Maggie (2015)

Maggie (2015)

Director: Henry Hobson

Cast: Arnold Schwarznegger, Abigail Breslin

Here’s a zombie movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger which immediately makes you think you’re going to  see Arnold kicking all sorts of zombie ass and what have you, but be advised, that is not the type of movie you will get. Maggie is a more somber affair. I wasn’t expecting  a big zombie action extravaganza because I’d read some reviews and seen the trailers, so I was expecting exactly what I got, an artsy-fartsy take on the zombie genre, which is fine with me because I’m a zombie nut and I appreciate new and different takes on the zombie genre. The thing is that movie goers in search of serious, dramatic performances don’t exactly flock to see zombie movies, and those who love zombie movies, don’t want to see over dramatic anything, they want their gore, they want their zombie mayhem. So, did this film reach a happy medium? Or will zombie lovers end up being disappointed?

The story for Maggie is quite simple. A virus is spreading across the land and its turning people into zombies. The government has issued a quarantine; anyone who’s infected is to be taken away to these concentration camps, where they will be treated for their infection. One of these infected is Maggie, daughter to Wade Vogel, also known as Arnold Schwarzenegger. So Arnies daughter is infected and now he’s got to protect her from the government who wants to take her away to their concentration camps. What to do? Wait until she turns then kill her? Hand her over to the government? Let her live her life as a zombie?

There’s one thing I enjoyed about Maggie and it was that feeling of dread. You get the feeling that society is crumbling, falling apart. Everything is slightly dilapidated, but not full blown post apocalyptic. It’s all very grey, very dreary looking as if it’s always about to rain. I appreciate films that can sustain this tone all throughout and Maggie does that very well. The film is absolutely depressing all the way through, you can expect something along the lines of The Road (2009), where there’s not a happy moment in sight. In Maggie characters don’t smile, they don’t kid around, everybody looks and talks as if they‘re just about to slit their wrists out of depression.  So when you see this just remember that it’s a heavy shot of seriousness all the way through. Unfortunately, it also reminded of Stake Land (2010), a boring film within its genre.

While I can’t bring myself to call Maggie a bad film; I do have to say that it was rather uneventful. Not much happens that we haven’t seen in other zombie films and this is primarily where Maggie fails. It goes step by step through every zombie cliché in the book, only in a really slow, boring way. So you know how this movie goes: somebody you know gets infected; it isn’t easy to accept that your loved one is turning. What will you do when they transform? Will you shoot your loved one in the head? Will you have the strengths to shoot their brains out? And that about as far as the themes for Maggie go. So in this sense it’s a very predictable film and therefore boring because it stretches this simple plot all the way through to the end, no complications, no twists…you’re basically waiting to see what’s going to happen when Maggie finally turns full blown zombie. So while the film might look beautiful, because it does, it’s very well shot, it disappoints because it doesn’t deliver. It doesn’t try  to cover new ground. It’s simply going over themes and situations we’ve seen played out many times before in a million other zombie movies and not in a very interesting way.

Arnold and Abigail do turn in good performances, but don’t be expecting Arnold to cry you a river. This is basically Arnold being Arnold, he’s just saying every line very seriously that’s all. I thought maybe the director might try and make Arnold display a bit more emotion, but the film wasted the opportunity to make Arnold stretch his acting skills. I think the reason why this movie is so banal is that it’s director  doesn’t have much experience in filmmaking, I mean, were talking about a director whose only other directorial efforts include the trailers and opening sequences for various video games. Oh and he’s also directed the Oscars a few times? If you’re a true blue filmmaker, then you should be able to pull off a good movie no matter what, blamo, you’re dying to make a movie and here’s your chance bro! So you go and make this boring zombie movie? The biggest problem here is these filmmakers have chosen the wrong genre in which to make their break out film. 

If Mr. Henry Hobson wanted to make an artsy fartsy movie, he shouldn’t have chosen the zombie genre cause who the hell wants’ to be bored to death when watching a zombie movie? Nobody that’s who. You have to know your genre, you have to know your target audience. At the very least, as a filmmaker, Mr. Hobson and crew should have attempted a way in which to balance out the dramatic elements with the horror elements, because as it is, both sides are disappointed here. Zombie fans will be disappointed because for one, you don’t see a hell of a lot of zombies. And the ones you see aren’t rotting decomposing corpses, they are the kind that have little black veins painted on their pale skins…you know, not really rotting corpses. Also, to my great disdain, the gore is kept off camera and to a minimum, which sucks for a zombie movie. So what we got here ladies and gentlemen is a zombie movie with an emphasis on the drama, but even in that department it disappoints because it doesn’t offer up enough complexities or depth, it’s too simple a movie. Maggie  needed a little more of what zombies are always asking for “brains”.

Rating: 3 out of 5 

Frankenstein's Army (2013)

Title: Frankenstein’s Army (2013)

Director: Richard Raaphorst

Cast: Karel Roden, Alexander Mercury, Luke Newberry, Hon Ping Tang, Andrei Zayats, Mark Stevenson

This one slipped through the cracks for me when it was first released, but I decided to give it a go because of all those positive quotes on the dvd case saying such great things about it. And to be honest, for a low budget straight to video release, the movie rocks; and it rocks even more so because normally, Nazi zombie movies just aren’t that good, but this one is, so there you go. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve only seen one really good Nazi zombie movie and that’s Dead Snow (2009), it’s the only one that’s really satisfied me. I mean, yeah, I’ve seen Shock Waves (1977) which had awesome visuals but was incredibly slow at times. And speaking of slow, Oasis of the Zombies (1982) andZombie Lake (1981) are two Nazi zombie films that I’d rather forget about, they bored me to death! I’d also seen another one that I consider moderately good called Outpost (2008), my only problem with Outpost was that you didn’t get any Nazi zombies till really late in the film, something that Frankenstein’s Armydoes not suffer from. And speaking of Outpost, it has many similarities with Frankenstein’s Army from the way it was made; shooting in solated locations to the basic premise of having soldiers enter abandoned claustrophobic buildings with re-animated Nazi soldiers. But anyhow, I can safely say that Frankenstein’s Army is one of the best Nazi zombie films out there, read on and find out why.

On Frankenstein’s Army we follow a troupe of Russian soldiers who are on their way towards rescuing these Russian soldiers from the clutches of the evil nazi’s, their orders are to infiltrate this location and rescue them. Along the way they find some weird things, like dead bodies with weird shapes and appendages. The further in they go, the stranger things get! It isn’t long before they uncover a mad scientist conducting grotesque experiments dealing with the reanimation of dead Nazi’s! But the strangeness does not stop there!

Director Richard Raaphorst fooling around with his creations

This film comes to us from director Richard Raaphorst, a director who first started in the filmmaking business through working in the art department on various films, including work as a conceptual/story board artist in films like Jackie Chan’s Who Am I? (1998), Dagon (2001), Faust: Love of the Damned (2000) and Beyond Re-Animator (2003), which is a good thing in my book because it means that we have an artist behind the camera, which means we will probably end up with a film that has a strong visual style, which is the case with Frankenstein’s Army, there’s a real effort on the way things look. The film might be low budget, but director Richard Raaphorst makes the most of his locations. You see, Raaphorst knows the one trick that most low budget filmmakers live by: a great location makes your film look good. In an interview for Daily Dead, Raaphorst said that he didn’t know if the film was going to be made until he found that perfect location, once he found it, he was certain the film was going to happen. Frankenstein’s Army was shot in various abandoned buildings, which were made to look like the laboratory of a German mad scientist, the resulting look is very effective.

The film was shot “found footage” style, now, I’m not a hater of documentary style films because to me they are the best way to get us as audiences completely immersed in the film. The found footage style works great on Frankenstein’s Army because there’s many claustrophobic environments and dark corners, you feel as if you are walking down these creepy halls with these Russian soldiers, you feel as if something might jump out at you from the shadows at any given moment. Best part is that the creatures in Frankenstein’s Army are pretty horrific!

Raaphorst is the driving force behind the look of these creatures, which he designed himself. You see, Raaphorst had been dreaming of making this movie for many years now, he’d always been designing these monsters from childhood. The strange creatures that the mad scientist creates are composed of dead nazi soldiers joined with machines, creating a weird breed between zombie and machine, in this way Frankenstein’s Army has some elements of the cyber punk film, that idea of joining flesh with machine. The further the Russians go down the rabbit hole, the crazier the creatures get. Gotta hand it to Raaphorst, the creatures were the highlight of the film! They look like something that Clive Barker might have cooked up if he’d ever made a Nazi zombie flick. I enjoyed Frankensteins Army a lot, the locations were eerie and the monster designs awesome, but I couldn’t get past the idea that the movie should have gone further with its ideas.

I’ve got very few negative things to say about this one, but there’s the idea that these are Russian soldiers that we are following, but for some reason they speak English the whole time, and I’m like, okay, so they speak English with a Russian accent, fine. But then, their Russian accent comes and goes, and some don’t even have a Russian accent no matter how hard they try, so they come off as American actors trying to sound like Russian’s speaking English? And sometimes it just doesn’t work, but whatever, that was a minor hiccup in the film, it didn’t bother me so much. Also, we get to see cool monsters left and right and the film is filled with gruesome moments and vistas, but sadly we don’t get that big finale which the film seems to build up to, you are left wanting more; which in a way is a good thing because I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel! But considering the budget these guys were working with, I think they got away with a decent horror flick, you get the feeling that Raaphorst could have done more if he only had a bigger budget for effects work, but still, the film is pretty cool none the less. Hopefully some producer out there will notice the great work done here and will give Raaphorst and crew a few more millions to play with. So anyhow,  this is one of the best Nazi zombie films out there, I say give it a shot!

Rating: 4 out of 5   

World War Z (2013)

Title: World War Z (2013)

Director: Marc Foster

Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, Fana Mokoena, David Morse

Review:

The first thing that pops in my mind when I think of World War Z is that it is the most expensive zombie movie ever made, this zombie opus costs about 200 million dollars to make. So taking that in consideration, I expected the biggest zombie massacre ever. But then I remember they decided to make it a PG-13 film which immediately means, no gore, no graphic gut munching, no blood, no brains, which of course just goes against everything that a true blue zombie movie should be about. I mean, a zombie movie with no gore? That doesn’t even fit the rhyme scheme, but that’s what World War Z is. A gutless zombie movie and I mean that in more ways than one. But okay, so who am I kidding anyways right? This is a movie starring one of the biggest actors in Hollywood, World War Z was not gonna be a graphic zombie film since that fateful day in which Brad Pitt signed on to do the film. So whatever, zombie movie expectations aside, what was World War Z like?

Gerry Lane is an ex United Nations employee who has to reinstate himself in order to help the government discover the origins of the zombie plague. In order to find a possible cure for the zombie plague, they have to find “patient zero”, the first victim of the virus. In this way they can identify the cause of the disease so they can find a way to stop it. So the search for this patient zero takes Gerry all over the globe. Unfortunately, the plague is spreading so quickly that any country that Gerry visits is overrun by thousands of zombies! Will they ever find the ever elusive patient zero?

If you ask this zombie fan a gore less zombie movie just isn’t the same, I mean, isn’t the nature of a zombie that they eat flesh and or brains? But whatever, I decided to accept World War Z for what it is. I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is one of those movies that’s PG-13 but still intense and scary? And it was, I’d say that even without the graphic violence and gore we’ve come to associate with zombie films, World War Z remains gripping and intense. And it has some genuinely spooky moments squeezed in there. On any one of these zombie movies, my favorite moments are those in which the zombie plague is just getting started, when the chaos is just starting to show its ugly face and these moments are very exciting in World War Z. We first come to face with the zombie chaos when Gerry and his family are on their car, having a nice day. Suddenly chaos hits and its explosions, car crashes and thousands of people hollering down a city street running from zombies…all cool stuff, exciting. I mean these zombies can leap like grasshoppers! And the movie maintains that level of excitement all throughout. My only critique would be that they should have made the zombies scarier, as it is, all we see them do is run ferociously, and that’s it. You never see a zombie munching away at somebody, so why are they a threat? Because they can run really fast? Yes my friends, sadly the flesh/brain eating element was left out of this zombie opus, as a result, the film is less gripping then it could have been. In my opinion, World War Z is good, but it would have been a better zombie movie had it been rated ‘R’.

World War Z is based on Max Brooks’ novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. For those not in the know, Max Brooks is also the son of Mel Brooks, the famous director of comedies such as Young Frankenstein (1974) and Spaceballs (1987). In contrasts with his father’s career, Max Brooks has chosen to be a writer of zombie novels! He also wrote another zombie themed book called The Zombie Survival Guide. From what I gather, the film is a very loose adaptation of the book, I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read some fans complaining that it isn’t a very good adaptation. When they adapt a film into a book, I like to judge the movie on its own merits; unfortunately, World War Z is not a very original film. Instead of sticking with the books political criticism or dammit, some of the books more original elements (from what I’ve read there are a lot of those on this book!) the filmmakers decided to show us moments we’d already seen before in previous zombie films. What I’m saying is that if you’re a zombie fan, then you’ll be familiar with many of the situations presented on World War Z.

The picture perfect suburban family thing, where the film starts out with a beautiful happy family being extra happy and joyful only to hurl them directly in the middle of zombie chaos is something we already saw before in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004).The scene in which a zombie horde follows Gerry as he jumps off the building? Saw that in Resident Evil Afterlife(2010). The heroes of the film find refuge with a nice family inside a complex building? Saw that in 28 Days later (2002), even the last shots of this film and the way it was resolved reminded me of I Am Legend (2007). Zombie outbreak on a plane? Saw that in Flight of the Living Dead (2007)! So in the end, World War Z goes down a couple of notches in its rating simply because it wasn’t that original. In essence, even though it entertains, it doesn’t break new ground in terms of what a zombie film is. The most original element about this film is how the masses of stampeding zombies pile on top of one another to form waves of zombies, but aside from that, it’s all be there and done that. 

So ultimately, what hurt this movie the most, in terms of it being a good zombie film, was Hollywood playing it safe. Multimillion dollar productions like this one are such a risk, that Hollywood has no options but to put a huge star in it and rate it PG-13 so that the biggest amount of youngsters will go see it. If they stamp it with an R, they are afraid fewer kids will be let in theaters to see it. When has an R rating ever stopped a kid from seeing a movie? I don’t know about you guys, but that whole rating thing is bull, I’ve seen kids seeing R rated movies in theaters all the time, so I don’t know about the validity of that whole rating thing. Ultimately I think theaters will take your money no matter what age you are. But in order to play it safe and rake in that dough, they rate it PG-13, it doesn’t matter to them if they end up with a less effective movie. They even went and changed the ending of the film entirely in order to give it the typical happy ending; I hear the ending was supposed to be this big ass zombie war, which would have made sense, I mean the film is called World War Z after all. As it is, the film doesn’t end with a bang, it ends with a whimper. Of course it’s going to have a happy ending; this is Brad freaking Pitt we’re talking about here. I’m not saying it wasn’t entertaining or gripping, in fact it has some moments that take zombie films to a level of epic that zombie films had never reached, I mean, 200 million bucks can buy you a whole lot of goodies for your film, but then you also feel like World War Z is missing valuable elements that would have made it even more effective.  I would have preferred this movie with a lesser known actor and with more guts. But alas, World War Z is Hollywood; pure and unadulterated.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

"No, no, no, scrap all that, we're going with the mega happy ending!" Brad Pitt talks with director Marc Foster behind the scenes. 

Warm Bodies (2013)

Title: Warm Bodies (2013)

Director: Jonathan Levine

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Rob Corddry 

Review:

The thing with Warm Bodies is that I initially thought I’d hate it, I went in with my bag of rotting vegetables, ready to throw them at the screen. To me it looked like it was going to be the Twilight of zombie movies and in some ways it is and in some ways it isn’t. What Twilightdid with vampire movies is it softened them up; it turned the monsters into the heroes. It turned blood sucking creatures into beings who sparkle in the moonlight; it made vampires for lack of a better word, ‘cute’.  And Warm Bodies does soften up the zombie film, it’s main character is a walking corpse, but you wouldn’t notice if you saw him from afar, except for the pale skin and a couple of scars. And yes my friends, let’s not forget this is a film about a zombie who falls in love with a human girl! So yeah, zombie movies are getting the Twilight treatment in a way, just compare Warm Bodies main zombie with the Edward Cullen character from Twilight, and you'll see they don't look all that different. Going into the theater I thought, “That’s it for zombie movies!” I don’t want my zombies falling in love; I want them mindless and brain hungry! But whatever, this being a zombie movie and me being a zombie movie nut, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Strange thing is I ended up enjoying Warm Bodies!

Warm Bodies tells the story of ‘R’ a zombie who wants to be something more than just a zombie. He wants’ to improve himself, better himself, and maybe even be human someday. Everything starts one day when R is on one of his food runs (i.e. looking for humans to eat) when he stumbles upon a group of rebellious humans who are fighting against the zombie hoards. In the middle of the battle, R notices a young human girl named Julie and its love at first site, and well, R starts to feel, his heart starts beating! Should R follow through with his feelings for Julie? Or are their worlds too different for them to fall in love?

One of the things I dug about Warm Bodies is that it actually delivers a couple of original ideas, number one, the idea that a zombie can go back to being human is one that hadn’t been done before in zombie films, and least not in any that I can remember. And number two that a zombie could fall in love with a human and vice versa. Now in a worn genre like the zombie movie, well, originality is a welcomed thing! The film presented us with one or two original concepts, which proves at least the filmmakers where aiming for something different.

The idea that we can hear a zombie’s interior monologue is a good one, again, I don’t believe I’d ever seen that done before. The idea is that R is conscious of his zombie state, but can do nothing about it. He sees himself act as a zombie, but thinks like a normal human being. Of course, to zombie purists this makes no sense whatsoever because zombies are walking corpses. Rationality, logic or thought normally don’t fit into the equation. But this isn’t your typical zombie movie and in the world of Warm Bodies zombies that think do exist. The idea is that R hasn’t been dead for long and isn’t as far off dead as the ‘Bonies’, which are zombies that are so dead that they literally look like walking skeletons. So I guess the filmmakers behind Warm Bodies bent zombie rules just a bit, as does every movie. All movies create their own universe and rules, in the universe Warm Bodies, zombies can think just fine.

Another good thing that Warm Bodies has going for it is that it’s a socially conscious zombie film, you kind of get the feeling that something like this is what George Romero would be doing nowadays, but of course, less cute. Recently I saw a Quentin Tarantino interview, in which he states that every director has his day, makes great films then their time passes and they get old and no longer make great films; though I still haven’t lost my faith in him, I feel this is exactly what happened to George Romero. To me old age got to him and he lost it. His last one, Survival of the Dead (2009) was a huge disappointment for me. Though not all that bad, it failed to live up to Romero’s post-apocalyptic glory gory days. Warm Bodies reminded me a bit of Romero’s socially conscious zombie films. Warm Bodies portrays modern society as robots, automatons who are growing increasingly disconnected from one another thanks to I-Pads and cell phones.  I really dug how Warm Bodies explores class differences by infusing the film with a bit of Romeo and Juliet into the story. Same as Romero and Juliet, R and Julie come from completely different backgrounds. Julie is one of the human survivors; she lives inside of a walled city that still manages to have some comforts while R lives inside of an abandoned plane, in a zombie filled neighborhood. Yet they come together, because together, they will change everything. There’s even a balcony scene, so if anyone had any doubts about it, yeah this is a zombie version of Romeo and Juliet. By the way, the actress who plays Julie -Teresa Palmer- is a true beauty, I really hope we see more of her on the silver screen, and soon! 

So that’s it for me ladies and gent’s, I say Warm Bodies is a good zombie film. It might get a little too cutesy at times, especially when it comes down to zombies thinking, talking, feeling, and falling in love, but it’s still entertaining and has something to say. A word of warning to zombie fans, there’s not much in the way of blood and guts, though brains are eaten the gory details are left in shadows or out of camera. I also thought that the ‘Bonies’ looked too CGI, they could have pulled those off a little better, I didn’t buy into those things being real at all. But the idea of the film, the concept that a corpse can come back to life through the power of love, is a splendid one. So is the concept that in a world that is constantly trying to dehumanize us, it’s important that we remember how to feel and emote, to communicate and help each other out. I enjoyed how the film emphasizes the importance of every day good deeds, simple things that make this world a more pleasant one to live in. That if we only put more of an effort into actually feeling emotions and interacting with other human beings, then maybe we can change things and make things in this world better, and though these are not the usual concepts we’d expect in a zombie movie, well, I still had a blast with Warm Bodies. Recommended!

Rating: 4 out of 5  

The Grapes of Death (1978)

Title: The Grapes of Death (1978)

Director: Jean Rollin

Cast: Brigitte Lahaie, Marie Georges Pascal, Mirella Rancelot

Review:

I am quickly learning there are various elements one can come to expect from a Jean Rollin film: girls, nudity, lesbians, gore, shock value, heavy atmosphere and blood, blood, blood; all great elements if you’re making a horror film, which is what Rollin specialized in. I am quickly absorbing many of Rollin’s films and I have to say, I have an affinity for them. I really like all that he achieved with so little money. I understand the kind of films he made, and admire him for making such beautiful looking films on such low budgets. How did Rollin achieve so much with so little? Well, basically, Rollin spent a lot of his time as a pornographer. For example, the film he made before The Grapes of Death was something called Hyperpenetrations(1978) and the one he made after it was called Discosex (1978). But the artist in Rollin wasn’t just satisfied with making porn, he wanted more! So he often times suggested his producers to fund a real film with the same amount of money it costs to make a porn film. He would use porn stars for his films; and you know how that goes: you give a porn star the chance to be in a real film and of course they’ll jump at a chance to do it. It is a step up for them; it’s something they can finally show their mom. This is no longer just porn, this is a real film we’re talking about here! So this is the reason why Rollin always had such sultry looking ladies in his films, this was also the case with The Grapes of Death, a film filled with luscious looking women running from the undead.

The film starts out with these men spraying pesticide on a crop of grapes. One of them doesn’t feel so good, but his boss tells him to continue working no matter what. We are then presented with these two girls traveling on an eerily empty train, their destinations are different, yet they travel together for companionship. On one of the train stops, the sick man who was spraying the crops, boards the train and sits next to one of the girls. At first there is nothing weird about him save for his awkward behavior. But soon, his face starts to degenerate and blood starts coming out of his pores! He is suffering from some sort of infection! The girl, terrified,  gets off the train looking for help but she only ends up stumbling upon more sick people, worst part is they are not only sick, they are violent as well! What the hell is going on? Why is the world now populated by violence, death and destruction? Elizabeth will soon discover the truth about The Grapes of Death!

So again, what I enjoyed about this film is what I have enjoyed about all of the Jean Rollin films I have seen:  the atmosphere, the mood, the ambiance. Rollin shot these films for very little money, so he did what any low budget filmmaker would do to make the most of his films: he shot in amazing looking locations. Great chateaus, abandoned locales, places with ancient architecture; he really exploited the use of interesting looking locations. Add a bit of mist, the howling sound of the wind and voila! Your movie is instantly creepier. This is something Rollin understood quite well for The Grapes of Death is a film in which the wind is blowing all of the time. This is something that a lot of directors don’t understand, but the sound the wind makes is something that adds a great level of spookiness to any horror film. Fulci used this sound effect a lot; Fellini used the hell out of it too and Rollin uses it to great effectiveness here.  The localizations he used for the film add a tremendous feeling of isolation, starting with the lonely train, followed by these beautiful (yet spooky) looking landscapes and finally, the eerie village where most of the action takes place in. So this is a great example of a director making a film better simply because he has an eye for beauty, something that is often times taken for granted by modern filmmakers. 

Most of the time, Rollin specialized in making vampire films like Requiem for a Vampire (1971), The Rape of the Vampire (1968) or The Silver of the Vampires (1971). Sometimes his films would be a strange hybrid between a zombie film and vampire film like for example The Living Dead Girl (1982), where I wasn’t quite sure if it was one or the other and sometimes he’d venture into the zombie genre. I personally didn’t like Zombie Lake (1981), I consider it a low point in Rollins career, but with The Grapes of Death he made a full blown zombie flick that I found completely satisfying. The Grapes of Death is something along the lines of The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974) where people are infected by some kind of toxic that makes them violent and crazy, the same thing happens on The Grapes of Death;  it’s the pesticide used on the crops that turns people into zombies. The zombies in The Grapes of Death degenerate both psychologically and physically; but they don’t completely lose consciousness, they know what they are and what is happening to them, they just can’t control it or their violent urges. So these zombies are unique in the sense that they are conscious of their decomposing state and they hate themselves for it.  

As a zombie film, I’d say this is a very satisfying one. It has a strange eeriness to it; things slowly creep up on you until you are right smack in the middle of zombie chaos. Rollin’s films are deliberately slow paced, building up on the atmosphere, but then at some point you can rest assured that Rollin will flat out shock you. Rollin’s loves to take you by surprise! In terms of gore, the film is pretty impressive! If there’s something that distinguishes a Rollin film it’s a well orchestrated gore scene. On this one we get one of the best decapitations I have EVER seen on any film. I remember The Living Dead Girl delivered the best scene of a vampire/zombie feeding on human flesh…well, on this one we get an extremely memorable decapitation by axe that will leave you gasping for more. In conclusion, I have to say this was a great zombie flick, I loved many things about it and practically found nothing I didn’t like, another plus being that we get beautiful girls left and right! Brigitte Lahaie, one of Rollin favorite actresses and all around muse returns looking as sensual as she always did in Rollin’s films. Highly recommend this French zombie film, it shows you don’t need a lot money to make a satisfying and entertaining film, all you need is talent and if you ask me, Rollin, with his artful eye, had it to spare.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Title: Resident Evil Apocalypse (2004)

Director:  Alexander Witt

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Sienna Guillory, Jared Harris, Mike Epps

Review:

Halloween 2012 was all about zombies here on The Film Connoisseur, hope you guys enjoyed it! I’m currently still in a zombie hangover…which means, I’m still watching and reviewing zombie movies for the next couple of days, so look forward to that! I’d been meaning to review Resident Evil Apocalypse for a while now because my initial reaction to this film was not a good one. I wanted to know if I still disliked it as much as I did when I first saw it. Re-watching this second installment in the Resident Evil long running franchise, it suddenly dawned upon me that I needed to do a reassessment of the film; I ended up enjoying it a lot! I guess after having seen six of these Resident Evil films at the hands of various directors, I could see this one and compare it against all the other ones in the franchise, and guess what, this one has come out on top as a very well made entry into this franchise, not the best movie ever made, but certainly better than other films in the franchise in many ways.

The film picks up exactly where the first one left off, with zombies escaping the Umbrella Corporations Racoon City facilities. The undead have spread all throughout the city infecting more civilians. The authorities have locked down the city, every citizen quarantined. No one is allowed to escape! If they try, they risk getting shot down by the police. Meanwhile, Dr. Ashford, the creator of the deadly T-Virus has escaped Racoon City. Problem is that his daughter has been left inside! He contacts Alice to rescue his daughter before the authorities blow up Racoon City to smithereens. Will Alice rescue the little girl in time? What tricks does the Umbrella Corporation have under their sleeves this time?

So what made me change my mind so radically? Well, I think it was the fact that I could see this film within the context of all the other ones and it ended up being better then say, Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), a film I personally ended up not loving for many reasons, too numerous to number here. So what did I like about Apocalypse? Well, one of the first things that I immediately noticed was how refreshing it was to see a Resident Evil film that wasn’t 95% computer images. On Apocalypse things are tangible, there’s sets, there’s props, there’s real stunts performed by real stunt men. I mean I loved the fact that director Alexander Witt decided to shoot almost everything practically, on camera. One of the pluses that Apocalypse has is that it was made in a time when CGI had not yet overtaken the film industry as predominantly as it has now, this was a time when films where still real. Sets are built, explosions are real, stunts are designed and pulled off; this element of Apocalypse comes in direct contrast to the more recent Resident Evil films in which practically everything in the background is computer generated. Nope, this film has a tangibility to it that’s missing from the newer films in the franchise and for that I applaud it.

This film is action packed, and that probably has something to do with the fact that director Alexander Witt had been involved as second unit director on many action films like The Bourne Identity (2003) and Black Hawk Down (2001), Twister (1996) and Speed (1994), so he brought that action movie experience to the table, and looking at Apocalypse now, the stunts on this one are more impressive then other Resident Evil films because they were pulled off for real. I mean, these guys went through the effort of planning these stunts so they could be pulled off in front of the cameras and not inside of a computer. So when you see Alice walking down the side of a building, guns a blazing, they did that for real. When we see Alice running through a hallway with every glass window blowing up, for real. When Alice jumps through the air as a cop car explodes into a ball of flames behind her…done for real!  When an actor jumps off a helicopter while shooting his guns…for real as well. I mean, kudos to this production for wanting to go that route, it’s a breath of fresh air; because hey, don’t you just hate it when you’re watching an action film and you can just tell its all computer generated?  That doesn’t happen here. This is one o the more action packed films in the franchise, guns are shot almost nonstop all throughout, I liked that about it, this is a no holds barred action film through and through; everything culminating in a big showdown between Alice and the Nemesis. There’s always been a physicality to the Alice character played by Milla Jovovich, but on this one she excels in terms of displaying her fighting abilities and shooting all sorts of guns; all the while never losing her sexiness. 

Then of course there’s the Nemesis creature, I just loved how it looks practically exactly like the video game. Actually, when we come down to it, this film has so many visual cues that come straight off of the video game. Certain images and moments can be traced down the first Resident Evil games. The filmmakers really made an effort to incorporate stuff from the games, which is something that the newer films kind of forget about sometimes. In conclusion, this is one of the best in the series in my opinion. When compared to all the others, this one stands on solid ground. Its action packed, Alice is kick ass as she’s ever been, this is actually the film in which she becomes more than human. None of these films have ever been deep, or meaningful, they’ve always been fun action packed and stylish and in that department, Apocalypse delivers.

The one thing I do seem to remember hating was the slow motion/blurry effect we see whenever zombies are shown, I could have done without it, why was it used? I don’t know, but it just doesn’t work for me thanks to that ‘effect’ we never really get a good look at the zombies. I remember hating the ‘token black guy’ in the film played by Mike Epps, I used to think he felt totally out of place on this film, but now I see him as just another crazy character we meet along the way. Bottom line? The film has more good things going for it then bad ones. You look at this film and you feel more effort was put into making it than say Resident Evil Retribution simply because most of it was shot practically, and because they went through all this trouble to film things on camera, kind of reminds me of Poltergeist III (1988) in that sense, yet another film in which the director purposely strived away from telling his story through visual effects. I say give this one a second chance, you just might end up enjoying it. 

Rating 3 1/2 out of 5

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Title:  Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Director:Edward Wood Jr.

Cast: Bela Lugosi, Vampira, Tor Johnson

Review:

“You are interested in the unknown…the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here...” with these ominous words, Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space opens, inviting us to enter into his imagination, deep into the cheesy recesses of b-movie territory. Some films are known for being bad; their call to fame is the fact that they are terrible films, i.e. badly written, acted and produced. This is the case with Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. Though of course  depending on who you ask; some will hail it as the best example of how NOT to make a film, while others will tell you it’s silly, campy, fun. I finally had the chance to see it after years and years of having it on my must watch list; and yeah, it’s a bad film, but it’s not without its charm. There are all kinds of mistakes left and right, every five seconds you can either see a boom mike pop up somewhere, an actor is reading the script from his lap or the strings can be seen on the miniature flying saucers, but again, this is part of what makes Plan 9 from Outer Space such a uniquely fun film. 

Story revolves around a group of alien invaders who want to destroy the earth because they fear that the humans will create a doomsday device that can destroy the entirely galaxy, so in order to prevent this from happening, they put ‘Plan 9’ in motion. Plan 9 consists in resurrecting the dead so they can take over the earth and annihilate mankind and their destructive inclinations. These aliens are trying to protect the universe from us, so in a way, these aliens are benevolent in nature; just not towards us humans.

I gotta hand it to Ed Wood, the guy had his heart in the right place. He might not have had millions of dollars to make his movies, but it’s obvious that he had the creativity and the energy, the drive. He had a creative wealth of ideas. Here was a guy who was always writing, directing or producing something. You just get the feeling that he simply needed more money to put his ideas across in a better fashion, but that passion for telling stories was always there. He might not have been much of a filmmaker; but the guy wrote like a mad man! He didn’t write masterpieces either, but the crazy ideas would never stop coming. I personally think he was better as a writer of cheap sci-fi b movies then at directing films. He produced and wrote many more films like Orgy of the Dead (1965) and The Bride of the Beast (1958), he even made some soft core porn! But it was Plan 9 from Outer Space which would go down in history as “the worst film ever made”. To be honest, I think calling Plan 9 worst movie ever is a bit harsh; there are far worse contenders for this title out there in movie land.

I won’t lie to you, yeah Plan 9 is badly produced and directed, not a second  goes by that you don’t see some incomprehensible image that has nothing to do with the film, a goof, a boom mike, a false wall moving, sometimes this kind of thing just makes me bust a gut laughing. For example in some scenes, Wood would mix scenes shots during the day in exteriors with scenes shot in a set, with a pitch black background, it’s moments like these that you begin to question his abilities as a filmmaker. There’s this other scene where a bunch of people are coming out of a crypt, because they were burying a friend, and it’s the smallest crypt I’ve ever seen! And if it’s not the stock footage of Russian military tanks (which are supposed to be American) that makes you laugh, then it’s the totally inane dialog. Now here’s where the real fun of the movie lies for me; that crazy ‘written in five minutes’ dialog! The film opens up with a psychic telling us that “future events will affect us in the future!” and he ends every sentence by calling the audience “my friends” about five times in less than a minute….now that’s some funny shit right there my friends!  My favorite is a dialog between two characters in which one tells the other “This is the most fantastic story I’ve ever heard!”  and the other guy says “And every word of it is true too” and the other guy replies “That’s the fantastic part of it!” Like I said, the dialog is hilarious stuff.

Obviously not Bela Lugosi! 

Ed Wood was a huge fan of the old Universal Monster movies, one of his favorites being Dracula (1931) which is the reason why he ended up using Lugosi in Plan 9. I’m sure Wood also wanted to have a star on his movie to pull in an audience and Lugosi with his vast experience certainly had that star power. This was Bela Lugosis’s final film, he doesn’t do much in it, in fact, he doesn’t even talk. Lugosi’s role in this film functions like a silent film. He simply weeps for his dead wife, who by the way according to the film was ‘Vampira’ and then he dies, off camera, only to be reborn as a zombie wearing the same exact attire he wore for Universal’s Dracula! I bet Ed Wood must’ve gotten a special kind of thrill having Lugosi in his full Dracula regalia on his film. In a strange twist of fate, I think there’s some sort of poetic justice that Lugosi dressed up as Dracula for his last performance on film. After all, Dracula was his most recognized role. About Lugosi’s participation in the film, it’s hilarious how Wood simply shot a bunch of random stuff with Lugosi, and then somehow found a way to squeeze it into Plan 9. Even funnier is that when he couldn’t use Lugosi, he would use this actor who would cover his face with the Dracula cape, to hide the fact that it wasn’t Lugosi! At the end of the day, the daftness of the production makes it endearing to watch. You get the feeling that everyone involved knew they were making a crappy movie, but they did it anyways. Or maybe it was all part of Ed Wood’s desire to spoof big budget sci-fi films? Maybe he did it all on purpose and the film is exactly what he wanted it to be? Watch the film and judge for yourself, but one thing I can assure you, you won’t be bored for a second, it’s a funny ride every step of the way. 

  

Rating: 2 out of 5

I Walked With A Zombie (1943)

Title: I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Cast: Frances Dee, Edith Barrett, Tom Conway, James Ellison

Review:

As I work my way through all these old zombie movies I realize just how similar they all are. In my review for King of the Zombies (1941) I mentioned how similar it was to White Zombie (1931), but here I am again to tell you that I Walked With a Zombie is yet another film that shares an alarming amount of similarities with Bela Lugosi’s film. They all share similar scenes, situations, premises and characters. Again, we have a Voodoo Island, we get to hear drums in the jungle, we get the black slaves, the zombie bride, the sugar mill…but I will say this, I Walked With A Zombie is superior to all of these movies I’ve mentioned because it benefits from something that none of the others films had: producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur. The involvement of these two talented individuals is what makes I Walked With A Zombie one of the classiest zombie movies ever made, I know that sounds like a contradiction of sorts because who’d think a zombie movie could be classy right?

In I Walked With A Zombie we meet a nurse named Betsy who has just accepted a job in the West Indies as a nurse taking care of the sick wife of a rich land owner named Paul Holland. What ailment has stricken Mr. Holland’s wife? No one really knows, some think she’s affected by some sort of fever, others think she has a mental disorder, but if you ask the slaves they’ll tell you she’s been zombified! Who knows the truth of what really happened to Mrs. Holland?

Director Jacques Tourneur was a master in creating atmosphere in his films, I remember noting this when I first saw Night of theDemon (1957). There’s moments on that one that are genuinely creep where the supernatural seems almost like a real thing. Tourneur was a director that knew how important shadows are, the importance of having the wind blow against the leaves of a tree, the sound the wind makes and the importance of those eerie moments of silence. I Walked With a Zombie has many moments such as these and though the film plays with themes and premises I’d seen before in similar films, what set this one apart is the quality of the production, the performances, the cinematography; all these elements where top notch on I Walked With A Zombie in contrast to films like King of the Zombies and White Zombie, which can sometimes seem cheap and show their budgetary limitations. I Walked With A Zombie does not suffer from these problems, this is a top notch production, or at least it felt that way! 

A thing or two can be said about the titular zombie on this film, which is without a doubt in my mind the most beautiful zombie in all of zombie zinema. I mean I’ve seen sexy zombies, I’ve seen gross out zombies, I’ve seen many a walking bag of puss, but I’d never seen me a more beautiful zombie then the one depicted on this film. Edith Barret played the zombified bride, she doesn’t speak a word throughout the entire film, but she looks hauntingly beautiful. I love the way she looked as she walked in her white dress, the wind blowing on it…she has a haunting almost ghost-like quality to her. Tourneur really made an effort to make her feel as if she was a shell of a human being, an empty vessel.

Same as with Night of the Demon and Cat People (1942) (another awesome Jacques Tourneur film) for a huge chunk of the film, we are never really sure if the supernatural elements are real or not. I’ve always enjoyed that about Tourneur’s films; he always questions religion and the supernatural. Even if in the film eventually the supernatural ends up being real, for most of the film the existence of the supernatural and its validity in the real world is always put in question and explored. In Night of the Demon the main character is an incurable skeptic, a guy who only believes in reason and reality, the same happens in I Walked With A Zombie. Characters are always questioning Voodoo. Is it real? Should we be afraid of it? Is it real only in the mind of the people who believe in it? I love the fact that a film from the 40’s explored these themes with such honesty, this is a recurring thing in Tourneur’s films.

But in the end, even though this is a film that puts belief systems in question, the film doesn’t forget that what we want is to be spooked, and that it does well. There’s this amazing sequence where Betsy goes walking with the zombie girl and she immerses herself, slowly but surely, in the world of Voodoo. Great sequence, the imagery there is unforgettable for me, the mood, the ambiance, undisputed; Tourneur really was a master creating truly eerie moments. So in conclusion, this one is a real find. I Walked With A Zombie is one of the best of its kind. Out of all these zombies in a voodoo island films, I’d say it can only be challenged by White Zombie which is still my favorite because it’s more of a horror film. Even though this Jacques Tourneur zombie film has its spooky moments and memorable imagery, I’d see it as more of a tragic love story then a horror film. Still, this is without a doubt, a gem of Zombie Zinema, not to be missed!

Rating: 5 out of 5