It Stinks!

 

 (IMDB)

THE STINK OF FLESH-2005-This zombie apocalypse soft core porn film was made by some sick fuck in New Mexico. There's gory blood spurting, flesh eating, rough sex with a female zombie, a woman with a conjoined twin, terrible acting, and '80's synth soundtrack. The director Scott Phillips also wrote some episodes of a “Kamen Rider” series.

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Fulci

 

ZOMBI-2-1979-A mysterious boat is discovered in the NYC harbor. It seems abandoned but 2 coast guard members discover a rotting flesh eating zombie on board which kills one of the guards. It turns out the boat belongs to a missing scientist. His daughter Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow) teams ups with a NYC based British reporter Peter West (Ian McCulloch) to find his whereabouts. They hitch a ride with another couple (Al Cliver and Auretta Gay) on their boat to reach the island of Mantool where it turns out Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson) is trying to stave off a zombie invasion. After an underwater zombie fights a shark, the quartet meet up with Menard. Meanwhile the doc's mistreated wife (Olga Karlatos) is killed and eaten (a splinter going through her eye is an infamous scene). Eventually zombies start turning up everywhere and the four take refuge in Menard's church/hospital.

 It's very gory and fast moving but director Lucio Fulci ran into a lot of problems with the producers (their original choice for director was Enzo Casarelli) and he wasn't that happy with the results. The ending is kind of laughable. Still it was a big hit. Called ZOMBIE in the US, it's original title was ZOMBI 2 since George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD was called ZOMBI in Europe.

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Funny Zombies

COCKNEYS VS. ZOMBIES-2012-English zombie comedy time again. Two dumb brothers rob a bank to get money to prevent the closing of the old age home where their grandfather (Alan Ford) is living. Just as they attempt the robbery some construction digging unearths old zombies who bite some workers. Soon local residents are turning into the flesh eating un-dead. The duo (with help from several other locals) makes their way to the old age home while blowing away the zombies in this gory horror comedy that borrows from SHAWN OF THE DEAD, DEAD-ALIVE and even the original DAWN OF THE DEAD. Later the whole cast get guns and a zombie bloodbath ensues.

The big surprise is seeing 87 year old Honor Blackman swear and kill zombies! I found it pretty enjoyable except  much of the dialogue was lost on me due to the heavy Cockney accents. It's the first feature film by a TV commercial maker Matthias Hoene.

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Italian Cannibal

ANTHROPOPHAGUS-1980-In a long opening scene a couple go to a beach. She's killed underwater and he gets a meat cleaver in the head. An American woman named Julie (Tisa Farrow with a dubbed voice) joins some tourists for a vacation on a secluded Mediterranean island. After fooling around with tarot cards they do some exploring and find the town there mostly deserted except for a young blind girl (Julie's friends' daughter). Of course it turns out that there is a mad cannibal (George Eastman) on the loose who used to be a guy named Niklos. Through a flashback we learn Niklos and his wife and young son were stranded in a raft. Niklos accidentally stabbed his wife when they argued over eating their dead son's body. Niklos wound up eating both and going mad. Niklos stabs several victims, decapitates another and rips the baby from a pregent woman and eats it. Before he dies he even attempts to eat his own guts.

The gore effects are typical for the time in an Italian horror film and the Niklos zombie is effective but much of it is way too dark.

Eastman (real name: Luigi Montefiori)  co-wrote the screenplay with director Joe D'Amati (real name: Aristide Massaccesi) who'd already made things like SEXY NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS. D'Amati would go on to make many more horror films in Italy (many in collaboration with Eastman) featuring bloody SFX and low budgets. Tisa Farrow (younger sister of Mia) co-starred in Fulci's ZOMBIE the year before. She'd make one more horror film in Italy HUNTER OF THE APOCALYPSE directed by Antonio Margheriti before retiring.

This played in US theaters as THE GRIM REAPER and was also known as ZOMBIE 7!

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Italian Horror

THE LAST HOUSE IN THE WOODS-2006-In the 1980's Italy churned countless cannibal exploitation movies featuring cheap extreme gore, nudity and real animal killings. It's been a long time since the last one but director Gabriele Albanesi (his first feature film after music videos and shorts) seems to want to revive the genre' with his TEXAS CHAINSAW (and Bava and Argento) inspired splatter film.

While discussing their relationship problems a couple Aurora (Daniela Virgillo) and Rino (Daniele Grassetti) are terrorized by three thugs. Rino is beaten badly but before the trio can do harm to Aurora the thugs are chased away by Antonio (Gennaro Diana) who happens to be driving by with his wife Clara (Santa De Santis). Antonio takes the couple back to his house and then the trouble begins. (you know right away by the title anyway...) It turns out Antonio and Clara are the parents to killer cannibalistic children. One is a little boy with sharp teeth and the other two are giggling sadistic "monsters". (they look like something from a Coffin Joe movie) After being knocked out Aurora awakens to find Rino with his leg cut off and the family munching on it. They then proceed to cut off his arm with a chainsaw! Meanwhile the punks return and seem to be Aurora's only hope for survival! It features a bloody beating, a guy trying to hold in his bleeding intestines, a bloody knife fight, flesh ripping and a surprise in the basement but the grossest scene involves the crushing of a tumor on one of the killer's neck. Director Albanesi sets up some great scenes with color, darkness and unusual music (at least for this kind of movie) but some scenes go on too long and the shock ending didn't make a whole lot of sense. Still it's better than most recent horror films made in the US.

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First for 2013

Well, it has been a while since I posted but hopefully that will change in 2013. Happy New Year!

MULBERRY STREET-2006-A virus carried by rats turns residents of NYC's Lower East Side into blood drinking, flesh craving zombie rat people in this horror film that uses a lot of character development to cover up the fact it's just another 28 DAYS LATER rip-off with very jerky camera effects. The zombies are fairly grotesque but not very powerful as a bar owner beats a few of them up with a frying pan. The lead character is an ex-boxer named Clutch (Nick Damici) who takes out a few zombies with punches. Meanwhile his soldier-daughter (Kim Blair) wanders the city trying to unite with her dad. Once again the ending seems to say it might have been caused by our evil government. Writer/director Jim Mickle does a competent job handily the cast and gore but it's too dark and frenetic.

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Un-Something

UNDEAD-2003-This gore horror-comedy from Australia reminded a lot of Peter Jackson's BAD TASTE (and SHAUN OF THE DEAD) with it's extreme violent SFX but I didn't care for it. 

In Queensland, a meteorite shower turns residents into human eating zombies. A woman named Rene (Felicity Mason) takes shelter in the cabin of the local weirdo (Mungo McKay) who seems to know a lot about the zombies. They are joined by a few other people (including a pregnant woman) who yell, curse, cry and act like morons.

This was made by twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig who really think their unoriginal plot, bad acting and dumb comic situations are very clever. They do thrown in a twist ending involving some aliens but by then it's too late. The 90 mins of your life that you wasted watching this crap is gone forever! 

After this The Spierigs made DAYBREAKERS which featured vampires. 

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PS: Wkipedia list of still living silent screen stars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_silent_film_actors

Survival of The Sequel

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD-2009-This is an off shoot of George Romero's last "dead" film (DIARY OF THE DEAD) as some stupid renegade National Guardsmen who appeared briefly in DAIRY are the focal point of this weird story. On Plum Island off of Delaware, two stereotypical Irish clans feud over how to deal with their un-dead brethren. The one leader Seamus Muldoon has the other leader Patrick O'Flynn banished from the island. After some inventive zombie deaths and arguing the soldiers (with a young smart ass just called "Boy") meet up with O'Flynn and return to the island.

After more in fighting they try to make a zombie eat a horse. There's a lot of talk in between zombie encounters but I really didn't know what to make of it all. This is by far the most disappointing Romero movie ever! 

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Deliever Us From Bad Zombie Movies

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE-2011-More nonsense of the living dead! First the infected VM2 virus appears in France. Then few days later 83% of Europe is affected. A plane crashes into Big Ben and then Japan is wiped out. Then somehow the virus appears in Iowa! Soon the virus spreads across the whole of the USA! Our government does its best to wipe it out but SIX MONTHS LATER (when our tale takes place) towns and cities are full of zombies. Ving Rhames (who was also in DAWN OF THE DEAD 2 aka DAY OF THE DEAD which this thing resembles) leads a group of survivors headed for Catalina. They also meet another group that uses bows and arrows. Between smashing and decapitating (and running) the group talks a lot about themselves. Later an undead tiger shows up. Director Nick Lyon also made GRENDEL and SPECIES: THE AWAKENING. An Asylum production.

Thanks again to Tony for getting me this!

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Doggone Zombies

DOGHOUSE-2009-A bunch of English gobs take their friend to a remote village so he'll forget about his divorce. Unfortunately for them (and us) the town is occupied by man hating, flesh eating women due to some kind of virus (Project: Cathouse).

This SHAWN OF THE DEAD/DEAD ALIVE inspired gore comedy features a variety of female zombies (a hairdresser, old lady, bride, butcher, dominatrix, etc.) but much of the heavy accented English dialogue was lost on me. At one point three of them (they meet an army sgt. at the village) dress in drag to evade the zombies. Things get more serious and deadly when the flesh eaters mutate. The weirdest death involves a fat dead housewife squashing her victim.

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Bean There, Done That...

HILLSIDE CANNIBALS-2006-A group (family) of cannibals terrorize some teens in the California desert in this low budget gory idiocy. They mostly use torture, eat the flesh and drink the blood of their victims but they also grunt and groan and fight amongst themselves a lot. Somehow another guy who's daughter was killed by the tribe has tracked them down and wants revenge but he gets killed the first time he attacks them! This is suppose to have been inspired by the (possibly fictional) legend of Sawney Bean, a Scottish madman who terrorized his native land with a his own family of cannibals but the real influence is THE HILLS HAVE EYES (which may have be influenced itself by the Bean legend). The director Leigh Scott plays the head of the clan.

I just read the DVD box also makes reference to THHE and the Bean legend!

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The Conspiracy Continued??

DAY OF THE DEAD-2008-This movie "based on the film by George Romero" is a piece of crap. It must be part of a conspiracy to remake and destroy any decent horror film of the past. While some might argue the original is not Romero's best work it looks like a classic compared to this talky, annoying shit which seems more influenced by 27 DAYS LATER. Once again the zombies are turned into clowns in unintentional funny attack scenes made up mostly of poor CGI SFX.

Mena Suvari (AMERICAN BEAUTY) stars as an Army corporal with an idiot brother (Michael Welch) and Ving Rhames plays an Army captain who's killed in the first half hour of the movie but comes back later and eats his own eye. As usual the government is to blame for spreading a virus that started the whole thing. Ian McNeice is a fat DJ and Nick Cannon is a dickhead private who's death scene is the only highlight of this miserable tale.

Not one likable character in the whole cast makes you wonder if a world inhabited by flesh eating zombies wouldn't be so bad....But what can you expect from a movie that's final scene is like a YOU TUBE screamer??

Director Steve Miner made the second and third entries in the original FRIDAY THE 13th series and lots of TV episodes.

I think this is also known as DAWN OF THE DEAD 2.

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Hyped and Not Hyped

28 DAYS LATER-2002-Strange modern zombie tale by Danny Boyle, director of TRAIN-SPOTTING could never live up to it’s critical hype yet it’s sad to say 28 just isn’t a very good horror film. It borrows from dozens of others (mostly post Romero Euro-cannibal stuff) and there’s too much talk and the herky-jerky digital camera work is a cheat and might give you a headache.

Jim (Irish actor Cillian Murphy) awakens from a coma 28 days after a bunch of stupid animal activists free some rabid “rage” infected monkeys. The results are a ghost town like England now terrorized by rampaging red-eyed zombies (called “The Infected”) who vomit blood while killing. Jim meets Selena (Naomie Harris) who fills him in on what’s happening (after she kills her partner when he becomes infected). They eventually meet up with Frank (Brendan Gleeson who was in A.I. and GANGS OF NEW YORK around the same time) and his young daughter Hannah (Megan Burns). Together they decide to travel in Frank’s cab to find the source of a radio message being broadcast by the army. Christopher Eccleston (also in Boyle’s SHALLOW GRAVE and later was the first "new" Doctor Who) is the army major who wants to keep the population going. Screenwriter Alex Garland wrote the novel “The Beach” which was made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.



WRONG TURN-Regency-2003-This is probably the best “recycled ‘70’s teenagers being terrorized by psychos” nonsense in a long while. Considering the junk that is passed off as entertainment in theaters these days I’m surprised it didn’t get a better release. It’s not original but it’s well made, bloody and a little suspenseful in spots.

After two cars crash the occupants try to find help and run into a trio of deformed, cackling backwoods killers. They kill in various ways but the remaining two stars (Desmond Harrington who was the mini-series TAKEN and the DRAGNET TV remake around this time) and Eliza Dushku (from TV’s BUFFY and ANGEL) get revenge in a fiery finale. Also with Jeremy Sisto (from TV’s SIX FEET UNDER and ANGEL EYES).

The well-done SFX are by (co-producer) Stan Winston! Alan McElroy’s (HALLOWEEN 4, LEFT BEHIND, BALLISTIC) cliched script throws in a little soemthing from every movie THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to JEEPERS CREEPERS but it actually works up until the final scene, which is too expected! Director Rob Schmidt made the non-horror SATURN in 1999 and the thriller CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN SUBURBIA in 2000.

WT seems to have inspired the 9 minute FRESH MEAT: THE WOUNDS OF “WRONG TURN”….

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