zombies Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Can a horror movie have a political agenda? Well, that was the question I asked myself after reading '15 Horror Movies Socialists Could Love''. So as I started to think back to all the hacking and slashing I'd seen over the years, I looked for some some pattern or connection between what I choose at the box-office and what I do at the polling station -- and what did I come up with? Well, I'll get to that, but first I wanted to take a moment to look back at some of the films that have gained a reputation with critics and fans alike as movies with a so-called conservative or liberal state of mind:

'Red State Horror':

Friday the 13th (1980)
Conservatives supposedly love this movie because it's all about no-good kids getting what they deserve. Sexy teens don't stand a chance in this franchise from the moment they take a drink, get high, or get naked. Plus, it's one of the few horror films with a moral about the importance of a good work ethic.

Frankenstein
It's science vs. religion in the story of a man who presumes to know more than God...and I think we all remember how that turns out.

Lost Boys
Family values are all over this one, and when a divorced mom pays more attention to a her love life than her two sons, look what happens. So even with a pot-smoking grandpa, plenty of critics agree that this film is all about Regan's America and the triumph of family over no-good, rock n' roll loving, motorcycle-driving youth gangs.

Tremors
2nd Amendment fans praise this tale of a band of locals fending off giant worms and the gun-toting survivalists that help save the day -- Take that Brady Bill!

Check out the rest at HorrorSquad!

People can't get enough of zombie stories these days. The walking undead have invaded movies, television, comics, and Regency England and show no signs of abating. I'm beginning to think this is part of the plan to turn us all into zombies and if so, you'll be meeting your new lord and master in Deadworld. Variety reports that the long running comic series is making its way to the big screen thanks to David Hayter, Benedict Carver, and Bill Mechanic.

Deadworld has been around since 1987, and has always had more of a cult following as opposed to new series such as The Walking Dead. That's probably because it's a rather unique and twisted spin on the zombie mythology, as the war to wipe out humanity is told entirely from their point of view. Led by King Zombie, the Harley-riding rotter to your right, they track down and slaughter the humans that cast them out for their accursed ways. The sadistic King seeks to wipe out the last traces of mankind and open the gates of Hell so that the dead can truly walk the Earth. If you dig the torture, gore, and slaughter of your fellow humans, this is your series. (It's also got a very cool website where you zombie lovers can buy all kinds of King Zombie stuff.)

Deadworld doesn't have a director yet, but Hayter is in the process of writing the script, and will also help design the world of the film. He and Carver are producing under their Dark Heroes banner, alongside Mechanic's Pandemonium company. (It's a Fox reunion!) They're hoping to launch a Deadworld franchise, and a multiple story arc they can splash over all kinds of properties. If all goes well, King Zombie will be hunting us down next year ... and God help us all.

Maybe it's all the talk of Swine Flu flooding the airwaves that has me in a pandemic frame of mind, but when Erik asked us to think about some of our favorite summer movie trailers, my mind wandered from the obvious blockbusters and instead, I came up with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. Now, I've always been a staunch defender of 28 Days against what seemed to be a chorus of naysayers. Yes, I know; the theatrical ending is too upbeat (not for me, but I've got a pretty bleak outlook sometimes), it's not a proper zombie film, Cillian Murphy's 'Rambo' turn comes from left field, and the list goes on. But believe me when I tell you that there is nothing you can come up that I haven't already heard about why this film isn't all it's cracked up to be. So even though better men have tried (and failed) to convince me that this isn't some of the best work that Boyle has done, at least we can agree that it's a heck of a lot better than A Life Less Ordinary.

The international trailer for the horror had all of the trademarks of Boyle's style; great use of music, striking visuals, and it was creepy as hell. Boyle and Alex Garland's story of an infection running amok in England might not have been your typical summer release; it was shot on digital video, it had limited F/X, and the most recognizable face in the trailer was Christopher Eccleston. But, just watching this trailer again after all these years reminds me that it isn't always the splashy Hollywood productions that can turn out to be your summer's most memorable film.

(Trailer contains language that is NSFW.)

With today's announcement that the graphic novel Zombies of Mass Destruction would be making the leap to the silver screen, it got Erik Davis thinking. And, as is often the case when Erik starts thinking about horror films, he turned to me and said "What's the next step for zombie movies?" So we started talking about it and he said "Aha, I tricked you! I don't want to have a conversation about it! I want you to write a Discuss post on the topic!" He then cackled like a cartoon villain and logged off. He's really crafty, I'm telling you.

But while all us gorehounds have been arguing about "slow vs. fast" for a few years now, it seems that the zombie sub-genre has been sprouting fresh legs and finding new ways to devour screaming humans. Just this morning, the amazingly undead Elisabeth Rappe told us that the shuffling man-eaters were about to get the Jane Austen treatment! (Yes, really!) So between fast and slow, funny or serious, semi-sentient or entirely brain-dead, which are your favorite zombies? And, more amusingly, what is the sub-genre going to give us next? I know that Nazi Zombies are making a comeback in Dead Snow, but those have been done before. Pirate zombies? Alien zombies? Zombie politicians? (Insert your own witty commentary here.) As always, let us thank George Romero for the ability to even discuss such wonderful things.

Despite having previously established my feelings about this weekend's Quarantine, I must confess a new willingness to give it a fair shot later tonight. Regardless, this week's Cinematical Seven is all about first-person horror movies, with a couple of oh-so-subjective stipulations:

• We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.
• Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.
• The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.

Now, on with the list...

I guess that if there is anyone suitable to be a zombie fighter, it'd be a guy who has experience as a Natural Born Killer. (If you can bring down humans, slow, mumbling zombies must be a breeze.) The Hollywood Reporter posts that Woody Harrelson has signed on to star in a new horror comedy called Zombieland.

This brains-obsessed tale will focus on "a mismatched pair of survivors who find friendship and redemption in a world overrun by zombies." Woody will be one of the two survivors -- "a zombie fighter named Albuquerque." There's no word yet on zombie hunter #2. But more importantly -- where does the redemption fit in?!

The film was written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who worked together on The Joe Schmo Show, although more suitable credits would be Reese's involvement on Monsters Inc. Jumping into the directorial chair, we've got Ruben Fleischer -- most recently a director for Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he's also worked with Mike White on Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl.

Despite the slower-than-expected installation of digital projectors into theaters, yet another movie is slated to be released in digital 3-D (which of course requires digital projection plus additional equipment such as a special screen). According to The Hollywood Reporter, New Amsterdam Entertainment plans to re-release George Romero's 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead into theaters after the film is modified, or "dimensionalized," to be shown in stereoscopic 3-D. The transition from 2-D to 3-D will be handled by In-Three, the company that handled George Lucas' presentation of a segment of Star Wars in 3-D at ShoWest back in 2005. The project is expected to be finished within the year. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which New Amsterdam remade in 2004, will likely be only the second film to be re-released with a 3-D version, the first being The Nightmare Before Christmas.

As wonderful as it is, the original Dawn of the Dead seems like an odd choice for 3-D, which often capitalizes on the gimmick of having objects jump out at the audience. With this film, we'll instead get to see zombies ever-so-slowly coming towards us as we nonchalantly continue eating our popcorn without fear. Perhaps we'll even have time to head to the restroom before the zombies actually seemingly make their way out into the space of the auditorium. See, that was part of the humor of Romero's Night of the Living Dead sequel, that the characters had time to run in circles around the undead mallrats. It would be much more frightening to see a dimensionalized version of the remake, which featured much quicker zombies. Presently there appears to be no set release date for the re-release, but depending on how crowded the 3-D marketplace is a year from now, I'd guess New Amsterdam is hoping for a 2009 bow.

Man oh man, sometimes I read a concept that's so up my alley that I want to physically punish myself for not thinking of it first. And this is one of 'em: It's a comic book called Last Blood, and here's the concept: A band of vampires has no choice but to defend the planet's last remaining humans from teeming throngs of zombies.

It makes perfect sense! Without human blood, the vampires would go extinct! So if zombies threaten to eradicate all mankind ... aw, man. It's so simple it's beautiful. The comic book was created by Bobby and Chris Crosby, and the boys are now in the movie business with the comics-lovin' Benderspink Productions. (They also have adaptations of Area 52, Y: The Last Man, and Pet Robots in development at various studios.)

Aside from this brief Variety piece, we don't have much more info on Last Blood, but you can check out the source material online right here! (Now I have something fun to do tonight!)

Get ready to break out your copies of The Zombie Survival Guide, and be sure to stock up on bottled water and "lobos" (you know, those weapons with which one decapitates the living dead in hand-to-hand combat) -- Max Brooks's World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is being made into a film, with J. Michael Straczynski (who's also scribing Silver Surfer) adapting the book for the big screen. The film is being produced by Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment and Paramount is distributing.This is probably old news to some of you, but it's exciting news to me, since I just last night finished reading World War Z.

I was absolutely immersed in this book and found it hard to put down. I've had deliciously scary zombie nightmares regularly while reading it, and have spent waayyyyyy more time than is probably healthy in discussions with my husband about the practical issues surrounding surviving a plague of the undead, comparing World War Z to Stephen King's plague book, The Stand, and pondering whether such a thing as an undead plague could actually scientifically happen (see, this kind of freakish obsessiveness is why I don't read or watch a lot of horror ...).

I love George A. Romero for what my Cinematical colleague Ryan Stewart does not -- the "symbolism bat," which allows Romero the freedom to use zombies to comment on whatever he wants. To me, that's a strength, not a weakness. Plus, Dawn of the Dead made me afraid of shopping malls, Day of the Dead made me claustrophobic and Land of the Dead made me wish I didn't work for a corporation.

His latest, George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, debuted at Toronto and fairly well divided audiences. I've heard from supporters, detractors and those in the middle -- Scott Weinberg was on the positive side -- but I can't wait to see it for myself. And hey! Romero made it completely independently, so that's in his favor. Jason Morgan at AMC's Monsterfest blog points to Box Office Mojo, which lists a release date of February 15, 2008. (Our friends at Moviefone also have this release date.) However, neither The Weinstein Co. site nor the film's MySpace page confirm the date yet, so plan your life accordingly.

Another independent horror film just found its leading lady. Brittany Murphy has signed to star in the psychological horror flick 3:30 a.m., according to Variety. Murphy has dipped her feet into the horror pool in the past (The Prophecy II, Cherry Falls, arguably Don't Say a Word). Mick Davis wrote and will direct 3:30 a.m., which is "about a young woman who leaves Gotham after the death of her father to work in a country hotel." The film is said to explore "the connection between dreams and reality." Davis is credited as a co-writer of The Invisible, one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year, but also wrote the original Swedish version; he is currently filming Dylan, starring Kevin McKidd as the Welsh writer Dylan Thomas. 3:30 a.m. is scheduled to begin filming in January 2008.