The Undead Symphony

Before Michael formerly joins the Podcast, living in the relative idyllic calm of the mainstream zombie hits (28 Days and Weeks Later, Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead), I am back scraping the bottom of the barrel,  and wading chest deep through the stagnant filth that is the low end of the Z List.

This week, as punishment for enjoying 28 Days and Weeks Later, I struggled (and I really struggled) through the Australian Zombie Brigade, aka Zombie Commando, and the Italian/Spanish Hell of the Living Dead/Zombie Creeping Flesh.

How as it? Painful. 

Zombie Brigade was poorly written poorly filmed and very poorly acted. Very few highlights for that one, as the local councillors and Mayor want to tear down a Vietnam war memorial so they can build a Japanese Robot themed theme park,  only to discover the memorial was a grave for the Vietnam war dead. But are they dead? No. They were affected my the Vietnamese biochemical weapon that turned them into vampires. As you do.

So with the Vietnam war war dead vampires killing the people of the town, they have nowhere to go. They are cut off by the military with mine fields and blockades. Not that we see any of the military doing this. The powers that be will just contain it, keep it out of the press, and then destroy the town in a "bush fire".

Who can save them? Well the local aboriginal Uncle Charlie can call on the spirits of the Great War dead, the honourable Australian soldiers who died in WW1 and WW2 to come back and fight for the white people in the town.  And so we have Vietnam War Vampires against WW1 zombies? Is it good? No. Especially not when they join forces.

A lot of racism, more than anything else, is what I remember about this one.

And if that is racist, then the Hell of the Living Dead is a lazy, confusing misogynistic nightmare from 1980. It is classed by many as one of the post-Dawn European classics, that really took the genre to the next level. Those people are wrong. Whilst Zombie Flesheaters and City of the Living Dead had something about this had nothing of merit. 

Famed for the overuse of stock footage from National Geographic that runs to about a quarter of the movie, and the sort of gaping plot holes you could drive a horse and cart though, this was not good at all. I had hoped the poor quality of Zombie Brigade would  make me look favourably on this, but no. It was truly awful.

I now need to have a shower I feel so dirty. 

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 he is back by popular demand. 

Off the success of his 28 Weeks Later chat Michael is back again to discuss the sequel 28 Weeks Later, it is bigger, it is bolder, it is more American, but is it in keeping with the original? Can Robert Carlisle, Idris Elba, Jeremy Renner, and Rose Byrne fill the boots of Cillian Murphy, Naomi Harris, Brendan Gleason and Christopher Ecclestone?

28 Weeks after the original outbreak the US-led NATO force in the UK has deemed the country is now free of the Rage virus.  Led by Iris Elba, with Scarlet (Rose Byrne) as his chief medical officer, they look after 15,000 returning Brits, monitoring them closely at a facility on the Isle of Dogs.

When Tammy and Andy arrive, the first children to return, Scarlet has her doubts. Tammy and Andy's father Don (Robert Carlisle) is the caretaker of the facility, with access all areas, and he has a secret. He left his wife, Alice, Tommy and Andy's mother to die in farmhouse full of infected.

But when Alice turns up, bitten but not turned, infected by asymptomatic, a carrier of the rage virus, everything they have worked for is going to go up in flames. 

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 was the best of times, it was the worst of times. As the incredible Dead Island 2 game is released (high), but without co op play (low) we here at the Undead Symphony are working our way through the z list, as well as finding new movies.

This episode we watch Amityville Uprising, a movie so bad I had to air out the house after watching it. And that was a struggle too. Off the back of Amityville Moon (a werewolf movie) and Amityville something else (a vampire movie) they made this - one of the worst movies we have seen, with some of the worst acting and worst writing combined (low). Set in a police station in Amityville, a US Army base explodes sending chemicals into the air that come down as acid rain that kill people and bring the dead to life. The effects are awful, the rain is an effect added in post, and there is a constant red hue on the clouds. The acting is the real drag here and there is nothing redeemable about it at all.

In contrast the British Among the Living looks beautiful in places, akin to Eradication, which was set in the US forest, this is the British countryside, the stunning rolling hills and lakes. We follow Harry (Dean Michael Gregory) and his sister Lily as they head across the country to their father. At times a bit slow, and always mired by the dreadful choice in music, the rest of the movie is suitably tense, and dramatic. It makes the most of a small cast and limited locations to create a pretty decent post apocalyptic tale, where the cautious and nervous Harry tries to keep his sister safe from the infected and uninfected alike.

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 joined this week by Michael Avery, a long time follower of the podcast, who has supported us throughout. And we are excited to talk all things zeke, as well as review and discuss one of the true game changers in the genre (sorry John Carpenter) of zombie horror, Danny Boyle's seminal work 28 Days Later.

Starring Cillian Murphy, Naomi Harris, Brendan Gleason and Christopher Ecclestone 28 Days Later follows Jim (Murphy) as he wakes from a bike accident in a deserted London hospital to discover the rage virus has decimated the country, turning the people into savage infected hell bent on infecting anyone they come into contact with. Joining Selena (Harris), Frank (Gleason) and his daughter, they head north in the search for salvation and a cure for the virus. Will they find it? Why not take a listen and 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.

In this episode we take a look at Peelers, a movie that does not live up to the billing of "outrageous comedy" that we discovered in the Amazon Prime description. I would say it is an infected movie, it is on the "z list" of movies classed as zombie movies found on that global source of information, misinformation, disinformation and outright lies that is Wikipedia and so I have to give it a fair shake.

I would say that death by taxidermy gazelle, urination over an audience, and some of the worst acting I have seen since I tried to split up with my freshmen year girlfriends Charlotte and whatever the other one was called. A cop theme, a BJ theme (Don't call her BJ), and some stupid deaths as the near indestructible Mexican miner zombies wreak havoc in a boondocks strip joint where we saw at least 3 full strip dances, one with urination, one as a schoolgirl with odd shaped nipples, and one called Thunderc*nt who farted out of her verjayjay. 

It could have been unique, but, much like the acting, it was overall pretty awful.

And onto REC4: Apocalypse. There really wasn't much apocalypse going on, other than when the evil Dr Ricarte says there may not be anywhere to go back to if they fail. Fail in what? I hear you ask. 

Well, following on from the first movie the journalist who went into the apartment building Angela and a solider that saved her (Guzman) wake up on a freighter out at sea with a lab, dodgy scientists and an army of armed mercenaries. They are trying to find a cure and suspect that Angela had it in her blood. We have a lot of infected, plenty of claustrophobic chases in the darkness (a la the first movie) , a few good kills and an unlikely hero.

Did I like it? I didn't see REC2 or 3, I am guessing 3 is the wedding one? But still it was entertaining enough, even though a bit obvious. 

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 love finding hidden gems, diamonds in the rough, and given the utter crud some zombie movies are, or infected movies, they are few and far between. So, much like when I discovered Blood Quantum, I am excited to say that I have found another in the form of Eradication starring Harry Aspinwall. David (Aspinwall) is in isolation, in communication with his scientist wife Sam, he follows a strict routine of diet, exercise and blood drawing. He is infected apparently but shows no symptoms. Anyone else who has come into contact with the virus has died, and so the scientists with Sam are looking at how to turn his blood into a cure.

Throw a crossbow wielding HAZMAT suited maniac into the mix killing infected an now, drones, and gorgeous cinematography, a nice twist or two in the plot, and I really liked this one. Two solid thumbs up. If anything because it took me back to surviving lockdown. 

And, as a juxtaposition, we have I am Toxic from Argentina. Mad Max with zombies effectively. Not brilliant. Not original in any shape or form.  If you want to see an 87 minute South American post apocalyptic by the numbers story with just enough action to keep you entertained and arguably the most pathetically ineffective zombies then go for this one on Amazon Prime.  

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 week I am looking at two wildly different movies. Having moved on from the "zombie" search on Amazon, I started with "undead" and finally "dead". And this threw up two movies I hadn't seen.

Dead Rising: Watchtower is a low end Hollywood take on a first person shooter game of the same name. It stars Jesse Metcalfe, Virginia Madsen, Dennis Haysbert, and Aleks Paunovic, so a pretty good cast and a movie that would spawn a sequel in Dead Rising; Endgame. 

In Dead Rising: Watchtower there have been several zombie outbreaks in the US and Big Pharma have got their greedy little fingers in the pie to make as much money as possible out the desperation and suffering of the people. Basically like they do anyway. To forward their agenda though, the meds they give people to stop turning Zeke stop working and the army, led by Haysbert's General Lyons has to push forward with a controversial plan as reporter Chase (Metcalfe) tries to survive the zombie zone, and Paunovic's biker gang to get the real story out.

And in Dead Inside, a British movie with a budget of £15,000 or about $18,000, we have a rather long, and ruined mostly by the poor acting of the teens and soldiers, movie with almost zero originality. It had a few moments that I liked, enough to give it a passing grade, but ultimately it falls short and looks and feels like it did indeed cost less than a 2017 Honda Civic VTEC with over 60,000 miles on the clock.

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 partially Brendan Fletcher's fault. Having seen him in The Last of Us as Robert I checked to see what else he had been in and, other than 3 episodes of iZombie (that I will not watch), 13 Eerie, a Canandian zombie flick appeared. It has a few names too, Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrel's Nick Moran, Stargate SG-1's Michael Shanks and Canada's 2008 Hottest TV Star Brendan Fehr as well as Ginger Snaps scream queen Katherine Isabelle.

Set on a small desolate island in a Canadian waterway that once housed a penitentiary where, unbeknownst to the cast, they experimented on the prisoners the forensic science students are doing an exam in the field, investigating 3 corpses whilst their performance is reviewed by their professor (Shanks). Except they are not alone...

And, mein Gott, Outpost 2: Black Sun, where Nazi scientists are bringing about the 1000 year 4th Reich using a machine from 1945 that will reanimate dead SS troops. We have Richard Coyne (Coupling) as an American scientist and Catherine Steadman (Downton Abbey) as a Jewish American Nazi hunter and a host of recognisable faces from British TV all with dodgy accents, be they German or generic Eastern European, Comrade.

It felt like the scene setting minutes at the start of a Dr Who episode where the TARDIS never turns up. It felt like a dragged out TV movie, with TV quality camera work, and sets. Das is nicht ausgezeichnet. Nicht at all. I didn't like it and will definitely not be watching the original, where there is a cheesy one of each Allie nation specialist squad going in, or the sequel with Russians as the bad guys instead of Nazis, which makes sense as they currently are the Nazi's of the modern world. It was directed by Steven Barker who directed The Rezort, with Dougray Scott, that we did like, but this... it is a nein from me.

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 genuinely both sad to bring the Last of Us three episode podcast to a close. It has been great fun reviewing and discussing the show of the game that gave us so much joy.

We look at the episodes back on The Last of Us: Left Behind giving us a personal arc for Ellie, as well the cannibal Cultists lead by the ominous, controlling David and then bring the show to a close as Joel hands Ellie over to the Fireflies and Marlene at the hospital.

And then there is a summary, as we detail what we liked, what we didn't, what we would have included from the game(s) and what we would have omitted, or changed to make the show better. I think it is safe to say we wanted (1) more infected, (2) more episodes, (3) the school and the first bloater, and (4) less of the Bill/Frank love story. But it is what it is, and what it is... is great.

Enjoy what we rated as a solid 8/10 show. 

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 brother Jeremy joins me for the second of three special episodes of the Undead Symphony podcast as we work our way through the second third of the HBO show The Last of Us starring Pedro Pascal and Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie.

Having set the pace and style of the show in the opening episodes, we are loving the little elements inherited from the game, as well as critiquing and appreciating, for the most part, the changes made to make the show work better.

So here it is, our second look as we descend into the world of clickers and The Last of Us Episodes 4 to 6. 

Survive and Endure!

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.