The Undead Symphony

In this episode Michael and I talk Zom Rom Coms, the zombie romantic comedy sub sub-genre of this sub-genre of horror. Avoiding the obvious Shaun of the Dead, we discuss those we have seen and scored well. Burying the Ex, As We Know it, Warm Bodies and the most recent Life After Beth all scoring in the 6s and 6.5s. So high scoring for us.

Come listen to us chat about why this much maligned sub-genre should be bringing all the hardcore zombie movie fans, and the romcom fan base together.

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 am still waiting for FORGIVE US ALL, Z MOM and QUEENS OF THE DEAD but in this episode, a spin of the wheel, a roll of the dice, a shake of the magic 8 ball brought me here to Rotten Tomatoes list of the top 100 zombies movies… which is…

… so we haven’t covered…

Reanimator at #4

Autopsy of Jane doe at 16

Corpse bride at 18 

We are zombies at 27

Friend of the world at 31

Dead dream at 44

Last man at earth at 45

Planet terror at 48

And this at 49

VERSUS

2002 Japanese

A relentless one of a kind sensory assault chock full of hyper kinetic fight scenes, gangster shootouts sword slashing violence and gory zombies… or  a nameless prisoner, a nameless female and her Yakuza abductors fend off zombies in a forest that resurrects the dead while the Yakuza's mysterious leader attempts to open a supernatural gate hidden within the forest and seize its dark power.

It gets a respectable 6.3/10 on IMDB

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes has a 73% approval based on 15 reviews with an average score of 6.5/10.[11] The Rolling Stone called the film "A Japanese zombies-vs.-gangsters action-horror comedy that plays like Quentin Tarantino remaking THE EVIL DEAD while on a speed binge". Sight & Sound praised the film by commenting "With Kurosawa-style swordplay, martial arts and elaborately choreographed gun battles". Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News commented on the film "I've never seen anything like it, it's a new kind of movie." 

And it is directed by Ryuhei_Kitamura who would go on to make several well received US movies including Midnight Meat Train, The Doorman, Downrange and No One Lives. I like that last one.

In this movie we have an evil priest trying to open a portal to Hell and fighting his own brother over the centuries, as a samurai, as a future punk and, for much of the movie, an escaped prisoner. We have an army of undead gangsters, and a motley crew of living gangsters. It is very OTT, with a lot stolen from the Matrix including the exact Bullet Time movie, and it goes on for 30 mins too long. I can see why people like it. But it wasn't for me. 

Still gets a respectable 5.5/10 though

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.

Life After Beth is a 2014 American zombie comedy film and it has a great cast of Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser, Matthew Gray Gubler, John C. Reilly, and Anna Kendrick. 

A young man is shocked to find his deceased girlfriend Beth alive, who is no longer an adorable woman but a walking zombie.

5.7/ 10 on IMDB On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 46% "In spite of Aubrey Plaza's committed performance, Life After Beth remains a sketch-worthy idea that's been uncomfortably stretched to feature length." 

Regarding its classification as a rom zom com

Not very rommie

Despite it starring comedic actors

Molly Shannon from SNL 

Anna Kendrick from Pitch Perfect 

John c Reilly from Step Brothers 

Aubrey plaza from Parks and Recreation 

Paul Reiser from Mad about You and My Two Dads 

It wasn’t all that commie

It was a bit zommie

However

It was still good in places. I do find Dane DeHaan in the same category as Scarlet Johansen, the dull monotone voice and lack of emotion. I don’t have a problem with him, and I've liked him in some movies, but if I am looking at comparing this to say Burying the Ex, Anton Yelchin did a far better job. 

I tell you what it was, I was expecting this to be like The Voices, or some other movie where we follow the sad lead, who is mourning, and everyone else thinks he going mad, and he actually is. Maybe he killed the people he sees. Maybe he even killed Beth, kinda twist. Like…. The Voices.

As a zombie movie, the elements are there, as a rom zom com, they are there just not done in a comedic enough way. A waste really of the talents of all involved.

6/10

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.

This one was dumb. Trailer park mullet sporting, C-word over-utilising Dutch thugs from opposing villages face off at the soccer games, drag races and facials over the local alcoholic pregnant prostitute. Until they have to join forces after an alien meteor crashes into farming country, causing the cows to overproduce zombie making milk.

It is dumber than is sounds. Best not watch if you are offended by gratuitous sex, violence, swearing, making fun of the disabled, or running over dogs. If you do like those things you may well love it.

5.5/10 for me. It was so dumb and OTT you can't score it as like it was anything else.

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.

After two seasons and 9 hours of dare I call it entertainment? Michael and I recap our time in Roarton. Did we love it? We certainly enjoyed season 1. Season 2 less so, but it is certainly worth a watch. There are precious few zombie shows out there, and even fewer that re worth your time. Our recommendation? Watch season 1. Maybe season 2 if you have the ability to filter out dozens of pointless and incomplete plot lines and inane unnecessary characters.

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.

We are back in Rourton for Season 2, and a sneak peek of what Season 3 would have become thanks to writer Dominic Mitchell as well as a possibly inebriated Ricky Tomlinson (Ken Burton from both seasons) telling us he never turns down a role. Bless him. But at least he responded to us, eh? Eh? Luke?

Onto the show. 6 hour long episodes with Kieren being less of a character in a far busier season. We gain Sinners and Loki's Wunmi Mosaku as Victus MP Maxine Martin, a nasty piece of work with an agenda. There is a lot more of Simon, a disciple of the Undead Prophet, and this whole idea of a second rising. 

With Jem and HVF Gary dating, and mum and dad being very inconsistent with their behaviour, as well as too many towns folk, kids at school, it was just a bag of cats for me. Too many things going on, and no police! I still don't understand why there are no police to enforce the law.

TBF Simon is the best character in the show, he is a conflicted man with love in his heart and a sad back story. I am kinda glad it got cancelled, and season 3 looked even messier.

6/10

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.

Steph over at the Listeners of the Dead podcast said this 2014 running infected Australian effort would cause smoke to come out of my ears. It almost did. It was just a very basic story of a bunch of one-dimensional survivors living in a bad location in my opinion, a farmhouse (no windows!). They are either pathetic whimpering women (Marge says nothing, Sammy says 2 words, Evie just whines and whimpers) and dickish men (Charlie is a thug, Bob is a thug, John is a whiny asshole), and you won't care if any of them live or die.

The story, like everything else in this movie, is very basic. A group is in a farmhouse trying to survive. Despite starving one of them lets beans spill on the floor, and when they hear infected they leave dinner rather than taking it with them. They did just walk inside, and could have taken it.

The farmhouse is really just a corrugated iron barn with no windows and two doors.  Not an ideal place, despite Charlie saying that it is later.

So Evie's husband John is missing but Bob, his mute wife Marge and Sammy decide they are going to leave, but only after Bob kills the only semi-decent character in the movie, Gary. Then John just turns up. He is as pathetic as the others, an entitled, pseudo intellectual academic who no smarts, or courage. He is going to kill himself, but then Charlie turns up and saves him and Evie. Charlie, however, is a nasty manipulative, violent rapist, and the movie falls into a pattern of sexual assault, and John being a whiny b*tch.

A particularly weak effort, following an almost clichéd story line with infinitely unlikable characters. If you like this small, indie style survival in a farm zombie movie then watch State of Emergency, or better still go back and watch any of the Night of the Living Dead versions. Avoid this.

As far as Australian zombie movies go watch Cargo, Wyrmwood 1 and 2, and Little Monsters. Don't bother with Plague.

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.

This is not the first Argentine zombie movie we have watched here on the Undead Symphony. Soy Toxico, I am toxic ambled in with a 4.5 a long while ago back in episode 61 over 2 years ago. This is episode 249 over 3 years in and this is El Ultimo Zombi which means, the last zombie and I found it on amazon amongst all the other shit in the bottom of the barrel.

It gets a respectable 5.4/10 on IMDB 2022 and it was a short, or there was a short of the same name a decade earlier.

The blurb is that a genetics specialist goes to an inn to find the origin of an infection that has started to spread. But it isn't that exciting.

With a constant soundtrack of dull moody piano, non-biting slow moving pathetic zombies that were 1. stolen from I walked with a Zombie, for the most part, but then 2. weak ass zombies that transmit whatever is the cause by breathing in purple steam. Purple steam! No biting! Bad constant piano!

I hated it. The colouring and actual film quality was fine. The acting, the writing, the music, the zombies and the purple steam were not.

3/10 at best

Hated it. Watch Soy Toxico if you need to watch an Argentinian zombie movie, but if you want something decent that is similar to this then watch Summer Camp.

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.

To quote Ewan McGregor's Obi Wan

"Hello there."

Yes, and I am back and this is the 248th episode of the US with me DS in which I watch Inifini from 2015.

In infini, not quite infinity, tells the story of an elite search and rescue team transporting onto an off-world mining facility to rescue whit Carmichael, the lone survivor of a biological outbreak.

Supposed to have space zombies. I am hopeful. I am hoping for Aliens meets Pandorum meets Event Horizon, but maybe I should lower my bar a little. It wont be Dead Space, that is for sure. Or even system shock

It is Australian and stars the least famous Hemsworth, Luke, Daniel McPherson as Whit Carmicheal and Grace Huang and scores a respectable 5.3/10 on IMDB

We open with a lot of title card to read

By the turn of the 23rd century, 95 percent of the world live on or below the poverty line. As a result of this many take dangerous jobs on interplanetary mining, military and space exploration sectors.

Off earth transit is achieved via slip streaming the process of turning matter into a data signal and transmitting it to a fixed co-ordinate anywhere in the known universe

Voluntary trained personal are fitted with an apex device that is fused into their central nervous system.

Sheeesh!

What did I think of it?

It was just a big old mess with a lot of elements stolen from a lot of other movies, a lot of Pandorum, Event Horizon, a lot from Aliens, and the Thing and The Abyss, the virus was from The Sadness but it was an organism like that in The Thing, and slip streaming (name taken from Slipstream) was stolen from Mike TV from Willy Wonka when he was turned into a data stream to appear on tv after The Matrix style head wobble, plus the time dilation from Interstellar as well. Now that is a lot of theft.

I am going to score the movie 4/10

And the succulent Chinese meal I had during it 5/10 

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.

Ok this his one genuinely appeared from nowhere. And whilst I wait for Daisy Ridleys We Bury the Dead, and Richard Roxburghs Forgive us All, and the Cambodian Z-Mom, and plough through In the Flesh, I was looking at the other streaming services.

Netflix – nothing

Amazon – nothing

Apple – nothing

Tubi… well a lot of shit, but also this… APORIA

2019 from Azerbijan, so a new country. Goodness knows what it will be like but here we go

What was it like? It was one of the worst acted, poorly written pieces of shit I have ever seen. The worst flipflopping dialog, terrible characters, all the women are on dimensional and pathetically weak, the men are contracting themselves in the same sentence, as the villain and Arvin spout such crap as "hunger makes a philosopher of you."

What an awful piece of shit you created REC BEVAN

2/10

This is the undead symphony by me DS and this is episode number 247: APORIA

Avoid like the plague. If you want to watch a movie from Azerbijan stick to goat porn.

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.