It’s the, “ZOMG I slacked off all weekend and didn’t get any movies done Zombie Movie Marathon!” Yes, four zombie movies all in small, bite sized pieces for easy digestion. Let’s get right to it!
October 10th
Hell of The Living Dead (1980)
While it’s one of the best of Zombie flicks to come out of Italy at the height of the late 70’s – 80’s zombie craze, Hell of The Living Dead is still an incomprehensible mess. Still, if you’re looking for a fun “cheesy” movie this is one of the greats and yet it still manages to be a little creepy.
A SWAT team (although they seem more like hired guns) stops a terrorist organization from taking over a building and are then assigned to go to New Guinea to go on vacation or something. There they meet up with a female reporter and find that there’s a zombie plague spreading amongst the native population that will soon escape the jungle and affect the entire world!
It seems a secret chemical plant had a leak and some of the stuff they were making got out. Of course it turns out that it’s a big government conspiracy to make a zombie virus to wipe out the third world population to end the hunger crisis. Our group of not particularly likable heroes has encounter after encounter with our undead friends and it quickly becomes apparent that the epidemic is out of control as the natives don’t burry the bodies of their dead underground or something like that.
This is a crazy film. Blood is everywhere, limbs are ripped apart and a zombie rat goes ballistic on a guy in a chemical suit. There’s so much stock footage from animal specials that it looks almost like a National Geographic film at times, the dubbing is horribly bad and a grown man dresses up in a little tutu and dances around while taunting a pack of zombies.
That’s right; we’ve hit the bad movie mother-load.
While it’s not a good movie it sure as hell is entertaining, and that’s why I’m happy to recommend Hell of The Living Dead this year. Watch it as an unintentional comedy for the full effect.
Rating –
8 out of 10 if you have a completely warped sense of humor like I do.
1 out of 10 if you’re a “normal” person.
October 11
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1973)
A small troop of actors led by supreme jack ass Alan arrive on an old cemetery island where dead criminals used to be buried. Alan plays tricks on them and eventually he conducts a ceremony where he calls upon old Satan himself to raise the islands dead from their graves. Nothing happens and everyone heads to a small cabin on the island to party.
Once they are inside however the dead DO rise from their graves in a spectacular scene, and then start eating people left and right. From that point on it becomes a zombie home invasion film where the actors try and keep the zombies from breaking in.
This is a great flick but some viewers might be put off by its slow build and the very 70’s appearance of it all. If you can make it through that you’ll be treated to one hell of a climax. As soon as the actors arrive on the island and start disrespecting the dead the audience knows that something really bad is going to happen to them, and when they start invoking the dark forces they’re really asking for it. This creates a sense of impending doom that adds some great tension to the films proceedings.
The zombie makeup is actually really good and that along with the awesome location, smart script and good direction helps to elevate this film from just another zombie movie to one of the classic ones. An excellent film for late night viewing, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is one of the better zombie movies that most people outside of the horror circle haven’t seen before.
Rating – 6 out of 10 is you’re sick and twisted like me.
Rating – 3 out of 10 if you have no attention span and you can’t sit through 40 minuets of film before the zombies show up and start eating people.
October 12th
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)
This is another goodie. A woman smashes into a guy’s motorcycle at a gas station in England, wrecking it. They become unwilling traveling companions as they head off into the countryside as the woman is going to visit her sister, but it’s not before long that they run into the reanimated corpses of the freshly dead, who are being resurrected by an experimental machine that uses ultrasonic radiation to kills pets by scrambling their brains and causing them to attack each other. To make matters worse there’s an asshole of a police inspector who suspects our hero’s are responsible for the killings hounding them at every turn.
Until is was re-released on DVD some years back this movie was hardly seen by anyone other than the hard core zombie cinema fans, but now everyone can enjoy this film for what it is – one of the best zombie movies of all time. The acting, pacing and atmosphere are all superb and the film looks slick, as though it had a much larger budget than it really did. The characters are likeable and the zombies look good, although not as juicy as some gore-fans might like.
One thing to keep in mind is that this flick was made only 4 years or so after Night of the Living Dead and it predates the huge European zombie boom that followed after the release of Dawn of The Dead in 1978. As a result this is a more thoughtful and original movie than some of the other zombie flicks that came out later and it’s one that’s very heavy on the atmosphere.
A fantastic movie, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is one of the best and it deserves a place in your horror collection. (Uh, if you have one.)
Rating – 7 ½ out of 10 if you love a good zombie movie.
Rating - 4 out of 10 if you’re normal. (AKA Boring.)
Day 13
King of The Zombies (1941)
Here’s a golden oldie for ya.
Three men crash land on a remote island during World War II and are welcomed into the mansion of creepy German Dr. Miklos Sangre, who unbeknownst to them is raising zombies to help win the war for the Third Reich! However, what the doctor doesn’t know is that our heroes “crash-landed” there on purpose to save an Admiral that the evil doctor has captive.
This was the age before Night of The Living Dead and therefore before zombies started eating people. The zombies in this film are vacant, soulless husks as all zombies were of that period. Brought back to life via Voodo they shuffle around and do random tasks for their master. As far as the film is concerned this is just a standard plot boiler that would have been pretty boring, if not for the amazing comedic performance of Mr. Mantan Moreland.
An African American, Moreland plays one of the unfortunately stereotypical roles given to non-whites of the period as the skittish manservant terrified of his own shadow. However, Moreland takes the material, runs with it and completely steals the show. It looks like the makers of the film must have had a lot of faith in him too because he gets just as much if not more screen time as the white actors. While the rest of the cast is forgettable Moreland is dynamite and this really is his movie.
King of The Zombies is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free all over the internet. It’s certainly worth watching as it does have somewhat of an eerily atmosphere and Moreland brings the house down. It’s safe for the kids and a good time all around.
Rating – 6 out of 10 assuming you have a sense of humor.
Rating – 4 out of 10 if you can’t stand those, “old movies”.
I saw Let Sleeping Corpses Lie over the summer and really enjoyed it. My fave part was that the zombie plague was small enough that the problem the protagonists faced (most of the way through the movie, anyhow) was not escaping zombies, it was getting people to believe them!
ReplyDeleteHell of the Living Dead came up on my Netflix queue as a 'recommended' flick so I rented it and didn't enjoy it at all. The first 1/3 or so was promising (though of course cheesy) but it just fell apart and I couldn't finish it.