The Undead Symphony

And whilst Ollie Eats Brains and Michael are in a holding pattern prior to tomorrows recording I am back on the DVDs and somewhat of a classic in the genre, THE BEYOND, a movie that has terrified audiences across the world, lucio fulci face melting, blood oozing, gory glory.

1981 it was also released as And you will live in terror! The afterlife

Set in new orleans Its plot follows a woman who inherits a hotel in rural Louisiana that was once the site of a horrific murder, and which may be a gateway to hell. It is the second film in Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy after City of the Living Dead (1980), and was followed by The House by the Cemetery (1981). The BBFC  the British film classification body passed it with an X rating demanding several cuts and subsequently it was considered a Video nasty.[36] It would not be released in the United Kingdom uncut until 2001 on home video.

It stars English actress Katherine McCall, she appeared in the trilogy as Liz, David Warbeck as Dr John McCabe and Cinzia Monreal as Emily. Fulci makes an appearance as the town clerk

6.6 on IMDB and 68% on RT

People have said

The Beyond' is sensational and a bona fide modern horror classic. Absolutely essential viewing!

The atmosphere was very dreamlike and nightmarish. I've heard criticisms of this film for it's loose plot, but that didn't bother me too much.

This is a better than average Italian horror but a below average horror. There is just no sense of horror or fear.

URGH!

3/10 hated this one

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.

Well, hot shit, we are back for another episode. Well I am, hi. This is the Undead Symphony with me Darren Smith. And in this episode I am watching Dead Zone, not the Stephen King paranormal movie with Christopher Qalken, or the show with Anthony Michael hall, this is a zombie sci fi tech armour movie starring Michael Jai White, of Spawn Fame, Jeff Fahey of Lawnmower man fame, and Chad Michael Collins from the Sniper movie series.

The blurb

An elite team of soldiers who, to stop the collapse of humanity, descend on a radiation-poisoned town and perform the ultimate stealth mission using high-tech weapons and armour. IMDB 3.6/10 and on Amazon it only gets 3.7, which is unheard of. Incredibly low.

And that description? Doesn’t it sound like the Crysis C-R-Y-S-I-S computer games? It does to me, and prompted me to download them for the PS4. And I am glad I did, as they are now 9.99 for all three remastered versions, down from 40 pounds. Result

But back to the movie…

Nah. I give it a generous 4 out of 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.

In this episode we welcome back the wonderful Stephanie Grant from the Listeners of the Dead Podcast for a chat. No real agenda, more a chat about what we have seen and liked, what we have seen and didn't like, what we are looking forward to, and what we've been up to and future plans. We also take the top 25 or so most recognizable TV and movie zombies to get to a consensus of our top 3.

It's relaxed. Come get relaxed with us. And if you are very, very good, we will let you sit on the floor in front of the couch as we watch Last of Us season 2. If you are bad, then it is Zombie with a Shotgun, Night of the Flatulating Dead and Nazi Zombie Death Tales  and bed with no supper for you.

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.

Die Alone is a 2024 Canadian horror thriller film written and directed by Lowell Dean. The film stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Douglas Smith, and Frank Grillo. It tells the story of a young man with amnesia who joins forces with a hardened survivalist during a zombie like outbreak, as they set out to find his missing girlfriend. 

And fortunately for us, it is on AMAZON at the moment, so saves me wading through the DVD cesspool I have at the moment.

People have likening it to Memento with the amnesia element, we have seen other movies where the main male character has lost his partner, probably in a car crash and cannot remember what happened. 

90 minutes on the nose too, so easy to get through… 

5.7 on IMDB 75% on RT and 3.1/5 on Letterboxd

It was a bit too slow

A bit too miserable

The twists were good

It was nice to look at, well acted, atmospheric, the creature effects were good, but they were barely used.

Didn’t leave me feeling happy

It felt like a cheap indie Memento meets the Last of Us and Annihilation with someone feeding loved ones, a la Donald Sutherland in Final Days, or Hershal keeping the infected in the barn in the walking dead. With hints of Maggie.

5.5/10 at best, closer to a 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.

Welcome to RACCOON CITY

It is reboot time

Johannes Roberts of 47 metres down and The Strangers: prey at night wrote and directed this 2021 reboot  set in 1998.

We have a new cast and a lot of familiar characters, with most of them coming from the games including Clare, Chris, Wesker, Jill, Dr Birkin and his family, Richard, Leon, Vickers, Irons, Ben Bertolucci and Lisa. 

However, they are NOT the characters from the computer games, they are just using the names.

The movie is dark, certainly darker than the Paul WS Anderson efforts. Set at night, raining, locals with their hair falling out bleeding out of their eyes, game locations such as the mansion and police station, a lot of death. And yet, Clare is too headstrong for me to care about her, Chris is also, Leon is too useless for me to care about him, Jill is too rough, Birkin too creepy. TBH out of all the characters in the movie, the poor experimented on Lisa and the one on the slab in the lab are the only characters I felt sorry for.

A bigger nod to the games, rather than a constant spotlight on his wife at the time (Milla Jovovic) as per the Anderson efforts, this was a decent enough escape from a city movie, not too dissimilar to the second Anderson movie, Apocalypse, however rather than having OTT comic strip computer games characters like the Anderson series, these are all quite weak and forgettable.

I gave it 6/10 because it was so much better than the others. It is watchable for sure, with some decent elements, but it isn't resident evil really, despite using all of the names.

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 we are here and back after the 200th episode extravaganza, back on the zombies, and the DVDs too.

Now this is THE DEAD NEXT DOOR

1989 written, produced and directed by JR Bookwalter. His debut too. And he did the soundtrack… another one of those

Steph described this as another from the bargain bin 2/10… which is a really bad sign…

The blurb is that

In the near future, the world falls victim to a plague of violent carnivorous undead humans, and a black-ops elite team of soldiers, nicknamed the "Zombie Squad", has been enlisted by the government as exterminators to control the growing epidemic. While on a series of routine containment missions, the soldiers stumble upon a mysterious religious cult which wishes to protect and enable the zombies, believing them to be a punishment ordained by God. Within their compound may be a cure to the virus causing the plague.

It actually gets 5/10 on IMDB which is somewhat surprising

It cost $125,000 with Sam Raimi some of the money of Evil Dead 2 t produce, Bruce campbell has a voice role and Evil dead 2 co-writer scott Spiegel appears as Richards. The film was shot on Super-8, which is an amateur grade film generally only used for making home movies. Everyone involved worked on the film for a deferred salary.[3] The film is notable for highly graphic gore effects.

Thoughts? Well the title is awful. Next door being the church in relation to Bow's place? And the DVD cover is very misleading.

It had ambition, a lot of people, and I think it deserves more credit for trying to make something on a shoes string. With a proper budget this could be classed alongside many of the 70s and 80s zombies, but wont be because of the poor camera quality.

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.

Our 200th episode and the end of season 6 of the podcast. It is a like a gender reveal party, but rather than blue or pink powder it is just blood and guts in pletiful supply. 

Before the Resident Evil series Paul WS Anderson actually made decent movies, starting with Shopping starring Jude Law he went onto making the popular first Mortal Kombat, the one with Christopher Lambert as Raiden. And then came this, 1997, and it was, as Darren describes it "Hellraiser in Space."

So with a lovable cast of Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Jack Noseworthy, Sean Pertwee, Jason Isaacs and Richard T Jones, and a director before he became lazy and/or jaded, we have this.

Set in 2047 (so not long to go) it follows a crew of astronauts sent on a rescue mission after a missing spaceship, the Event Horizon, spontaneously appears in orbit around Neptune, only to discover that a sinister force has come back with it.

We talk when we saw it, when we owned it, and when I met Jack Noseworthy... 

libera te tutemet ex inferis - save yourselves

We love this movie... it is a solid 7/10 for us

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 film uses color footage to show the action from the zombies' point of view in which they see themselves as normal humans and occasionally switches to black-and-white footage to show the zombies from the point of view of normal humans

55% on RT and 5.7/10 in IMDB th DVD box suggests it could become an instant cult classic. We shall see about that.

It stars Matt Davis from The Vamepire Dairies, Legally Blonde and CSI as Mike

Michael Grant Terry from Bones as Tim

Juliana Robinson as Venessa

And Betsy Beuler from the awful Scrubs interns as Cindy

The root menu has an infuriating college rock tune Barricade by the Random Class Collective so had to mute that.

...

...

Urgh..

A classic? No

Cult? No

Was it ok? I suppose.

3.5 is the score of the year so far… as bad as the amateur Codename: Yin Yang and the last 3 resident evils… I feel this tried, it was quite clever with the flipping of the story but this was no where near as good as Dead Heads or the Revenant which scored 6 and 7 respectively, or even the massively skewed Fido thanks to Jen's score… so what was this? Was it 3.5 again? No it’s a 4

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.

2006 something is rotten in the state of denmark

Codename: Yin/Yang is a fan-made movie. 6.2/10 on IMDB Some say it has great plot ideas and characters, but poor editing and low-budget effects. 

• One reviewer says the movie is "horrible" but that the fun they had making it shines through. 
• Another reviewer says it's "beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema". 

The US President (Daubjerg) unleashes a zombie virus on Denmark, apparently confusing the country with Iraq [maybe this joke makes more sense in Danish?]. To finish the job off, he sends in Special Forces icon Bobo Moreno (Penstoft), to oversee the mop-up work. But against him are Yin and Yang (the other Penstoft and Louring), two opposing sides of the same lethal coin. One is dark, dresses in black and is an expert with firearms. The other is blonde, dresses in white, and wields a mean Samurai sword. They are Denmark’s last hope, and have to slice and dice their way through the zombies, to reach Moreno’s headquarters, where he and an amazingly over-acting mad scientist are holed up.

Sounds shit… IM IN!

Directed by Penstoft

Outtakes of the zombies

Written and filmed by Penstoft

Yin was Penstoft wife in real life

Penstoft as gaffer, FX, set design, colour grading, trandlster, subtitles and the computer work….

Looks like they had a lot of dun making this even though it was bad in places they did put more effort in that some of the movies we have seen. It may have been cheap and fan made, but it scored better than many professional movies with a budget. Well done, team.

3.5/10

To be fair that is the same score as the last 3 resident evil movies and way better than Night of the Flatulating Dead and Johnny Z and Pro Wrestlers  Zombies HOW DARE YOU!

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 a mmm, and urgh and a "brain candy" in the first three the movies the last three are categorically dog shit with credits. We hated apocalypse, retribution and final chapter for a reason. As Lurch in the Addams family says "Urrrrrrrrrrrr."

3.5/10 dont bother unless you need closure

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.