All Zombie Films Are Not Created Equal

There's a certain type of charm to lots of bad films. There's a certain type of soul that shows that even though the film might not be the best or the brightest, it was still loved and cared for.

Bad films can transcend in ways that well put together soulless pap cannot.

Bad films can be great films.

I've seen quite a few great bad films --Street Trash comes to mind immediately, virtually any Troma film directed by Lloyd Kauffman, John Waters films. These films rise above their humble beginnings to attain something greater.

Then there are the truly soulless abominations of cinema that contain neither soul nor substance. These are the films that look like bad film school projects.

Very rarely do I encounter a film that fails within the first few minutes. Usually if the film fails that spectacularly, something brilliant may follow. Sometimes not so much.

Day of the Dead 2: Contagium is one of those abominations.



I will now summarize the first twenty minutes of the film (the part Roxanne and I watched before shutting it off):

In the late sixties there is a hospital with a mad scientist in it creating zombies from a Russian soldier who is apparently a super-zombie. There is a soldier who steals some of the zombie formula and puts it in his thermos. Then the military rush in and start shooting everyone, including a host of zombies who were apparently running rampant at said military hospital. Dude manages to run away from all the killing with all the subtlety of a GI Joe cartoon. Then he turns into a zombie and they shoot him. During the commotion he drops his zombie-juice filled thermos into the weeds.

Flash forward to the present. The military hospital is now an insane asylum populated by bad actors with little direction. This is the point where the movie becomes a strange combination of attempted Tarantino dialogue and girl interrupted. We have crazy guy in glasses, crazy guy who may be gay, crazy other guy, crazy possibly retarded or just stupid or burned out on drugs black guy, and crazy guy who has visions and has a girlfriend who is a cutter with a friend who wears devil horns.

Hooray!

Didn't even get to the zombies in the present. Could. not. do. it.

There is a making of documentary on this DVD which I feel I must see. I am curious if the makers of the film realize how terrible the film is.

Some directors can overcome horrible acting and bad scripts to make something good.

Very few directors can overcome horrible acting, a bad script, bad editing and horrible direction to make something good.

The worst part is the association that this film had with Romero's Dead films due to the title. That is the saddest thing.

I am now done talking about this movie.

Zombie Story, pt. 1

Watching a lot of Zombie stories here lately. Decided to write something Zombie-ish, here's part 1:

Your first instinct, mine too, is to get someplace big like a mall, or a town hall, or a hospital, but your instinct is wrong. Big is good to get you lots of people, but big is also good to get you overrun.

Your first instincts are what get you killed.

Second instincts are good, third instincts are best.

Trust me. The first place I went was the mall. I guess I watched Dawn of the Dead a few too many times and thought it would be a great place to spend the Zombie Apocalypse. All it was was burning and so full of those things you couldn't even pretend to wade through them.

This was in the beginning when some of them were still fast and smart, before they really started falling apart. I hit the local mall thinking I'd find survivors and supplies and I ended up finding neither.

It's not like even in the beginning these things are too hard to handle in a one on one situation. Even the fast and smart ones aren't really that fast and smart. A moderately fast guy on crutches can outmaneuver one of the fast ones.

I saw that happen outside the hospital.

A group of them though--a group of them would take out a Jamaican sprinter.

I haven’t really seen any of them that can take out a truck though.

Just keep the doors locked and the windows up and your eyes open is the best way to go. They’ll bang on the windows, but unless they get clogged up under your wheels you’re good to go.

I think I spent the first few hours running around in shock like everyone else. You don’t really have a way to plan for the Zombie Apocalypse, even if you think you do. I’ve seen Fulci and Romero and Shaun of the Dead and lots of the regional zombie films, and nothing really prepared me for this. The only real thing that I brought away from any of those is to keep my eyes open and be distrustful of the security that groups bring.

Groups just bring you problems.

It’s not that being alone is all that much fun either, but I will take being alone to being left at risk by someone else's problems.

Not that groups of people are a real problem at this point. It's been forty-seven days since I saw or heard from a non-Zombie. In the beginning there was chatter all over the short wave and CB. The television and internet were alive with reports from all over, then, after about a week those started to trickle out and then they stopped.

Now it's radio silence.

All quiet on every front.

Power is still on in a lot of places because my wireless card still picks up the net, but there haven't been any new youtube videos or blog reports in quite a while. I can look out my front door and see an enticing amount of nothing and lack of activity which makes me want to go out and see what's going on, but at the same time all quiet doesn't necessarily mean all dead and not moving.

Fey=Palin

For those that missed it Tina Fey with the pitch perfect Alaskan/Wisconson accent and Amy Poehler acting like Hillary Clinton probably feels:

Unify through disunity

There's nothing like forming your own group to work on unifying everyone else's groups. Presidential elections are a prime time for this type of thing and there seem to be brand new groups popping up all the time. Don't let the fact that some of them may be run by people they seem to be trying to oppose and that some of them are just arms of other organizations that already exist, that's beside the point, really.

Here are a few of those groups, more as I find them:

Unity 08: Law and Order's Hang 'Em High McCoy stumped for this group earlier in the year, but, unfortunately the man has brought them down already.


DividedWeFail.org: This is an arm of the AARP, but they do have the coolest logo.


WeCanSolveIt.org: Founded by ManBearPig hunter and popularly elected president of the US, Al Gore. This one is more of an environmental one, and you can guess.


One.org: Star power to find unity in something or other.


TillAllAreOne.org: Autobot campaign using the matrix of leadership to light our darkest hour.

Hope all that was helpful.

For Gunny Walker

Just for Gunny Walker:

The other day I was strolling around the interwebs the other day and I happened to find a bootleg of a concert that Gunny and I were at at MTSU. Here for your (Gunny Walker's) listening pleasure are the Presidents of the United States of America live at Tucker Theater from MTSU. If you listen closely (Gunny), you can hear Gunny singing along.

Spin, Spin, Spin

Watching James Carville being completely flummoxed by how to argue against Sarah Palin with Rep. Michele Bachmann because it seems like the Republicans are spinning so fast on trying to back up a position here that they run the risk of catching fire.



"She easily has more qualifications than Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden combined if you look at executive experience. She's been in an executive position for two years. She's made very tough positions.

She's looked her own party in the eye and said enough with your corruption and she says throw the bums out. She has delivered and she knows how to get things done."

--Michele Bachmann



I like the confusion from Carville trying to distance from attacks on the teen-pregnancy angle and the showing of the picture of the town in Alaska that Palin was mayor of.

How is it that this can at the same time be a horrible negative for McCain, but a positive as well.

It seems from Bachmann that there are already talking points and catch phrases that they have been given to use.

Also interesting on a panel with three women and one man where the man was the one supporting a female presidential candidate and one of the women is for Obama there is someone arguing that to question the qualifications of Palin is offensive to women.



"They tout her experience as mayor of this town in Alaska. This is a picture of the city hall. It looks like a bait shop in south Louisiana."

--James Carville

Republicans and Hillary attacked Obama for a lack of experience in foreign policy and a lack of experience overall, but now are all a twitter for someone who has been governor of Alaska for less than two years and saying she has more experience (albeit Bachmann then qualified it as executive experience) than Obama or Biden put together.

So executive position (albeit governor of Alaska)trumps Senator since 1973 in experience.

Spin Republicans spin.

I think they went all in on the Flop with a K-Q on suit in heads up, but they're really going to need to pull out that gut-shot straight draw on the river.