The Undead Symphony

Joining me this episode I have my brother Jeremy, ardent fan of The Last of Us (TLOU) game series. He has played TLOU 1 and 2 on numerous occasions, as have I, and therefore will be coming into the HBO show starring Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, Nick Offerman and Gabriel Luna with the same eyes as I do. We know the game back to front, the plot lines, he gimmicks, and everything the game had to offer. We love the game and have played in numerous times to fruition, and the show had better include the elements we love.

Adaptations of computer games do not traditionally go well, I am thinking Doom and Super Mario Brothers. I didn't mind Max Payne, or the most recent Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider, or Resident Evil (especially the new series with the wonderful Lance Reddick (RIP) as Wesker), and haven't seen the Tom Holland and Marky Mark Uncharted. But with the game writer co-writing the show, I have high hopes.

So let's get into it, my brother Jeremy and I, entering the QZ  and dissecting The Last of Us Episodes 1 thru 3. 

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 classic starring Peter Cushing and John Carradine, the Nazi's are at it again, creating their super soldiers that then go wrong (surprise surprise). 30 years after the war a pleasure cruise around a Caribbean island runs into a ghost ship. The ship has been sitting on the sea bed since it was scuttled at the end of the war by its commander (Cushing) to send the uncontrollable SS zombie stormtroopers to their watery grave, only for them to return with a vengeance after a weird solar event the movie never properly explains.    

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.

Cockneys vs Zombies with Michelle Ryan (Bionic Woman), Harry Treadaway (Penny Dreadful and Mr Mercedes) racing to save their grandad, Alan Ford (Snatch) and his friends at their old peoples home in the East End, including Richard Briers (The Good Life) and Honor Blackman (Goldfinger) as a zombie plague from 1666 tears through London. It was ok, not brilliant, but watchable.

In Zombie Resurrection, a British movie with a decent enough premise (the virus was created as a vaccine that then went wrong and now two soldiers are escorting the scientist that created it as a prisoner back to Imperium, the largest encampment to face justice. And then as they hold up in a school they find a zombie that can turn zombies back into humans). It is done badly, the acting is atrocious, and the main scenes happen off-camera or are skipped entirely and we have the characters elsewhere questioning, like we do, what happened. Awful start to finish. Avoid. Unless you like this kinda shit. 

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.

Day of the Dead Bloodline, one of those movies that aren't official sequels or canon, but rather are a "reimagining" of the original. Now personally I found the Day of the Dead weak, dated, and forgettable. Outside of "Bub" I didn't like it. And this, well, before I started I thought if anything it would have 1. the military, 2. the bunker and 3. an asshole commander. Tick, tick, and tick. In the end it was as many shots as possible of Zoe running in her bra or a bra top, and an attempted rapist hybrid zombie.

And Zombieland Double Tap, and yes, I am watching the second movie first because of circumstance more than anything. We gain a few new characters, but it is the same schtick, the kills are off the chart (376 in a 99 minute movie), the FX are great and the story is... meh. The guys are comfortable, then they split up, then they have to go meet up again, before one final battle. So, pretty much the first movie.

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.

Two movies that couldn't be more different, but two movies I thoroughly enjoyed. After a dumpster dive into YouTube I chanced upon a bad Chinese zombie movie (The Way Home) that I had to skim, but then I learned of the sequel, well not really a sequel but same genre/writer/director I am guessing. Also not sure where the Home in The Way Home is, as in The Way Home 2 they are already at home, the zombie apocalypse has happened and widowed father of a baby Hu Bohin lives in a rotting tower block. He is smart though, using pulleys, and robots and cameras to provide for him and his baby daughter. Armoured doors, shelving units of water cooler jugs of water, all very smart. Until a woman enters their world.

6/10 from me

And it has been paired with Pride Prejudice and Zombies, starring the sort of cast that would grace any period drama, including the original Pride and Prejudice: Lily James, Sam Riley, Charles Dance, Jack Huston, Matt Smith, Sally Phillips, Suki Waterhouse, Lena Heady, and Ellie Bamber. A wonderful combination of a movie. It has the classic Jane Austin story of the Bennet sisters, Mr Darcy et al, combined with a zombie apocalypse, clever pre-rabid zombies, kung fu kicking petticoat wearing sisters, and lots of handsome jodhpur wearing men, and a lot of comedy. I genuinely laughed out loud half a dozen times. Give it a watch. 

And a well deserved 7/10

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.

It is an international episode this week as we watch joint Italian/Spanish production City of the Walking Dead, or Nightmare City, from 1980 and set in Madrid, and Cuba's first zombie movie Juan of the Dead.

In Nightmare City local TV journalist Dead Miller is there when radiated zombies, nigh on indestructible and able to use weapons, land at the airport and kill everyone, before drinking their blood. The blood allows them to regenerate. It is classed as a classic, and is in a few of the Top 50 Zombie movies of all time, despite the director even questioning if it is a zombie movie at all.

And then we have Cuban comedy Juan of the Dead. And, before you ask, or presume, no it isn't anything like Shaun of the Dead at all. It is a far better movie in my opinion. With the accursed Yankies supposedly funding dissidents to fight against the communist regime, low end criminals Juan, and his best buddy Lazaro, Lazaro's son California, Juan's daughter Camille, local transsexual prostitute China and his bodyguard El Primo carve out a new life in Zombie Havana. Their new business venture, Juan of the Dead, is they will kill your zombies for a fee. Very funny, and worth a look.

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.

Two very different movies this week, one made by the British, one made in Britain by Americans. One very good, one pretty poor.

The Rezort takes the genre on a new angle. Several movies have looked at what happens to the zombies post outbreak. In The Cured they are second class citizens, trying to regain their rights, in Shaun of the Dead they are kept for menial labour, same for Fido. In The Rezort, they are used for sport. The rich can pay to head to The Rezort, an island where you can hunt the remaining zombies left over after the last outbreak 10 years earlier. It is unethical, and wrong, but people pay to get their kicks, and also as therapy to get over what happened to them in the war. But Ellen Rhys and Dougray Scott have a different opinion, that changes again once hackers take down the security controls on The Rezort and let the zombies out.

Redcon-1 is brought to you by the producer of Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the producer of Sin City: A Dame to Die For. And, speaking freely, they should all be ashamed of themselves. This steaming pile of macho shit takes place a month after the initial outbreak at a prison in London. Given the sheer size of the city, the sheer numbers of people who live here, the military and armed police presence, there is no way it would happen the way it does. The quarantine zone from the Essex coast, outside the M25 to the Kent Coast isn't possible, and the acting, cast and most of the plot is rubbish. There are a few good bits, but the poor choice of acting talent, the poor choice of location, the fact it is 40 mins too long, and this is rightly near the bottom of the pile of movies we have watched. That is 118 minutes of my life I won't be getting back.

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.

Originally I had planned to follow my normal 2 movies per episode format but I just hated a lot of this movie so much my ranting took over the whole show. Rise of the Zombies, from the writer of Zombie Night (which we hated) and director of Zombie Apocalypse (which we hated), and starring Mariel Hemingway, Ethan Suplee, LeVar Burton, Chad Lindberg, French Stewart, and the headline act Danny Trejo.

Only 2 months after a viral outbreak with a source traced to the water purification plant outside of San Francisco, there are very few survivors, and a lot of zombies. Well, not really, not compared to how many there would be in the whole bay area was infected. A group including the aforementioned C listers are holding out on Alcatraz without using any of the security features that made it famous.

After zombies start washing up on the shoreline they decide to leave the most secure facility in the area to split up and head to an evacuation centre, or the lab where a slightly mad scientist is working on a cure.

Sound good? No. Was not a fan. Enjoy my ranting 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.

This week, dear listeners, we are treated to a Irving Rameses "Ving" Rhames double header with the 2011 Zombie Apocalypse and the 2008 namesake Day of the Dead, I say namesake as it is not a remake at all.

In Zombie Apocalypse three useless survivors are two thirds rescued from certain death by 4 battle hardened zombie fighters who talk the big talk, but can they do the walk? Well, no! They are almost as useless, they just pontificate a lot. They are then saved by 3 actually useful archers and suddenly we have people who are not so useless in charge. Ving is Henry, a sledgehammer wielding horse lover in this one who doesn't think all tigers are grrrrrrrrrrr-eat!

And in Day of the Dead it is a flu outbreak that causes coughs, then nosebleeds, then an overriding desire to eat people's flesh in Leadville, Colorado. No worries though as the US military are there including subordinate Nick Cannon, bullet less Mena Suvari, and at one point a legless Ving Rhames. It has no bearing on the original, other than both movies have military involvement. It wasn't as bad as Micky made it out to be. Running, jumping, clever zombies that can run along the ceiling? No thank 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.

Two new movies for me, neither rated very highly by critics and regular people alike, but I thought I would go into them with an open mind.

In Paradise Z, set in Thailand, we have more of a survivalist tale, dull routine, but stunningly beautiful to look at as Sylvia and Rose live day to day. It is a little slow for 3/4 of the movie but it builds and I liked the clever little things they did to hide their presence in the hotel from the infected.

And in Witness Protection, a comedy where the premise far outweighs the end product, two mob families are moved to the same city in California from New Jersey. A tainted batch of Italian sausage poisons anyone eating it, turning them into flesh eating infected. Not as funny as it sounds. 

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.