The Undead Symphony

In this episode we watch, review and try to justify the existence of the 2021 Night of the Animated Dead Starring Battelstar Galactica's Katie Sackhoff and Transformers Josh Duhamel along with the West Wing's Dulé Hill as Ben and Canadian Scream Queen Katharine Isabelle as Barbara.

It is a pretty poorly drawn scene by scene remake of the 1968 original with a few added elements. Personally (this is Darren typing this) I think it did add a few elements that made it worthwhile and the poor animated made me focus more on the voice acting, which was superb and allowed a better between Ben and Harry Cooper re their plans, as well a much more in depth cemetery scene with Jonny and Babs.

Did we like it? It was ok.

Dd we need it? No

Would recommend it? We would recommend it for the connoisseurs of the genre, but not those starting their zombie journey.

Steph's podcast on Night of the Living Dead - https://open.spotify.com/episode/50ue2vNXwPJbhU9YlAnOx8?si=u1-bctTtT0CmvhC9Bo4AnA&nd=1&dlsi=a82dff73310b4294

The GoodBadFlicks link - https://youtu.be/NxPK3sYb90w?si=7iu50Nf9ND9Am8aV

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.

My weekend plans seemed so simple. I would enjoy the sun, chill out with the dog, do a few chores with the impending arrival of the parental unit coming up - they will find something in which to find fault and so I try to preempt it with some target tidying. I had loosely planned to watch the next Uwe Boll produced bag of crap Zombie Massacre but then Bloody Babble poked the bear by asking if I had ever seen this, the 2011 Chilean Zombie Dawn. Had I seen it? It was one of the many slop bucket productions that Amazon Prime charge you for.  And I had seen the opening 5-10 minutes before binning it for something better.

But now I was prompted into action, and had to get closure on this horse's dick of a movie. The premise was simple and we have seen it many times before, not least the original Resident Evil,  and House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim and I want to say the Dolph Lundgren Dead Trigger.  The idea being a group of soldiers/mercenaries are sent into the zombie hot zone to find x, ordinarily  a scientist, or the vaccine, or patient zero or a sample from patient zero, you name it.

And that is the plan, a rag tag group of wholly unlikable shouty Chileans grumpily walk into the infected zone. Which, and now I am thinking about it, makes no fucking sense. There is no zombie apocalypse outside of this area, so take a jeep, a tank, a truck, a helicopter. Why did they have to go in on foot? Now that has annoyed me as I didn't include it in my review.... I may have to add an addendum.... in fact I will...

Anyway, this was shit. 2.5/10, lots of shouting, no character development, confusing plot elements and a bit of unnecessary rape.  Not a fan.

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 recipe for Gangnam Zombie

Cooking time 81 minutes

• 1 young handsome male debutante with Taekwondo skills and a crush on the female lead
• 1 difficult female lead who hasn't made a movie in 7 years and wears the noisiest shoes ever
• A dick of a boss
• A bigger dick of a building owner
• A chubby workmate of the male lead
• 2 useless security guards
• 1 petty criminal as patient zero
• A dash of COVID from a Chinese cat
• 80 minutes of constant incidental music

Add the dash of COVID to the petty criminal via a cat bite and steep in the river overnight before delivering him to Seoul, making him patient zero

Mix the male and female lead, but be careful as these ingredients do not go together, the  add the mix to the office environment with a dick of a boss, the chubby coworker and the asshole building owner chasing them for the rent

Patient zero gains some attention by getting worse in public before heading to the office mall mixing the COVID virus through bites to the neck for everyone

Add a couple of comeuppances for the idiot boss and the building owner

Before bringing it all together for a very bland and obvious movie we have seen dozens of times before and better accompanied by constant annoying music

3.5/10 and I feel that is generous

Arguably the worst Korean zombie movie we have seen so far - US Magazine 

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 first movie was a double shit pizza with a stuffed crust. The crust stuffed with shit. And if you think nothing in the 2003 House of the Dead made any sense at all, despite it being a very simple premise, and losing all of the Uwe Boll insanity of the first, this the 2005 sequel is better, but it's still not great.

We lose the cheesy race music, fighting action stolen from the Matrix, terrible editing where the characters were use one gun, then a different one, then another different gun in quick cuts, all interspersed with shots from the actual game this just has a lot of unrealistic and stupid decisions.

The premise: after an outbreak caused by Sid Haig, he is Rudy from the first movie's dad somehow, AMS send  in their crack team of Ellie, Ed Quinn's over the top macho, cliche of a man, with a recently dead brother and Nightingale, in with the most incompetent US Marines, led by Sticky Fingerz to get a sample of a first gen zombies blood before they flatten the place. 

Lots of annoying inconsistencies, the soldiers are all killed easily and one on one with fast, nimble, capable zombies, whilst Ellie and Nightingale just walk through hordes, lack of radios, the missile just hits one building when the campus is overrun, the zombies are already in town, so where's the roadblocks and quarantine zone? I got progressively angry with a lot of it, but, to my first point, it was still much much better than the original.

3.5/10 at best. Definitely wouldn't watch it again. On par with Aquarium of the Dead, and that had a CGI zombie walrus.

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 could have been so good. Take a movie director, give them a computer game franchise movie and say go for it. The problem is they chose Uwe Boll a man who has spent his career making utter crap. Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark and this House of the Dead (2003), three games turned into movies that really didn't work. Sure, computer game movies don't work, certainly not with him at the helm. 

He also gave us zombie movies Apocalypse Z, the diabolical Anger of the Dead (rape and sex slaves), Beautiful people (rape), Zombie Massacre 2 Reich of the Dead (haven't seen it but can guess the women will be topless and at some point raped), making me think Uwe Boll should just stop. Uwe Boll the director who VideoHound's "Golden Movie Retriever" described as a "cinematic train wreck". 

This movie is so bad I think the $1.8M it made more than its cost was purely fans of the arcade game, fans who would be very disappointed within the opening moments. It was so panned that as Snyder made Dawn of the Dead, the studios wondered if the public had lost interest in zombie movies. No, we just hated this one. In fact his average is just above 3. And this is being generous.

  | Anger of the Dead  | 4.5
 | Dead House/Beautiful People  | 3
 | House of the Dead  | 2

My thoughts?

"House of the Dead" is an abomination of filmmaking, a festering sore on the landscape of cinema. From its wooden acting to its laughable dialogue, every moment is a testament to incompetence. The plot, if one dares call it that, is a haphazard mess of disjointed scenes stitched together with all the grace of a drunken surgeon. Special effects resemble a middle schooler's first foray into CGI, and the direction is as lost as a blindfolded toddler in a labyrinth. This cinematic catastrophe serves as a warning beacon, signaling the dire consequences of relinquishing artistic integrity for a quick cash grab.

2/10 and you should be thankful for that too

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.

Where were you when you first saw the poster of Dawn 2004? Did you have the 1978 poster on your walls at college? What's your favourite Shaun quote? You got red on you? Do you have a local Winchester where you can hold up until it all blows over?  

In this episode Michael and I talk Shaun of the Dead and Snyder's Dawn of the Dead 2004 and the original Romero. We talk favourite scenes, zombies, legacy, game changers, how we would change 2004 to better suit our taste, guilty pleasures and more in this episode imaginatively titled Shaun of the Dawn or Shaun of the Dawns.

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.

A real mess of a movie from Joe Chien who brought us Zombie 108 (another real mess of a movie). Taipei, and in a high rise building reminiscent of every other high rise building from every other zombie movie criminals and the locals live side by side. We have stories running in parallel,  kidnappers have kidnapped a businessman for ransom, a drug dealer gets his new stash as he is visited by a rapper friend, a birthday party for a local teacher is attended by nubile friends of his daughter, and a SWAT team that is 99% corrupt head in to take out a drug gang.

Not that we see it but the drug turns you into a standard flesh eater, and then anyone bitten turns into one too. The violence is brief and good when it happens, the CGI effects are all computer games circa 2000 level, and the last third of the movie makes so little sense in the scheme of things we get 4!!! Title cards an hour in to explain what has gone on. I won't ruin it for you here, you will have to listen.

There was no obvious lead characters for a chunk of the movie, we had Jessica C who missed 7 people being turned and eaten and killed in her small apartment as she is listening to her headphones, and Andy On, the 1% good cop who does ask if they should even be there... what? Stealing a hold all of money from drug dealers after killing them all? But neither were decent enough characters. On was only straight laced, but was good in a fight, and C was just too painfully thin and painfully whiny, screaming and whimpering at everything she sees. I cared more for his character than hers, and neither as much as the kidnapper and his GF, who Chein wrote out of the story with hackneyed pointless side plots.

3.5/10 and now I need to watch something that makes sense. Naked Lunch anyone? 

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.

Troma movies are just fun. You can't get angry that the effects are bad or the story line doesn't make much sense, just sit back, grab a beer and enjoy. And that is what I did for this, the first Troma movie produced in Portugal.

2018. And we follow Maria as she rescues experiment TS-347 from the labs of a cruel military cell that has been trying to create a super soldier. Enter Pedro, a bit of a loser, who's birthday party ended with a zombie attack and losing all his friends. He teams up with Maria, accidentally kills TS-347 and starts a chain reaction of events that includes, but is not limited to, 10 nuclear bombs, a psycho zombie experiment TS-504, a French half human half lobster, a dolphin samurai, a 6 foot lactating rat monster, and all manner of radioactive friends trying to fight the zombie hordes. 

Sound fun? I think it was. A solid 5/10 for this Troma fun.

I was happy to be Troma-tized.

Special Thanks to Troma co-founder and Toxic Avenger director LLoyd Kaufman and Toxie for the audio.  

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.

If I said to you that Shed of the Dead is a British zombie comedy movie in the ilk of Shaun of the Dead,  co-starring Michael (The Hills have Eyes) Berryman, Kane (Friday 13th) Hodder and Bill (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) Moseley in which Trevor spends all his time in the shed at his allotment fantasizing about being a wizard and drinking moonshine before the zombie apocalypse kicks him into action, it would sound alright. And on paper it is alright. 

The reality though is something completely different. For us to care whether our protagonists live or die they need to at least be likable. NOT A SINGLE CHARACTER IN THIS MOVIE IS REMOTELY LIKABLE. I would go further and say they are all so unlikable that you want them to be eaten. Bobbi is one of the most caustic and just mean characters we have seen in the history of the show and Trevor, the wannabe Shaun, is an argumentative, unemployed unemployable whiner who has virtually no redeeming qualities, to a point of just letting his best friend be attacked and infected and doing nothing to help him.

The writing was poor. The fantasy scenes, of which there were many, were god awful and pointless. There is no moment where they notice the zombie apocalypse is happening. It is in the background and then they are just ignoring it. We spent 45 minutes ranting about how much we hated this.

It is a Shaun wannabe, but it really is a point and a half below Stalled, that had similar budget and size, but was much much better. 

We gave it 3/10. Watch Stalled or Anna and the Apocalypse instead. This was pants. 

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 a bit of a mixed bag of predictability.  Take a really bad rip-off of The Walking Dead, make the township's mayor be the doctor, who can banish people by just saying they tested positive for the infection. Throw in a douchey goatee sporting psycho henchman with designs on the pretty girls in the town, a bunch of rednecks, a congregation of cultist loonies, Dee Wallace dying of cancer in a trailer and never leaving her bed for the movie, and Billy Zane in a cowboy hat and neckerchief training beautiful 20 somethings to fight zombies by playing paintball and driving around on quad bikes to poor rock music. 

I think the 10% on Rotten Tomatoes is harsh

I think the 2.9/10 on IMDB is closer to the mark

I think Horror Society saying it was an awesomely acted slow burn just goes to show where the meth went that day

It is a 3.5/10 at best that had far to many inconsistencies. So the zombie apocalypse is caused by whatever was on the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and came up from a fracking site? And whilst the idiots under the doctor staying behind a thin fence and send paint balling teens on quads off with Billy Zane for supplies, a whole other community has Apache attack helicopters and dozens of redneck gunmen and women and are positioned right next to a giant hole in the ground.

A hole in the ground? The one the zombies are trying to get to because it is like a.... duh duh duh... elephant's graveyard.  

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.