The Undead Symphony

In 2022 Constantin the production company behind the Paul WS Anderson and Milla Jovovic movies worked with the asshats at Netflix to create this show that has literally nothing to do with the movies, or Welcome to Racoon City, the movie reboot of the year before.

It follows Jade and Billie Wesker as teens as the outbreak is about to happen after their dad, Albert Wesker (brilliant played by the much loved and missed Lance Reddick) and his evil boss and daughter of the original Dr Marcus, Evelyn Marcus, pushes a new happiness drug from Umbrella called Joy, that includes small elements of the T-virus. Why doesn't this sound like a good idea.

And Jade as an adult, 14 years later in a post-apocalyptic world, is trying to get home to her husband and child after being in the field in the UK and trying to get samples of something or other before being chased across Europe by Umbrella and a fat beardo in a grey suit.

We will be doing this as a three pod breakdown with our chat in the third. In this pod, I cover parts 1 to 3 of 8. Enjoy.

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

And we come together to talk two movies high on our watch list for the year, Tina Romero's Queens of the Dead, and 28 Years Later The Bone Temple. What did we think of them? You will just have to listen to find out.

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

So I saw 28 Years Later The Bone Temple and, unlike it's prequel, I loved it. This is the movie we all wanted 28 Years Later to be from Jim to the old theme tune, to villains getting their comeuppance, to the virus not only being the red eyed blood spewed rage virus we loved, but also some progress in its study and cure.

I would question how a bicycle courier has somehow become a history teacher (that bit was stolen from the History Boys), and how Jonno was turned with a simple old school 28 days/weeks infected blood spray, and the Jimmy's aren't affected at all by it.

Some iconic scenes inc the Number of the Beast, and the train fight scene, but for me, oddly, it was Jimmy's upside down view of the stars and the bone temple looking like pillars I found the most stunning.

It is a bit of an off the cuff ramble, but I scored it 8/10 and will definitely see it again. 

The Franchise for me is 28 Days Later, 28 Years Later The Bone Temple, then the other two equal third.

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

Michael has gone rogue, going to not only watch 28 Years Later The Bone Temple but also he recorded an episode of the podcast whilst Darren writes and appears in The Fallen Diaries episode 1. Questions will be answered, including but not limited to:

Does Michael like the look and feel of prosthetic penises? 

Has he ever joined a cult?

Did Jimmy Savile fix it for him?

What other BBC presenters and DJs does he think could be pedophiles?

And many many more.

Check out his review of Bone Temple, the movie in the franchise that he scores 7.5/10 and describes as "second only to Days."

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

The things I do for you fucking people.

Where am I going with this? Well, since We Bury the Dead and Uncontained, both decent movies, with the Daisy Ridley effort immediately cementing itself in my top 50 zombie movies, we are back on the slippery downward slope with this one – Bong of the Living Dead, not to be confused with Bong of the Dead, although, yes, for you dear listeners I am watching Both! Yes both! The 2011 Canadian movie BONG of the Dead, where Although the world is dealing with a zombie apocalypse, two friends decide to make the best of it. They use zombie brains as fertilizer to grow powerful cannabis. And the 2017 AMERICAN Bong of the living dead Friends fighting for survival realize that the zombie apocalypse isn't all it's cracked up to be. 

BONG OF THE DEAD from 2011 an experience akin to being the only sober person in a room full of drunk and stoned exhibitionists who think they’re the funniest people on Earth.

What a bag of shit… that was bad, like one of those really bad episodes of Z nation that felt like the writers were drunk, high or both, as it had nothing do with the main storyline.

3/10 avoid 

And so onto the second wind of this podcast, we have slept off the 2011 Canadian bong of the dead and now have the American BONG OF THE LIVING DEAD from 2017 

It gets a surprising 5.3 on IMDB and although it didn’t have enough reviews on RT to create a score, the two critics that watched it seemed to like it.

Tries to be Shaun of the Dead and fails at being remotely funny, despite some decent zombie movie references. Then becomes serious when they run out of weed and fails at that too. In the end it was far better than Bong of the Dead, but it was still shit.

4/10 avoid also

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

Winter. A fly over of near black trees. The wilderness in winter seen from above and below. From under the show a shirtless man appears. It is Morley Nelsons Dan. Long hair. Blade. Ominous music.

Morley Nelson writes, directs and stars as Dan a bit of a cliché, former spec ops soldier who found the woman of his dreams, and then lost her and their baby, kinda thing. And Dan is confused and lost in the snow as he stumbled upon 7 year old Jack and cute as a button 2 year old Brooke living in a huge house by themselves. What is going on? And this is after a couple forced themselves into the house and were killed by someone, or something.

So this zombie virus has two strains, you either turn standard running zombie, I am thinking Black Summer, and will die when killed, these are Deaders, and then there are the Changers, that turn, then turn back, a la zombie versions of werewolves or, more recently, like EAT BRAINS LOVE, but more serious.

With the main story being less about the zombies and more about the head of the local militia looking for his daughter, who was part of the couple killed earlier, it does detract a little from what this could have been.

It scored 4.6/10 on IMDB and I can see why people would put it around there. I am going to round up to a 5/10 as I found it quite interesting, a fresh take to a degree but with room for improvement. As this was Morley Nelson writing, direction and starring in this well done to him pesonally, it is certainly better than a lot of indie zombie movies we have seen on the pod.

If you want to move away from the second rate Romero clones out there, give this a go. It was a few new scenes and a little bit of better writing and acting away from being Blood Quantum ish.

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

I have been waiting for this one for a year. Or so it seems. It has certainly taken its sweet ass time in coming but finally I get to cross off Daisy Ridley's We Bury The Dead.

The story follows American Ava (Ridley) as she heads to Tasmania after a US weapon of mass destruction accidentally wipes out the entire population of half a million people. Ridley's husband Mitch was there for a work thing, and she wants to find him/his body.

We learn though, as she is volunteers with thousands of others to identify and retrieve the dead that some of them are coming back. And we do see them. Although the are tragic grey skinned, opaque eyed hollow people, grinding their teeth into sharp splinters. 

The military are overseeing the whole thing and the returned, the undead, are immediately and ruthlessly dealt with.

Enter Brenton Thwaites' Clay,  a bit of a loser, and so far away from the clean cut, pretty boy US roles he is famous for (Teen Titans, Office Uprising, Ghosts of War) you have to double take to see the unkempt, long greasy hair and swearing Aussie is him. Clay offers to take her to the other side of the island, 200 miles, to where Mitch was at the time of the tragedy.

And so this becomes a road movie, interspersed with flashbacks to Ava and Mitch's troubled marriage, right through the payoff at the end.

It is quite haunting, but not the Australian 28 Days Later that some of the trailers hinted at. A sad story about her and him. A story of loss before and after death. Moments of the Schwarzenegger Maggie. Scary moments. Don't get me wrong. Mark Coles Smith from Beast of War, was truly scary as Riley. It will stay with you. But those wanting a bloody, zombie fest will be disappointed.

I liked it though, and given this is my podcast, I score it 6.5/10. Well done all. 

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

There are sub-genres within the horror sub-genre of zombie horror, oh yes there is. Other then the obvious, the apartment survival horror, the South Korean zombie horror there is this, the romantic comedy set in the zombie apocalypse. And if you think that Shaun of the Dead was probably the first, and Warm Bodies is likely the best example, it is a good segue into the genre if you have a reluctant partner who doesn't want to see Zombie Flesh Eaters on date night. 

There are a lot of examples, and we enjoy the light-hearted nature of the sub-genre. We have covered Better Off Zed, Death do us Part, Life after Beth, Burying the Ex, The Last Marriage, Eat Brains Love, Newtopia and Night of the Living Deb. And there are more out there.

The question is in the balance. Directors tend to lean towards one or two of the elements in the zom rom com equation and either make a romantic comedy with little zombies, or a good zombie comedy with barely any romance. It is a tough nut to crack. But they do keep trying in this entry level sub-genre. 

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

It is battle of the shit biscuits tonight as I pit Amazon against TUBI, the slop bucket of cinema versus the cesspool of slime with Night of the Living Dead Resurrection and Deadlocked.

What can I say about Night of the Living Dead Resurrection on Amazon, a Welsh movie that tries to steal as much from Romero's 1969 classic as possible whilst retaining nothing? A movie that ends with the line "throw her in the rape van" when the zombie apocalypse literally started the day before. A movie with a black character called Ben, in a white shirt and trousers, who has Karen Cooper from the original as his phone background image, but then blows his brains out after 15 mins and we are left with a pointless Welsh family who we have no sympathy for. Rubbish. Unoriginal.

2/10

And from TUBI we have Deadlocked. Not our first zombie movie set in an elevator, but certainly the worst. TBF compared to NOTLDR this is fucking Shakespeare, director by Spielberg, scored by Morricone. It isn't, of course, it is an overly dramatic but of annoying characters with more drama than a season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as cop Lee, perp Mason, wannabe actor Connor, runaway Jacqui and alcoholic Olivia get stuck in an elevator as the zombie apocalypse happens outside.

Not as good as the Italian movie The End? but certainly better than is rival in this episode.

4/10 

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.

Recording in Progress...

Kirk, Birdseye, Scarlet and Stabbin, we know a few captains, but in this episode I finally get to talk to friend of the pod Captain Magenta, the only Captain that matters. 

We talk his first, last, best and worst zombie movies. He tells us what he really thinks of the 28 Years Later ending and Jimmy Savile, and why he loves South Korean zombies the most. We give him a shortlist of new movies to watch, and new TV shows and we have just come off the recording and are already planning a follow up. It was that good.

So give the man a listen, hook hand, parrot on the shoulder and skull and cross bones flapping in the wind, this is the one and one Captain Magenta...

And you can listen to the Captain's podcast here on Spotify...Spilling Brains and Gossip, go check it out. You won't be sorry.

https://open.spotify.com/show/0Z3oo1X6h4el0459Mc6yXG?si=IL-yZG5PTlud2AWqmaLPmA

I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share.