The Undead Symphony

Always happy to talk Dead Zero, having followed the project for so long, and in this episode we have the man himself, Lee Donaldson, back now we have seen the first chapter. We talk the future of the project, and funding options for fans and followers alike.

Follow the project here

https://www.instagram.com/dead_zero_feature/

and watch it here

https://whop.com/lee-don-productions-ltd/dead-zero-chapter-1/

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 a post-COVID Japan we get four stories that make up the anthology Everyday of the Dead. Pretty dreadful acting, pretty awful writing, pretty awful cinematography. We have Punch of the Dead, where a dumped guy comes out of lockdown to go see his girl, only to be dumped over the phone. He decides to limp over, and fight his way to get, giving every one of the slow moving zombies a punch, before discovering that she has been cheating on him. She does get her comeuppance, and our guy limps off. In Chain of the Dead a couple who are having an office affair find themselves chained to each other a la Saw. Although the reason is much more simple and no one has to go delving into baskets of dirty syringes or have their head ripped off. The wife of the man wants a divorce. But she also has left poisoned water in the room, so when the man drinks it he turns zeke and goes after the office girl. In actor of the dead, a poor man's Still, an unemployable actor inadvertently walks into a couple of zombies and, so stop them killing him, he copies their behaviour and acts like one of them until, that is, a sniper hunting zombies gets them in his sights. And then we have the last story, as a man thinks he is immune, but isn't really, a TV crew follow a vigilante around who is killing zombies. The two will collide. But what will happen?

It was poorly acted, poorly filmed, the animation was terrible, the writing, the makeup, well, everything was terrible.

2/10

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.

Once the Bone Temple was released we looked at the calendar and the next big ticket item for zombie movie fans wasn't the gender swap NOTLD remake (another one!) or the scene by scene remake of ROTLD, no, sir, it was the next zombie movie by Yeon Sang-ho the write/director of Train to Busan - Colony.

Colony tells the story of a bio-terror attack in a building that has office and conference spaces in the top floors and a shopping mall on the lower levels. Disgraced awkward professor Kwon and her ex-husband Han are invited to a presentation by Chain Bio, who are using natural design in their technology, most notably, using the idea of Mycelium to allow electronic components to communicate instead of using wires, carbon, optical cabling.

An overly villainous villain played by Peninsula's Koo Kyo-hwan injects the CEO with the virus and with some classic South Korean bone cracking, body morphing, goo spewing changes he is patient #1. Or is he?

The infection spreads through the building and we have the normal rag tag group of survivors including a cop on a mission, a business suit, a teen and her bullies, and a security guard and his disabled sister, joining Kwon and Han as they try to escape.

Fast paced, with a lot of excellent new hive mind elements, I found I didn't need the villain to be so villainous, and I didn't need the Jason opening his eyes at the bottom of the lake ending, but the rest is superb. Is it better than Train to Busan? Not in my eyes, but it is very good. Certainly better than the other movies we have seen this year.

7/10 and def worth a watch when you can, despite it's shortcomings.

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 time has come. Our friend Lee Donaldson is now finally showing off the labours of his hard work, Dead Zero. In a windy hotel on Southend seafront Michael and I attended the Horror On Sea movie festival, meeting up with Lee, and watching the first 31 minutes of Dead Zero. What did we think? You will have to listen to find out, but as a little taster, it was a lot better than many of the movies we have seen in the genre. It needs work, and it needs the backstories of the characters, but it was still thoroughly entertaining.

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.

Michael has caught up, watching Tyler Posey and Donald Sutherland in Matt Naylor's Alone (Final Days in the UK), the western version of #ALIVE. Will he like it more? He is also tattooed. He also likes rock music. Listen to 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.

As we excitedly prepare ourselves to head to the Horror On Sea movie festival at the weekend and the premier of Dead Zero, Michael and I go wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy back, back into time, to the first episode of The Undead Symphony Pod. Back then I didn't have a Michael, didn't have a format, didn't have the theme tune and didn't have the celebrity intros. 

In episode one I watched the #Alive and Final Days, both based on the same script Alone by Matt Naylor, who worked on both movies. It was that whole Let Me In, Let the Right One In, kinda scenario where two movies came out at the same time based on the same script, one American and one not, and both very good.

After discussing #Alive today, we shall reconvene for Final Days tomorrow,  but in this lunchtime chinwag, we ended up expanding our chat to South Korean horror as a whole and it's place in the world of zombie entertainment.

Check it out here. 

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.

From the people who brought you Deadlocked (2020) comes an upgrade of sorts. Despite the comic undertones of the title, and the comedy lines from douche nozzle Toby as well as the "come to daddy," goading by the lead as he takes on the undead this is not a comedy. This is a zombie drama set in the rest room at a coffee shop, where tall, handsome, but mostly pathetic hunk Iverson and his newborn baby hold out with madman Harry, sarcastic barista Brie, fitness freak Annabel and absolute ass piece Toby as zombies pen them in.

There are precious view zombies, it is mostly the people who you are trapped with turning on you. And the baby crying puts them all on edge, turning one against the other whilst Iversen, who is a clear foot and easily 50 pounds bigger than all the others and could kill them all, is just too much of the wimpy kid. The CGI veins also sucked.

5/10

When I saw Deadlocked, which is set in an elevator, I was rather watch The End? from Italy, which is much better. This is a toilet zombie movie, so I would rather watch Stalled, again much better.

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 I have my dog walker and post man disrupting me 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.

Somme-bies!

Yes, that is actually one of the many Battle of the Somme jokes made by Marcus (played by the patchy bald soldier from 28 Days Later). Somme-bies! Somme-er Holiday. Somme-body get me out of here.

I do hate found footage. I really do. I know some people love it but when it is done badly it is so bad. And this was bad. Given we have seen Live! Escape, Live! Survival, Godforsaken, The Bay, Zombie Diaries, Diary of the Dead, Savageland was more documentary style, but then the REC and Quarantine movies, I can easily spot the mistakes made. In this the mistakes are many.

If you like camera glitches, camera glitches that somehow make you jump to past footage as filler, lots of people running about and screaming, but actual action and deaths off camera, if you like an annoying condescending director making unfunny Somme jokes and actually easy to kill zombies that for some reason are from the allies as well as the German ranks, and zombies obsessed with a van, then this is for you.

It was the locations of Trench 11 meets Nazi Zombie Death Tales with the poor footage skills of Zombie Diaries and Goforsaken.

It may not be the worst found footage zombie movie I have seen, but it is Somme-where around there.

World War Dull! 3.5/10

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.

In this episode I shall be reviewing a zombie movie that I had seen before I started this podcast. And yet somehow 4 years into it and nearly 400 movies from 42 countries into it I haven’t gone back and reviewed the black and white Japanese movie Miss Zombie. 

Directed by Sabu and released in 2013 this multi award winning zombie movie takes it in a different direction, in a post apocalyptic Japan zombies exist and are caught and domesticated as either slaves or pets by the humans. I am getting FIDO vibes here. Just tragic FIDO vibes. The blurb is simple, A wealthy Japanese family hires a female zombie to do their household chores. However, soon they realise that her presence is affecting everyone around. Hires? No she is bought as a slave, as all zombies are in this movie. So whoever wrote that is an idiot.

She is a slave. She is abused by the locals, stabbed everyday, raped, attacked. But yet the doctor who bought her is now falling for her slow moving, scarred wiles, and the mother is now getting more and more jealous of her after her son dies and is brought back as a zombie, by the zombie.

Filmed in black and white, with no music, and a repetitive style, each day Miss Zombie remembers more of her life before, and the tragedy of how it ended, as everyone else becomes more and more obsessed with her as we reach a violent climax.

Definitely unique in the genre, true, it is a little slow, but haunting. 

6/10

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.