The Dead Don't Die

Bev Vincent and the Hidden Secrets of the Universe

2011-09-28T01:44:00.016-05:00

I first encountered Bev Vincent about thirteen years ago. I'd gotten a hold of some photocopied screenplays of unproduced Stephen King films and, like all opportunistic nerds in 1998, I decided to make copies and sell them on eBay. Bev bought one, and I very idiotically asked her if she wanted photocopies of THE PLANT.

No, thanks, she said. I have the real thing. That may not be verbatim, but there it was. She proceeded to school my ass in the finer points of why offering to sell photocopies of a Stephen King novel was not a good idea.

I got her check, saw her name and that of her wife, and thought, awesome, a lesbian doctor.

Five or six years later--long after I learned that Bev was, in fact, a man, and that the possibility didn't cross my mind because I was raised in a semi-literate redneck hell in which men named Bev could never be permitted to exist--my wife and I got the bright idea to start a small press.

(You probably know the story. If not, follow that link once I'm done blowing your mind.)

Anyhow--we decided that an anthology would be the first venture of the newly-formed Creeping Hemlock Press, the evocatively titled Corpse Blossoms. By that point, we'd become friendly with Bev, so he was one of the first people we invited to submit a story, and he was the very first to deliver. It's a damned fine story, and we bought it.

A year later, Corpse Blossoms was compiled and awaiting its trip to the printer, and we were homeless, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. In a hellishly slow nineteen hour drive, we evacuated to Houston, where Bev visited us at our hotel and treated us to a lovely meal. We were harried and in shock, but it was a wonderful experience--Bev is (or appears to be) a very sweet and kind human being, and meeting with him made us feel as if we were actually a part of this strange little community.

We stayed in touch via the magic of the internet, and I next saw Bev four years later, in Atlanta, at a Stephen King public appearance in support of Under the Dome. Once again, I was a mess, this time because I was on the tail end of a nasty bout of swine flu. My motel was farther from the event than I'd thought, and I foolishly chose to walk instead of catch a cab. I arrived sheathed in sweat and bubbling snot, but I managed to not get anyone sick. Bev inscribed my copy of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion (For that bastard Ronnie), and we had a great old time.

Take my hand and move forward with me now, and this will all start to make horrific sense. WORLD HORROR 2011 in Austin, Creeping Hemlock's first major convention appearance. We launched our awesome new zombie imprint there, Print Is Dead, and an even greater time was had. Bev was there, serving as Guest of Honor Liaison, and we were very happy to see him again.

And again. And again.

See, every time I turned around, it seemed like Bev was there, sitting in a chair wearing one of his trademark loud shirts, his laptop perched upon his knees. The dude gets around. He's in great shape. He's a ball of energy.

It wasn't until near the end of the con that I learned about the room with the free coffee and donuts. This was late in the day on Saturday. Friday night had been intense, and I needed coffee. Bev was there, perhaps getting coffee himself. I half-joked that he was everywhere and that a thinny (those strange portals between worlds in King's DARK TOWER novels) must surely be involved.

Bev laughed, and something about the look in his eyes chilled my heart and made the flesh of my scrotum tighten.

I got my donut and coffee, left the room with Bev in it, walked down the hall--it was a long walk--and got to the elevator. Rode it down to the lobby, stepped out...

Walking toward me? Bev Vincent. Not possible, but there he was.

He gave me a wicked, knowing smile, and I felt the world shift beneath my feet. Everything clicked into place: the nineteen hour drive that led me to my first meeting with Bev; the Captain Trips-like flu that plagued me prior to my second meeting with him.

And now this. Whether by accident or by some strange design, the purpose of which has not yet been made clear, I was afforded a glimpse past the veil of this reality and into the greater truth beyond--that of the Tower.

What is Bev Vincent? He is not human--that much is clear. I saw him several times more before the convention ended. We stood outside of a packed party and talked Planet of the Apes while Peter Straub shuffled by with a drink in his hand and Nick Mamatas threatened to kick someone out for being a loudmouth asshole. Bev came to our table and talked shop. And through it all, there was an awareness, an unspoken acknowledgement.

I saw him sitting in the lobby on that final day, his laptop once more placed atop his knees, which now seemed knobby and to quiver, the cloth of his pants holding back some impossible insect anatomy, the patterns on his shirt shifting, ever so slightly, his glasses doubling and trebling his eyes until I found myself blinking away the lidless alien leer of a spider.

One can only withhold the truth for so long, and I am no longer strong enough to do so. Nor do I care that people will think me mad. I need the nightmares to stop. I need to stop looking up at the clock every single day just in time to see it click over to 9:19.

I need to stop seeing Bev Vincent every time I close my eyes.

I probably won't survive the day. As soon as this goes live, I expect the agents of the Crimson King, led by his chief emissary in this When--Mr. Bev Vincent, who is not a lesbian doctor--to congregate at my house and unravel my mind.

Which is a shame, because I was hoping in my next entry to reveal another cosmic truth I learned at WHC 2011: every time you look at John Skipp, no matter how often, he is climaxing.

DR. SLEEP: Stephen King Shines On

2011-09-26T16:20:00.009-05:00

For years, King talked about writing a sequel to 'SALEM'S LOT, his second published novel. Details were sketchy, and he was never very clear on what this follow-up would entail. There was talk, however briefly, about some kind of shared world sequel to LOT-- he'd write one, but other authors would get a chance to, as well. (As I recall, he specifically mentioned his wife Tabitha and Clive Barker.)

Eventually we got a 'SALEM'S LOT sequel of sorts, in the form of DARK TOWER V: WOLVES OF THE CALLA, in which Father Callahan's exploits following his trip to the Greyhound station are explored in great detail.

King allows his books to overlap quite often, but with the exception of the DARK TOWER and THE TALISMAN, he's never really been a sequel kind of guy... until now.

As we near the release of his JFK/time travel epic, 11/22/63, King is working on DR. SLEEP, a sequel to THE SHINING--his third published novel and perhaps his most well-known and iconic work (thanks as much to Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick as to the novel, if not more so).

He first broached the DR. SLEEP subject while touring to promote UNDER THE DOME. The novel would, he said, follow forty-year-old Danny Torrance, now an orderly at a hospice, surrounded by death and still dealing with the scars he obtained during his stay at the Overlook. In addition to using his powers at the horse track, Danny secretly helps the terminally ill at the hospice to peacefully pass on to the other side.

King seemed excited about the idea and was eager to share, but quickly warned that he should probably stop talking about it, as it would hurt its chances of becoming a reality. “It’s a great idea," he told Entertainment Weekly in November of 2009. "And I just can’t seem to get down to it... People shouldn’t hold their breath."

Not long after, there was a poll at King's official site, asking which book Constant Readers wanted more --DR. SLEEP or THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE (a DARK TOWER novel that takes places between Books IV and V).

DR. SLEEP won by 49 votes, but the call of the Tower was stronger: King wrote THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE and DR. SLEEP seemed to have gone away for a while...

...until King read from it three days ago at The Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he was given the 2011 Mason Award. The selection he read deals with "The Tribe," a group of psychic vampires who travel the highways and byways of America in mobile homes.

One can assume that Danny Torrance will encounter these creatures at some point.

I'm of two minds: excited and cautious. THE SHINING has nearly thirty-five years of cultural saturation under its belt. For many readers, it's an old friend. Even if DR. SLEEP is a technically better novel (it's possible--when he's on, King is a better writer today than he ever was), it will come as a disappointment to most.

Then there's the issue of which King is writing this novel--the serious, focused King who wrote BAG OF BONES, LISEY'S STORY, and DUMA KEY--or the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink goofball behind DESPERATION and UNDER THE DOME.

I'm there either way, of course. Such is the life of a Constant Reader...

(Aside: THE SHINING, as you may know, is dedicated to "Joe Hill King, who shines on." Going back to the concept of someone else writing a sequel to a King novel, can you imagine a SHINING sequel penned by Joe Hill?)

PRINT IS DEAD: Press Roundup

2011-09-14T04:15:00.001-05:00

Here you go.

Zombie Talk

2011-09-08T02:48:00.002-05:00

Zombie Talk interviews the producer of the upcoming UK-based remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

GREEN LANTERN and THOR

2011-06-17T16:27:00.020-05:00

In terms of quality, they're pretty much the same movie. Green Lantern is not as bad as it could have been. It's not Jonah Hex or Catwoman or Batman and Robin. It doesn't inspire outright disgust or confusion, merely indifference. Thor's few shining moments outnumber those of Green Lantern, though not by much, and the end result is pretty much the same: a shrug and a meh, and in two weeks I will have forgotten I've seen it.

Most importantly, I have no desire to see Green Lantern a second time. In that regard, DC has succeeded in catching up to Marvel Studios--their movies (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Thor) haven't been worth a second look, either.

This isn't a cohesive review, so much as a random collection of observations:

Why is the planet Oa so drab and ugly? So damned dingy and dark? It's lazy, uninspired production design, to be sure, but I wonder if it's not intentional--there's a lot of compositing in this movie, and if you're on a tight budget, you can hide your seams much easier in darkest night than you can in brightest day. Whatever the case, the end result is ugly and without even a shred of awe.

The movie's internal logic is peppered with holes, the worst of which can be found in the handling of the Guardians and Sinestro.

Parallax is pretty much doom incarnate, but he's also the Guardians' dirty little secret. There are thousands of members of the Green Lantern Corps, and yet only one of them knows about Parallax. Before the movie starts, Parallax is defeated and imprisoned, and no one is placed to guard the most dangerous force in the galaxy. He's just sitting there, waiting for anyone to free him with a yellow drop of fear.

When they learn of his return, how do the Guardians respond? By authorizing Sinestro to take nine or ten Corps members to face him. Again, there are thousands of Corps members, and they send fewer than a dozen?

The Guardians suck.

Logic says that you send the whole damned Corps to face the Ultimate Evil, but the climax reveals Parallax to be such an easy-to-lick punk that the entire Corps could obviously have taken him--no sweat. Or maybe they'd all have died like most of Sinestro's small crew. So what? They serve no purpose, anyway, other than to stand around and make Star Wars cantina creature noises and sell toys, so why not wipe out the entire Corps and have Hal Jordan's victory at the end actually mean something? Make your sucky villain look formidable, end the movie with Jordan rebuilding the Corps, and avoid a ludicrous lapse in logic that undermines the whole shaky mess.

Sinestro: ah, Sinestro. A Marvel guy, I haven't read many books featuring Sinestro, but I grew up watching the Superfriends, so I got a nerd chill when he put on the yellow ring, but here's the problem: nothing about this Sinestro says that he'd ever put that ring on. (Nothing but his damned name, of course.) Yeah, he pushes to forge a yellow ring, far too late the the game (he should have been pushing for this from the start), but he is proven wrong by Hal Jordan, and not once are we given any reason to believe he was actually tempted by the yellow power of fear.

He puts that ring on at the end simply because he does so in the comics, and not because any logic inherent in this particular storyline dictates that he do so.

And why is no one guarding the yellow ring? The Guardians need to be overthrown and executed in the murky streets of Oa because they're clearly all suffering from immortality-induced dementia.

Good things to say? Sure--the make-up FX are spectacular. Not just okay, but absolutely stellar. I saw no names that I recognized in the credits, but whomever is responsible for the practical make-up work on Sinestro, Abin Sur, and Hector Hammond's bulgy head deserves an Oscar. It's as good as it gets. (Unlike the CGI, which is hit-and-miss, as it always is in FX-driven flicks with ambitions larger than their FX budgets.)

Sinestro, again: flawed logic aside, he's the coolest thing in the movie. He doesn't have much to do, but he looks and sounds cool and I wanted more, and that's saying something, because he's a pink-skinned alien named Sinestro, and I'm not a twelve-year-old boy living in 1963. Mark Strong does a great job, and I'll allow myself to fantasize that someone with actual skill will write the sequel and we'll get a good movie about a green guy fighting a yellow guy.

My hometown, New Orleans, must be one of the most recognizable places on the planet. In Green Lantern, the city that care forget is digitally manipulated and expanded, but there's just no mistaking the suburban shots, the coastal scenes, and even the sky. I love my city, and it was nice to see it on screen. If this movie did one thing right, putting the talented folks down here to work was it.

Green Lantern gets one thing right that Thor didn't, I guess--it's talisman. In the comics, Green Lantern, Thor, and Captain Marvel are all cut from similar cloth. As object/magic-based heroes, they serve as the ultimate childhood fantasy: find some special item, get powers. In the original Thor comics, Donald Blake discovered Thor's hammer and, being worthy, became Thor, just as Billy Batson became Captain Marvel ("Shazam!"). Thor's hammer even has it's own magic words:

Whosoever Holds This
Hammer, If He Be Worthy,
Shall Possess The Power
Of THOR

Odin utters this line in the movie, after stripping Thor of his power, but why? The hammer gets lodged in a rock, all Excalibur-like, but Thor never retrieves it. His daddy eventually summons it and sends it to him, the whole lodged-in-rock sequence serves no purpose (unless you count facilitating yet another Stan Lee cameo), and the words on the hammer are just an empty nod to fandom.

I hold out little hope for Captain America. Yes, the trailers promise the Raiders-esque WWII-era Cap film comic readers have longed for, but this is Joe Johnston. He's a competent technician at best, sort of the cinematic equivalent of a good sessions drummer. If Kenneth Branagh can't get a Marvel movie right, I'm not sure the director of Jurassic Park 3 and The Wolfman can.

The point of all this?

Go see X-Men: First Class, of course.

Kirkman Talks Season Two

2011-03-04T14:51:00.002-06:00

Here's a pretty nifty interview with Robert Kirkman, in which he reveals that Hershel's farm will come into play. The Rick/Shane drama will also continue. My suspicion is that they will make it last until mid-season, by which point Carl will have gotten in some gun practice and, well, y'know...

Pray To Stay Updated

2011-03-04T02:35:00.004-06:00

Thanks to those of you who picked up the Kindle edition of PRAY TO STAY DEAD. With an e-book, it's sometimes hard to tell just how large is the book that you're buying, which can make pulling the trigger on a purchase difficult.

PRAY TO STAY DEAD is approximately 110k words long, and the print edition will clock in at nearly 350 pages.

THE WALKING DEAD at my front door

2011-03-04T01:24:00.006-06:00

I shouldn't have watched THE WALKING DEAD the first time around. AMC sent me a screener of the first two episodes, and that was cool--I got to see those episodes several weeks in advance, the only drawback being the picture quality: it was terrible. Just a pixelated, non-anamorphic mess that looked really bad on my 50" plasma screen. Image quality on my Standard Definition satellite service is worse, and the remaining episodes gave me the impression that THE WALKING DEAD just didn't look very good, a fact that detracted from my enjoyment of the show.

Today I received the WALKING DEAD Blu-Ray press kit. It arrived in a bloody-footprint-stamped envelope that must have alarmed my mail carrier, and contained a nifty full-color folder containing character sheets and some nice shots of KNB's excellent make-up work. I haven't had time to sit down and watch the entire show in HD, but the little that I did watch this evening was an eye-opener.

THE WALKING DEAD's 16mm photography is beautiful. Lush and sharp, with a subtle, organic grain--not some post faux digital grain. This isn't the show I watched late last year, and I kinda wish I had waited. Unless I get an HD service before Season Two, I just may wait for DVD...

In addition to the complete series, the DVD (available in both Standard Definition and HD on March 8th), contains an assortment of extras:

Featurettes:
- The Making of THE WALKING DEAD
- Inside THE WALKING DEAD: Episode 1-6
- A Sneak Peek with Robert Kirkman
- Behind The Scenes Zombie Make-Up Tips
- Convention Panel With Producers
- THE WALKING DEAD Trailer
Extra Footage:
- Zombie School
- Bicycle Girl
- On Set With Robert Kirkman
- Hanging With Steven Yeun
- Inside Dale's RV
- On Set With Andrew Lincoln

I'd seen many of these online, but they're worth checking out--the "Bicycle Girl" clip is fun, and the Make-Up Tips segment shows you how a pro does it with a limited Halloween budget.

PRINT IS DEAD is alive

2011-03-03T00:39:00.003-06:00

We started this blog a few years back, when we decided to launch our own zombie imprint. As you can see, we haven't touched it in a while.

It was a long time coming, but the zombie imprint is here...

We're pleased to announce that the first novel from Print Is Dead, our new zombie line, is now available through Kindle. The trade paperback will be available for order wherever books are sold within two weeks.

ABOUT THE BOOK

1974.

The Summer of Love is a fading memory, the Cold War rages on, Richard M. Nixon is barely holding onto the Presidency, and the dead are returning to life.

Five friends on their way to a week at Lake Tahoe, a Vietnam veteran in Sacramento trying to get home to his daughter in New Mexico, an older couple idling in a dusty shop in the hills, and a dangerous man who has spent twenty years preparing his strange family for the end of the world...

As civilization collapses, these scattered survivors cross paths, and the hungry dead are the least of the horrors unleashed.

Those who die will walk. Those who live will hope for a quick death, and they will...

PRAY TO STAY DEAD.

PRAISE

"A brutally entertaining collision of zombie thriller and grindhouse action. Not for the faint of heart!"

Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Patient Zero

"This guy Mason James Cole knocked me back on my heels. I've read a lot of zombie books over the last few years, and frankly, I thought I had seen it all. It seemed like nothing could shock me anymore. But Pray to Stay Dead delivered on all fronts. It's got all the raw emotional violence and brutal gore one would expect from a zombie book, but those things are only the surface of this tale. Underneath, Pray to Stay Dead possesses an elegantly simple style of storytelling that I haven't found since my first encounter with Jack Ketchum. Mason James Cole is that good. Read Pray to Stay Dead, and then pray this guy writes more soon, because he's the real deal."

- Joe McKinney, author of Dead City and Apocalypse of the Dead

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mason James Cole is the pseudonym of an apparently mild-mannered conservative type who doesn’t want his family and friends to know he writes stuff like this. His boring but lucrative job keeps him on the road five months out of the year, and that’s when he watches scary movies, reads scary books, and writes scary stories. He smiles and nods through church every Sunday and secretly votes Green. He lives in Farmington, Utah.

ABOUT PRINT IS DEAD

PRINT IS DEAD is a new line of top-quality zombie novels brought to you by the critically acclaimed indie publisher, Creeping Hemlock
Press. Each title is available in both paperback and e-book format.

www.printisdead.com

"These guys know more about the undead than I do... and that's saying something, because I've been hanging out with zombies for as long as I can remember."

-- George A. Romero

Thirst

2009-10-19T22:00:00.005-05:00

Decades of fancifully lousy representations have given me cause to be trepidatious when walking into a vampire movie. Thirst by Park Chan-Wook was no exception. My husband and I had a double date with a comedy rapper and a Russian-born psych student (not relevant to the review; just had to put that out there) and we all arrived early to guarantee good seats. Everyone else's expectations were high, which meant I was nervous. I love Park's work. But vampires?

As put off as I am by traditional vampires, I'm even more apprehensive of "reimaginings" of the vampire mythos. (Y'all know that of which I speak. coughglittercough) I thought maybe we'd be treated to a depiction of Korea's historical equivalent of the European vampire, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that Thirst's vampires are about as conventionally western as they come: night-dwelling, super-strong, immortal, black-bedecked bloodsuckers, obsessed with Christian images and superstitions and the struggle between good and evil. It's interesting to see this faithful representation of western myth cast through the lens of an Asian culture. It strikes me that Europe's vampire, the evil spirit of the dead that comes by night to feast upon the blood of the living, turning to ash at the touch of sunlight, fits in perfectly with the majority of Asian lores, which are saturated with malicious revenants bound by quirky, complex rules. Our Draculas and Nosferatus would fit in perfectly over there.

As I expected from Park, every shot is crafted conscientiously and individually, paying attention to the entire toolbox available to cinematographers but somehow never feeling overly artsy or conspicuous, always in service of telling the story rather than distracting the audience with flashy visuals. American directors ought to be ashamed of themselves; with a few remarkable exceptions, cinematography has become a sleepy game of Follow the Leader, made up of cut corners and obvious answers intended to keep the production short and cheap. And when it's not that, when it's designed to impress, the poor audience is bludgeoned with sweeping (typically artificial) vistas, junky color correction and hamfisted, "Look how dramatic" shots. Park allows his environments to be natural and his scope is mostly kept to the characters' awarenesses. The shot style often reflects their emotions.

Park's paramount Vengeance trilogy (full disclosure: I've only seen two of them) thrives on black and bitter peripeteias that make you cry "Mercy!" The same notes are struck in Thirst, though lightly, and the supernatural subject matter in combination with a heightened dark comedy angle make the whole experience less realist and, thus, far less harrowing than those films. Still, the story twists in a dozen little directions from act to act, so the predictability factor is zero.

It's probably fair to say that my favorite things about Thirst are the non-vampire things. (And that's a lot; the story is largely about humanity and its motions.) I am not converted, I still expect vampire movies to suck, but I have had a bit of a revelation. Between this and Let the Right One In, I see that even subgenres I've written off as foolishly gothic can come calling in the form of a movie I love, provided the right director is molding it.

I have learned to trust Park absolutely. He has my blessing to adapt for screen stories that I would otherwise have nothing but disdain for, and I'll be first in line. Perhaps he could try a sports legend biopic next. I'll place myself in his fatherly care.

I have a new euphemism for suicide

2009-10-16T22:01:00.002-05:00

"Putting up Halloween Decorations"

Pepper's Ghost

2009-10-16T22:00:00.002-05:00

Fun video explanation of the Pepper's Ghost trick at Disney's Haunted Mansion.

PSYCH

2009-10-16T19:26:00.010-05:00

I've been watching the USA show Psych for a couple years. Each episode is a happy potluck of inventively geeky plots, low-stakes drama, fake psychicry and real cowardice, Easter Egg pineapples, rapidfire wiseassery, Final Jeopardy-level eighties references, third-tier celebrity appearances, and, dependably, yet more fodder for my crush on Secret-Latino James "Roday" Rodríguez. (Oh, James, talk Tejano to me!)

Best (and most surprising) of all is the occasional emergence of really savvy horror-homage elements. I'd credited the writers alone for these secret-handshake gestures (such as the name of the final episode of the second season: "Shawn [and Gus] of the Dead") until I watched February's documentary on the SciFi channel (back before it was Siphy), His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th, wherein ~~Rodríguez~~ Roday gushed his commentary and memories in the company of innumerable Hollywood power players. Yes, the varied cast of grateful creators and thinkers illustrates the far and wide influence of Friday the 13th. Indeed, there are many commentators whose names I almost recognized!

His gushing proved it: James Roday appears to be the genuine article, a dyed-in-the-dollar-cinema horror geek. (He was also the biggest name attached to the Freddy Tribute Special even if you DO count the next-highest contenders--and you most certainly shouldn't, as they were all involved in the original project, namely Cunningham, Manfredini, and Savini.)

Learning that Roday was a genre nerd sealed the deal on my infatuation, naturalmente. Apparently the lead actors on Psych have a pretty considerable hand in shaping the show's content. They even did a group panel--actors and writers--at this year's San Diego ComicCon. Unusual? Mmmmmyyyeeeeeesssss.

The most blatantly and thoroughly genriffic episode was, of course, "Tuesday the 17th", the penultimate episode of last season. This season has so far brought us an Exorcist-inspired episode ("The Devil Is in the Details... And the Upstairs Bedroom", August 28) and last week's episode, "Let's Get Hairy", a werewolf-themed episode featuring none other than David Naughton. (Okay, it featured one other than David Naughton; Biff from Back to the Future played, as well. Hey, I said third-tier and I meant it.) It bears mentioning that there is no genuine supernatural element to the show. Rather, as straight mysteries go, nothing is what it seems, and the culprit never turns out to be reeeeaaal ghoooosts wooooo. It's a little like Scooby-Doo that way. Also, the protagonists are a duo of constantly-in-over-their-heads goofballs who bug eyes and turn tail almost as often as they munch branded snacks. Make of that what you will.

Alas, I lack basic cable, so I've not yet caught tonight's episode, the fall finale. However, USA Network graciously places the full episodes on their website one week after they air. I can't link to a specific video but the navigation is easy-peasy.

Full (recent) Episodes of PSYCH at USANetwork.com

¡Llámame, Jaime! ¡Te quiero!

Wordle is Adorable

2009-10-16T18:16:00.000-05:00

And this doesn't belong here.

Shambling to New Orleans

2009-10-15T22:58:00.004-05:00

If you're going to be at Voodoo Fest in New Orleans this Halloween, be sure to slap on some greasepaint and register (register. REGISTER!) to be counted in ~~Disneyland for Alcoholics'~~ the Big Easy's attempt at an official record-breaking Zombie Walk! Get your Instant Zombie tips below.

This just in

2009-10-15T22:55:00.001-05:00

Zombies are, apparently, hot. Check out this week's Savage Love at the Onion AV Club.

Review: Zombieland

2009-10-08T23:07:00.004-05:00

It's gotten harder and harder to knock my socks off with a movie. Lately the honor seems reserved for sparsely set dramas that lay on the abject, self-destructive, human-condition themes fairly thick.

The trailer for Zombieland, however, had me over the moon with juvenile excitement--RJ and me both, actually. It was our favorite movie ever that we hadn't actually seen. The snappy physical comedy, unaffected cinematography, dorky lead, witty third-person omniscient observations, slow motion attacks, Van fucking Halen--what wasn't exciting? I declared it "the perfect zomedy", a sentence which physically pained me to construct, since I've said time and again that I'm no fan of neologisms, and, further, that neologistic portmanteaus are outright offensive. But in this case there was no other way to say it.

The actual movie keeps the trailer's promise by delivering all these fun features, distributed quite adequately, and more. I won't even give it away, because the second act has a prize so timeless and perfect that Harrison Ford himself would get off his Hoveround just to catch a glimpse of it.

None of this will come as any surprise to those who've been following Zombieland at all (of course, those people will have already seen it by now). It's holding steady as a B+ at Rotten Tomatoes and handily earned back its budget in the first weekend (domestic).

The weaknesses are brought by the comedy element alone, and are fine examples to illustrate why I don't care for comedies in general: Dialog is dedicated to larfs rather than nuanced exposition of well-thought-out characters, so it's hard to care when disaster (or even love) befalls them.

Secondly, similarly, and tragically (I say "tragically" because it cropped up at the very end, leaving a sour taste in my mouth about the film overall), the comedy actually irreparably undercut the climax. I'm giving away little (and even less worth preserving) when I say the movie's last act takes place in an amusement park that a couple of characters had been trekking to, thinking it a safe haven. Obviously, this Shangri-La gives the film its name, and would have done so from the concept stage of production, when, perhaps, the characters were more fluid and the tone of the film, like a flan in the oven, was not yet set. It's a crime that the first sixty minutes of the movie grew to be something downright remarkable but, due to the locked-in title, (if my projections are correct) that stupid finale in the stupid theme park had to stay. Nevermind that it makes no logical sense on any scale, that savvy characters become as hapless children when they set foot in Pacific Playland. Nevermind even that the very goal of getting these streetwise characters to the park necessitates a precipitate string of out-of-character decisions.

BAH. Nevermind. I'm going back to thinking about the great parts, and there are many.

Does this flick knock Shaun of the Dead off the throne? That's subjective, a matter of taste. There would be no Zombieland without Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, I'm sure, but the quality of the former is undeniable. It's close enough, though, that there will be a hearty debate in horror-geek circles on the topic for years to come. And that's refreshing.

See what I mean?

2009-10-02T11:37:00.004-05:00

They're everywhere:

CNN on the enduring popularity of zombies.

Yesterday I said: "Max Brooks may very well never outsell The Zombie Survival Guide," a statement that may very well be proven to be in error: this Wednesday, Brooks's third book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, hits shelves. It's a graphic novel, which means that it has fewer words and more pictures, which in turn means that it has broader appeal to the stumbling slack-jawed hordes.

Not that I won't be purchasing a copy, of course. Or that you won't, right here:

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks

ZOMBIELAND was fun. I'm working on my review now, which will run at Fear Zone. The lovely and talented Julia may chime in with her own thoughts later.

Welcome to Zombieland...

2009-10-01T13:16:00.006-05:00

Not the movie, which I'm seeing tonight, but the world in which we live.

The Zombie Explosion

Twenty years ago, it seemed like all we had were three Romero movies, a few Italian oddities, CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, and that funny one that convinced the public that zombies love to eat brains. In the printed realm, there was Skipp and Spector's BOOK OF THE DEAD, and Philip Nutman's novel-length expansion of his short story, Wet Work. DEAD/ALIVE came along and moistened things up a bit, but, beyond that, there really wasn't much for a zombie fan to chow down upon...

Today, one could say that our cup hath runneth over: zombies are everywhere. In less than five years, we've gotten three new Romero movies. Over the past decade, Skipp, Spector, and Nutman have been scooted down the shelf to make room for tomes by Max Brooks, Brian Keene, Kim Paffenroth, and a shambling and varied host of other zombie novels.

Romero predicted the zombie apocalypse, and it is here: the living dead are everywhere. Slim pickings have given way to an embarrassment of Rhodes-style open-belly feasts, and one has to wonder: how much is too much? Is the grue-filled balloon about to burst?

Yes and no.

Gamers have shown no sign of zombie fatigue. After a decade, Resident Evil--the spark behind today's zombie craze--is still going strong, and its progeny (LEFT 4 DEAD, DEAD SPACE, DEAD RISING) are among the most popular games on the market.

In movie theaters, zombies have yet to take a serious chunk out of the box office. Films like [REC] and DIARY OF THE DEAD receive limited theatrical runs, and a modern classics like SHAUN OF THE DEAD produce less-than-stellar box office numbers. Zack Snyder's remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD remains the reigning zombie box office king, and it's popularity is due more to the fact that it's a balls-out action packed horror film than to the fact that the movie-going public at large were champing at the bit to see zombies on the big screen.

As far as books are concerned, the public will move on. Some new trend will pass over the cultural landscape, and a few major publishers will get burned, having dumped too much money into a zombie book simply because Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sold well, and Max Brooks may very well never outsell The Zombie Survival Guide.

There will, however, always be an audience for zombie books. Zombies have niche appeal, and I don't believe the core audience--the folks who purchased 20,000 copies of DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON, for example--is going anywhere. They've been around for quite some time, and while their numbers are not strong enough to put anyone on the NY Times Bestsellers List, they are more than powerful enough to keep several small presses afloat for the foreseeable future.

Outside of games, movies, and books, zombies continue to disappoint nut-jobs the world over by simply insisting upon remaining fictional.

Big Book News

We're about to find out just how strong the zombie book buying audience really is: George A. Romero, the real Big Daddy, has reportedly been paid a $300,000 advance by UK publisher Headline to pen two zombie novels. The first, aptly titled The Living Dead, will reveal "the origin of the zombie realm," and will give us "glimpses of increasing chaos from around the globe."

A decade ago, Romero dipped his toe into these waters, with a serialized e-book, the somewhat Vonnegutian The Death of Death. The plug was pulled on that project one hundred pages in, but elements of the story have shown up Romero's recent work, and I suspect the minute-by-minute, around-the-globe time-line style of Death will carry over into The Living Dead and its sequel.

Click here for more.

Zombieland

Thanks to the fine folks at Sony Pictures and Moroch, I'll be attending a press screening of ZOMBIELAND tonight. Based on the trailers alone, I have pretty much decided that this is my favorite film of all time.

Stupendous advance word isn't helping, but I should probably lower my expectations...

The Ultimate Zombie Survival Guide

2009-09-29T19:28:00.002-05:00

A 10-minute faux-vintage informational video. Check it out at YouTube.

Do You Have the Crazy?

2009-09-28T19:56:00.009-05:00

The remake onslaught continues with THE CRAZIES, a movie "loosely based" on George A. Romero's little-seen original.

Aside from Justin Welborn, star of THE SIGNAL*, I have no idea what to expect from this movie. Romero is listed as Executive Producer, but I don't know if he had any real input.

Here's the teaser poster. Click to make it all nice and big.

*Probably the best movie ever made about a town going nuts, as well as my choice for best horror film of the past twenty years.

A Fanboy Nightmare

2009-09-28T08:46:00.011-05:00

In 1984, my mom took me to see A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. I was nine years old. Whether or not she was acting responsibly is open for debate, but one thing is certain: I became obsessed with Wes Craven's scarred dream stalker.

A make-up effects aficionado, I spent the first year or so of my unhealthy obsession wanting to get a good look at Freddy--he was always in shadows, and I hadn't discovered the joys of FANGORIA! The obsession died somewhere around '89, at roughly the same time as the interesting yet disappointingly awful DREAM CHILD, and by that point my favorite burned child-killer had been over-exposed to the point of being little more than a cartoonish joke.

Twenty five years after the fact, I've grown up a little. Yeah, so, I did buy a Freddy sweater from Hot Topic just last week, but I haven't watched any of the movies in years. I still hold the original film in high esteem, and consider the third film, DREAM WARRIORS, to be the quintessential '80s horror films, but overall, well... despite the R rating, these are movies best enjoyed by kids aged 12 & up.

My point? This trailer gave me chills, of course.

I've gone on record multiple times: remakes don't bother me. By their very nature, stories are meant to be retold and reinterpreted. Bad remakes are the problem. Good remakes give us things like THE THING, THE FLY, THE MALTESE FALCON, and THE WIZARD OF OZ.

It's easy enough for thirty-something film geeks to turn up their noses in condemnation. The original is perfectly fine the way it is, right? I agree, sure, to a point--but these are stories for young people, and young people need to be spoken to in the language of their day. They may still dig on Depp, but they're probably not all that interested in Heather Langencamp's voluminous mane.

Warm and fuzzy nostalgia be damned, the original NIGHTMARE films can be improved upon. The freshness of DREAM WARRIORS in 1987 will never be duplicated, and the sight of Freddy on the big screen --a face-peelin, arm-stretchin', belly-slicin', finger-choppin' revelation of sorts in 1984-- is merely an echo. But, technically, this new iteration of the franchise has every right to be the most well-made film of the lot.

But Englund is the only man for the job, you say? Yes, well, have you heard: a UK-based company called Hammer is producing a Dracula movie without Bela Lugosi! Some lanky loser named Christopher Lee is stepping into the cape. I hope he has a day job.

Shut up. You're being silly.

Haley is an excellent choice to fill the most iconic sweater in movie history, and the film certainly looks nice (even if it does have Bay's wretched fingerprints all over each and every digitally-manipulated music-video-lookin' frame). The script--the draft I've read, anyhow--is mostly good, until it cheats and then causes the whole damned thing to collapse. My fingers are crossed that they've ironed out these problems.

Despite the fact that the NIGHTMARE remake is not being made for me, and despite the fact that I have grown up somewhat since 1984, I will be there on opening day.

I just have to decide whether or not to wear my sweater...

Simon Pegg & Nick Frost Fight Zombies

2009-09-26T10:33:00.002-05:00

I have no idea what this comes from or how old it is. All told it's about a half hour, slow, and not exactly brilliant, but still thirty minutes better spent this way than watching TWO AND A HALF MEN or something. Cute.

Pics from SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

2009-09-26T08:50:00.001-05:00

FearNet.com has a gallery of fresh pics from the set of George A. Romero's newest project Survival of the Dead.

Bon appetit!

28 Days Later

2009-09-26T08:32:00.001-05:00

...in One Minute, in One Take:

I guess I post enough stuff that's creepy and/or depressing. Here's something full of British charm and cheer!

Great fun for Gojira fans

2009-09-24T22:27:00.001-05:00

Anatomical Diagrams of Mythical Japanese Monsters

Comic Shop by Tripod

2009-09-18T20:31:00.001-05:00

Man, this hit a lot of notes for us.

Shudders abound: Video special

2009-09-17T21:21:00.004-05:00

Want to see a mainstream music video about nightmares and child abuse that actually contains a nightmare-inducing level of actual child abuse?

I give you "Kids" by MGMT.

For those with weaker stomachs or more delicate sensibilities, here's a montage of bloody movie violence.

Clearly, I'm just interested in monsters and nature.

2009-09-17T21:19:00.002-05:00

Welcome to The Dead Don't Die, a blog about natural monsters. Obviously.

Gollum-Like Creature Emerges from Lake in Panama (Includes EXCELLENT photos!)

United Appeal for the Dead

2009-09-17T06:55:00.001-05:00

A classic clip from a movie I don't really consider classic, Kentucky Fried Movie. Maybe I need to see it again.

A step forward for snakes

2009-09-16T06:36:00.002-05:00

I'm probably getting fairly off-course from the declared purpose of this blog, but how can I not report this? I'm fuckin' scared!

Not only can a snake grow a goddamn leg, it can also use it to scale the walls of your motherfucking bedroom while you sleep.

More SURVIVAL footage, reviews OF THE DEAD

2009-09-09T20:32:00.003-05:00

Here's some more SURVIVAL footage. And here. I'm not sure if these are merely promo pieces or actual clips from the film (maybe the opening, pre-credits?), but I dig them. They're vintage Romero in many ways. I love the cutaways to the puddle of blood.

The first reviews of the film have gone live. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have lots to say about Romero's latest-- the former is pretty scathing, the latter quite positive. Neither are very insightful nor are they of much use to me either way, as my ass is already in the seat.

28 Days Later comic

2009-09-07T14:22:00.003-05:00

We picked up the new 28 Days Later comic last week, and it's... pretty much fail by our standards. Those looking for something bearing any tonal similarity to the 2002 film will be sorely disappointed. Rather than being bleak, smart, breathless, realist and emotional like the movie, the comic is dumbed-down and features a very shopworn setup.

In this imagining, the UK mainland is still teeming with infected but has been successfully quarantined. The story begins elsewhere on the continent at a safe encampment.

Serena, the street-smart, tough-as-nails, machete-wielding survivor from the film is here depicted as a stony loner who was separated from the other two survivors, her de facto family, under yet-unexplained circumstances.

For some reason--it was silly enough that it's already forgotten to me--a crew of Americans (combat journalists, I think?) wants to get back into the quarantine zone, and they ask Serena to be their guide, since she has firsthand experience with the infected. She refuses flat, then has a flashback and agrees at the last second. Like ya do. (I don't recall the content; maybe she flashed back to watching Aliens?)

These intelligent and battle-hardened journalists have never crossed paths with the infected before. Nor have they, apparently, ever seen a photo of one or read up on any accounts of identifying symptoms and behaviors before going on an armed trek by foot into infected territory. Within a couple of pages of landing on some island, a supposedly secured connection zone, one of these morons mistakes two infected for healthy people and, in trying to initiate conversation, gets close enough to be assaulted by them. Serena saves the day, natch, and determines that the infection has spread to where it's not supposed to be. (Duh-duh-DUUH!)

Yawn.

The art is a mixed bag, as photo-based sequential art tends to be. Some artists are great at action and layouts but not faces--Hitch comes to mind, of course, except he's not really great at anything except getting shit out quickly, which is apparently enough of a qualification for most comics publishers. The trouble for me is that faces and expressions and unique, consistent features are probably the criterion that matters most to me in sequential art, so it's hard for me to applaud this work for that reason alone. I guess... the color is nice? I don't know, overall it's just not a style I dig, though I suppose it works for this kind of story better than fully stylized anatomy and scene-setting.

As we mentioned before, you can check out the first few pages of the comic at newsarama.

We're going to stick with this for two or three issues just to see if Kirkman has any competition. I've described my problems with his work ad nauseum but, writing-wise, the 28 Days Later comic makes The Walking Dead look like Steinbeck.

First scene from SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

2009-09-04T18:47:00.003-05:00

At last, here's our first real look at George Romero's SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, which will premiere this month at the Toronto International Film Fest. The Red camera footage looks much better than the previous (unfinished) leaked clip indicated, and it's interesting to see George shooting in what appears to be 2.35:1 again-- until now, he'd gone wide for only LAND OF THE DEAD.

George seems to be dipping his his toe into the Zombie Comedy (Zomedy? Zomby Comedie?) pool this time around, though I suspect this light moment is akin to the pie-fight in DAWN OF THE DEAD -- it's no doubt surrounded by all manner of drama, horror, and action. Speaking of DAWN: the second zombie in this clip looks as if he crawled right out of that classic flick.

Between this, [REC]2 and ZOMBIELAND, TIFF is the place to be. In fact, if you call yourself a zombie fan and you don't attend, you suck.*

*I suck.

28 Days Later to be expanded into comic series

2009-08-26T17:18:00.005-05:00

Hitting stands today, BOOM! Studios comics is producing the continuing story of Selena, hardcase heroine from Danny Boyle's impressive 2002 foray into zombies. (That's right; I said zombies. You pedants can argue as I once did that we're talking about "infected", and that remains a notable distinction within the movie, but it's foolish to argue from some biological technicality that 28 Days Later is not, for all intents and purposes, A Zombie Movie, or that it should be removed from the company of zombie movies. We're talking about fantasy creatures: biological details are irrelevant, but the critical elements--particularly the psychological effects on the humans--are identical. It's like saying your book about unicorns is not about unicorns because their horns grow back when hacked off. For fuck's sake, even the seminal modern zombie film, Romero's Night of the Living Dead, does not feature "zombies" in the strict and original Voodoo sense--nor does any of its descendants--but I don't see many people having kittens over that misattribution. The umbrella of the definition and category expands as we see fit, and I see this inclusion as extremely fucking fit.)

Newsarama has a full preview.

Personally, I'm not wildly impressed with the art, but I'll probably pick it up just to see for sure if The Walking Dead has any competition.

The Next Batman Film

2009-08-26T17:10:00.003-05:00

Christopher Nolan, apparently already convinced that there's no way the next Batman film could conceivably top The Dark Knight, has given into failure and decided to just make it spectacularly bad, presumably so Batman 4 has some ashes from which to ascend phoenix-like. Contrarily enough, though, his first destructive stroke already hints at a blockbuster for the mouthbreathing masses:

Hollywood plastic-surgery-wreck-in-progress and soulless Real Doll Megan Fox has been cast as Catwoman.

*****************

EDIT: Aw, damn. It was just a rumor. And I was so looking forward to the glorious crash and burn outshining even Cameron's Avatar. (OH SNAP I WENT THERE)

Zombie Ants

2009-08-19T00:49:00.004-05:00

Not solanum, not radiation, not voodoo, not even some microbe picked up by the Venus probe. By what means shall the dead be made to rise? By the same means that your pizza tastes awesome and your grandma's toes look like movie-theater popcorn: FUNGUS!

Some crybaby fungus in Thailand (I'm looking at you, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) got sick of the shitty political climate and castaway coconut bits and decided to entertain itself by seizing the nerve centers of carpenter ants, destroying their organs and sending them on a well directed death march to the fungus's dinner table.

Read the article at livescience.com.

Danny Lloyd today

2009-08-16T23:11:00.004-05:00

It's common knowledge in horror circles that Danny Lloyd, the boy who played young Danny Torrance in Kubrick's The Shining (1980), disappeared from the film scene, went on to become a schoolteacher, and has no interest in playing a public role for fans, in fact having a distaste for The Shining itself and the hubbub surrounding it. He came out of reclusion (if you can call it that; compared to the life of most die-hard internet-trolling genre geeks, I'm sure the life of a well-adjusted 37-year-old science teacher in the great Midwest is quite socially enriched) for a single appearance this past weekend at the Fright Night Film Fest in Louisville, Kentucky. What finally got this private fella to step into the limelight? He signed autographs for cash to benefit the Make-a-Wish foundation.

Classy guy. Round of applause for Mr. Lloyd.

Okay, now stop and go back to leaving him alone, as he deserves. His naive, childhood contribution to horror filmmaking is all we ever needed of him.

Zombie Girl

2009-08-16T22:36:00.004-05:00

In the vein of An American Movie, but hopefully less depressing (and necessarily less entertaining), Zombie Girl is a 90-minute documentary following twelve-year-old aspiring filmmaker Emily as she sets out to make a zombie film.

The full documentary streams at snagfilms.com. Check it out if you like. You can watch it until August 20th.

I was actually bored after the first few minutes and had to stop--my time is a little too precious these days and I've already spent hundreds of hours behind the scenes of various low-budget endeavors, and that's boring enough first-person when you have an actual stake in it--but I thought some of you out there might be interested. Do let me know if you think it's worth your time. Personally, I'm more apt to give an hour and a half to the actual feature. (Something I can't say for Coven.)

District 9

2009-08-15T16:33:00.000-05:00

I won't be the first one to tell you to go see District 9. I also won't be the first one to tell you that it's not all it's hyped to be. As with Cloverfield, the promotion and critical ovations foment expectations that are nearly impossible to meet. District 9 is not a Messianic work.

It is, however, a really nifty genre-straddling piece of action-adventure. By stripping some of the best gears and cogs from horror, disaster films, alien SF, and even contemporary sociopolitical features like The Constant Gardener, all mashed together and presented roughly documentary-style, District 9 strikes a very fresh balance and manages to surprise at nearly every turn. The first act, strictly journalistic in tone, is intense and constantly delights. Context for the story--twenty years of allegorical history--is provided in natural, low key shorthand. The second act drops the handheld camera shtick, and it's a bit jarring to shift to what is in essence an utterly conventional 80s Unlikely Buddies action flick. This proves a bit of a disappointment; I'd have preferred the distanced, cinéma vérité model to have carried throughout the film, and for the plot to have continued building on challenging social observations and human drama rather than falling back on more shopworn narrative tropes, but I understand that this is a little more trying than most mainstream viewers want their blockbusters to be. Still, the ending is admirably inconclusive, and I'm curious whether the intent is to spur a sequel.

The most remarkable thing is the effects work. The scores of physically complex insectile humanoids are magnificent and certainly adequately repulsive, and interact with their environments almost flawlessly. The animators imbued the lead Prawn, Christopher, with gestures and tics that are remarkably expressive and humanlike considering that he has a freaking exoskeleton.

As a friend of mine pointed out, digital film is the great leveller. I'll add that $30 million is the new low budget blockbuster. Indie and semi-indie studios, particularly thanks to patronship by a fellow like producer Peter Jackson, are built on economy, inventiveness, dedication, and vision. The Day The Earth Stood Still must have blown through its preposterous $80 million on, I don't know, throngs of highly trained and well-armed security forces to keep long-loving geeks from throwing themselves on Jennifer Connelly. It certainly wasn't spent on special effects, since those amounted to Occasional Big Smooth Metal Man and A Couple Minutes of Hungry Clouds. There's no excuse for a budget that bloated to create a movie that unimpressive, and District 9 demonstrates that principle commendably.

While imperfect, District 9 is a great flick and well worth seeing for the visual effects accomplishments alone, though there's much more to love than that. (Go Weta!) It's a marvelous sign that movies like this are being thought up, and that there are studios uninterested in intellectually neutering them and gussying them up throughout production with tits and 'splosions to better appeal to the mouthbreathing masses. (Hell, that's what Michael Bay is here to do.)

Using Math Against the Undead

2009-08-15T14:45:00.001-05:00

Wired.com: Mathematical Model for Surviving a Zombie Attack

We Are Going to Tweet You

2009-08-13T16:21:00.003-05:00

It's official: George Romero tweets.

Below is a really cool featurette on Romero's latest, SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, a movie I'd very much like to see next month in Austin.

BTS George Romero Sneak Peek

Darabont + Walking Dead + AMC

2009-08-12T09:43:00.003-05:00

Linky link: Frank Darabont to Direct The Walking Dead for cable?

So what do y'all think: is this a better move than the silver screen? I think it could be delish.

MORE zombified nazis

2009-08-06T22:41:00.003-05:00

...in something called Worst Case Scenario. Seems like the sort of thing that only exists as trailers but might lift off the ground if the trailers get enough attention. I don't know. I don't feel like looking it up, but if you're interested enough, I'm sure you can dig up something. I'm just here to link you to YouTube.

Worst Case Scenario trailer 1: in your face

Worst Case Scenario trailer 2: atmospheric

Buon appetito.

I Love Sarah Jane

2009-08-05T13:28:00.002-05:00

Check out I Love Sarah Jane, a short Australian coming-of-age zombie film. Very much worth fourteen minutes' viewing.

Review: Pontypool (2009)

2009-07-23T21:43:00.005-05:00

The setting is Pontypool, a Canadian podunk mired in snowiest winter. The hour is ungodly-early, and disgraced talk radio host Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is still getting his bearings at the new small-beans gig. The morning begins typically enough, but soon unbelievable reports of mob violence begin coming in. Shut up in their studio, Mazzy and his crew try to make sense of the situation as it worsens--and even as merely speaking about it becomes dangerous.

Pontypool, directed by Bruce McDonald and based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, does what so many zombie-type films fail to: while playing with the familiar undead themes of senseless mob rule and inverted (or erased) humanity, it climbs out of the Romero sandbox and presents a wholly different type of baddie. The "conversationalists", as they are referred to in interviews with the director but not in the film itself, are mere living humans infected with empty linguistic mimesis, the frustration of which drives them to violence.

Viewers looking for a coherent pseudoscientific justification will be diappointed. This is more like Les Revenants (2004), an eerie French film about the return of the dead that saw no reason to inject half-assed explanations or even logical chains of consequences. The event simply occurs, and the results simply are. Pontypool, likewise, includes no talk of radiation or viral mutation. The phenomenon seems to be a massive metaphor, perhaps for the idiosyncratic nature of human existence and the increasing impossibility of genuine communication (or even interest in it) as we move forward into times that are more and more Me-centered. My husband suggests that it might symbolize the poisonous nature of some Western ideologies (only the English language is affected by the disorder--I argue that this plot point is a contrivance rather than part of a political statement).

The subtext might be hazy, but McHattie's dialogue makes a general point quite clearly: words only have the meaning that we give to them, and we can rip that meaning away or swap it out for another as we please. This is a flimsy theme, so either the creators intended for the film to provoke speculation about deeper themes, and certainly succeeded in our case, or they're satisfied with this stoner-musing level of cut-rate open-ended "like, what if my blue was your orange, man" philosophizing. Ain't a thing wrong with that.

For my money, though, Les Revenants does a better job of letting its characters simply deal with the repercussions through an organic dramatic playout rather than spend all their time talking. And talking. And talking about how to defeat something that's never fully explained in the first place, trying to come up with logical solutions to illogical problems, as McHattie's character is forced to do by virtue of being an on-air personality attempting to inform his listenership and by virtue of the vehicle of terror being the spoken word itself. There's no avoiding it, and I consider that a pitfall.

However, the acting is solid, the aesthetic is evocatively dreary, and the violence is hard (if not abundant). It's not a loud movie. The first half hour is remarkably well-executed and chilling. If you like your zombie horror straight-up and untainted by artsy half-baked injections of meaning, it might not be for you. If you're interested in experimentation with what "zombies" can be, you won't find your ninety-five minutes wasted.

Review: [REC] and DEAD SNOW

2009-06-14T21:05:00.006-05:00

I've reviewed recent(ish) foreign horror films DEAD SNOW (Norway) and [REC] (Spain) and examined them specifically as the inverse of the normal trend we have coming out of Hollywood: they are influenced by American cinema to the point of feeling like the same retreads we seem to tire of over here imbued with varying degrees of their own cleverness, but the international flair they're necessarily lent makes them feel downright refreshing.

[REC] is presented as the recovered footage captured by a TV crew during a zombie outbreak late one night in Barcelona. DEAD SNOW is a zombie comedy pastiche set in the gorgeous Norwegian Alps. They're both fine viewing, though DEAD SNOW, I think, earns the rank of classic.

Check out the review at FearZone.com.

Interview with a Zombie

2009-06-02T21:27:00.002-05:00

Well, this is just plum adorable, but for maximum fun you have to pretend it's Christian Bale deep into undead method-acting. (Trust me, it's not much of a stretch.)

Creeping Hemlock Press Newsletter

2009-05-31T23:29:00.000-05:00

We haven't done a newsletter sign-up sweep in... well, ever.

Sign up for the Creeping Hemlock Press newsletter to receive occasional (usually quarterly) updates about new titles, sales and offers, events, exceptional reviews, and awards. Just email us at admin@creepinghemlock.com with "Newsletter" in the subject line.

Thanks!

...No One Can Hear You Suck

2009-05-28T05:57:00.003-05:00

An Alien remake? Really? Now with super shiny CG Alien hopping all over the place and gesticulating wildly, I am sure.

They may as well just remake The Exorcist, too, and get it over with. It can be about a little boy this time, and instead of Pazuzu possessing him we learn that it's the spirit of another little boy who Fathers Karris and Merrin tag-team corn-holed-to-death in the rectory.

In related news, here's Freddy.

Drag Me to Hell

2009-05-27T01:47:00.007-05:00

Tonight I realized something startling. (No, not the tragic fact that Alice Cooper's abandoned birthname is Vincent Damon Furnier. What a wasted fucking opportunity that was!) Rather, I realized this: that Sam Raimi has not spent the last twenty years continuing to make horror films is a terrific loss for us as film-goers.

Drag Me to Hell is delightful, a breath of fresh air when set against the modern mainstream horror-movie scene. Hollywood is content to trot out remake after remake--all dank, all grim, all flimsy and utterly formulaic. We're lucky to get a handful of independent or foreign winners each year, and even those are generally very serious or very silly. Drag Me to Hell flies in the face of all of these by bringing a large box of tools but a very simple plan.

A quality tragic moral setup places the protagonist, a loan officer, in a pickle: to grease the wheels for her own promotion, she denies a mortgage extension to an old woman of Eastern European descent and, as a result, basically gets mightily fucked up for the next ninety minutes. As with the best classic horror films, the plot is at times quite thin and the acting quite obvious, but you likely won't care through all the expertly-directed harrowing, violent, and often blackly humorous trials the protag goes through in attempting to redeem herself.

Raimi's new work walks the magical line he drew in 1987: the line between action and suspense, comedy and terror, homage and innovation. You'll find the mix recreated well here. Fans of Evil Dead II will not be disappointed. That being said, I can't imagine how it will play to those unfamiliar with Raimi's earlier work. I have to think that some of the classic gags and visuals will fall completely flat for them, particularly the young'uns who will undoubtedly flock to this, what they might perceive to be Just Another Blue-Filtered Boo Flick. Only this weekend's numbers will tell.

It does bear commenting: while most of the gore-and-ghost sequences are very effective, a few of the CG effects are surprisingly unfinished. There's no explanation for this discrepancy, except perhaps that the film was made on a scant budget and the last few hundred-thousand went justifiably toward wooing a certain elusive Mr. Ted Raimi for a cameo that's as heartbreakingly genius as it is brief.

I'm not sure what to make of the depiction of the Romani in this film. Between the "ugly old gypsy" and her requisite dispensation of a vengeance curse, there's essentially no deviation from the archaic stereotypes found in classic film and literature (note that Drag Me to Hell is, in fact, a Universal Pictures release--doesn't quite constitute a justification, but maybe part of an explanation). You feel sympathy for the curse-giver and her family, but they are not well-rounded or respected. I'm curious to learn Raimi's thoughts on the matter (perhaps it's an intentional caricature?), as well as reactions from people more familiar with the culture and its treatment than I.

Also, Justin Long is a fucking blight, a walking Mac ad with all its intrinsic smugness who somehow manages to be surrounded by the Apple logo in a movie that has jack shit to do with that. Is it supposed to be funny? Long has no range and no depth. Neither he nor his character help this movie one iota.

Fortunately for us, Drag Me to Hell doesn't need the Mac's help; it thrives in spite of his abominable presence. It's a triumph of popcorn-horror filmmaking, wall-to-wall fun of all the best gooey and gaspy stripes.

Also, mark me: handkerchiefs are the new cat-jumping-out-of-a-closet. Handkerchiefs, I say!

COLIN: The $70 Zombie Movie

2009-05-22T17:39:00.002-05:00

CNN: The very soul of frugality, British indie zombie flick Colin impresses at Cannes and now has distributors lining up.

The official website is here. (I'd watch the trailer but I got my kid in the room.)

The Walking Dead #61 and CHEW

2009-05-21T15:19:00.002-05:00

The Walking Dead #61 does some shocking (and much-needed) cast paring-down. Yay! Also introduces a new character, the Suspicious, Unwavering Black Preacher.

I'm curious to see how this character shakes out. If you read this issue, you know that there's certainly more to him than meets the eye--he may not be at all what he claims to.

Also, this issue contains a preview of the title Chew, written by John Layman and rendered by a guy I got to meet at New Orleans' recent Alternative Media Expo, local hottie Rob Guillory.

(I mean "hottie" in the sense that he's a hot new player on the field--you know, a rising star. It would be wholly inappropriate for me to characterize this very-married man as irresistible, let alone delicious. Wholly inappropriate.)

Ahem. So, yes, Chew. I actually didn't read the preview and I'm too lazy to dig it out now, but it's about a food critic whose reviews are quite literally mouthwatering--readers actually taste the flavors as they read her vivid descriptions. (Do I smell magical realism? There should be more of this in comics! I love that.) When her feelings for haute cuisine turn sour, it seems she sticks to reviewing greasy-spoon eateries and street vendors, resulting in acute food poisoning among her readership. (Awesome.) "Cibopathic" cop Tony Chu uses his palate as a tool for clairvoyance, munching on victims to divine the details of their murder. It's his job to put and end to the critic's renegade psycho-poisoning while hiding his secret from a curious government. Whew!

Oh, yeah, and he's in love with her, too.

Look for this one June 3rd.

Comics round-up (well, at least the ones I read)

2009-05-14T15:32:00.011-05:00

DESTROYER/KICK-ASS
Kirkman may have been spinning his wheels a bit with THE WALKING DEAD, but he busts out all flavors of brilliant with this five-issue mini. Unlike WALKING DEAD, which I recommend purchasing in as trade paperbacks, DESTROYER delivers every issue, every page. It's a great buy in floppy format, especially considering the brevity of its run.

The most remarkable thing about DESTROYER, though, might be the art--or, rather, the juxtaposition of an art style that's clean, soft, simple, and lacks highly contrived composition (in these ways, nearly kiddie-cartoon-like) with such graphic, adult-aimed content. Millar's KICK-ASS comes to mind as a comparable title. That one's drawn by Romita Jr, whose right-angle/chest-level layouts, massive heads and bubble eyes struck me as very kid-friendly during his Spider-Man work. Of course this was paired with G-rated storytelling, only cinching my conception of him as an All-Audiences artist.

His work on the exceedingly violent KICK-ASS, then, is something of an exercise in contradiction. He can't render action and gore as realistically as, say, Steve McNiven (siiigh... dreamy), so the art falls short in that regard, but seeing cute kids in a tame art style pulling off a sudden and very bloody series of dismemberments, well... it's like they invented their own brand of Shudder. It's pretty shocking, I think.

DESTROYER has a similar effect.

Which answers a question that I suppose has been hanging for me. We've gone past the age of fairly innocent art with conventionally-moraled stories (early comics through the seventies) and through the really hardcore, subversive art with hardcore, subversive stories (from the eighties on up). Where do we go from there? Make both aspects even more hardcorerer? That's one route, I suppose.

But this unexpected hybrid of NC-17 storytelling with G-style art is growing on me. It's actually quite charming.

ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS HULK
This title is all about *patience*. Wait years in between issues only to be tantalized by a story that keeps cutting around The Main Event and never actually shows it. However, this is a really great, creative story that plays with chronology like it's an air-hockey puck. Plus, Logan's dream-mentor-guy is a Panda. Fuck yeah.

(Did you know that the real-life wolverine is a repulsive little scavenging weasel-cousin that's also known by the names "stinkbear" and "nastycat"? Good luck washing that factoid from your gray stuff next time you see Logan cavorting in a wood with some badass "totemic" timberwolves!)

Also, Francis Yu's art is quite stunning. I'd give my right ovary for his talent. (Frankly, though, I'd likely give both my ovaries for a Arby's $5 gift card [OBO!] and be able to live out the rest of my life in contented security and financial freedom.)

WOLVERINE NOIR

Can't recommend this one. Unless I'm oddly mistaken, it builds on the WOLVERINE: ORIGIN mythology. While I really enjoyed ORIGIN as a standalone "here's a neat idea" piece, I don't consider it canon and I don't appreciate this attempt to capitalize on its (limited) cache by extending the pseudo-myth, especially when they NOIR in itself is not a great read. At least, this issue was not a great read--maybe the next one will be better. For my money, though, your #1 should have enough hook on its own without having to squander goodwill from previous creators' labors. Maybe, like Tutti-Frutti or Thousand-Year Egg, it's just not my flavor.

New THE WALKING DEAD is waiting for me at the shop! ...And there was much rejoicing.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2009-05-01T22:01:00.003-05:00

Completely spur of the moment, the fam and I decided to see catch a matinee today. I had terrifically low expectations and, as a result, great great fun. It was obviously designed to give hard-ons to fourteen-year-olds, so if you have any kind of love for brainless bravado, cheesy one-liners, and nonstop mediocre action, you'll probably enjoy this.

High points:

Every second Liev Schreiber's around
Ryan Reynolds speaking
Hugh Jackman's extended pantslessness

Low points:

Three words: Will. I. Am. (I'm not normally the type to shout "Kill him!" in the theater. Especially regarding a good guy.)
Surprise: adamantium can absorb Cyclopian eyeball-blasts!
Wolverine's claws and skeleton look like they're made of soft gray plastic like the butcher's knife from a cheap Halloween costume
Ma and Pa Kent
Mute Ryan Reynolds and his stupid-ass powers--even Liefeld couldn't have made Deadpool this awful

If you're from New Orleans, you had to wonder as he crossed the Greater New Orleans Bridge into the city: just what the fuck was Wolverine doing on the West Bank? Ain't no reason to be there unless you live there. It is NOT a route from anywhere else in the country to the city. Though it shore looks purdy on screen, don't it, chere?

The action never feels high-stakes, but it's pretty good regardless.

Stick around for the post-credits snippet. As a scene it's about as useless as ketchup to a kangaroo, but it does suggest that a sequel would draw from one of the best Wolverine stories, Claremont & Miller's mid-eighties Japan-set run. I don't know if that's really good news.

The Walking Dead #60

2009-04-30T12:05:00.006-05:00

I've next to nothing to say about The Walking Dead #60, except that I continue to be quite pleased by the pace and tone of the current story arc.

This issue follows Abraham, Rick and Carl after they've retrieved Morgan and are running from a zombie "herd" of two-thousand or more. Apart from touching base with the remaining crew a couple of times, we stay breathlessly with the foursome as they devise a subterfuge to ditch their grave-scented pursuers. In an expertly crafted sequence, a morbid discovery does a subtle number on Morgan's addled conscience. There's some fucked up shit with the twins that provides further evidence of Kirkman's emerging theme: postapocalyptic life is not romantic or liberating, but rather an unceasingly hostile plane that can lead only to madness.

Adlard is getting even better at composing and detailing in actual-size format. He pulls out a lot of really stylish framing and poses. Some of them are quite lovely.

I guess I'll have to wait till #61 to find out the meaning of the final panel. I hope it's what I think it is!

Again with the Boobs

2009-03-31T15:36:00.004-05:00

A few quickies:

My review for THE BOOBY HATCH will appear at Fear Zone within the next week or two. As far as Romero-related oddities go, this one may be the oddest: it's a post Latent Image softcore sex comedy directed by John Russo and Rudy Ricci.

It also stars Ricci, who you'll recognize as one of the bikers in DAWN OF THE DEAD, as well as Russ "Johnny" Streiner and David "Flyboy" Emge.

I haven't watched it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some other familiar faces pop up...

In other news:

John Harrison recently talked to Fangoria regarding his score for George's new DEAD flick:

"I don’t want to write a score for …OF THE DEAD by starting off with ominous horror movie music, atonal , even pseudo-industrial sounds that are cliché in horror films today. To do that would deliver what everybody expects…this is not that kind of movie. This is something entirely different."

Sounds promising. Follow me for the entire interview.

"I do not have a title for the movie yet,” Romero told Fango this month at the Weekend of Horrors in Chicago. “Right now it’s just called …OF THE DEAD, although I kind of wish I could just name it DIARY OF THE DEAD PART 2. What I can tell you about the story is that it is going to be focused on what is happening in the world right now. The atmosphere is a little different after the Bush years, but I still sense some uncertainty."

Some uncertainty? George Romero, ladies and gentlemen, this year's recipient of the Understatement of the Year Award.

Zombie Haiku by Ryan Mecum

2009-03-17T02:17:00.002-05:00

The undead and short-form metered verse: two great tastes that taste great together. Or, if you're like me, one great taste that makes the other taste edible.

When I was a wee one, my mother would give me aspirin crushed in honey. This succeeded in making me despise the taste of both aspirin and honey. Luckily, author Ryan Mecum lays on that sweet, reddened corn syrup branded Humor About the Undead in sufficient quantities to make the bitter pill of haiku downright enjoyable.

Can you tell I don't like poetry yet?

While attending ZombieFest 2008 at the famed Monroeville Mall just outside Pittsburgh this past fall, I had the pleasure of meeting Ryan and buying the book directly from him--it was the first I'd heard of it, in fact. I commented to him at the time (rather apologetically) that, due to the choppy form, I suspected the collection might be best enjoyed as bathroom reading.

I've been wrong before, maybe once or twice. In fact, this genre-straddling work enjoys two worlds of benefits: the convenient, serialized brevity of a poetry collection and the addictive readability of a zombie comedy. (Don't ever ask me to call such a thing a "zomedy". I'm not a fan of neologisms, let alone neologistic portmanteaus. Just... don't ever ask.)

I was hooked because Mecum's verse is adroit and actually presents a single continuing narrative. It's related from the perspective of a lovestruck would-be poet whose scrawlings go from bad to worse as his pulse goes from existent to non-. More than handful of entries feel uninspired--just as the work enjoys two worlds of benefits, it also suffers in trying to meet two worlds of expectations. Once or twice, the poetry misses the 5-7-5 syllable rule for haiku. The comedy wilts a bit when the story is made to shuffle along with occasional filler pieces. With over 300 entries, the odd duds are expected. But overall, it is a fast read and a real romp, with frequent laugh-out-loud moments and lots of general zombie mayhem awesomeness.

But the best thing about Zombie Haiku is not the humor, not the zombies, and certainly not the poetry reading experience per se (can you tell I don't like poetry yet?). The best thing is that, when it's not ghoulishly funny, it's startlingly dark and effective. The humor is the right hand that lightly tickles your belly till you're in an absolute state. The grimness is the left hand that reaches behind and delivers a quick little sucker punch to your kidney. Then you get tickled again.

Lastly, the production details on this book bear mentioning. It's full-color throughout with a spot-gloss cover treatment. Rich blood spatters, filthy, crumpled backgrounds, demented sketches and eerie polaroid snaps make this book a visual delight. (Well, if you're a sick puppy like I am, anyway. ....and I know you are.)

At merely $9.99, this stunning, clever little collection is an excellent selection for a gift, a coffee table book, or, yes, even a bathroom book. Check out Mecum's Zombie Haiku website, where you can see video clips of zombies performing haiku and even download sample pages. You can buy the book through Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble online.

Fresh Lebbon: Children of the New Disorder now in stock!

2009-03-16T10:49:00.002-05:00

Children of the New Disorder, a new novellette by Tim Lebbon and Lindy Moore, is now in stock here at Creeping Hemlock Press.

An age ago, the children stopped coming. The priests’ promise of a curative kept the fury and misery at bay, for a time. Then the airships passed over and dropped their antidote. A relieved people drank it up like a mist of ambrosia.

Marooned and hopeless, Chaylie and her family escaped the horrors that followed, only to return to a land plagued by the tragic and the bizarre.

They appear in the night. Deformed. Mewling. Inhuman. And it’s Chaylie’s job to destroy them in great and blistering heaps. But the living nightmares can only be thrust aside, never defeated. And what if one of them were to survive?

Children of the New Disorder is a chilling vision, a frightening fever dream from the minds of Tim Lebbon and Lindy Moore. Paired with the refreshing voice of a pseudonymous YA fantasy writer, Lebbon’s lauded prose has become unexpectedly daring in this spellbinding apocalyptic tale of the horrors both around and within us.

Children of the New Disorder is a tight, quick read, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in substance. With just a few broad strokes, Lebbon and Moore do an amazing job of creating a fully formed picture of a society collapsing in on itself.... A winner.

-Blu Gilliand, Dark Scribe Magazine

For free shipping, order Children of the New Disorder direct at creepinghemlock.com. It can also be purchased from Horror Mall, Camelot Books, Ziesing Books, the Overlook Connection Bookstore and others. Ask your preferred retailer about ordering.

Signed/numbered edition, limited to 450 copies -- black genuine leather, two-color foil embossing, several full-page illustrations, illustrated color endsheets: $35. Order

Lettered edition -- red genuine leather, case and price TBD

We're waiting on materials for the lettered edition's case but will have details on that shortly. You may make your reservation now for the lettered simply by emailing us with "Children lettered reservation" in your subject line.

The Walking Dead, issue #59

2009-03-13T17:26:00.007-05:00

Hallelujah! Actually, coming from a Catholic background, it's really Alleluia for me.

This issue hits all my happy spots, starting by breathing lightly against my neck, then running its fingers down my trembling sides and nibbling my earlobe while whispering dirty, dirty promises.*

It's quick-moving, relatively light on dialogue (and what dialogue we get is generally brusque), covers a lot of territory in just a few action-packed pages culminating in a perfect mid-scene, un-silly cliffhanger ending. Kirkman hauls us back to the hair-raising scenarios that hooked us into this series. As I've mentioned before, Adlard's best work is his zombies. If we were to graph me nitpicking his art, we'd see that my whining's highest when zombie content is low. This issue dishes up our friendly neighborhood shamblers in spades, and Adlard rises to the occasion. The high water mark is a *superb* double-splash, capitalizing on some pulse-pounding action.

I have no idea how it will resolve; I'm on pins and needles. This issue is clearly the payoff I've been waiting for. (Who doesn't mumble and whine in line? Even in line for something awesome. I'm guilty.)

I repeat the point I articulated several posts ago: month-to-month is no way to read The Walking Dead. I'm sure that for youngsters in the sixties and seventies, getting a quarter to spend on books was a special treat, and they wore that quarter thin every day after school, reading and re-reading each issue for four weeks, their grubby li'l fingers leaving it filthy and dog-eared. Never distracted by the legion multimedia that today keeps our heads snapping in a different direction every twelve seconds, these kids had the time and tenacity to commit that issue to heart. They knew exactly what resolution to hope for with the next issue and never lost the narrative thread.

Couple that with the fact that comics at that time were written for kids who needed a spandex-befitted fix every month, written to be punchy and rewarding every time, and you can see why a mature title like The Walking Dead is really not suited for monthly reading. The plot takes time to ripen. The characters are usually interesting to observe just *being*. There are a lot of lulls while these things happen, and those lulls are critical.

They're critical because they are definitively punctuated by issues like this, #59, blowing your balls clean off. If every issue were like this, the title would've been an insane adrenaline-fest, ass-kicking as a horde of hyperactive tweens having their way with a donkey piñata, compulsively readable but ultimately empty. It would've burned out years ago.

Instead, Kirkman gives us a well-paced, thoughtful, long-reaching narrative that (I can't say it enough times) is undeniably best enjoyed in collected format. (Now, whether that is a series of stapled floppies or a trade paperback is left to your preference. I'm a big trade fan, myself, but that's because a: I'm cheap, b: I'm clumsy, and c: I believe the collectibility of modern comics is negligible if not dead.)

Next time you read me bitching about an issue being slow, direct my short-ass attention back to this entry and I'll promptly STFU.

Another note: When Adlard switched to drawing his pages actual-size several issues back, there was a marked drop in the quality of the faces, with eyes clearly misplaced, mugs flattened, etc. I think he's finally starting to get his footing again and is beginning to master the smaller layout. There are only a small handful of WTF faces in this issue. Most of the art has come up to the level Adlard established when working full-size. High five, Charlie!

See? I'm not so insistent a whiner as you've empirically observed me to be.

*I'm not so Catholic anymore, but I feel like I ought to say some Hail Marys just now.

There Will Be Boobs, and Other Assorted Stuff.

2009-03-07T22:37:00.000-06:00

Watchmen

Like any nerd worth his or her weight in Golden Age comics, I sat in line for the midnight premiere of Zack Snyder's Watchmen.

I'm not going to attempt any kind of in-depth review, as even now--some two days since I saw the film--I'm still processing it. It will take several future viewings, I believe, for it to stand in my eyes on its own merits. For now, it's merely a lush visual representation of the book, the viewing of which was heavily informed/influenced by my most recent re-reading of the source material.

I will say this: the violence lacked subtlety, and thus lacked impact. It's cartoonishly grand guignol. It didn't help that what could have been the most shocking and unnerving kill (the child killer's run-in with his own meat-cleaver) was marred by shockingly unfinished digital gore.

Am I the only one confused by Snyder's choice to transform the alley brawl into a massacre? Disarming a thug and then plunging the knife into his throat? Rorschach or Blake would do that, sure--but Laurie and Dan?

Contamination Follow-up

I finished watching it. It's the most under-edited movie I've ever seen, a 45-minute story (possibly thirty!) stretched and padded to the ninety-minute mark.

It's interesting to note that writer director Luigi Cozzi was no mere hack hired to churn out an Alien knock-off, an easy assumption to make. The accompanying documentary reveals him to be a science fiction fan steeped in the rich history of the American pulps. This is evident in the decidedly quaint silent invasion plot, as well as in the design of the cyclops, a creature that would have looked at home on a cover of Amazing Stories (or maybe sprawled across Times Square in an effort to stop a nuclear holocaust).

For all of his love for and knowledge of the genre, Cozzi produced a film that is little more than an amusing oddity. There are a few fun ideas on display, but, unless you're an Italian horror completist, this one isn't worth your time.

Unless, of course, you want to have some fun playing around with it in Premiere or Final Cut.

The Man Who Saved Night of the Living Dead

The first part of my massive interview with Don May, Jr. is now live at Fear Zone. The second will be posted this coming Thursday (the 12th), at which time I'll run my review of Synapse's upcoming release, the boob-filled Swedish sexploitation flick, Exposed.

Belated Thoughts on a Movie Already on the Way Out

I liked the Friday the 13th remake. I began writing this half-baked review a few days after seeing the movie, but it sat around as a draft for too long and now it's just plain stale.

It's not a great film. It's not really even a film. It is, however, a fine Friday the 13th movie--a low bar, but a bar nonetheless.

I have a certain fondness for the Jason flicks--not because they've very good (they're mostly not), but because I was a kid when I saw them and they titillated me in all the ways good slasher flicks are supposed to titillate a thirteen-year-old boy: a scary and unstoppable monster, creative and bloody kills, and boobs (unless we're talking about Part 7, which delivered perhaps the coolest-looking Jason, but nary a blood-droplet or even a barely-glimpsed areola. (The MPAA were zealous when it came to butchering horror films back then.)

The new Friday delivers on all of the above: Jason is as imposing and unstoppable as ever (and maybe even a little cooler), the kills are fairly creative (though not nearly as bloody or inventive as one would expect, given the freedom offered by digital FX. A sign of some modicum of restraint on the part of the film makers, or a lack of imagination?), and boobs. Not a bountiful abundance of boobs, but more boobs than I've seen on screen since Hostel, as well as a bouncy and protracted sex scene that would have prompted me to go on a slow-mo frenzy, back in post-pubescent VHS glory days of 1987.

The Friday movies are the butter-slathered popcorn of the horror genre. They're junk, but they're greasy good fun. Because of this, one should not go into a Friday the 13th remake with the same apprehension or incredulity inspired by remakes of truly great films. It's Friday the 13th -- not Dawn of the Dead or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

With Scream 13 years behind us, the slasher film is, for better or worse, once more allowed to merely be a slasher film: the new movie is self-aware only in that it references elements from the first three Friday films. Surprisingly, it's not nearly as winky as one would expect, and there's even a nuanced and--gasp!--sophisticated moment or two.

If you're an old-school Friday fan and you're up in arms over this movie, it's probably because you've not given the original films an objective assessment.

Congratulations to the guys behind THE SIGNAL

2009-02-22T14:36:00.000-06:00

...on their nomination for the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award for an independent film with a budget under $500,000.

The first recipient of this award was The Blair Witch Project in 2000. It seems they've since lost their appreciation for genre films.

I didn't watch the awards, not really, but RJ saw enough that he got me to catch the Cassavetes Award section of the re-airing. The Signal was the only genre contender, an excellent movie made for only $50,000 and, to my mind, the obvious choice--it represents the very spirit of low budget, using creativity, crew enthusiasm, clever shortcuts and a packed, short schedule to produce something that plays big, feels smart, and looks fantastic. I'm not going to claim outright that there's a bias in the Spirit Awards against genre films, as I haven't even seen the other movies, but they didn't look that great. My only piece of evidence is one that couldn't have affected the decision-making process:

Presenter Sandra Oh expertly announced each nominee and delivered its synopsis with solemn respect and admiration. Except for The Signal, of course, whose fantastical, violent plot she described with patently sarcastic disdain. You got the sense that she wanted to spit into a napkin when they cut away to the trailer.

Grr. What did you ever do for zombies, Oh?

Watch this space for an interview with Justin Welborn, the star of The Signal and Dance of the Dead and all-around dramaturgical fireball.

The Walking Dead, Issue #58

2009-02-20T19:06:00.004-06:00

Last month's prognostication:

Can't wait to read BFF Handlebar McWeepy's touching-ass Vaseline-lens family flashback.

It didn't shake out exactly that way. Instead of a visual flashback, we're given a solemn recounting by Handlebar (apparently "Abraham", which I had to look up) of exactly how he lost his family.

Kirkman's heart is in the right place. I just don't know where his head is at.

In spite of what he may think, these extreme events experienced or retold with emotional frailty are neither touching nor shocking anymore, at least to me. They still have power over Rick, though, whose eyes bug out of his head as he hears Abraham's story. Why? After years of outrageous trials and losses, why are Kirkman's characters not as desensitized as we are?

Again, he overuses dialogue to come around to a very simple, powerful point, one that would have been served better through minimalism. Adlard matches his lazy stride through this segment. Things take a turn for the better when the crew approaches Morgan's house. Adlard bats one out of the park with his sweeping shots and with the depiction of Morgan's palpably maniacal state through excellent facial renderings. (Challenge: See if you can spot the vastly different panel where Adlard appears to ape Romita Jr. Winner gets a virtual handshake!) Of course Adlard wouldn't have gotten as far as he has without kicking ass at drawing zombies. I wish he got to flex this muscle more. His illustration of little Duane is chilling.

As much as I complain about Kirkman extending scenes beyond the limit their content can sustain, I truly wish that roping Morgan into joining their expedition had been a little less quick and easy. (He does manage to squeeze in some stale adages about the inhumanity of the undead.)

Lastly, the Mullet Moment--you'll know it when you come to it--reads like a reader complaint addressed within the pages. Curious!

Overall, not a terrible issue, but certainly not one that shakes off the shackles that have been holding this book back. I look forward to the return to terse action. District of Columbia, here we come!

Contaminated Expectations

2009-02-11T03:01:00.004-06:00

I've wanted to see Contamination since my uncle bought me a Fangoria Video Guide back in--what was it, 1987? The review mentioned explosive gore FX and a Goblin score, and that was pretty much all twelve-year-old me needed.

Too bad I waited until last night to try and watch it.

I turned it off and went to bed after thirty or so plodding and severely under-edited minutes.

(The exploding rat was cool.)

I'm gonna try to wrap it up now. I'll let you know what's what...

The Best News I've Heard All Day

2009-02-09T23:53:00.003-06:00

George's Undead Neo-Western has a composer: John Harrison.

I was personally hoping that the Big Guy would pick Donald Rubinstein, as Ruby's scores for Martin and Knightriders are fantastic (his Bruiser score was pretty damned solid, too), but you'll hear no complaints from me: Harrison's Caribbean-infused and Carpenter-esque score for Day of the Dead is perhaps the finest in the series. After two less-than-memorable Dead scores, George has taken one daddy-long-legged step in the right direction.

...of the Dead is on schedule to be completed in either March or April, barring reshoots.

Thank you, Dread Central.

---

The Don May, Jr. interview is in the can. Expect it soon at FearZone.

Be Clever and Win Zombie Goodies from Tor Books!

2009-02-08T13:45:00.004-06:00

Can you concoct a caption for this captivating cop corpse couple?

Then head on over to Tor.com and check out John Joseph Adams' contest--all you need is brilliance! Winner receives a copy of Adams' anthology The Living Dead and the video game Left 4 Dead; a prize package as uncompromisingly saliva-summoning as any I've ever seen.

Bon chance, deadites!

World War Z review

2009-02-03T19:03:00.003-06:00

My review of Max Brooks' World War Z appears in the latest issue of Cemetery Dance magazine (#59).

While terrifying, the Romero-based zombies (aka "Zack") are nothing more than a foil in this masterwork. The true boogeymen are bureaucracy, ignorance and greed. Billions of lives are lost to miscalculations and political ploys.... Immensely imaginative, chillingly authentic, brimming with real-world substance, World War Z is a zombie novel for a new era.

Find it on newsstands now!

Zombies Invade Austin!

2009-02-03T18:49:00.004-06:00

Damn. All the coolest stuff happens in Austin.

Quit trying, Indiana.

Tagged: A Zombified Meme

2009-01-19T12:45:00.008-06:00

Zombie author Kim Paffenroth meme-tagged me and I don't have the heart to let him down. It's a pretty standard "Tell Six Random Interesting Things About Yourself" setup, but I figure that if this journal is going to keep up the pretense of being a zombie blog, they should be six random interesting zombie things.

THE RULES (for this game of tag):
1) LINK TO THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU.
2) POST THE RULES ON YOUR BLOG.
3) WRITE SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF.
4) TAG SIX PEOPLE AT THE END OF YOUR POST AND LINK TO THEM.
5) LET EACH PERSON KNOW THEY ARE TAGGED AND LEAVE A COMMENT ON THEIR BLOG.
6) LET THE TAGGER KNOW WHEN YOUR ENTRY IS UP.
7) DON’T BREAK THE CHAIN (not actually a rule).

SIX ZOMBIE THINGS ABOUT JULIA

1) Savini's 1990 Night of the Living Dead remake, while derided or ignored by the majority of fandom, is one of my top five favorite zombie movies. I first rented it in about fifth grade because the chick on the back (Tallman) looked like my aunt. That was my first real exposure to zombies after "Thriller".

2) My favorite zombie ever is probably Dr. Tongue from Day of the Dead. I could stare at him all day.

3) When we worked as scenic artists at Six Flags Jazzland in New Orleans, RJ and I used liquid latex and greasepaint to dress up as zombies during their lead-up to halloween. Lacking explicit permission, we staggered all through the midway terrorizing people. I was dressed a little on the skimpy side, I guess, in a really flimsy low cut tank top, so the patron reaction was... mixed. I didn't realize and become embarrassed about it until later. I put cold cream in my hair to make it greasy and it didn't come out for a week. The hardened latex deeply exacerbated the wrinkles in my forehead, which to this day have not smoothed out.

4) I've written a few dozen stories in my life, and the only two ever to have been published are zombie stories. (Thin Them Out and "The Shunned" in Bits of the Dead)

5) I'm no longer very fond of Romero as a director. I think his early works seem to imply genius but are ultimately simple, potent messages whose shoestring production gave them an accidentally great look that fans mistake for style. When Romero has a real budget, he goes insane and the result is not nearly as effective. Also, I think he's bought the hype about the early films being intentionally loaded with rich, well-developed sociological commentary, so he's taken it upon himself to stuff bags of this crap into every film, with awful, hamfisted results in Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead.

6) I probably would not survive an undead apocalypse. I own no weapons, I can't run very fast for long and my immune system is nothing to write home about. (Come to think of it, the G1 Megatron figure that RJ keeps locked into disguise mode to wave at home intruders probably wouldn't help him much against the undead, so I guess I'll have company.)

And I'm not tagging anybody. Perhaps because I'm a mav'rick? (Perhaps because I only know like two of you on a first-name basis.)

Kirkman interview at Newsarama

2009-01-14T17:51:00.003-06:00

The writer of The Walking Dead talks about the bold new narrative arc, Adlard's essential contribution, how far he'd go as a father, a gold boat, and the future (or lack thereof) of main character Rick.

Newsarama Article

Dun-dun-duuuuuhn!

(And yes, this cover gets me totally worked up.)

The Walking Dead, Issue #57

2009-01-10T19:18:00.006-06:00

Finally.

Finally.

Like a phoenix ascending gloriously from the ashes of whatever that phoenix used to be, or like some other thing being remade in a really impressive manner, issue #57 remakes The Walking Dead in a really impressive manner.

Fast-paced and tense with brusque, real-feeling dialogue and some awesome developments, this may be my favorite issue in... I don't know, years. Add an emotionally up-fucking climax and, mark my snark, this issue will be called both a major turning point in the overall narrative and a classic in its own right.

And that's all I have to say on it. With the mockery uncalled for, I have no reason to sum up the plot at all. It's a simply great issue. See, I don't despise Kirkman. I just hold him to the standard he's established with earlier greatness.

Oh, shit, I fucking forgot, though: P.S. Can't wait to read BFF Handlebar McWeepy's touching-ass Vaseline-lens family flashback. w00t. Although I shouldn't complain--as far as Kirkman's cliffhanger's go, you could do a lot worse. At least it's not a complete fakeout. *wank wank*

See there, Jonathan, baby? I can be loving and vicious in the same breath. What can I say--what I do best isn't very nice. ;)

Shock!

2009-01-03T22:03:00.026-06:00

We interrupt our regularly- scheduled Zombie programming to bring you a look at an unsung great in Horror history, New Orleans TV legend, Dr. Momus Alexander Morgus.

I grew up hearing my mom's stories of Dr. Morgus. When I was twelve, he returned to the airwaves, and I became hooked. A good friend, Chuck Brillowsky, webmaster of Morgus Online, reminded me that today marks the 50th anniversary of the Doctor's televised experiments. So I wrote the following:

A Morgusian History: The Condensed Version

In 1957, Screen Gems struck a $20 million deal with Universal-International, obtaining the television distribution rights to over 500 pre-1948 Universal films. One of the first packages offered to television programmers across the US was Shock!, a collection of 52 Universal Horror films. Stations were encouraged to produce wrap-around segments, and the Horror Host was born.

In Pittsburgh, there was "Chilly Billy” Cardille. San Francisco had Bob Wilkins and his Creature Features (on which Night of the Living Dead made its broadcast television debut). Cleveland had Ghoulardi; Philly and New York had Zacherly.

New Orleans had Morgus the Magnificent.

On January 3rd, 1959, fifty years ago tonight, The House of Shock premiered. A New Orleans icon was born. With production values higher than those of the typical Saturday night Creature Feature, House introduced New Orleanians to Dr. Momus Alexander Morgus, a whacked-out nut-job of a scientist toiling away in his lab atop the "Old City Icehouse" in the French Quarter. With his caveman brow, nasty teeth, and heavily-soiled labcoat, Morgus was both horrific and comedic. Each week, he'd unveil a new invention destined to make the world a better place. Each week, said invention would blow up in his face.

Beneath it all, there was a subversive heart: Morgus lived among the Bohemians and railed against the establishment. The handprint on his shoulder was more than an example of his filthy working conditions; it was the Hand of the Man, holding him down.

The creation of talented New Orleans radio and TV personality, Sid Noel, the character of Morgus evolved, over many years, from diabolical mad scientist to Quixote-inspired “secret scientist” working to bring about a “Higher Order” of humanity.

(In one of the earliest surviving examples of Morgusian Entertainment, a WWL radio production that possibly pre-dates the January '59 premiere of the television show, Dr. Morgus, sounding like a deranged Karloff, reveals his plan to fill the atmosphere with bubbles containing mind-control gas-- he'd soon control us all! Thirty years later, during the Doctor's '80s return, the Bubble Machine made a comeback, but this time it produced "Love Bubbles." One whiff, and you felt like loving the one you were with.)

Assisting Dr. Morgus across three decades and several incarnations was the mute and hulking Chopsley, a towering masked man whose hood concealed the results of a botched plastic surgery job by the Good Doctor. Also on hand was Eric, a talking skull-- all that remained of the assistant who'd preceded Chopsley.

The House of Shock was an overnight success. Everyone loved Morgus. It was reported at the time, perhaps in jest, that crime stats went down on Saturday nights. While Morgus was carrying out yet another ill-fated experiment, everyone in the city was sitting in front of the television--even the criminals. And when Morgus was "robbed" live on his own show, the NOPD switchboards lit up.

The House of Shock became Morgus Presents and spawned a motion picture, The Wacky World of Doctor Morgus (1962), a little-seen example of independent New Orleans cinema that influenced both the original Nutty Professor and the big screen version of the Batman television series.

In 1964, the Master took his experiments to Detroit, but returned to New Orleans shortly thereafter. In one form or another, Morgus Presents ran until the mid-seventies. The Shock! and Son of Shock! packages of the early '60s were a thing of the past, and Morgus eventually found himself hosting episodes of Star Trek.

Not long after, the cameras within the Old City Icehouse fell dormant.

Sadly, little from the Magnificent One's early years has survived. A five minute snippet of The House of Shock is all that remains, as well as a few tantalizing odds and ends-- Morgus and the Weather segments from both New Orleans and Detroit, a color film pilot from the early sixties, and the Wacky World feature.

To the delight of two generations of New Orleanians--those who grew up with Dr. Morgus and those who grew up hearing about him--January of 1987 brought the triumphant return of Morgus Presents, nearly thirty years after The House of Shock premiered.

Today, those 52 slickly-produced episodes of Morgus Presents have been repackaged and, fittingly enough, retitled Morgus Presents: The House of Shock. (They air every Saturday night on Cox 10, and your humble scribe would be watching an episode right now if he didn't live a little too far out in the middle of nowhere. With any luck, all 52 episodes will get a DVD release one of these days...)

Alive and well, the Good Doctor still makes the occasional TV and personal appearance, and has become a regular on George Noory's Coast to Coast.

Thanks, Dr. Morgus, for fifty years of Morgusian Science. Here's to at least fifty more.

---

Dr. Morgus and Chopsley, from the premiere episode of The House of Shock. The feature film that night was, of course, Frankenstein. (Edit: recent research suggests that this pic is not from the premiere episode.)

1987 promotional photos from a local donut shop. You got one with each purchase. Toward the end of the promo, they put stacks of the things on the counter for all to take. An entire section of my bedroom wall was covered in them.

Morgus and Chopsley in 1998 with something far more terrifying than a faux Frankenstein's Monster: me at twenty-three. Run, friends of Science, run!

The Walking Dead, issue 56

2009-01-03T17:30:00.005-06:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuughhhhh.

Okay, so Kirkman totally got me with the last issue's ending. I bought the fake-out. The gang sees Maggie's body and we assume she's dead. The story assumes she's dead. A full twenty-eight panels later, Rick suggests she might still be alive HOLY SHIT! (Kind of a dick for not piping up earlier, huh?) Anyway, he HAD to wait that long to allow a very tired five-page argument on whether or not to shoot her and also to make sure he timed the "What if she isn't dead?" to be uttered just before she sits up, gasping. Clearly, Kirkman is throwing a new wrench into the works: Rick is psychic!

Also a wrench: The handlebar-mustache guy must have sustained damage to his hippocampus in some previous, unexplored occurrence because his memory is shit. A couple issues back he delivered a dramatic speech about the danger of using guns, whose sound can draw more walkers, when a silent weapon would suffice. He emphasized his point by needlessly firing a gun, and was then shocked when the undead showed up. "I hate it when I'm right!" Ugh. If that wasn't enough evidence of brain damage, take issue #56 as another example. Offending his own position, Handlebar pulls A GIGANTIC FUCKING CANNON to take out a motionless corpse. This results in a little showdown and marks an emerging enmity between Rick and Handlebar, which is actually pretty exciting.

Props time: Also in this issue, we got to see some realistic ramifications of Maggie's attempted suicide, touch base with some neglected characters, and get a quick reminder of little Sophie's mental instability.

I'm estimating that about one in five panels in this issue is free of dialogue. I wish it were more. I wish somebody had the balls to tell Kirkman to axe some ham.

"Only a matter of time before she turns into one of them now." Shameful that anybody in this far-gone world could even be imagined to utter such a thing.

A tense nose-t0-nose staredown panel between Rick and Handlebar, newly made foes, is cluttered up with "What?! You gonna say something? Make a move, tough guy" and "Asshole..." These accomplish nothing that the staredown itself does not, and are a vivid example of the need in literature to omit needless words, strip down scenes to their barest and most effective.

Maggie, clearly unstable, humiliated and terrified, instead of remaining silent in the semi-stat panels of the night, manages to spell out, "Even if I could talk about it, I wouldn't want to." Then there's the white-knuckle confession by Handlebar to Posing-Sexy-Even-When-I'm-Looking-At-A-Corpse Latina: "I'm--I'm full of fucking rage."

There are more examples, but with the exception of a few WTF faces and phrases, #56 is actually not a huge offender in either art or writing. Still, the series continues to coast along on an outdated reputation. Understandable enough--hell, it's the only game in town and has a rabid circle of supporters who are unlikely to ever utter the phrase "overrated". Still, with this, another weak, padded entry, I'm getting closer and closer to saying just that. At the very least, it seems that it's best read in TPB form, where the pace seems less glacial.

Still looking forward to the gang hitting DC. Seems like it'll happen next issue.

Ain't It Cool and Bookgasm on our Chaps!

2008-12-13T14:02:00.001-06:00

Ambush Bug (Mark L. Miller) over at Ain't It Cool has reviewed our two recent chapbooks and deemed them both "damn fine reading" with "some of the coolest zombie action you'll read this year."

Thin Them Out by Kim Paffenroth, R.J. Sevin and myself is a "surprisingly personal tale" that "does what so many zombie stories fail to do: offer something new to the zombie genre... It is a harrowing tale with a pulse that quickens right to the last word."

Meanwhile, Gary A. Braunbeck's Flesh is Fleeting, Art is Forever (or, Some Bullshit Will Continue Even After the Dead Wipe Us Out) is "profound and imaginative... the best zombie story I've read this year."

Rod Lott at Bookgasm also has some words on Flesh is Fleeting:
"[A]musing... all about bleak humor, and pays off in the end."

Can't argue with that.

These two chapbooks, as with all items at creepinghemlock.com, come with free shipping and make superb stocking-stuffers for the zombie aficionado in your life.

Walking Dead, issues #54 and #55

2008-12-09T12:18:00.004-06:00

Our comic shop is like forty minutes away. We don't make it there every month. Occasionally, reviews may lag and then clump. Apologies.]

Well, last month's good will, high hopes, and dramatic promise were squandered on two tedious, talky issues. You might not agree that dialogue is a shamefully weak point of this series--you'd be wrong. It's a blight. It's an indulgent, junior-high-drama-class space waster.

The best, tightest zombie stories--in all media--have little talking and absolutely zero overexplanation. Everything is dry, ineffectual, incomplete. Understated. The exceptional

soliloquoys or exchanges then stand a chance of being truly startling or moving. (It's impossible here not to think of Ben's hallmark recollection in Night of the Living Dead.)

I understand Kirkman's predicament. A 22-page comic with limited dialogue seems like a liability. The team has to compensate for the quick reading time with stunning art (in this case, stunning in grayscale) and an engaging story (in this case, one that maintains dread). What Kirkman fails to understand is that his dialogue is a worse liability. The story's there, for sure, as long as it's not spelled out page after page (a tough trick when characters have little to do), and the art is strong enough. Really, the art needs to be nothing more than the passable, simple set dressing of a surprisingly adept community theater performance. Unfortunately Adlard's art is most times passable, sometimes great, and sometimes downright lousy. More and more recently I find myself just staring at one of his faces going, "...what... the... fuck?" This is likely a product of renewed schedule adherence and Adlard's recent decision to create the originals at the same scale as the final pages. Hell, when every face is the size of your thumb, I guess occasionally the eyes are going to be just a notch too high into the forehead. What can you do? (Keep in mind, I fall in with the faction that thinks that the original magic of the series was dependent on Tony Moore's artistic contribution. When he left, the writing suddenly seemed clunkier to us. Yet nearly fifty issues later, we're still reading. Hmm.) Ultimately, zombies as a genre achieve a better effect (with less effort) by almost any film than by monthly comics of this particular caliber. When you've got a slow, intense story with no stunning graphics to fall back on, a glut of jaw-wagging seems better than nothing.

And so we arrive back at Kirkman's dialogue. Issue #54 presented one of my worst pet peeves, something I generally consider to be the mark of an intellectual elitist. A character is established as being working-class, or uneducated, or urban, or what have you, yet their speech patterns, vocabulary, interests, and philosophical style are inconsistent with these established traits.

Writer: Now I'll just have Johnny Bluecollar wax poetic for a moment, comparing the situation to Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

Readers: OMG This is blowing my mind this character is so LAYERED!!!!!! He seems dumb but then he comes out with something so DEEP AND ARTICULATE AND EDUCATED!!!!!!!!!! I'M MORE INTERESTED IN THE CHARACTER NOW, HIS SURPRISING CONVENTIONAL INTELLIGENCE HAS EARNED MY RESPECT

Me: Are you kidding? The character's "intelligence" is completely framed within the writer's own parameters for intellectual values. Why can't Johnny speak in a way consistent with his education and still say something moving, something profound... but in his own terms, without resorting to cultural shorthand or squeezing himself into the writer's traditional perceptions of What Makes Intelligence and What Earns Respect? Can't we respect him without him using ten-dollar words or summoning up some cheap and improbable literary coinage?

Writer and Readers: NO

All that being said, Kirkman's offense in this issue is minor, merely a permutation of the oft-hammy style of dialogue that weighs down the first half of issue #54, wherein our heroes hash out plans on the ol' farm with the new military trio before being forced to run for it. Their need to escape the farm is contrived by an impossibly illogical decision by a character who is supposed to be proving he knows better.

What follows is an issue-and-a-half of always-popular seige-and-flight, and GAWD is it boring. After a couple good moments in #54 (and much more talking, of course), the zombie threat becomes peripheral at best. Issue #55 focuses on Rick's mental instability (a nightmare, then more with the damn phone). There's a harmless interlude in which one of the new crew surprises us by asking some questions about zombie behavior that has never happened before in the series until that very page.

They camp out for the night Maggie's already-one-note character arc ends with the same 24pt, fire-engine red exclamation point! that Kirkman has been falling back on the entire series for various characters (hint: she's fuckin' crazy!), the very crutch I explored in my last post.

Overall, a disappointing pair of issues. It's reasonable to conclude that such a lull in action and zombie presence can only point to Big Things on the horizon, which I remain psyched about.

Zombi/e 3(D) or: "This is All Your Damned Fault, George!"

2008-12-06T00:39:00.000-06:00

L. Cass claims to be on the very cusp of purchasing Night of the Living De3D.

Don't. Not for a penny, I say to you. Not for a penny.

He's also interested in seeing Zombi 3*, another awful zombie movie, but one with some mad measure of charm. Night 3D is charmless and soulless and just plain bad. It's the worst thing to bear the Night of the Living Dead moniker since John Russo did that terrible thing ten years ago.

Here's what the original Night of the Living Dead, now a sentient celluloid entity, thinks of the whole bloody mess, by the way.

*Apparently there are no less than three films that sometimes go by the name of Zombi 3:

There is Zombi 3 (also known as Zombie Flesh Eaters 2), the Fulci/Mattei hybrid that served as the official (if utterly unrelated) sequel to Zombi 2 (also known as Zombie Flesh Eaters), the deceptively-titled sequel-in-name-only to Zombi (also known as Dawn of the Dead).

Then there's Zombie 3 (also known as Burial Ground, Nights of Terror, The Zombie Dead, and, most accurately, Shit), the deceptively-titled faux-sequel to Zombi 2 (see above).

The other Zombie 3, a deceptively-titled sequel to I'm not sure what, since it's supposedly the original US title, is actually Dr. Butcher M.D., Zombie Holocaust, Zombi Holocaust, and, oddly enough, Also Shit. Or something.

Compounding and confounding the whole ghastly situation even further, Paul Naschy's Orgy of the Dead, a movie released four years before Dawn of the Dead spawned this sorry mess, was apparently released at some point as Zombie 3: Return of the Living Dead, though I'm not sure where that particular info originates, aside from IMDB, which isn't always the most trustworthy source.

Then there's Zombie Flesh Eaters 3, also known as Zombie 4, but my head is starting to bleed and I'm gonna close my eyes for a minute...

...now what was I saying?

Oh, yeah.

Don't buy Night of the Living Dead 3D, man--don't!

Dr. Acula, Actually Dead

2008-12-05T20:35:00.000-06:00

Uncle Forry is the epicenter of Horror Fandom, the devilish daddy spider at the heart of an intricate web teeming with countless grinning spider-babies.

I've had this post saved as a draft since November 3rd, when the internet reported the passing of Forrest J. Ackerman, founder of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Uncle to Monster Kids the world over, and Father of Modern Geekdom. Just about everyone jumped the gun in declaring him deceased, but Uncle Forry held on just long enough to turn 92 and bid farewell to a few more of his loving friends.

Born in 1975 and much more a member of the Fango Generation of Horror Magazine readers, I missed out on FM in its Aurora model kit-filled heyday, and, as a child, came to know the magazine through my brother's tattered back-issues.

I recall paging through one of them and seeing a photo from Night of the Living Dead with a caption stating the film's original title (Night of Anubis) and informing readers that its sequel, Dawn of the Living Dead, was underway. I bought my first issue of FM in 1982, #183. It sported the Swamp Thing on the cover, a photograph that could not compare to the beautiful painted covers of the magazine's golden age, but a glorious sight nonetheless for this monster-obsessed kid.

(I took that issue to school, stored it with my books, and was not very surprised to find it missing when I returned from recess. I was pretty sure then that I heard the teachers laughing in the hallway as they tore it to shreds, but that was probably just my First Grade imagination. Then again, we are talking about a Southern Protestant private school that still used the paddle, so...)

FM kicked the bucket seven issues later (the less said about Ray Ferry's revived FM, the better), and an era came to an end, but its seeds were already planted, its legacy established. All of us involved in this strange little genre owe something to Uncle Forry, the man who sparred (in print) with H.P. Lovecraft, discovered Ray Bradbury and gave Harlan Ellison a reason to scream about the sound of crickets fucking.

Today is not a sad day. No tears should be shed for the man. Instead, his life should be celebrated--a life of generosity, influence, and innovation, a life that brought frightful joy to countless souls, many of whom, so inspired, then brought joy to countless more.

Not knowing exactly how to end this brief tribute, I pick at my moist and gently pulsating brain and decide to go with the first thing I find there. I suspect it'll pop up in several similar tributes over the coming days, but what can I do? We can't all have Uncle Forry's way with words.

The Ackermonster is dead. Long live the Ackermonster.

---

Go here for a two-page obit from the LA Times.

For a series of heartfelt tributes followed by depressingly-hopeless "letter from the grave" of sorts from the man himself, follow this link.

Zombie Bits

2008-12-05T05:30:00.003-06:00

THE DEAD DON'T DIE... IN THE ZONE

Hop on over to FearZone. The first installment of our monthly column features a retro-review of Deathdream (1974) (AKA The Night Walk and Dead of Night), Bob Clark's follow-up to Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things.

The poster art looks a little familiar, doesn't it?

"THAT'LL FIX YA, YOU FRIGGIN MONSTERS!"

I just watched Zombi 3, the Fulci film mostly directed by Bruno Mattei. It somehow manages to be both monumentally awful and relentlessly entertaining. There's very little Fulci on display, but in a film that pays homage to (read: liberally rips off) Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, The Evil Dead, Return of the Living Dead, The Birds, and Vanishing Point, there's also very little opportunity for boredom.

The nonsensical zombie action is pretty much non-stop, and by the time I got to the refrigerator scene, I knew I'd discovered something special.

THE WALKING DEAD

Julia should be around shortly with a review of the most recent issues of The Walking Dead. After what seems like a few years of little to no forward motion, the series is picking up steam.

NORWEGIAN NAZI ZOMBIES

Check this out.

I guess they just got Evil Dead 2 in Norway. With any luck, this will actually be fun.

A Zombie a Day: Day Seven

2008-11-27T23:14:00.004-06:00

Today I devoured more succulent homemade baked macaroni, mashed potatoes, stuffing (two kinds!), yams, green beans, apple and cranberry dressing, heavily-buttered bread, turkey, turkey gravy, and pumpkin pie than any one sane human being ever should. As a result, I am bloated and sluggish and in the mood only to sleep.

I wasn't up to even attempting to top yesterday's zombie, so I kept it simple and silly.

Title: A Gluttonous Bastard Bloated, Gorged, and Undead: A Self Portrait
(Click for larger image)

A Zombie a Day: Day Six

2008-11-26T01:01:00.003-06:00

Title: Blind Faith
(Click for larger image)

A Zombie a Day: Day Five

2008-11-25T00:59:00.005-06:00

This one really looks best full-sized. Click away.

Title: Y
(Click for larger image)

Day Four: Redux

2008-11-25T00:06:00.000-06:00

The wonder of digital art is its infinite malleability. (It's also a bit of a curse, 'cause it's just so damned hard to stop making changes sometimes.*) Here's today's piece revisited:

Title: Messy Eater
(click for larger image)

*Just ask George Lucas.

A Zombie a Day: Day Four

2008-11-24T03:16:00.000-06:00

The goal is to produce each of these within an hour. So far, I've been successful, though I find myself wanting to be a little more ambitious with each zombie. For a while tonight, I thought this guy was gonna loaf past the sixty-minute line. If he did, it was by a minute or two.

Title: Axl Rose is Insane*
(Click for larger image)

*Lousy title, I know, but I painted this image while listening to Chinese Democracy for the first time, and it's pretty much the only coherent thought in my mind right now.

A Zombie a Day: Day Three

2008-11-23T03:08:00.000-06:00

About seven years ago, my friends and I came pretty close to shooting a zombie short film. I wanted to have this zombie show up somewhere. The idea wasn't popular.

Title: Taking Candy
(click for larger image)

A Zombie a Day: Day Two

2008-11-22T18:17:00.000-06:00

Title: Rise and Shine

(click for larger image)

A Zombie a Day: Day One

2008-11-22T00:15:00.000-06:00

Earlier this evening, while looking at some truly amazing artwork by Bernie Wrightson, I decided to draw a zombie. By the time I was done, I'd decided to do one per day for the next week and post the results.

So here you go. It looks more than a little like a naked Dr. Tongue, and it isn't a strand of gristle on a Wrightson ghoul, but I like it.

Title: Useless
(click for larger image)

The Death of the True Undead

2008-11-21T19:47:00.000-06:00

Simon Pegg nails the real Zombie Problem: "Death is a disability, not a superpower. It's hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all."

Too Much Information

2008-11-19T14:37:00.000-06:00

I accidentally stepped on my copy of Dying to Live yesterday. I bent the hell out of the back cover and let slip the expletives. A traumatic experience, the horror of which was compounded by the fact that I was naked from the waist down.

Afflicted with a collector's mind, I like to keep my books in good shape, so between this and the scratch the cover received at some point on our trip to ZombieFest, the book now makes me sad and twitchy. I guess I'm glad I forget to ask Dr. Kim to sign it. Next year, I'll buy a new one from his table and give the stomped and marred copy to a random stranger, or something.

60 pages to go, by the way.

Resident Evil: Degeneration

2008-11-13T17:30:00.000-06:00

We owe the current zombie craze to Resident Evil.

Released in 1996, the Sony Playstation chiller created the survival horror game genre, spawned several sequels across multiple platforms, produced a string of imitators, and caught the ever-watchful eye of Hollywood.

It was obvious from the start that George Romero's Dead films inspired the video games, so it only made sense that he would be involved with the film. George's Resident Evil screenplay (the draft I read, anyhow--there were several) wasn't fantastic, but it was a damn sight better than the mess we got in March of 2002. That it featured a pack of zombie dogs devouring a character named "Russo" makes it some kind of unsung classic. But it was not to be.

The director of Dawn of the Dead was out. In his place, the director of... Mortal Kombat and Soldier? Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil was lousy, but for the first time in over a decade, there were zombies on the big screen, man. That alone was kind of cool.

Money talks, and though Resident Evil didn't set the box office ablaze, it performed well enough worldwide to triple its meager $33 million dollar budget. By the time its utterly rancid sequel hit screens in September of 2004, 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake had already made it clear: zombie movies were back.

Five years after the first Resident Evil film resurrected the living dead on the silver screen, George A. Romero had returned twice to the genre he created--this after twenty years had passed since Day of the Dead.

The success of Resident Evil also brought new life to the world of zombie fiction, dormant since Philip Nutman's excellent novel Wet Work, itself an expansion of his short story of the same name, found in Skipp and Spector's groundbreaking Book of the Dead. By 1998, zombie short stories (many of them very poorly written) were multiplying online, found chiefly at the Homepage of the Dead, a site frequented by longtime Romero fans who loved to play Resident Evil and Resident Evil fans whose love of the game prompted them to seek out Romero's films.

By 2000, the demand for zombie novels was growing, a demand initially answered by self-published writer Darrin Brent Patterson. Project Phoenix: Dead Rising, a nightmare abomination of bad writing, borrowed elements from both Romero and Resident Evil. Appropriately enough, the genre was eating itself.

Eight years down the road, thanks mostly to the small press, there are more zombie novels than any fan frowning in confusion over Project Phoenix could have hoped for, many of them far better than the shoddy fan fictions that announced their coming, and some not much different. Like the walking corpses within their pages, they just keep on coming, with no end in sight.

Zombies are everywhere now: on the big screen, the small screen, in video games and comic books, on toy shelves and book shelves. And George Romero is up at bat again for the third time in five years.

Thank you, Resident Evil.*

Oh, before I forget: Here are the first eight minutes for the fourth Resident Evil film, the all CG Degeneration. I'm not going to say it looks good, but it certainly looks... interesting, if a little lifeless and uninspired. The motion-capture work is convincing, the fluidity of which goes a long way toward making the textures and the facial animation all the more unnatural. Unless you're a hardcore fan, you'll probably just want to skip the eight minute clip and go straight to the Age Restricted Red Band clip. That's where the fun stuff is, anyhow.

While not real, Claire Redfield no doubt has a glowing future as a Japanese pop sensation.

*If you had anything to do the 30th Anniversary Special Edition of Night of the Living Dead, well, then... someone should kick you in the nuts.

Overheard at ZombieFest

2008-11-09T01:33:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of Overheard in the Office:

"The only book I ever read was fucking Jaws 3."--man walking past Kim Paffenroth's table

"It's all like Goosebumps and shit."--some other man walking past Kim Pafferoth's table

"Ugh. The dead. This is all so negative. Get me out of here."--elderly woman in wheelchair being rolled past Kim Paffenroth's table

"You got any movies?"--woman at Kim Paffenroth's table holding a copy of Dying to Live: Life Sentence.

"Un-fuckin-believable."--Joe Pilato upon noticing the ring on Julia's finger

Desperately resisting the urge to run my fingers through his hair...

FearZone ...of the Dead

2008-11-07T22:23:00.000-06:00

The Dead Don't Die isn't just a zombie blog. Starting in December, it's also a monthly column for Greg Lamberson's FearZone. First up will be an interview with Don May, Jr. of Synapse Films. We'll discuss his involvement with Night of the Living Dead, from Elite's 25th Anniversary laser-disc to the recent 40th Anniversary DVD, as well the upcoming Definitive Document of the Dead.

Also on the horizon, extensive coverage of George A. Romero's latest living dead opus, known simply as ...of the Dead. Early reports suggest that the title is a placeholder. Others have referred to the film as Island of the Dead, an unlikely title, with the remake of RKO's Karloff chiller, Isle of the Dead, on the horizon. I hope ...of the Dead sticks. It has a nice Steinbeckian ring.

After a few months of confusion and erroneous reports (It's a sequel to Diary of the Dead/It's not a sequel to Diary of the Dead/It's about an island of intelligent "zombie overlords" who cull the living), we're finally getting some solid and reliable news on the film's storyline.

Direct from Voltage Pictures:

On a small island off North America's coast, the dead rise to menace the living. Yet the islanders can´t bring themselves to exterminate their loved ones, despite the growing danger from those they once held dear.

A rebel among them hunts down all the zombies he can find, only to be banished from the island for assassinating his neightbors and friends.

On the mainland, bent on revenge, he encounters a small band of survivors in search of an oasis on which to build a new life. Barely surviving an attack of ravenous flesh eaters, they commandeer a zombie infested ferry and sail to the island.

There, to their horror, they discover that the locals have chained the dead inside their homes, pretending to live "normal" lives with bloody consequences. What ensues is a desperate struggle for survival and the answer of a question never posed in Romero's Dead films:

Can the living ever live in peace with the dead?

Somehow, I don't think things will turn out like the end of Shaun of the Dead.

Neither as ambitious and compromised as Land of the Dead nor as experimental as Diary of the Dead, Romero's latest is the most promising entry in the series since Day of the Dead.

Review: THE WALKING DEAD #53

2008-11-03T23:31:00.000-06:00

This issue sees Rick and Carl, newly rejoined with Latent-Crazy Michonne, returning to Hershel's old farm to meet Dale, Andrea, Glenn, Maggie, and the kids.

While nothing much happens in this issue, some key threads are developed and an exciting new turn seems just up ahead. The theme we've already seen established in Walking Dead--that insanity is as much a threat as the pusbags--comes to a chilling head in the character of Sophia, a young girl now without father or mother. She's now crazy enough that even young Carl can detect it.

The use of insanity (or fleeting moments of viciously loopy decision-making) in this series has occasionally been a deus ex machina, a monkeywrench to break up the monotony of Survivors Holed Up Interminably. It's a trick, really, but one that's turning into a trend. And that trend is actually effective, as it bears a broader meaning.

I can't say I was very pleased when Rick started talking on the phone with dead wife Lori, especially because he seemed to be nursing it as a pet neurosis that in no way affected his general functioning or hinted at deeper psychosis. Perhaps it was a hammy move; we'll see how it develops as he continues to carry a rotary phone with him in a backpack. Michonne, of course, has been riding the crazy train for a while: speaking to herself, blacking out, denying deeds, displaying extreme personality shifts. In this issue, Rick discovers her, and she claims she's been talking to her dead boyfriend, prompting Rick to bond with her by confessing to his own morbid chats. They promise to keep each other's secret.

Michonne, shrewd thing that she is, is clearly lying to Rick. Time will tell just how dangerous her disorder may be to the cast. But little Sophia's instability is most troubling--and topical--of all.

Our generation has seen unprecedented levels of diagnosis of childhood mental disorders, many with symptoms traditionally associated with "just being a kid". As a parent of a young child, one part of my life has been terrifying--observing my son, becoming concerned about his probably-normal behaviors (inattentiveness, temper tantrums, aggression), and rushing to the computer see if the behaviors aligned in any way with ADHD or autism or reactive attachment disorder. This concern has bloomed into full-fledged paranoia for many adults, and has resulted in a general societal wariness about children, an obsessive sensitivity to their mental health.

In writing in mental disease for a young child, Kirkman is definitely pushing a button, but also sending a message. Sophia's mental illness is chilling not because it represents a grave threat to the survivors (as Michonne's or Rick's might), but rather because it suggests an uncertain future for the clan. Mental disease has spread to the most innocent among them. What hope remains? What is there worth fighting for?

In the last few pages, we meet three new characters who rescue the cast from the unspeakable boredom that was sure plague us all back on Hershel's farm. These three proclaim that they know the cause of the phenomenon and are headed to Washington, D.C. They invite our familiar survivors along for the journey. The three characters themselves, of course, are horrendously flat archetypes with mercifully unique visages. (Grayscale printing is no friend to large casts of middle-aged white folk without access to razors.) But that doesn't matter. Sure, Kirkman will give them some kooky interests or traits later, but for the time being, they're machines. They're a trio of Clydesdales that exist only to haul the story forward.

As you might know from reading the series, the ranks were viciously thinned a few issues back. We had some recovery time isolating just Rick and his son. (No more bible of characters in the back of the book. None needed.) Kirkman demonstrates superb timing by adding these three (very distinct) characters now, and pushing the story in a radical direction. I, for one, can't wait to see our heroes back in a big city, on an actual mission.

Again, while not a lot happens, issue #53 holds great promise for the series. Frankly, I'm more excited about The Walking Dead now than I have been in several months.

Zombie Fest Haul

2008-11-02T23:08:00.000-06:00

As if my TBR pile weren't obscene enough.

Special thanks to Glenn Kay, who gave me two posters featuring the way cool cover art* to his highly enjoyable** book, ZOMBIE MOVIES: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE.

*It's the poster art for an Italian flick called REVENGE OF THE DEAD. My mom took me to see it when I was very young, and I remember waiting and waiting and waiting for zombies to erupt from the sidewalk. I'm still waiting. Possibly my first zombie experience.

**Enjoyable, yes, but really-- Freddy Vs. Jason, the highest grossing zombie movie of all time? Clearly, Mr. Kay suffered (hopefully temporary) self-inflicted brain damage from watching Children of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead 2: Contagium, and Burial Ground.***

***Oh, mama. Your breasts!

Test post

2008-11-02T22:14:00.000-06:00

I'm 33 and I haven't outgrown stupid movies about dead people getting up and biting living people. Just last night, I watched half of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I'll watch the other half tonight. I've probably watched that damned movie over fifty times since 1987.

Somewhere, a great movie that I've never seen is crying.