The Undead Symphony

A bizarre horse dick of a Bulgarian (country 45 baby!) zombie film that starts brilliantly before collapsing into absolute diabolical nonsense. 

The WW2 openng section, set during Stalingrad, is brutal, tense and genuinely exciting. Hans, played by Valeri Yordanov, is easily the highlight as he battles advancing Russians, rescues wounded comrades and eventually faces zombies created by a mysterious chemical weapon. I’d happily watch an entire film about Hans trying to survive. Maybe someone should make it.

Then we jump to the modern day, and everything falls apart. Paul Logan plays an American weapons inspector using an alias, despite the Bulgarians not knowing who he is, with all the charisma of a wooden plank, surrounded by dreadful Bulgarian villains, terrible acting, awful CGI, shaky cinematography, constant rubbish music. Although the zombie makeup and weaponry was pretty good.

The plot involves biochemical genocide, secret weapons, military cover-ups by a dodgy Bulgarian moustache and his brothel owner business partner and a seemingly endless repetition of “CODE RED.” I think the final count was a dozen repeats of the title. Everyone got a shot at the titular line. 

Zombies overrun a Bulgarian town, people make spectacularly stupid decisions, a lot of fucking stupid, a really annoying stupid child and the film eventually just… ends. They literally stop filming and just go with stills. Did they run out of film?

1/10 for the modern-day mess, but Hans saves it from total disaster. Final score: 4.5/10.

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A fun one for our 400th zombie movie or show, a classic that was one of the IMDB top 50 zombie movies and the only one of that top 50 that we were yet to cover. And there is a lot to unpick here.

We have aliens sending an experiment in mind control down to Earth in 1959 at the same time as an axe wielding serial killer escapes an asylum and starts killing locals. The experiment involves brain altering slugs that when fired into the mouth of a victim, control them, then incubate before their head bursts and numerous slugs come out to infect more people.

This is what happens in 1986 when two freshmen, Chris and JT, are tasked by a frat house to dump a cadaver on the doorstop of a rival fraternity. The mayhem ensues with slugs, zombie frat brothers, an animatronic  zombie cat and zombie dog, as well we a flame thrower, and one of my favourite horror movie quotes, "I have good news and bad news, girls. The good news is your dates are here." What's the bad news? "They're dead."

Tom Adkins on form, some great quotes, mostly from other movies from him, and a load of a characters named after the great horror movie directors, from Raimi to Romero, Carpenter and beyond.

6/10 and so much fun

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The Ford brothers are at it again, after The Dead (2010 and episode 36 of the pod), in which a white American must fight his way from one dry, desolate village in Africa to another during a zombie outbreak, we have The Dead 2: India (2013), in which a white American must fight his way from one dry, desolate village in India to another during a zombie outbreak.

And yes, despite knowing of this movie for the entire lifetime of the Undead Symphony, it took me 348 episodes and being stuck in a cottage in the middle of nowhere to finally get around to it.

In this movie English actor Joseph Milson (Moon Knight, Ashes to Ashes, Penny Dreadful) plays Nicholas Burton, an American wind turbine engineer who is fixing wind turbines 300 miles from Mumbai when the outbreak happens. The issue? His pregnant girlfriend, his second pregnant girlfriend, as he has issues with condoms, is in the city with her oppressive priest father and ominously bitten mother.

The movie suffers in many of the same ways as the first, with the mostly Indian cast struggling with the English dialog, continuity errors, and poor direction, seriously the scenes on the motorcycle in the desert and the mass grave could have been so much more, also an unsatisfying ending, but it was ok. It was better than the first, Milson does the best job with what he is given to work with, and so it is a 5/10 for me.  As gritty stories about trying to get from A to B in an apocalypse in a foreign country go, with a juxtaposition of the quiet countryside setting verses the hectic city setting, this one is ok.

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By far the worst adaptation of Matheson's I am legend, with Mark Dacascos high kicking his way through a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles full of rubber suited bald zombies with their vertebrae hanging out.

His wife and kid died. He scavenges from the wrong places. And somehow has working electricity, internet, satellites, and running water, whilst the rest of the city pisses in the same pot they drink out of.

Enter somehow immune car whisperer Brianna, thuggish Vincent who wants the world to stay as it is, and it all turns into a mess and a half.

3/10 and 90 mins of my life I won't get back. The highlight of my 90 minutes watching this movie was sneezing four times and getting a little bit of a head rush.

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A random from Amazon, the 2019 LGBTQ+ Dead Don't Die in Dallas aka Kicking Zombie Ass for Jesus. Drag Queen salon owner Beth Ann Fetterman and Preacher Daniel butt heads as they end up together with the preacher's promiscuous wife and a lesbian boxing champion in an abandoned building as the zombie outbreak wipes out their pissant Texas town.

With social commentary laid on a thick as a whale meat omelette, and campy gags from Beth Ann and travelling drag queens Tipper Sommore and Dr Cunni Lingus, this basic zombie story is actually ok. 

Many will hate it, the acting is poor, the Preacher's wig is ludicrous, and the cheap use of grindhouse mock film effects is annoying, as is the 8 times we see the moon, the message may get on your nerves, and it is overegged at times, but the gore is well done, the story holds itself together so it was a 5/10 for me.

Darren has spoken!

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A low budget Japanese indie with a runtime of 45 minutes this follows the well trodden path of a production company making a zombie movie only for then the zombie apocalypse to actually happen around them. It is rarely done well, I am thinking the godawful Reel Zombies as well as Diary of the Dead, one of George's lesser movies.

In this move, bought on Amazon for £3.99, Dom, Tommy and Gen are friends who run an independent production company that has had it's day. They have no money and so are making a zero budget zombie movie in Okinawa. After filming a scene they head into the woods, and a cursed copse where a real zombie attacks and kills their lead actor, before chasing the other into town.

Add a funny scene of a drunk avoiding death, and a LOT of blood sprayed over everyone, and this low budget short is actually quite watchable. 

I would give it 5/10.

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Wading through TUBI again this weekend and the stink is under my fingernails. Johnny Gruesome is next up, a story of a revenant coming back to wreak revenge on those he thinks did him wrong.

In this case it is D student metal head Johnny Grissholm, a drink driving, pot smoking thug that they try (and fail) to portray as a victim. He isn't he is a dick. Along with his slutty GF Karen, backstabbing dope dealing buddy Gary and nerdy virgin Eric. 

Johnny, a son of a drunk father, lives in a Podunk town, and one night, after being suspended from school, and beating a kid up in the parking lot of school, drives like a maniac whilst drinking. Gary can't stand it so chokes him to death in front of the others and they agree to make it look like an accident.

And he comes back and starts killing everyone. Not that you notice, the deaths, the makeup, the acting, the music, and the cinematography is so you can't even think about the minimal plot.

Don't waste your time. Watch The Revenant instead, which is also on TUBI.

3/10 

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Not to be confused with the 2014 movie of the same name with Brenton Thwaites and Laurence Fishburne this is a mixture of the movie we watched before this, Cell, with a signal/pulse turning people homicidal, like The Crazies. So if you liked The Crazies this is for you.

It is written by and directed by 3 friends who each took a third of the story, but what this does is give us a slightly disjointed film. 

Part one tells the story of Mya and Ben who are having an affair and cheating on Mya's husband Lewis. It is New Years eve, although that isn't really used enough given NYE is a huge thing and it is barely mentioned, and Ben wants them to leave Terminus, their home city and move to the country to start afresh. Mya is still new at this infidelity lark and heads back to her husband, only to find cellphones, phones, radios and TV are all broadcasting this weird psychedelic signal. And that signal is turning people crazy homicidal.

She barely escapes the building with one of her husband's friends, Rod, and there are some nasty kills, baseball bats to the heads, pruning sheers to the throat. All fun stuff. Before they crash the car after Rod goes nuts and starts attacking Mya.

Part two tells the story of Anna and Ken and their landlord Clarke as Anna tries to throw a New Years eve party. Looking for Mya Lewis arrives with Ben tied up and unconscious in his van, and we have a comedy house invasion, complete with talking decapitated heads and cocktails.

Before part 3 has Ben and Clarke looking for Mya as Lewis chases them into Terminus.

I have to say, despite the switch in tone for the second part I genuinely enjoyed this movie. Far better than Cell, not quite as good as the Crazies, but still a very good indie take on it. The acting was great, the practical FX too. The dialog was snappy and funny when it needed to be and the violence bloody when it needed to be.

This joins Savageland and Interlopers in the very small club of movies on TUBI I have enjoyed and made 8 times it's budget.

6/10

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John Cusack, Samuel L Jackson and Isabell Fuhrman from The Orphan movies, based on a Stephen King novel about zombies created by a pulse and linked to cellphones, and directed by the director of Paranormal Activity 2. Should have been a slam dunk. Was it? Well, no.

The book purists slammed it. The movie reviewers panned it. And me? I remembered it quite differently. The Mandela Effect and all that.

Clay (Cusack) is a bit of an ass, who walked out on his wife and son to pursue his dream of becoming a graphic novel artist. He works on a story about a raggedy man, a harbinger of doom and after selling it to someone heads to the airport to tell his son in person, regardless of his ex wife telling him he can't simply do that, as he walked out of them. He plans to anyway, see earlier comment about him being a bit of an ass.

At the airport anyone with a bluetooth headset on or on their phone suddenly screams and convulses in pain, foaming at the mouth before turning homicidal, a la The Crazies, and killing people. Clay escapes as a plane flies into the terminal and joined subway driver Samuel L Jackson and others in heading out.

We then have this idea of heading to see if Clay's family is still alive, they can't call, so it becomes a cross country apocalyptic road movie.

There is a lot of dislike, but it had it's moments. 5/10 from me. I shall discuss with Michael next week as he hasn't seen it before.

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I am back once again with the renegade master Michael Avery as we talk kids names, the education system, and other random nonsense before embarking on a lengthy chat about Colony the latest zombie movie from the man who brought you Train to Busan. Is it simply Train to Busan 2? No. It is Peninsula 2? No. It is something in between, a hive mind evolving zombie story with a villain and enough there for it to be top 50 but also plenty of USPs that will turn some viewers off.

Did we like it? Yes.

Would we recommend it? Yes.

Would we watch it again? Probably.

Colony 7/10

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