This was the opposite of ace, all to pot, and eggy.

So in the not too distant past I won a online contest run by I.m. BadRonald for a copy of the movie Shank. Its a British movie about a post apocalyptic London in the year 2015 where gangs run the streets and its a fight for survival. Cool, sounds like The Warriors or A Clockwork Orange so far. . . and that's about the only nice thing I'm going to say about the movie.

Basic story goes like this: Shit hits the fan, government goes into chaos, people are left to fend for themselves, leads to a "futuristic land of anarchy," a brother gets killed and its time for some Rambo revenge. You'll never see this kind of crazy setting in real life. . . unless you travel to various parts of North America (Detroit, I'm looking at you), South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia. This future that the movie is trying to portray already exists around the globe and its a lot scarier then anything shown in the movie (guns>pocket knives every time). If your apocalyptic world is less dangers then the real world you then know you're off to a bad start. Second issue is the thick accents that the characters have. I've seen enough British tv and film to know that I can understand British dialogue decently enough. But not in this film, the characters lay on the slang as much as they can which might seem edgy until you realize that's like an American film throwing in Ebonics for the in the now crowd (Step Up 13 In Da Hood Yo' 3D), in three years all the slang will chance and the movie will date itself like some raunchy smelling milk. And you don't want your movie to be dated like raunchy milk. Another pit fall for the movie are the various visual changes thrown into the film. The overall look of the movie is fantastic. Its sharp and has a grimey feel too it. Unfortunatly the great visuals of the film are broken up by a drug (a cheap early '90s video game) and a dream (an Adobe Flash video) sequence. If done right you get Kill Bill Vol. 1 if done this way you just think the director took too much shrooms during filming one day and wanted to watch cartoons. I can't say any about the music because I thought it fit the look of the film perfectly.

On to my least favorite part of the film, the storyline. There are two brothers and they have three friends and together they are a family (ahhhhh). They all have their own special abilites as well. There's the leader (Rager), the little brother Junior), the pretty boy (Sweet Boy), the crazy one (Craze, who does absolutly nothing crazy in the whole film), and the guy obsessed with his kicks (Kickz, and kicks means shoes, ohhh so funny). They steal munchies aka food which they then trade for money. They joke around about things I don't understand and talk all this slang that, as stated before, will be irrelevent by the time I finally finish writing this review. One day a job goes wrong (who saw that coming, I know I sure didn't) and the crew gets chased off by a gang of hoodlems led by Lou Deng's little brother (they aren't really brothers but I seriously thought of Lou everytime I saw the evil teenage do-no-good-er during the film). In a great WTF moment Junior (little brother to Rager in the film) decides to run in a completely different direction then the rest of the crew with absolutly no explaination as to why. He gets tracked down by the bad kids and their leader Tugz pulls a knife on him (again guns>knives but I digress) and stabs him through the hand. Yes, that would be etremely painful but not a death wound. Luckily Rager comes in and beats the crap out of the little baddies while Junior runs and hides. Instead of helping his brother and the two of them getting out of there (and basically making this a short film) Junior continues to hide and eventually Tugz stabs Rager and he dies right there on the spot. Junior being the man that he is runs away crying until he is safe and then vowing revenge. And for the next to hours there is a bus scene, lots of talking, those crapy inserted animated scenes I spoke about earlier and more talking. I honestly started looking at facebook on my cell phone during the film because NOTHING was happening (remember in LOTR when they just walked around for about two hours? This was worse). The build-up to the final fight was mind numbingly boring and once it happened it was completely anti-climactic.The fight scenes were horribly done with random cut shots and a complete lack of intensity. At the end during the final show down Junior pussies out and Tugz pulls the oldest villain trick in the book (The "I'm sorry don't kill me" and then I'll try to kill you when your back is turned attack). Its extremely predictable and a cheesy final fight scene.

Don't waste time on this movie when there are so many other options out there. Just watch Green Street Hooligans if you want some good old fashioned British street fighting in your life.

I'm singing in the brains!

Last Thursday I went to the premier of a new zombie themed musical called Musical of the Living Dead. Let me just start off by saying that its the best $20 (per ticket) you could spend this season and that you NEED to go see this if you even remotely like zombies or musicals. Musical of the Living Dead mixes story elements from Night of the Living Dead (original and duplicate copy remake) and Dawn of the Dead (again, original and remake as well). So if you've seen those movies you'll get the characters, background story, and plot right away. I have never been to a musical before and never expected to have so much fun at one. The whole audience, myself included, was laughing the entire time. Equal parts great writing/directing and acting contributed to that. I could tell that the writing team took their time in putting together this story and are fans the movies that inspired it. I could also tell that the actors had some serious singing and dancing skills (from where I was sitting the stage looked pretty small so to have six or more people dancing at once without hitting each other or tripping all over themselves takes some talent). Another aspect that I like about this musical is its lack of PCness (that's right, political correctness can kiss zombie ass!). Its nothing serious and if anyone does get offended they should probably go get hit by a CTA bus for ruining the world for the rest of us (yeah, I'm talking about you Anderson Cooper). The music/dance numbers were all entertaining and the live instrumentals helped out. The zombie makeup was limited but there wasn't really a need for full on Savini work. This performance is good enough for the Cadillac Palace Theatre (its too good for the Chevy Mansion House) but luckily it doesn't cost Cadillac prices.

One recommendation I have is to get there early since the Charnel House is pretty small and you might drive right passed it your first time (yep, talking from experience here). Another benefit in getting there a bit early is being able to sit closer to the stage. This benefits you with seeing more of whats going on since all the seating is level and shorter people will have a harder time seeing in the back. The first row will have blood and guts flying towards them throughout the show so ideally that's where you want to sit (whats a zombie musical without guts flying around anyways?).

Make sure to check out Musical of the Living Dead, its one of the seasons best.


Sunday I went to my first haunted house of the year, Dream Reapers in Melrose Park, IL. I need to start off by saying that jump scares (people jumping out from behind walls, mirrors, corners, etc) don't scare me so I won't be rating my experience based on those. And I won't be talking about World Zombie Day seeing as it never really materialized. What I can start off with are the Metallica Roadies/Security Guards working the parking lot and outside the entrance. Now I know these guys weren't actually wearing costumes but they did make it feel like I was at Sturgis which is pretty cool. I could do without the Rob Zombie music (seriously Rob Zombie is to terror as Lindsay Lohan is to 24 hours of sobriety). I didn't even know Q101 (sponsor of the haunted hause) played Rob Zombie anymore. The price of admission was $10 (there was a $6 discount for dressing like a zombie on Sunday) and thats a price I can (un)live with. The haunted house starts out with a talking skeleton that looks like its been around since the 70s giving you instructions about the haunted house and then you proceed into the elevator where a ghoul takes you down to the lower level(this part was actually interesting and I assume the "elevator" does a 180 degree turn and leads you into the house area). The begining of the house starts with strobe lights and mirrors. It was confusing and I think I almost walked into one of the mirrors (face-planting glass ftl!). From there its pretty much standard fare, you walk around and people jump out at you (sometimes I could see the people from around the corner as I approached their position). Some of the spots were actually pretty well thought out and if I was a wuss like Robert Bartleh Cummings I might have peed myself. There are some nice set pieces throughout including hanging meat and a pig faced butcher cutting up a corpse. Less impressive were the sections that were pitch black (trying not to trip into something or someone is more annoying then scary). But the one thing that sold me on the entire house was the spinning room. This room has lights that play a trick on your mind making you believe the room is rotating when in actuality it isn't rotating at all. I was actually holding the side railing to keep from losing balance and Sarah Lova (who was nice enough to let me make her part of the undead for two nights) almost fell over. That room was worth the price of admission. The regular price of admission is $16 (might be $2 or $3 more), which is about the average price I've seen for houses in the area so nothing to complain about there. There was a $3 charge for parking which seems like a nice way to screw people out of a value meal, but I guess Rob Zombie has high royalty rates (seriously thought, Gaga has more street cred then the director of those horrible Halloween remakes). All in all it was a fun experience (that spinning room still gets me) and worth a trip out to Melrose Park (the only other reason would be to hit up Ink Spot Tattoos).  

I think that's all I have for now. I know, seems short, but I have some (sweet) zombie posters I need to get working on. Till next time, stay dead. . . or at least half brain dead.

You killed the devil, now what?

I took a week off, slaughtered some unsuspecting people in their sleep, finished reading The Living Dead, died on Youtube and still had time for Flat Top (love that place!).

I'll start by telling you that The Living Dead was absolutely nothing like what I expect from a horror novel. To start with it, this book is a compilation of short stories from various authors, including Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, and Steven King. All of the stories are unique and most of them do not follow the traditional zombie storyline (zombies attack, people run away screaming and crying). At first I have to say I was a little taken aback considering my love of the traditional storyline. But after a couple pages I started to get into the book and I enjoyed seeing zombies in a new way. For those who scoff at the idea of different kinds of zombies there are traditional brain eating death machines in some of the stories just for you. All in all I loved this book, I couldn't help but wonder how the authors came up with their ideas while I read their tails. There was only one story that made me angry (yes, the story was so bad I got mad at it for its level of 'suck'), but as people always say 'nothing's perfect'. I say any zombie lover should pick this book up. I hope when I pick up The Living Dead 2 the originality and individuality of this compilation remains.

You may not know this fact: Supernatural is a great tv show. You may not know this fact either: I love Supernatural (I own the first 4 seasons on dvd). Now that you know these two facts I can move on. I'll sum up the show as easily as possible. Two brothers (Sam and Dean) hunt monsters because their mother was murdered by a demon when they were children. Their father (John) raised them to be hunters and eventually trades his life for the life of his older son Dean. Sam, Dean, and John all manage to go to heaven and hell mutiple times and Sam and Dean always end up coming back up/down to earth to fight evil another day. Season 5 saw the conclusion of a five year story arc about the Devil. The Winchester brothers are able to defeat Satan himself and that story ended there. So how do you top fighting the Devil? I don't know, and I can tell the writers for the new season aren't sure yet either. The first two episodes have gone back to the 'monster of the week' formula that was prevalent during the first three seasons. Back then those episodes were great because you didn't know how the brothers would be able to defeat a certain monster. Now it really doesn't matter considered how they defeated the strongest opponent imaginable. It's like playing in the NFL and going to the CFL, Manchester United to Real Salt Lake, Chicago White Sox to the Toledo Bearclaws, National Ping Pong League of America to the much maligned Regional Ping Pong League of Greater Alabama. It just isn't the same level of competition. The episodes, on their own, are pretty decent and show the trademark humor I've come to expect from the show. Its just that compared to last season there is no real sense of urgency (oh, and the new family members from Sam and Dean's mom's side are a bunch of dicks). Hopefully the intensity picks up in the coming episodes. This week will feature the return of Castiel (angel+super serious+not understanding human humor=pure awesome every time!) and that alone should help the show bump up my current rating up from a C. Its the only show on The CW worth watching. . . sorry Smallville/Gossip Girl/I don't even know what else is on that channel fans.

Like movies?
Like zombies?
Like movies not about zombies transformed into movie posters with zombies?
Is that a yes?
Then go here: hollywood-is-dead.com

I read about artist Matt Busch's work in the November issue of ImagineFX and figured I'd share his work with you. Breakfast is Tiffany is my personal favorite.

And finally make sure you join CURE (Citzens for the Undead Rights and Equality). One person can not do it alone, but if we all work togther then maybe, just maybe, zombie's will have the same rights the living have taken granted for too long.

http://www.citizensfortheundead.com/index.html (fyi, didn't like Dead Rising too much, hope this one is better)

Thats it for now. Stay dead, don't eat brains over a month old and watch out for buses!

Slime time and confined spaces.

I recently got my hands on two autographed books (The Frenzy Way and Desperate Souls) by author and director Greg Lamberson. Along with those two books came a copy of Greg's first feature film Slime City (first released in 1989). This dvd also included a commentary, a mini-documentary about the making of the film, liner notes, trailers for a couple other films (I have to check out Womens Prison Massacre and Criminally Insane now!), SHOCK-O-RAMA mini-documentary, the film Naked Fear, and a comentary for that film as well. As I am a huge fan of Lamberson's novels and have wanted to see Slime City for a long time.

I'll start with the movie that was included with Slime City. I don't know how else to put it, so I'll just have to come right out and say that Naked Fear (1999) was really bad. I like the concept behind it but the execution wasn't good. The story is about a man named Camden who at the age of 17 sees his murdered parents right outside their apartment. Ever since then he has had agoraphobia and won't leave the apartment. He spends the next couple of years living alone until one day he decides to get a room mate (forced the plot along but in a unconvincing way). He gets a room mate who starts killing people in the name of "friendship".
Eventually Camden overcomes his fear and gets out of his apartment. . . leaving the murderous psychopathic trapped in the closet (because calling the cops to say "Hey, there's a murderer in my apartment, you guys might want to arrest him." was too hard of a task for him). Obviously there is a final, as mentioned before, completely unnecessary showdown at Camden's girlfriend's apartment (I guess it is possible to meet girls over the phone). The acting was terrible, but it wasn't bad enough to be funny. It looked like the actors were just picked up from the streets and told to read cue cards. The film looks like it was shot on a regular video camera and the voice overs always seemed half a second off. The pacing is extremely inconsistent and the story has severe plot holes. I would recommend skipping this film if you pick up a copy of Slime City, trust me, you'll be better off.

On to Slime City. I'll start off by saying that my mom liked this film. My mom and horror movies go together like Garry Busey and libraries, its a combination from hell. So with that I'd have to say that Slime City was slightly disappointing considering my expectations of it after having read all of Greg Lamberson's books (I should point out that this film is about 20 something years older then the novels). I've come to expect a lot of blood, guts, and brains everywhere. Unfortunetly for me there wasn't much of the first two and just one brain.
The story is simple enough: guy gets an apartment so he can bang his girlfriend, guy meets some CBGB rejects and eats green pudding, guy starts getting possesed by a dead satinist, guy gets all slimy and starts killing hookers and friends. Pretty simple to follow, except that slime guy gets slimy and then unslimy throughout the film without a solid explanation. I always assumed that once you go slime you never go back but I guess I was wrong about that. Its an issue I hope gets resolved in the sequal Slime City Massacre. I'm happy to say that most of the acting compared to Naked Fear (you'll easy see who is and isn't an actor) was good. The film doesn't go overboard with the violence (that's part of the reason my mom liked it so much) and the pacing is pretty slow and jumpy but not horrendous. The film had some cool things to offer like a gang sporting sweet MJ Thriller jackets, a really cool makeup job (think Yellow Bastard from Sin City at the age of 85), a killer stomach (literally), and a creepy old lady sitting infront of a building with a sinister smile. While the film isn't my usual of bloody tea, there was enough to keep me entertained and I look forward to seeing Slime City Massacre, which promises more slime and guts then the first film.

The Amazing (Zombie) Spiderman

This past Friday night was the second night of shoot pictures for my zombie book. My friends Nino Ottolino, Etienne Monroy, and I went to an event called Superheros vs Villains. I thought it would be cool for some zombies to dress up for the event. I decided to be a superhero and for this event I choice Spiderman (any fan of Marvel Zombies might know why). My friends did not have their own costumes so I gave them two of mine and Etienne became a villainous surgeon while Nino became a clown (which are evil by default). We dance like fools and there will definitely be pictures of that in the book! All night people were giving us compliments on our outfits and makeup (all done by yours truly). I can honestly say it was an extremely fun night. I am brain storming my next idea as I write this and hope it turns out as great as the first two ideas have.

I was also lucky enough to get signed copies of The Frenzy Way and Desperate Souls by author Greg Lamberson who was in St. Charles over the weekend doing a live interactive online book signing (it sounds ridiculously technical to me too). I'm a big fan of his novels and have read every one them from front to back. I can also now include Slim City into my horror movie collection (I will try my best to watch it this week and have a review up the next for everyone). Along with the movie I also received the official soundtrack. I'm not sure what to expect from the soundtrack but I can't wait to listen to the sound of guts splattering while sitting in traffic.

Every ones favorite neighborhood (zombie) Spiderman signing off.

Bowling strikes.

I saw Machete this weekend and it was everything I was hoping it would be. The movie plays out just the way the trailer does in Planet Terror (another great movie!). Machete is a Mexican Federale who is continually double crossed by the people he works for. The opening scene is pure badass with Machete taking out a whole building worth of bad guys and rescuing the girl. After that things take a turn for the worst and he ends up in the states working as a day laboror. He is hired to assasinated a senator (Taxi Driver's Robert DeNiro) and the movie takes off from there. The movie has obvious political overtones about immigration but its all done in a humorous way and I never felt as if director Robert Rodriguez was trying to cram it down my throat. The movie is full of blood, humor, cheesy 70s porno music, and Steven Segal speaking spanish, and Lindsey Lohan playing herself (a strung-out drug addict with a messed up family). What's not to love?

Friday night I started working on my book, titled My ZOMBIE Scrapbook (for now). Kelly Wojcik, Joey Dunsey, and myself went zombie bowling. I'm a horrible bowler normally so I had no idea how I would bowl weariing prostetics, makeup, and ripped up clothing. Somehow I managed to win the game (with a slightly less pathetic score then Kelly and Joey)! I should play all sports dressed like a zombie from now on. It was fun and I have the first pictures to use for my book. This upcoming Friday I will be dressing up as zombie Spiderman from Marvel Zombies. It should be a fun night as well.

Big things are brewing.

The wheels are in motion for an awesome zombie event soon! Zombies need exercise too don't they? I would love to go into detail about this but I want to keep it a secret until everything is set. Be on the lookout for the facebook event in the coming weeks. Its going to be bloody fantastic. I also ordered some great things off of mostlydead.com and can't wait until they come in.

Saturday I went to go see The Last Exorcism. It was a really good film (that's two weeks in a row now, Piranha 3D being the previous, I'm shocked at this). The story follows a reverand named Cotton (awesome name, I'm going to name my first child "40% Polyester") who is being filmed for a documentary exposing exorcisms as a hoax. The story takes place in rural Mississippi were it seems possible that people would still believe in the devil taking over ones body. While not horribly scary,  the movie did have a couple moments that made me flinch or just feel uncomfortable. And the drowning baby doll scene was pretty messed up. The story kept me wondering whether or not the demonic possession was real or not, I finally thought I had it all figured out until the randomly bizarre plot twist near the end of the movie. While not the worst twist ever (M. Night anyone?), it seemed rushed and akward. The movie could have ended without the final scene and I would have been happier with that. Unfortunetly it did not but I won't judge the rest of the film by it. People compare this film to The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby and rightfully so. Its obvious that the director used those films for inspiration but still made it feel like its own film. Another good thing about the film was the complete lack of 3D!!! Saving money and not wearing those stupid glasses is always a good thing. This is movie I would recommend people check out.