A Blind Eye

Come with me readers on a journey. It starts in 1099…I’m just kidding it starts in 1971 when for whatever reason Amando De Ossorio took Spain’s fear of the Knight’s templar and turned it into a horror film which became the only Spanish horror film of any repute until Guillermo Del Toro let Spain ride his coattails. It wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but it was original enough and spawned three sequels, don’t ask how. Meanwhile in 2007 I somehow sat through all of these movies and now, in the comfort of my living room, with the lights dimmed just how I like it, with two pieces of toast and a superior movie on my television, I shall share this experience so you never have to do it yourself, not that I discourage curiousity in the face of a horror film.

Tombs Of The Blind Dead
by Amando de Ossorio

We are given the back-story on the “knights from the east” about how they had their eyes pecked out by crows after raping women in the name of the lord in a flashback we have not seen the last of. And then the ‘plot’ starts up. An ugly Spanish couple are lounging poolside when they meet the girl’s old roommate who another flashback tells us did some of that experimenting guys are always wishing more girls did on their own. Well their reunited friend starts hitting on the guy and it makes the first girl feel like a third wheel. Instead of confronting her problem she jumps off the train and runs off to a nearby abandoned ruin and decides to make a life for herself there. But that gets tabled when really cheesy looking skeletons in tattered costumes awake from, well, the dead I guess and kill her. The scene is moody and spooky and the fact that seemingly endless numbers of the things seem to come from nowhere is at least mildly scary, but the skeletal fiends are just too damned goofy looking to be all that scary. Anyway, the girl is found with bite marks all over her and then she comes back to life in the morgue and attacks her old job only to burn to death, for a second time. So then the girl’s friends and a greasy bandit and his uniformly greasy girlfriend go back to spend the night at the villa and they’re killed in the same slow way except the first girl’s friend who makes it to a train which starts to move again just as it’s boarded and it’s occupants massacred. The train makes it town, leaving room for a sequel, which is exactly what director Amando de Ossorio did not do. Oh there was a sequel, but the only thing it had in common with Tombs was the fact that they have the same villain. This movie is lumbering, ugly and mean. People are killed, slowly, stupidly. The villains are implacable and though not invincible, endless. There is no way for this movie to end but bleakly, and the fact that the people we have to sympathize with are disgusting, piggish, vain and petty doesn’t help this film any.
The Return of the Evil Dead
by Amando de Ossorio

The second car in this train wreck The Return is meaner and approaches legitimate scare value occasionally. This time the love triangle is actually a quadrangle consisting of the Mayor of a town that shares its name with the villa from the previous film, the Mayor’s bodyguard, the Mayor’s secretary and a fireworks expert who the secretary once had a fling with named Jack Marlowe. The fireworks guy and the secretary lead the small party of survivors into a large church after the knights come back to life during a celebration occurring on the same night that they were originally blinded, though, this time it was with a torch, not by crows. Anyway, the dead are brought back by a blood sacrifice provided by one of the most disgusting caricatures of a retarded person I’ve ever encountered in a horror film named Murdo. Murdo, the Mayor, his bodyguard and secretary, a young single woman, an expendable guy, his wife and child all take refuge in a church a la George Romero and are slowly whittled down. The demise of the Knights at the end is unexplained, probably for the better and we are forced to see a retarded guy get his head cut off. Go Spain!

The Ghost Galleon
by Amando de Ossorio

Movie number three has even less to do with the knights templar than either of the first two combined and the fact that its called The Ghost Galleon ought to have been my first clue. I thought they might have tried explaining it somehow, but I guess the idea is that the Knights are something like Spain’s Godzilla, just out there somewhere, waiting to attack whatever be-make-upped 30 something that should cross their path. Anyway, some models are performing the worst thought out publicity stunt in history by pretending to be stranded on a dingy awaiting rescue. This plan is being thought out in a dungeon somewhere where the model’s only friend is raped by one of the men behind the scheme, but she seems ok with it, all in all. Anyway, the girls encounter some kind of Ghost Galleon and are killed. The rape victim and three of the heartless ugly Spaniards behind the publicity stunt go looking for them, find the ship and are also killed. Notice the one guy, he's played by Jack Taylor (That sweater! THAT MOUSTACHE! GODS!) What are the bodies of the knights templar doing on a boat? Why does it become dark whenever one boards the titular galleon? Why is there treasure on the ship? What causes the professor’s heart attack? Anyway, this film has one thing that works and one thing only and that is the obviously soundstaged boat exteriors. The boat looks like it’s in the middle of a forest but it is actually creepy, unlike everything else about this piece.
Night Of The Seagulls
by Amando de Ossorio

Ok, film number 4 is actually my favorite and not just because it has a slightly more favorable view of retarded people. The prologue to Night of the Seagulls has some foreboding but is completely irrelevant, both to story and the templar mythology. A man and his buxom bride stop to knock on the door of a house for help of some kind, we’ll never learn why. The help they receive is actually from some horseback riding gentlemen with crosses on their white robes. These guys provide as much help as the blouse the girl sports, which is soon ripped off to give us the film’s first in a long line of forcibly topless women. In the present, a doctor and his wife move into a seaside town where they are most certainly not welcome. The first night in town the doctor’s wife is visited by the town’s retarded man, named Teddy. In Spain. His name is Teddy. Yeah. Anyway, that night the couple hear seagulls and a strange chanting, neither of which make sense given the late hour (someone’s been reading real books). They go to the beach to investigate the noises and witness the first half of a ritualistic murder but leave before the end. Some of the town’s folk try ignoring them completely except for a young brunette named Lucy who offers to be their maid. The doctor tries to get to the bottom of the weirdness when a girl comes to their door seeking refuge and is taken away by the black hooded procession from last night’s beach party. They do the same thing as last night with this new girl, except they outfit her in a see-through silk nightee. Anyway, they try to kill both Teddy and Lucy, but the doctor stops them from being killed initially and bring ‘em home for some Night of the Living Dead and then they both get killed anyway. The doctor and his wife escape on the blind dead’s horses who don’t obey their orders and then they discover their weakness is the giant stone idol in their seaside castle. This is the one movie that could actually work as it’s own film were it not for some much needed exposition. If they had added some other explanation for a town-wide agreement to sacrifice virgins, instead de Ossorio expects people to rely on the evil already set-up in his first three films. Happened once, why not again? But this has a coherence the others do not. Easily the strongest of the series in that some of the images are pretty cool and frightening and the film feels a lot less mean and a lot more tactful. But to say any film is tactful because it doesn't feature explicit rape, children murdered and a scheming retarded person isn't saying anything.

The internet might have just about everything you want but what it lacks is a statement from the late de Ossorio explaining how he arrived at the conclusion that prompted him to make these movies, because I for one have some questions. The series as a whole: FUCKING TERRIBLE. Why make such a big fucking deal about the fact that these guys can only hear you if everybody screams and whimpers like a puppy being hit with a baseball bat. Gimmicks are supposed to mean something. Then there’s the everyone dies thing. What a mean-spirited bully this guy is. Also, the knights templar never change from film to film, but their stories do. How do they get there? And the knight zombies are NOT SCARY! Their hands most glaringly so. They are frail little plasticy things that never bend in any way as if to accentuate the falsehood. Then there’s the pacing; slow as the day is long these movies are. This stems from the impossible slow speed the knights themselves move at. All of this makes for four screamingly awful films, and that’s not even bringing in the atrocious day-for-night photography that accompanies every attack not done on a studio lot. And why is every sound echoed whenever the knights attack? For scare value? Cause all it does is make the film feel like an endless chasm of boredom and like the movie itself will never die, even with fire.

Extra Credit

Beccah turned this report in to me during the winter, before christmas, even. so, i thought it only right to give credit where credit is due and put it up for the world to see. If any of you had done the same, this class might have turned out a little better in the end. Nice Job, Beccah.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things
1972

Director: Bob Clark

Starring: Alan Ormsby (Alan); Jeff Gillen (Jeff); Paul Cronin (Paul); Anya Ormsby (Anya); Jane Dally (Terry); Velerie Mamches (Val)

Plot: a ridiculously pretentious/ fucked up company of actors go to a cursed island, which is ¾ cemetery. There, their seriously demented/ enragingly pretentious and arrogant douche-bag of a leader plans to awaken the dead with Satanic rituals just for kicks. When obnoxious Alan’s spell fails miserably, they take a dead body back to the rat-infested abandoned cottage in which they’re staying, and proceed to have a grand old time disrespecting the dead—until they actually come alive and start eating the members of the troupe.
Fun facts:
• 1st North American zombie film inspired by George Romero
• Budget was between $40,000 and $70, 000

Reactions:
• Obviously extremely low budget (all I can say is wow regarding the “special effects”)
• The plot moves at a snail’s pace—the zombies don’t even come alive until 10 minutes before the end of the movie, and the acting really isn’t good enough to carry the plot
• The opening scene is pretty great though—it sufficiently confuses you, and sets you up to be tricked by Alan’s joke later. Plus, live burial is always a disturbing topic (having the view from the inside of the coffin is a nice touch)
• The zombies do make a genuinely creepy entrance into the film (extremely late in the game, but whatever). The whole protruding limbs/ rotten-looking flesh is pretty effective when popping out of the dirt (eerie green fog helps too)
• It’s less a zombie movie, and more a commentary on pretentious artists. As the latter, it’s pretty effective (and funny), but it kind of falls short as the former.
• The zombies steal the (now dead) company’s boat at the end…presumably to head toward civilization for a night on the town
• Alan throwing Anya to the zombies, then locking himself in the room where Orville is patiently sitting on the mattress waiting to exact revenge on his ass (probably the best part of the whole movie)
• This movie is hilarious, and the bastards get it in the end

Sequel Season Begins Again

Well, I finally got over myself and saw this, the sequel to my favorite horror film in the last ten years (Save for The Devil’s Backbone (The Ring and Dawn of the Dead are remakes, so they don’t count)). Anyway, here’s what the sequel was up against. 28 Days Later was the first horror film of it’s kind in many ways: Digital video; grainy footage; it was the first fast-running zombie film in 20 years; principles were all unknowns; spookiest opening in years; incredible soundtrack; stunning visuals; believable characters; new cause for zombification; taut plot; riveting ending; average-Joe hero; and the list goes on. Anyway, the odds weren’t just stacked against a sequel, they were dumped and incased in concrete and then turned into a memorial to Danny Boyle. So, I took a hard look at the pros and then saw it. It was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who’s directed three other horror films, one of them, Intacto sounds like a creepy Spanish version of The Cooler with Max Von Sydow. 

28 Weeks Later
by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

The film starts with six people in a dark, eerie farmhouse of indeterminate size and location, four of who are married. The first couple is Don (Trainspotting’s Robert Carlyle) and Alice (Shadow of the Vampire’s Catherine McCormack) whose children were sent on a school trip which puts their minds at ease, kinda. The others are the old couple who own the house, an angry loner named Jacob and a blonde girl whose boyfriend ran out on them days ago. They’re all sitting down to eat when a knock on the door and the screams of a young child give them all a heart attack. Don reluctantly lets the voice in, it belongs to a young boy who eats with his hands and tells them he was chased by a whole shit ton of zombies, who show themselves about 8 seconds later. The music from the ending of the first movie starts up, which can only mean bad news. The infected make short work of the blonde girl and the old couple while Jacob flees, and Alice and the young boy get trapped in a bedroom. Don goes after them and the infected quickly fill the room, giving Don one hell of an ultimatum, which cowardice makes a lot easier. He leaves his wife and the young boy and runs away, his tail between his legs. He watches helplessly from the road as his wife is overtaken by the infected and runs through a field, dozens of the things behind him. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough a bunch more come from over an adjacent hill. He runs to a lake where Jacob is trying to start a boat and jumps in while Jacob falls off the dock and is bitten and then begins attacking the boat as more and more of the infected make it into the lake. The boat motor cuts up some of the buggers in the water, turning the water red and Don gets away. Ok, so...guy from Intacto knows his shit.

The plot is simple after that: The american military has set up a quarantine in Britain where some incredibly lewd snipers are stationed. The most sympathetic of them Doyle (Jeffrey Dahmer himself, Jeremy Renner) and Flynn (The Matrix Sequels’ Harold Perrineau) are friends who seem to be of some importance. Don and Alice’s children Andy and Tammy are sent back to their dad to London, which has recently been reopened after the events of the first movie. Don lies to his children about how their mother bought it and then they go back to London to find a picture of her at their old house. They sneak past the surprisingly inept guards and make it to their house where they find not just pictures of their mother, but mum herself. The soldier’s quarantine her and the most irritating military scientist in the world finds out Alice has something in her blood that makes her immune to the infection. Scarlet (Wicker Park’s Rose Byrne) wants to do tests (ah, what’s a science fiction movie without a protesting scientist who wants to run tests) because they discovered that though she is infected, she still has all her motor skills. The military just needs to hear that she can still spread the disease through her blood and saliva and they want to kill her. Anyway, Don sneaks in to Alice’s room and she spreads her saliva around and Don goes berserk and kills her terribly and escapes, causing a code red, which means everyone has to be killed. It starts with shooting and ends with firebombing. It’s during this time that Doyle’s conscience gets to him and he leaves his post and helps Scarlett, Andy, Tammy and some expendable meat escape. Scarlet believes that the immunity gene lies in one of the children and puts their escape high on their list of priorities.

Ok, what made this film worth the price of admission. First of all, I really like Robert Carlyle and his thick Scottish accent, so any chance to see him act like a regular guy is always rewarding. Second, the visuals were amazing. Fresnadillo knows how to show you something beautiful in the midst of something heinous. I couldn’t believe some of these images; the scenes of the city at night were unbelievable and the scenes of the small party escaping the city at dawn and running away from the firebombing and whenever they found themselves in field (I have a weak-spot for fields). Also Andy’s eyes are a really great image; they are two different colors. Anyway, the fact that the movie was just beautiful made it much easier to sit through this bleak nightmare.

Ok, the major downside: the Americans. Except for Flynn, who escapes this fate because Harold Perrineau is a real actor who doesn’t need direction to act like a human being, all of the Americans are wooden stereotypes. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo might know how to film a cityscape but he can’t direct people worth a damn. Rose Byrne as concerned, caring scientist Scarlet is so fucking aggravating; any scene with her in it reminded me of a Disney film, that is until zombie Don beats her to death with the butt of a rifle. Renner seemed to think he was in a WB program because he acts like a dude for most of the film. For whatever it’s worth I was sad to see him burned alive, so I guess he wasn’t a total wash. Neither of these two sound as if they have a day's experience doing their jobs. The whole film just gets bleaker and bleaker and more disgusting as it goes. And I'll admit I was a little miffed when they tried that helicopter blade through a field of zombies trick. Nightmare City started it, Planet Terror ended it, 28 Weeks should have left it the hell alone. This is not supposed to be an Italian homage, so stop pretending it is. The fewer reminders that Nightmare City ever existed the better and this one provided a few, not the least of which was running zombies. And then there was the heavy-handed military talk. The military seemed to exist to remind the world that Americans are twats and they have really misguided military operations (No Shit!). Watching a colonel give the order to kill everyone in sight, I guess was supposed to represent the idea that you don’t know the difference between a terrorist and a regular person, or an infected and a not…whatever. It was more than the film needed. We know the military sucks and if English was Fresnadillo’s first language the military stuff might have been more poignant.

Entertaining, scary, tense, gory, bleak, beautiful. All in all it could have been much worse, however, I fear for this franchise so Hollywood take heed. NO MORE SEQUELS. If I see Roger Corman’s 28 Minutes Later, I will be very, very upset. Zombies might rise from the dead to tell producers what they think of a third movie. I’ll watch Intacto and see if I couldn’t have seen this coming.

I Remember When I Lost My Mind

Here is probably the crowning achievement of George A. Romero on his downtime. I haven’t watched Martin yet, but this smells of superior quality somehow, I could be wrong*. This movie, interestingly enough is like an older sibling to pioneer gross-out I Drink Your Blood. The two have a huge amount in common, not the least of which is actress Lynn Lowry playing a nutcase. The music is a hyper version of the simple electric guitar riff from the first movie, the colors are just as intense, the characters are caricatures of people, the hysteria is hysterical and the ending is ambiguous. This isn’t a zombie film, neither is I Drink Your Blood really, but it’s close enough. This is an incredibly silly movie, but I liked it in spite of myself, just like I Drink Your Blood.

The Crazies
by George A. Romero

The story: the military quarantines a town after an experimental virus gets released that turns people crazy. This goes well. Romero regular Lane Carroll is Judy, a nurse and Will McMillan is her husband David, a volunteer firemen and veteran. When Judy and David are summoned on two equally urgent calls, Judy by her boss Dr. Brookmyre and David by his war buddy and fellow firemen Clank, something serious must be going on. Their calls have to do with the first thing in the movie we see: a man burning down his house with his children and dead wife inside. The children are still alive and contain the virus “trixie” which apparently comes with a few conditions: that a military regiment under the command of the sympathetic Colonel Peckem be sent to force marshal law on the people of Evan’s City, PA, a scientist, who's head of the project must do research in the high school where they've begun quarantining the town folk, and most importantly, civilians have just become expendable. David, Judy, Clank, an old man and his creepy looking daughter (Lynn Lowry) take to the woods to remain out of sight until the whole thing blows over...or until they all catch ‘the bug’ and become crazy....or until the military finds and kills them....

Movies that feature mass hysteria are a favorite of mine; a fondness I inherited from my dad. This one has that and mildly likeable Pennsylvania types do I’m naturally drawn to this picture. The hysteria is fantastic; poorly edited, violent, no continuity between guns fired and squibs blown, impromptu and frequent. They come out of nowhere and they really sucker-punch you. We will see David nervously watching Clank’s behavior get more violent and then out of nowhere comes this incredible sequence of a few dozen men in plaid shirts with rifles firing at the military men in identical white jump suits with gas masks on. Grenades, axes, pitchforks and many, many bullets are used. The absurd quality of the crazies makes the moments of linear plot just that much sillier. Richard France as Dr Watts, the technician on ‘trixie’ is really something to behold. He speaks like an angry Shakespearian actor not given enough room to develop his instrument. He works for hours in the high school chemistry lab, flirting with his assitant, trying to do…something. Not for nothing, the disease is left ambiguous. We know it’s dangerous, that it was spread by monkeys, and that the government wants a plane over Evan’s city ready to nuke the place.

Romero, like Wes Craven is about as subtle as the proverbial elephant in the room when it comes to putting anti-conservative messages in their films. The military quarantining a town and killing at random stating marshal law as their reason is not even a metaphor; it just is what it is. The fact that nothing is ever given away and that more and more people are just killed makes this movie and its people hard to sympathize with and hard to watch, especially when they become so crazy that they engage in incest. This surprised me when it came time to feel sad. Watching the mental deterioration of the film's central characters was a lot more effective than it should have been in a film with absolutely no character development. We see a lot of characters with little to no compassion who don’t change, some who are compassionate in very loud and obvious ways, and some who just have their small personalities taken away by ‘Trixie’. It comes as no surprise that in the end Lloyd Hollar’s Colonel Peckem still agrees to supervise the transformation of hamlets into necropolises and David doesn’t seem all that bummed out when he is turned into a military lab rat. He and Peckem exchange knowing glances and the film goes out on a bleak but ineffective note.

The colours and setting are fun to watch, the wilderness of Pennsylvania has always possessed a strange charm that I’ve loved since I was a kid; parts of Doylestown look just like Evans City. Also look for a lot of Romero regulars: Scott H. Reiniger from Dawn of the Dead as a policeman in the first act, A.C. McDonald from Night of the Living Dead’s ending posse is in there somewhere, Richard Liberty who would go on to play Logan in Day of the Dead also present. Richard France, the eye-patched scientist on TV in Dawn plays a sort of precursor to his character here. Most of these people gave much better performances in the other films but who can blame Romero for making a hysteria film where both sides put up an equal fight. Maybe the knowing glance that David and the Colonel give each other is because they knew that Dawn was only a few years away and Romero would end his post-Night slump and show the Europeans how it’s done.

*I was wrong

I Wonder Who The Real Cannibals Are...

Keep the River on your Right
by David Shapiro & Laurie Gwen Shapiro



Tobias Schneebaum is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever encountered. The documentary Keep the River On Your Right is just as enigmatic as he is. It starts by introducing Tobias, an eccentric, profane anthropologist who beguiles his final years by taking jobs as a lecturer on the subject of the tribes of south-eastern asia and central America. We see him as an illustrator, a 78 year old man who used to paint, but stopped after his visit to Peru where he tells us something inside of him died. While lecturing at a museum we find out that while he was there he lived with cannibals and engaged in cannibalism while he lived there for a year.

As this documentary progresses we are shown more and more of this man’s life, his loves all over the world, and his many friends. Interview footage of him on Charlie Rose, Mike Douglas and elsewhere show the incredible naïveté and prudery of the world he escaped by living with tribes for those years in the 1950s. Charlie Rose’s disgust at the thought of a homosexual wife-swapping society is particularly funny. This man had a summer of love existence that was more exotic and violent than most others can claim. Norman Mailer, who lived with Tobias in the 50s speaks about his courageousness and his polar opposite personality traits. More fascinating than this was that Mailer credits Schneebaum as opening his eyes to the world of homosexuals and his mind to the thought of alternative lifestyles. As he discusses his childhood fascination with the Wild Man of Borneo, his mother’s battle with cancer and his current struggle with Parkinson’s disease, we feel sympathy, intrigue and compassion for this 78-year-old man. His story is so fascinating and the imagery of the film so strong that we forget why we rented this movie. He has no desire to relive the reason for his fame , but eventually he is talked into going back to Peru and meet the people he lived with by an incredibly insistent film crew, anxious for a story.

The meat of this film is when the documentary film crew pushes this frail old man to travel further and further down river to find the natives he once lived with. Watching him remember the Peru he left, and even more surprisingly the Peruvians he left remembering him is almost cathartic. As we meet the men he lived with and they remember their days of raiding nearby villages with a smile on their faces, something interesting happens. The directors ingeniously blended this reunion with footage of Mike Douglas and guests reacting to the tales of raids and murderer, but somehow we side with the smiling, singing old men and women of the tribe Schneebaum rediscovers in their untouched glory.

What really gets inside my head is the talk of the raid and how evil Schneebaum must have seemed to the unassuming audience of the 1960s. He went on a hunt painted red with the rest of the men, but it lasted a little longer than usual. When night fell they invaded a nearby village and killed all the men. The Italians really had no idea what they stumbled upon when they started making cannibal movies. Watch this man’s face when he talks about being forced to kill and eat human beings. He’s never dealt with the pain in his head and his words are truly haunting. I wonder what must have run through the heads of Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi when they decided to make their money exploiting the behavior tribes that existed for hundreds of years untouched by the influence of Europeans. The movie, though it veers off course is an effective one. Often times nobody realizes the impact of what they do until much after the fact, as is the case with this man and his cannibalism. Everyone he’ll ever encounter we’ll ask him about it because they don’t understand it, but what they don’t know is that Schneebaum doesn’t understand it either.

“I’m not a cannibal. I’m something else.”

What A Nightmare! HAHA! Oh Me!

Nightmare City or Incubation of a Contaminated City as it's Italian title would have been originally is really something. All I’ll say about this film before describing it is that in the documentary Tales from a Contaminated City contained on the DVD, Umberto Lenzi, director of The Man From Deep River, Cannibal Ferox and other Italian masterpieces has this to say, “Consider AIDS and how people infected with AIDS have a similar breakdown to the characters in Nightmare City.” Umberto Lenzi just insinuated that AIDS was some sort of copy cat virus that took after the characters in a zombie movie. Astounded? Well, let’s let him explain. “Do you remember in Philadelphia, how it started with a slight outbreak, the fear of appearing different, the breakdown of the physical body, which continues until everyday life is desecrated, this leads to the desolation of social relationships in the organized society, the American society. That’s how it happens in my film in a much more fantastic way.” Yeah, I do remember that. Maybe if you'd put any of it into this piece of shit, it might have been worth a damn. Wait, a minute, did he just compare AIDS to zombiedom? DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK YOU CAN COMPARE AIDS TO BEING A ZOMBIE, YOU MISERABLE FUCK!? Nevermind that the AIDS crisis wouldn't become public knowledge until about six years after he finished this fucking thing and the idea of a director retroactively trying to shove some meaning into his movie is about the most arrogant thing in the world. He couldn't even subconsciously have been thinking about AIDS because it wasn't even called AIDS (when it replaced the acronym GRID) until 1982. He also compares zombies to the anthrax scare a few years ago. Anything to justify your existence, eh pal?

Lenzi: “It’s a film totally based on reality.”

Nightmare City
by Umberto Lenzi

Starring Hugo Stiglitz. Umberto Lenzi on Stiglitz: “Hugo was a star in mexico, at least he was twenty years ago. As an actor he was insignificant. He wasn’t a great actor but I had to hire him because of the higher-ups.”

02:25 Newsman from the BWC tells the public about a potential radioactive spill.

03:05 Ace reporter Dean Miller is sent out by his boss to greet nuclear scientist Otto Haganbach at the airport to quell the public’s worries.

04:14 A UFO is discovered on the green high pitch meter at the airport control tower.

04:35 Guy on radio pronounces ‘data’ like ‘dada’.

05:17 The plane comes in for a landing, a military plane with no markings on it.

06:19 A yellow van is dispatched and some guys in orange jumpsuits shout at the plane. There is no answer.

06:40 Fire trucks, English police officers, volkswagon eurovans with lights and siren, a truck load of heavily armed Cuban revolutionaries rushes to the scene.

07:40 The police give them 30 seconds in the name of the law to come out with their hands up.

08:10 Military guy looks at his watch. Miller gets antsy.

08:27 The plane door opens. Haganbach steps out and….

08:45 Stabs the military guy. Dozens of zombies follow with axes, knives, sickles, guns, sticks, pipes, chains, hammers, wire, boomerangs, rulers, files and other stuff and start beating up the soldiers and occasionally sucking on their wounds. One zombie has his arm shot off. Miller is unharmed and escapes with his camera man in a VW bus.

10:30 The guys in the control tower die of shame.

11:14 A sexy dance program called “It’s All Music” is in full swing on Miller’s beloved BWC, for some reason. The camera men wear white coats, like doctors. Miller doesn’t interrupt the sanctity of the dance for a couple of minutes.

12:34 Guy in white coat makes rascist joke when Miller demands airtime for no reason.

13:06 The dancers lament their lost airtime. Miller starts yammering about the attack, but the chief cuts him off and demands that the dancers be put back on the air, and they do so with gusto and tact.

14:08 General Murchison tells Miller to keep his lousy mouth shut so that he doesn’t cause a panic. The defense department says not to interfere or make a fuss.

14:53 We are given our first hint as to the location of this movie. “in a democratic country, nobody is allowed to interfere with the freedom of the press.” This rules out the movie taking place in Cuba, China or Laos. Miller is then suspended for his impudence.

17:00 The first breasts of the film are seen. They belong to Sheila, the wife of a military advisor who is called in by General Murchison.

20:23 Zombies attack the dancers, their sexy blue leotards can’t save them from the knives of zombies. For some reason most of the women run screaming with one or more breasts exposed.

23:10 Ace reporter Dean Miller rescues everyone by throwing a television at some zombies, which then explodes.

25:40 Miller’s wife makes small talk with the ugliest men in the hospital. One suffers from dementia and mentions the “hatchet man”. For some reason nobody knows that there are zombies outside about 20 minutes away.

27:00 The military is clueless

32:57 A lawnmower powers itself across that first naked girls lawn. Why?

35:15 General Murchison’s daughter and her husband discuss the fussy nature of generals and a guy in a red beret comes and requests they come with him. Zombies cut the phone line and so the two smartly decide that the best course of action is to sneak out in an RV and the soldier guy is killed.

38:30 Zombies outsmart the military and show up in a big van and hit everyone to death with sticks, then cut the cities power. Just like in Philadelphia.

43:19 Miller, now looking for his surgeon wife passes a hospital elevator, contemplates helping the trapped hospital aides and patients, but decides against it. meanwhile his wife Anna goes to the plasma room and is assaulted by zombies, just narrowly surviving their undead wiles.

45:30 Husband and wife are reunied

46:00 Surgery is interrupted by zombies looking for blood. A whoosh noise is heard when the head surgeon throws a scalpel at a zombie. Downstairs, breasts are exposed and women are murdered.

48:17 A zombie wipes his mouth of blood. The trend continues throughout the film.

50:25 The elevator scene from Dawn of the Dead.

55:35 The following conversation takes place between the general’s daughter and her husband in their vacation spot, which appears to be an infrequently visited road. “They declared a state of emergency.”
“A state of emergency? Are they crazy?”
“I, I don’t know. it’s difficult to understand, but we should go back to town.”
"But we just arrived. I have no intention of giving up my weekend. To hell with the soldiers.”
"Listen, you’re my wife and I love you.”
Lenzi: “I hated the shooting script.”

56:55 The general’s daughter’s friends arrive and they are now harpoon zombies. They harpoon the two and then eat them.

01:04:08 Miller and his wife find a gas station, which appears safe. Too safe. Oh and there’s a bloody axe there.

01:06:05 the following is said:

Miller: “Just like a western.”
Miller’s wife: “Except that they didn’t have instant coffee in the good old days. Another advantage of civilization, my dear. Like Coca Cola or nuclear energy. We’d be a whole lot healthier without all that stuff.”
“This is good (indicating the coffee). Do you think we should give up the advantages we have gained.”
“Maybe It would be better. However, it’s not the fault of science and technology, but of man.”

01:07:21 A radio announcer estimates damage in the hundreds of thousands. Of what?

01:12:00 Spousal abuse calms Miller’s wife

01:16:00 Miller’s wife: “remember the medieval legend: If they’re really vampires, they can’t enter the house of god.”
Lenzi: “they’re more like vampires than zombies.”

01:16:30 Miller kills a zombie priest.

01:24:56 Miller and his wife run up a roller coaster for safety.

01:27:35 After a botched helicopter rescue, Miller’s wife falls to her death, but…

01:27:43 Miller wakes up from a dream. Although he’s late, he is still thrilled about his assignment, to interview nuclear scientist professor Haganbach.

01:28:01 Déjà vu. Or, no I'm sorry, recycled footage. That's what I meant. This is the same goddamn footage from the beginning.

01:30:46 The Nightmare Becomes Reality.

MY GOD! WHAT A MESS!

Historical significance: running zombies. Not the first, that honor belongs to The Messiah of Evil, but early nevertheless. That's about it. Enjoy!

Recently Viewed Films/Enjoy Spring Break

Below are the most recent Zombie films I’ve seen with a brief statement about each (I can't say I recommend any of them). If you've been busy like me, you've had time for a few of them, so respond with some of your break activities and/or films watched. Right now I’m writing the sequel to the one I wrote a few years ago that I’ve shown a few of you (this time the techies are the star). Ok, here we go.

Oasis of the Zombies
by Jesus Franco

My first Jesus Franco film (fate tells me this won't be the last) is a boring little number. Nazi stock footage guards an oasis on top of hidden gold. An Italian boy who apparently attends university cause it's just something to do inherits a map to the oasis and a bunch of his idiot friends go searching for the treasure and instead find...Zombies. The effects and acting are miserable affairs (some of the zombies look like paper machete, some are rip-offs that go as far back as I Walked With A Zombie). The scenes of the zombies far away in the desert look dreamlike, but not particularly scary and the gore and nudity are tame because of its Spanish audience and board of censors, so all in all, a big mistake.

Hell of the Living Dead
by Bruno Mattei

A film that rips off Dawn of the Dead so heavily I couldn't watch all of it. Everything from the exact Musical score is stolen (even the outfits of the main characters) and the plot is nowhere near as sustainable as even the loosest of Italian films. Directed by Bruno Mattei the man responsible for sullying Lucio Fulci's reputation by finishing Zombie 3 as a tragic farce that many refuse to credit as actual cinema. Awful, terrible, big, mean, dumb.

Dead and Buried
by Gary Sherman

A misty film about a cult that inhabits a salty New England fishing village that kills visitors and turns them into productive members of society. This film scores points for treating zombies as the real thing: in Dead & Buried, it's manual labor in exchange for a soul. Bits are silly, like when a couple with their young child stubbornly investigate a house while having an argument that consists of the same two lines of dialogue ("Let's get out of here!" "I saw a light!"). A lot of really frightening stuff involving syringes and bugging eyes. Could have been a bit better, could have been a lot worse. At the time of the film's release, the producer put Dan O'Bannon's name on it to drum up business, but he himself never came within 10,000 feet of the project. He claims he was embarassed by the film after having seen it. Eh, I don't think it's all that bad.

Homecoming
by Joe Dante

Showtime original movie and part of the Masters of Horror film series, Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins) makes an all-too-obvious statement about Bush on a shoestring budget. The story follows a campaign worker and conservative pundit who helped the president get elected and supports the war in Iraq starts sleeping with an Anne Coulter character after he makes a comment on national TV about wishing the dead soldiers could come back to life. Soon after, they do and they want to vote and they won't die until they do. Iraq war veterans spring up as a Karl Rove character tries to spin it as a pro-war zombie epidemic, he pays for it. In the end there is not enough money to achieve any kind of success with the effects or scale of the zombies and the film's look is too dry to scare anyone. Dante employs the old trick of putting zombie director's names on the names of veteran gravestones after republicans fix the election.


All in all, not a hugely successful haul, but after Zombie Lake anything's preferable.