The Undead Symphony

This week, as part of our rehabilitation after Z Nation, we are back on the high quality movies starting with the Romeo and Juliet in Zombieland Warm Bodies, starring Nicholas Hoult as R, Theresa Palmer as July and John Malkovic as her zombie hating father. It is funny, it is warm, it is a zom rom com even your horror movie hating other half will enjoy.

And I have paired it with the French La Nuit Dévoré le Monde, or the Night Eats the World, probably the best, in my opinion, survivor stuck in an apartment by himself zombie movie out there, certainly superior to #ALIVE and Final Days, as we Sam making excellent decisions about his survival from day 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.

Something new and a full season review. I will do the same for the other TV shows including the Walking Dead franchise, Dead Set, All of us are Dead and the new Day of the Dead, but in this episode I head for the trailer park for the low end Z Nation, where moments of childish hilarity and clever plots are rare nuggets to be found only by digging in a landfill of used adult diapers. 

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 have gone back to the shopping mall Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead, starring Jack Webber and Ving Rhames, and George A Romero's next instalment of his zombie series, Land of the Dead boasting Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo and Simon Baker in the lead roles.

When I watch the 1978 version of Dawn I always nit pick. There are plenty of things they do in the movie that I think are wrong; they waste a lot of ammo in body shots, they didn't plow into the zombies when they used the trucks, they made bad decisions, like storing the dead in the pantry with all their fresh food. All stupid, stupid moves. Those issues were all addressed by Snyder, who also gave cameos to the 3 male leads of the original, named a store after the actress who played Francine, and also had a shout out to Day.

And Land of the Dead is Romero in the 2000s getting a decent cast to put together a movie that made $46M worldwide at the box office, before heading to video. It has the zombie evolution, from communication, to planning, tool use. As Simon Baker says, they used to be us, and now they are learning to be us again.

Both solid movies and both worth a watch.

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.

Paddy Considine, Emma Arteton and Glen Close in the British zombie movie The Girl with all the Gifts, where a fungus turns people into rabid monsters, and where the next generation has evolved.

And Extinction with Matthew Fox and Jeffery Donovan in another movie where the zombies have evolved from those at the beginning of the movie, in a snowy landscape and a story that was a mix of A Quiet Place, 30 Days of Night and I am Legend.

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.

Back to the classics and one of the greatest zombie movies of all time, the game-changer that is the 1978 production of Dawn of the Dead. The first zombie movie set in a shopping Mall, with lines and themes that would be stolen by dozens of directors and writers in years to come. And the sequel Day of the Dead, the cheesier and angrier 1985 movie with a lot of issues that make it a weaker Romero and a more disappointing sequel than Land of the Dead (2005) but there's a few decent moments including the introduction of Bub, who will inspire The Mechanic in Land.

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 we are back on the comedies with Little Monsters and Cooties. Australian little monsters stars Alexander England and Black Panther's Lupita Nyong'o as they battle an army of shufflers at a petting zoo/farm whilst on a kindergarten field trip, and Cooties brings Rain Wilson, Alison Pill and Elijah Wood together in this elementary school based, infected chicken nugget of a story.

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 I move away from the dual movie idea and watch two seasons of the Netflix zombie drama Black Summer. The spiritual sister of Z Nation with none of the comedy or cheese. Instead it is break neck speed, frantic and frenetic with zero character development for any of the actors other than the lead, and then she goes the wrong way. Hope you enjoy it. Let me know if you have seen Black Summer and what you thought.

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 yin yang of an episode as the most incredibly cast The Dead Don't Die fails due to poor choices from director Jim Jaramush whilst Shaun of the Dead flies high with the help of my ex housemate James and twin buddies Kev and Nick. Let's go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

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 comedy and a musical week, the jokes need to land when you are making a comedy, the tunes need to be memorable if you are making a musical,  so let's see if the 4th July dead presidents comedy and high school music cuts it.

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 tonight we are talking about the Korean movies Train to Busan, in my opinion  one of the best zombie movies ever made, and it's sequel, more of a zombie heist movie Peninsula. Both good, one great, and both worth a watch, or at least a listen. 

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.