The Lucky 13: Week Eleven: Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!
by Brutal As Hell Staff
Intro by Marc Patterson
Zombies… I love those brain eating bastards. I’m going to go out on a limb and declare that zombies are the most popular of monsters amongst fans of horror. I know that vampires seem to be pretty popular right now, but let’s face it – amongst horror fiends… give us zombies and give us death!
This week in The Lucky 13 we celebrate our most favorite and treasured zombie horror films. The tastes range from mainline popular films to some more obscure titles only proving that amongst fans of the undead, our personal tastes can vary tremendously.
Make sure to also visit the The Vault of Horror, our fellow conspirator in The Lucky 13, who has a TON of great selections this week as well.
Marc Patterson on Zombi 2 (AKA Zombie)
How can we talk about zombies and not talk about Lucio Fulci? He is the Italian Godfather of Gore, the maestro, purveyor of gut-churning grotesqueries that will have you gnawing at your own knuckle in horror! So much of what we do here revolves around this incredible (and sometimes incredulous), filmmaker. For the love of all that’s undead, we even feature artwork from the Zombi 2 poster in our banner!
Naming things that I love about Zombi 2 would almost take more time than the film has running minutes. It starts with a bullet to the brain of a corpse as it rises from the dead. A man hidden by shadows quietly states, “The boat can leave now,” upon which we enter the harbor of New York City. For me New York is the epicenter of the universe. While I live in the secluded woods of New Hampshire, I go to New York at least once a month and I love seeing it on screen. Being able to catch a vision of the city before it was cleaned up and turned into Disneyland is pure bliss.
But that’s only the tip of a monumental iceberg of the undead. Zombies in New York are great but let’s kick it to the Caribbean, the birthplace of the modern zombie. Here is where most of the action takes place, on an uncharted island cursed with the walking dead. The tone of the film takes a drastic turn as we deal with voodoo curses, and more nasty horror at every turn. At this point in the film we start seeing some of the iconic imagery that made Fulci famous, and this film so immensely popular.
Of course there’s the famous splinter to the eyeball, and the rotting corpse head that is featured on so much horror merchandise, but for my money it doesn’t get any better than zombie vs. shark, one of my favorite moments in horror cinema. This is a scene you’ll never see replicated anywhere else. No indie filmmaker would have the cahones to pull it off and no big studio would ever get a set insured! A diver with no breathing apparatus dressed as a zombie, wrestling in a pool of water with a live shark? C’mon. This is what horror cinema is all about.
Topping off the non-stop action are titacular women which Fulci disrobes for our ogling pleasure before he dismembers them. Fulci knows what we look for in gut-munching cinema and pours it on liberally.
Zombi 2 is a film that works anytime anywhere. I can watch it late at night, or in the morning over a bowl of Cheerios. It’s as much a staple to horror as Apple Pie is to Americana.
Ben Bussey on Shaun of the Dead
Come on. I’m the sole English member of the Brutal As Hell crew. What else could I have picked?
(And don’t say The Living Dead in the Manchester Morgue, because… ahem… I haven’t seen it. And I understand it’s not a British film anyway.)
This is one of those movies that it’s hard to find something new to say about, seeing as how it has inspired so much love, so many outpourings, and had such an impact culturally on both sides of the Atlantic. Where to begin? Okay, for starters it’s easily one of the funniest films of the past ten years. Truly laugh-out loud funny, even after multiple viewings, with the kind of dialogue that doesn’t stop being fresh, sharp, and witty even once you’ve seen the film enough times to recite every word in time with the action. On top of which, it’s a film that balances humor and horror with rare skill, with the constant threat of grisly death hanging over the protagonists, and every so often an unexpected emotional jab to the gut that leaves the viewer floored. It’s the film that kick-started the big screen careers of messrs Wright, Pegg, and Frost, three of the most talented and endearing guys in the contemporary film scene (not to mention the Twitterverse!)
And then, of course, there’s the real clincher for our purposes here – Shaun of the Dead brought back zombies. REAL zombies, that is. I don’t want to start picking at the scabs of the old 28 Days Later “are-they-or-aren’t-they” debate (and if you’re listening closely in the final scenes you’ll get a hint of Wright and Pegg’s position on the matter!), but it’s fair to say that even if the antagonists of Danny Boyle’s film were not of the living dead, they were still used as a blueprint for many a living dead movie to follow in this past zombie-saturated decade. But Shaun, in that way that only the British can, went back to basics, utilising the classic Romero model, which – as Pegg has eloquently argued (read here) – carries a degree of pathos, tragedy and “poetic subtlety” that the athletic contemporary model notably lacks.
But above and beyond that, Shaun is just great fun, in a plain, simple, good old fashioned kinda way. Yes, it’s riddled with references for the genre fanatics among us, but none of these are used in an exclusionary way; you don’t have to get the references to be in on the fun. I mean, the significance of the name chosen for Shaun’s mum didn’t occur to me until I’d seen it a few times, even with Frost declaring “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!” Indeed, Shaun may well be the first noteworthy comedy horror made since Scream that didn’t sink into explicit knowing references, having the characters comment outright on how similar the scenario is to a film. Even the “Z” word itself is only invoked a couple of times.
In its energy, its endless re-watchability and its affection for the genre, this “zom-rom-com” masterpiece is hard to beat. It raised the bar for comedy horror, and I think it’s fair to say that no other pretender has come close to stealing its crown. And of course, in Shaun’s classic combo of cricket bat, red tie, and white shirt with red stain, it has provided the blueprint for many a lazy person’s Halloween and/or comic convention costume. How’s that for a slice of fried gold, as someone wiser than myself once said.
Kayley Viteo on Dawn of the Dead (1978)
There is definitely something about George Romero that is unidentifiable. If you’re not a horror fan, I don’t think you can quite understand the level of god-like power this man holds over an audience. At a showing with him in attendance at Fantastic Fest for his most recent film Survival of the Dead (which many in the audience did not like overall), the atmosphere was electric from beginning to end, just because of the very fact that this was his work. For me, this rampant and explosive Romero energy really begins
and flourishes with Dawn of the Dead.
Dawn of the Dead is an obvious choice, of course. What horror fan doesn’t love this movie, doesn’t consider it to be a classic? Hell, even if you’re not a horror fan, this movie should be on your list of classics. There will always be criticisms of the film (New York Times film critic Janet Maslin famously walked out after only 15 minutes), but for me … well, Dawn of the Dead is one of those that I reach for as a comfort film, as weird as that sounds. Yes, it is bleak (even more so if you’ve seen the alternate ending),
pessimistic and savage in its intensity, but the unrelenting nature of Dawn of the Dead is what the horror genre is all about – especially when it is done so right. It is smart, witty, elegant in its own way, and a dead-on allegory that is like a punch to the gut (we’ve all been mindless consumers at some point), not to mention has enough gore to make any gorehound worship at the feet of Tom Savini, the man behind the special effects.
To be completely blunt, when the going gets tough in the horror world – AKA when I’ve watched five awful films in a row (and I know we’ve all been there) – this is one of those films I consistently reach for to ease that frustration. Dawn of the Dead is a lesson for every future horror filmmaker – and for some already working – that you can have heavy gore while still maintaining a story and characters that intrigue you just as much as a good kill shot does. Sure, we all like a bit (or a lot) of violence, but most of us like it to be
well-matched with the story behind it.
I’d lay bets that all horror fans have these “comfort films” where watching them centers us to what the genre is really about and, in doing so, gives us back that feeling we had when we were 12 and watched something for the first time; that sense of being rendered utterly breathless by a film, as well as feeling terrified and filled with adrenaline. Nothing else matches it. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a constant reminder that you can, in fact, have it all as a horror fan.
Britt Hayes on Dead Alive (AKA Braindead)
Before the brilliant genre mash-up of Shaun of the Dead, there was Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. A mixture of splatstick, romance, and horror, Dead Alive (or Braindead, as it’s known in its native New Zealand) is a bold film from the mind of Peter Jackson, the man who only two years later would bring us the blissful and dark Heavenly Creatures (and introduce us to Kate Winslet, thank you very much), and would eventually lead Frodo Baggins on his epic journey to Mordor.
Dead Alive is the third film in Jackson’s early, blood-soaked career, and tells the story of Lionel (Timothy Balme), a bumbling and spineless mama’s boy, forever in service to Mum (Elizabeth Cosgrove). While out procuring groceries, he meets Paquita (Diana Peñalver) who believes they are fated to be together. Soon after, Mum is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey (it’s here that we first see Jackson’s love of King Kong: when the Sumatran rat-monkey’s back story is given in the beginning of the film, it’s found on Skull Island). Mum becomes very ill, starts quite literally falling apart, and dies in the middle of the night. Just as Lionel is rushing to get her to the hospital, she comes back to life as a zombie and continues to wreak havoc on Lionel’s life. Soon Lionel has a hand full of new zombie friends living in his basement, two of which are procreating, and he has to keep them hidden from Paquita lest she think he’s disturbing and insane.
Dead Alive is an absurd comedy of errors from beginning to very, very bloody end. Filled with memorable moments like the zombie baby running amok and Mum mutating into a giant, Freudian, larger-than-Lionel’s life problem. It’s also notorious in my house for being the only film that, even upon repeat viewings, still makes me gag (it’s the lunch scene with the ear and the pus). But the best part of the entire film is the climax at the end, when hordes of zombies descend upon Lionel and Paquita, culminating in the most visionary use of a lawnmower to ever grace cinema. Gallons of blood cover our characters, the house, and the floor – so much so that Lionel can’t keep his footing and slips and slides all over the place, lending credence to the term “splatstick”.
More than just one of my favorite zombie films, Dead Alive shows us the beginning of Peter Jackson’s directorial career. From his early films to Lord of the Rings and The Lovely Bones, Jackson still employs the same camera techniques, just with different content. Dead Alive is also just such an incredibly original and insane idea, that it truly stands out among the rest.
Dustin Hall on Zombie Bloodbath
Are you the type of person who will watch anything with zombies? I mean, anything? You might think that House of the Dead is slumming, and generally I agree with you, but there’s a whole slew of straight-to-video horror flicks that have directors just as bad as Uwe Boll, that don’t have the benefit of his budgets.
If you’re willing to look at a movie only a mother could love, you might be properly braced for Zombie Bloodbath. It’s a terrible movie, worthy of MST3K, forever linked to me by the fact that it was filmed in Kansas City, not too far from my home, and I dated one of the zombies from the film… Not that it would be hard to do so, an impressive 700 free volunteers showed up to play the swarms of undead that filled the city streets.
The movie is a labor of love from director Todd Sheets, who also wrote, produced, and did some stunt-work for the film. His story is that of a nuclear reactor leak that somehow begins a zombie apocalypse. Things progress about the way you would assume from there: the city is quickly and messily overrun, Romero-style, as a rag-tag group of survivors try to leave the city, and run into some trouble with gangs along the way.
It’s hard to nail down what my favorite part of the movie would be. It might be the opening, when the spontaneous reactor leak causes one worker’s face to melt off (I think the effect is created by melting ice cream over his head while he screams), and a horde of zombies in civilian clothes come bursting out of the walls… remind me, where in the nuclear power plant did these guys come from again? It might be all the scenes with the gangs, straight out of an all-female rendition of Michael Jackson’s Beat It. Perhaps it’s all the sweet karate moves the last couple guys pull out against the zombies, to surprising effect.
The one thing I pulled out of this movie was this: raw chicken, we’re made of it. Any time a human is cornered by zombies, their flesh, of course, must be devoured. The zombies rip into them, and pull out mounds of gooey raw chicken covered in fake blood to munch on. Hey, it really looks like human organs! Well, that kind of makes sense, except that every part of a human is made of it; legs, buttocks, bits of face, chest and torso. Everything! You haven’t lived until you see a redneck get bent over on a bridge to have a hole ripped in his jeans while zombies pull his chicken-guts out of his ass.
Its terrible and great, all at the same time. And filmed on numerous KC landmarks! Bonus! If you want some real trashy zombie cinema, check it out, now with the DVD packed with the 2 sequels this thing somehow spawned.
Annie Riordan on Return of the Living Dead
Seventeen years before Danny Boyle introduced the Fast Paced Infected, Dan O’Bannon gave us literal hordes of charging, galloping, marathon-capable zombies, running their rotting asses off through the streets of Kentucky with 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead. Every zombie fan knows about this movie, and every decrepit old fart who was a teenager back in the 80s (myself included in said fart consensus) remembers it: this was the movie that made zombies cool, punks cooler, and hard rock soundtracks for movies an absolute staple.
Eschewing the up-to-that-point popular origins of walking corpses (irradiated satellites, untested pesticides, etc.) ROTLD lays the blame at the feet of the U.S. Military, who are helped along by two bumbling morons. The entire film which follows is an unfortunate domino effect with attempts to clean up one mess leading to an even bigger mess which spirals out of control into a HUGE mess, at which point the word “clusterfuck” seems polite. In the process, ROTLD vomits up some of the most memorable zombie characters ever filmed, including the talking Half-Corpse, the “send more cops” dude, and the unforgettable Tarman, who should be a poster child for BP. These zombies – unlike the blank-faced “group mentality” zombies of films past – really had personality, colorful enough to match the mismatched band of “heroes” thrown together to combat them. Where else are you going to find a prissy mall-doll, a former Nazi, and an expletive-spewing punk rock black guy (who amazingly is NOT the first to die) joining forces in a mausoleum to battle the undead with baseball bats and jars of nitric acid?
And that soundtrack! FuckYeahPunkRock! From The Cramps and 45 Grave, to the supremely eerie Roky Erickson who croons and cackles his way through a truly hideous scene involving James Karen and a crematorium, everyone wanted to party like a zombie after viewing this gore-iffic flick. I had the vinyl edition, because THAT’S how god damned old I am!
Once it starts, ROTLD is just a blood-soaked snowball’s rapid downhill descent into zombie hell, but the music, the jet black humor, and the over-the-top slapstick style makes this more fun than Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride on acid. If you haven’t seen it yet, you just flat out suck. Get on this bitch, already!
