt it!? Say hello to auntie Alicia" *Bang* *Bang* if I were there.

That is main problem with the movie. I agree with the supposedly bad guy, the military leader Captain Rhodes. The scientist provide nothing useful and the military man were risking their life to protect them? Later on we even discover that the mad scientist used the dead military guy on experiments, and their flesh as "rewards" to the zombies that behave. Who, if from the military, would not want to shot him. Hell I would even feed him to the zombies.

A zombie gets punished in the dark room. Wait. Zombies are afraid of the dark?

Another problem would be the mere concept that zombies can learn. Zombie are scary because 1) they are dead, 2) they want to eat you and last but majorly 3) they feel no fear. By letting them have emotions you are killing off the major scary factor. So then you can do things that they fear to keep them off and that is not hard. In this way they looks more like idiots then zombies.

An iconic scene from the movie.

The one that took the bite, as one would stated in the formular, did not actually died but open the lift to the surface and led of the zombies in, to sebotage the tyranny rule of Rhodes. It seems the lift is the own way to the surface since when he destroyed the button in LG, they did not find another way to reach the surface. Problem: how does the zombie infest the base so quickly? Once the lift lowered down, the military people ran all over the place and all they met were zombies. This leads to a natural conclusion the they all were killed by the zombies. Supposedly the scene in Dawn of the Dead the a human were ripped apart by the zombie were so popular that they make that scene several times in this movie.

It does not stand down in gore value.

I havent yet talk about the main characters because there are nothing worthy to talk about. Rhodes and the mad scientist steal the show for me. We see the men arguing, the collapsion of their mental states, but we have  already seen that in Night of the Living Dead didnt we?

Dont get me wrong this is still an entertaining movie and adding new elements shows Romero's effort to try to extend the whole idea instead of repeating it. After this one Romero took a long rest from zombie movies, and this movie completes the original trilogy of the Living Dead. Next time we would switch from Romero zombies, and watch how zombie movies advance in other people's hand. 

Theatre of the Dead #3 - Zombi 2 (1979)

Director: Lucio Fulci
Stars: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch


Review:


The first natural reaction off seeing the title would be: where is Zombi 1? Upon release in Italy, the title of Dawn of the Dead was changed into Zombi, and in order to capture the success of Dawn of the Dead they decided to call this movie Zombi 2. In the States there is no Zombi 1 so the poster uses the title Zombie. Despite the confusing title, this movie have nothing to do with Dawn of the Dead.

I find this looks amazing visually. With fires it looks like gate of hell.

Zombi 2 takes a more traditional horror movie approach to the zombie scenario. In Night of the Living Dead zombie just appears right at the beginning of the movie with no explaination. In Dawn of the Dead, the zombie already taken over right at the start. Zombi 2 gives the backstory on how the zombie raises.

The movie starts with a discovery of an abandoned ship in New York. Two policeman go abroad to investigate, but one of them got killed. The police force believes that it has something to do with the shipowner, but the shipowner's daugter and a reporter does not share the same thought with the police. They find a death letter from the shipowner on the ship, that he was held on an island. They decided to went on that island, and find out the dead is coming alive.

She would turn around but I dont want to make this an adult site.

We seem to have heard the story many times before (the basic plot is a bit similar to Tombs of the Blind Dead 1971, in which in both movie the characters went to some far places and the dead come to kill them), and it contains all bad horror movie omens, such as a love subplot and un-necessary nudity. In the first half of the movie it does get a bit boring while the characters try to create suspense when we all have already know the answer. But later when the zombie attack is in full motion,the shock value even exceeds Dawn of the Dead. The zombie makeup looks way better and designed that they decays, and their flesh can easily be scratched off since they are dead. They rises from the grave with all the worms and insects, and looked way more nasty.

Compare these with the Dawn of the Dead zombies and you know what I mean.

Another thing this movie brings to the zombie formular is it gives more attention to the cause. In Night of the Living Dead we were told briefly that the zombie coming back to life is because of an outer space radiation bought by a spaceship back from venus. Nowadays we know that radiation does not work that way, but back in 1968 people was fed by tonnes of sci-fi movie of the 50s about ridiculous consequences of exposure to radiation. People in 1950s were afraid so much of radiation since they witnessed the nuclear bomb explosion first hand.

A zombie fighting a shark. The shark is real by the way.

Coming back to this movie, it goes back to the root of zombie legend, that the cause of zombie is voodoo, like in the movie White Zombie (1932), though we were not definitely told. The native on the island said it is voodoo, but the doctor that is researching the zombie phenonmenon on the island, speaking representing our logic, does not believe. However he tried pathology, virology, radiology, etc and nothing gives an explaination. So at the end we were not sure if it is really the cause, but it thrills you more with the mystery than just telling you it is a virus.

Ever played Resident Evil 4/5?

Zombi 2 is worth watching for its shock value, and it defines what a zombie looks like today. It spawns its own line of sequels, though seemingly not related to each other, and none of the sequels is worth mentioning. The director Lucio Fulci went on to make some other zombie movies that is unrelated to Zombi 2, like City of the Living Dead (1980). Nowadays George A. Romero is commonly hailed as the person who created zombies, but I consider Lucio Fulci's name in the Hall of Fame of the zombie genre with Romero and another director that I have yet to introduce.