:: a world of zombies ::

:: Thursday, July 31 ::

Last night I finally got out and saw 28 Days Later. And it was pretty great. I'm not quite sure why it's being called a zombie movie by everyone, because it really isn't, any more than Lenzi's Nightmare City was. It's more about a contagion that turns people into stark raving mad monsters. But no less monstrous than some of the non-infected we meet later in the film. Of course. I could pretty much see that one coming. But that's really only because I've seen so many of these sorts of films, not because of any inherent flaw in this one.

The acting is well above average. Cillian Murphy as Jim, our hero for the evening, is superb. And it's always a delight to see Christopher Eccleston in anything. His devastating performance as Derek Bentley in Let Him Have It has stayed with me even though I haven't seen that film in over 10 years, and he doesn't disappoint here either, going from likeable to thoroughly despicable with tremendous ease. Naomi Harris is also terrific, thankfully avoiding the 'bad-ass chick' cliches that have become so so tiresome in recent years.

I have to admit to not being much of a Danny Boyle fan. I don't know why but Trainspotting always left me a bit cold. But his direction here is nothing short of wonderful, with an excellent sense of pacing and real feel for pathos that only heightens the horror when it comes. And the use of digital video is also to be highly commended, creating an atmosphere unlike anything else I've seen before. The digital video not only adds an urgent realism to the proceedings but a haunting surrealism as well, particularly in a gorgeous shot of our heroes driving through a field of brightly colorful flowers, which the digital video gives a distorted, otherworldly sort of glow. It's really difficult to describe and has to be seen to be fully appreciated. And once you see it, you'll never forget it.

There's also some excellent use of music by Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Brian Eno which greatly enhances the desolate atmospheres on the screen.

And then there's the ending. It's not ruining too much to say that there were two endings for this movie. The happy ending, which is the 'official' one and the darker ending that was originally intended and has now been added after the closing credits. I seldom say this, especially about 'zombie' movies, but I prefer the happy ending, if only because this movie did such an exemplary job of making me like its characters that I wanted them to have a corny happy ending. So there.

Anyway, if you haven't already, I highly recommend that you rush out to see 28 Days Later. It's certainly unlike anything else playing your local multiplex.


:: Jason Hyde 11:01 AM [+] ::
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Just some random thoughts on John Agar.

I was over at a friend's this weekend getting his home studio ready so we could do some recording with my theremin. And by 'getting his home studio ready so we could do some recording with my theremin' I really mean sitting around watching an old Something Weird tape of 50s sci-fi and horror movie trailers, and two thoughts struck me.

First - man, John Agar's in every other trailer on this tape.

Second - I will never, ever be as awesome as John Agar.

This is the man who defeated the Mole People, who was possessed by the Brain from Planet Arous, he Journeyed to the Seventh Planet and proceeded to hit on every single imaginary female in his immediate vicinity. He had a bigger part in Revenge of the Creature than Clint Eastwood. Agar stopped the Invisible Invaders when that wimpy scientist with the moustache was crying like a baby. In Daughter of Dr. Jekyll he wore a striped jacket that would probably even be forbidden in the Village. He Married a Communist. And in Hand of Death, he turned into the Thing before Ben Grimm did.

John Agar was a god among men. And science was his weapon. He could beat down uppity aliens with science the way Kongor beats criminals with Koma Boy.

John Agar, I salute you. You were William Shatner before William Shatner was.

:: Jason Hyde 12:21 PM [+] ::
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VAMPIRE RAIDERS: NINJA QUEEN

Actually, I'm not sure if that colon is supposed to be in the title, and maybe I'm giving Tomas Tang more credit than he deserves, but darn it, VAMPIRE RAIDERS NINJA QUEEN is a stupid title without the colon. Okay, it's a stupid title with the colon, but at least almost makes sense. Unlike a single second of this movie.

God, this movie. I want to hurt it. I want to hurt everybody involved in its production/distribution/consumption. Of course, that last one's pretty easy, I mean, all you have to do to participate in its consumption is watch the cursed thing, which means you've already been hurt. Job finished.

Tomas Tang...does he really exist? I'm not convinced. I think he, along with Phillip Ko and Godfrey Ho are all simply aliases for one individual. This individual is of course Satan, who apparently decided, sometime in the 80s, that the greatest evil imaginable involves pasting together phony features from the remnants of obscure and/or unfinished martial arts films.* Just take the original footage, insert (badly) some totally unrelated scenes with Caucasian actors wearing headbands that say 'ninja' on them, call it FULL METAL NINJA, give it an eye catching shiny metallic box, and presto! Instant evil. It's a wonder we survived the 80s, seeing how the prince of all that's vile and unholy wielded this awesome power and infiltrated our very living rooms to do that voodoo that he do so well. Of course, the main flaw in herr Satan's plan seems to lie in the fact that not too many people rented these things, and thus the world is not now the devil's playpen**. Oh sure, some people probably got drawn in by the boxes, popped the tape in, got bored, took it out of the VCR, and went to bed wiser becuase they had learned the vital lesson that there are films worse than SPACED INVADERS out there. I was not one of these people. After seeing one of these (ULTIMATE NINJA CHALLENGE, which featured the immortal line 'I kill you, you die!'***), I only wanted to see more, and see more I did. I even realized that not all of them were in shiny boxes, so I learned to watch out for names like Phillip Ko, Godfrey Ho, and Tomas Tang. Even after seeing how miserable these things can be, I kept coming back. You see, Satan's strategy worked on me. I am going to Hell, where Satan will no doubt play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with my soul while Rip Taylor and Phyllis Diller re-enact the entire loathsome filmography of his messenger of evil Zalman King before my horrified, unblinking eyes. For Satan will take away my eyelids. It's what he does.

I know this now because I have seen VAMPIRE RAIDERS: NINJA QUEEN. A friend of mine, who shared a perverse fascination for other cut-and-paste epics with me and is therefore also going to Hell, found it for a couple of dollars and decided that I needed to see it. Not having seen one of these in well over 5 years, I was game. Now I realize that I should have stayed at home pouring hot lemon juice into my eyes. Where do I start with this movie? Okay, instead of the usual martial arts epics usually plundered for these things, this film takes a Chinese hopping vampire flick as its main source of 'inspiration.' Strike one.
Chinese hopping vampires are after all one of the absolute coolest things you could put in your movie, as MR. VAMPIRE and ENCOUNTER OF THE SPOOKY KIND ably demonstrate. Of course, this is not by any stretch of the imagination a good hopping vampire movie at all. In fact, it's the worst. Even worse than that one that was made in Canada.

Our main story involves a group of annoying, giggling Chinese youngsters, some of whom work at a hotel. I think. Anyway, there's this evil guy who's using hopping vampires as part of his scheme to take over the world's hotel industry. No, really. Did I mention that our Chinese heroes are Mormons? No? Well, they are, and don't ask me why. Cut into this less than engaging footage is laughably awful stuff involving a blonde ninja woman (the Ninja Queen of the title, I think) fighting ninjas and periodically watching the other movie in settings vaguely similar to its settings. In some scenes she'll peer out from behind a tree and smile at the wacky antics of the other movie's stars, which is her only participation in these scenes.

What makes this movie stand out so vividly in my mind as such a mind-numbingly painful viewing experience (and I've seen more than one Andy Milligan film) is the sun-bathing scene. Our Ninja Queen has this sun-bathing scene that, while I'm sure is not more than five minutes, it seems like a good half hour of this unattractive woman oiling herself up, lounging about, acting all sexiful, and generally inviting people to ogle her not at all attractive self. Now I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I don't think I want to meet the eye that beholds this as beautiful. Or the creature that's attached to it. Thankfully, our hopping vampire friends interrupt her exhibition and attack, leading to all kinds of lame martial arts action and one of those 'POOF! They're in ninja costumes!' cutaways so common to the ouevre of Tomas Tang. Actually, one of the vampires was buried under her all along, which raises questions that I do not want answered.

Mere words cannot convey the horror of the sun-bathing scene. But I'll try. Nothing I've seen can compare to it. Not endless footage of Jess Franco walking down the street in DEMONIAC. Not the voodoo witch woman in ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE stretching every line out to about three times its required length. Not LAST ORGY OF THE THIRD REICH. Okay,that was going a bit too far. The sun-bathing scene is tied with LAST ORGY. But that was a whole movie, and this is just one scene. One scene that is forever burned onto my retinas. Someday, I may be able to forget it and laugh again. But that day is far far away.

Anyway, a lot of stuff happens that makes no sense at all, and at one point our first set of heroes decide that the urine of a virgin can ward off the hopping vampires, thus paving the way for some painfully unfunny pee-pee humor, which proves that other countries were doing bodily fluid jokes way before the Farrelly Brothers, and it wasn't funny then either. Our heroes in the Ninja portion of the film have a big showdown with evil ninjas and hopping vampires, that, considering the pain that's gone before, isn't too bad. At least it's got some decapitation, which always livens things up.

There's no reason why anybody should watch this movie. None at all. Unless you're uncertain about whether you're going to Hell. If you are, and you don't want to go through life with that uncertainty, then by all means, watch VAMPIRE RAIDERS: NINJA QUEEN. And look me up when you get to Hell. I'll be the guy with no eyelids. We can go play air hockey.


* In fact, it is my belief, based on my studies of Oriental linguistics (which consists mainly of monster names in Godzilla movies), that 'Tomas Tang' is Chinese for 'Big Satan.' Of course, there's a slight chance that I may be wrong.

** This is, of course, open to debate. See the continuing careers of Joel Schumacher and Albert Pyun. And reality TV.

*** This brings up an important point. Some of these things are kind of entertaining in a pointless, stupid kind of way. They're still undeniably evil, though, like the music of John Tesh. Tesh himself is not evil, he seems pretty nice, probably doesn't eat puppies, hasn't raped any nuns (that I know of), and he's fairly pleasant overall. But his music is undeniably evil, and a one-way ticket to Hell. It's not really his fault, it's Satan's.
:: Jason Hyde 11:51 AM [+] ::
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LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE

Sometimes, while watching something for the first time, all you can do is stare at the screen in wonder and amazement, thinking over and over 'why did I push this film aside for so long. What was I thinking?'.

This happened to me while watching Jorge Grau's unbelievably good zombie epic LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (aka THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE and sundry other inappropriate things). This is odd, as it's not like this is an extremely obscure film, like, say DR. FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS. In fact, I had heard and read glorious things about it for some time, but still I put it off. Now, thinking about how the time spent watching ZOMBIE LAKE or Franco's DEMONIAC or that one movie with the chick in the insane asylum that had a guy in a department store wolfman mask for about a minute could have been spent submerged in this undead classic makes me realize just how much of my life I actually waste on frequently trash films (all in the name of science, of course). I almost learned a lesson, but then I'm excited to learn that RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR is out on DVD, so I guess I never learn.

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE opens brilliantly with some incredibly bleak footage of Manchester. We are shown quick cuts of pollution, traffic, soulless (zombie-like, get it?) people going to and from work, etc. There's also a nude woman who runs into the street and disappears. This is odd, since it goes absolutely nowhere. The opening is all set to weird electronic music that gives way to funky 70s garage rock. Let's see, weird electronic music, funky garage rock, bleak footage of people walking around in those little surgeon masks because of the pollution pouring out of post-industrial Manchester. A random naked woman running into traffic and disappearing. We're off to a great start. And it just gets better.

Soon we meet our hero - long-haired and bearded, as was the custom at the time, swinging art dealer George (Ray Lovelock). George is looking to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city (and most likely the pollution and overall misery of Manchester in particular) for the weekend and so he's riding his motorcycle out to the country, where presumably he will lounge around smoking pot and doing other things that swinging, long haired bearded art dealers did in the 70s, when such people apparently ruled the world. George's plans start to go awry almost immediately. While he's gassing up, his motorcylce is run over by Edna (Christina Galbo). I immediately took a shine to Edna because she's got red hair and wears those long black Star Trek boots. Generally, retro fashions annoy me, because those who partake of such things seldom get it right, but the resurgence of long black Star Trek boots makes me happy. After all, it's hard to screw them up, and their renewed popularity means that, everywhere I go, I see women looking like the one who briefly became Dr. McCoy's girlfriend in the 'Shore Leave' episode, at least from the knees down. And red hair is just good. End of discussion.

At this point, I suddenly realized that our protagonists were named George and Edna.

Anyway, George berates Edna in his thick Mancunian accent (the dubbing in this film's surprisingly good, by the way) and more or less hijacks her car to drive to his destination. This doesn't sit too well with Edna, who's on her way to visit her sister, but she gives in, because she did after all trash his wheels. And she's spineless. We will be reminded of this throughout the course of this film.

Of course, they get lost and have to stop for directions. George gets out and chats with a tweedy British farmer guy whose farm is currently the subject of a test to eliminate insects, thus making tweedy British farming that much easier. Ultra-sonic waves are sent through the earth, reacting on the primitive nervous systems of the insects and causing them to turn on and kill each other.
We, the viewers, immediately recognize that this can not be good, because it involves radiation and is being carried out by 'science' guys in white coveralls.

Meanwhile, Edna gets out of the car and, in a supremely eerie sequence, spots a pasty-faced, wet guy with a noose around his neck. This is England, so the pasty-faced part is pretty much a given, but the noose is not a good sign, nor is the wetness, the scary wheezing sound, or the fact that he just sort of appears out of nowhere. Of course, he makes a run for Edna, who runs back in the car and screams until she realizes that it's just not doing any good and gets out to run away from our living dead friend. She eventually makes it to George and describes her assailant, whom the tweedy British farmer recognizes as Guthrie the loonie, a local village idiot type and all around miscreant. There's only one problem, Guthrie the loonie is dead.

Now we meet Edna's sister Katie and her photographer husband Martin, who are not the cheeriest couple in the world. It seems that she has a heroin habit, and the not necessarily warm, but definitely sensible, Martin is shipping her off for treatment. Hence the cause of Edna's visit. Guthrie the loonie makes a grab for Katie, but fails and ends up killing Martin instead, while his camera clicks away, recording the whole scene. Or so you'd think. This is another nice scene, with beautiful British countryside scenery so green you can almost taste it.
George and Edna arrive to discover Martin's body. Shortly the police, under the command of an unbelievably gruff Irish inspector (Arthur Kennedy, in one of the greatest performances in the entire history of European NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD knock-offs). This guy's simply one of the most unpleasant, close-minded, arrogant, rude, obnoxious representatives of the law to ever appear in film, God bless him. And for some reason, he doesn't sound Irish at all, instead he sounds Irish-American. Like Chief O'Hara on Batman.

Our friend the inspector does not believe Katie's story and claims that she killed Martin while smacked up. George immediately runs afoul of Mr. Inspector by constantly insisting that he has nothing to do with all this. He also has long hair and isn't wearing a tie, which more or less put him on the inspector's bad side from the start. Anyway, in one of his less enlightened moments, George talks Edna into distracting a police officer so he can steal the film from Martin's camera, which when developed, shows everything of Martin's murder except Guthrie the loonie. This is the first of the movie's odd inconsistencies concerning the zombies. Created by science, they have odd elements of the supernatural about them. The Inspector interrupts them and tears into George, uttering what may be the greatest line I've ever heard:

'You're all the same, the lot of ya, with your long hair and your faggot clothes. Sex, drugs, every kind of filth'

The rest of the film basically involves George and Edna fleeing the undead (all of whom look really Mediterranean for a film set in England) and the inspector, who's convinced that George is on a murderous, cannibalistic, Satanic rampage across the British countryside. Things finally converge at a country hospital that becomes the scene of one incredibly impressive zombie attack. The movie ends with the typically downbeat sort of ending expected from zombie movies from this period (it's more than a little reminiscent of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), which is then followed by a nice little twist ending that you can't seriously think I would actually reveal here.

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE is probably the best of all the Italian Romero ripoffs, and it was also one of the earliest. Spanish director Grau was approached by the film's Italian producers specifically with the task of making a film like NOTLD. He then proceeded to do a ton of research on medical procedure in order to make the corpses a bit more convincing and came up with the terrifying zombie wheeze that is one of the film's most memorable aspects.

Not that there aren't other memorable aspects. It's a beautifully shot, fast-paced, constantly engaging zombie film that gives us not only one of the best origins for its living dead ever, but also some characters that we actually kind of like and care about, and that separates it from much of the Italian films that followed (most of which came after the success DAWN OF THE DEAD or ZOMBI, as it was known in Italy). Fans of zombie films who haven't yet seen this one owe it to themselves to check it out. As do fans of just plain good horror movies.

Grau sadly didn't do much more work in the genre (his only other horror movie that I know of, the Elisabeth Bathory film LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE came before this one), but his one contribution to the genre of the zombie film is one of the relatively few that deserves to be mentioned alongside Romero's work.

This also has some of the most memorable zombies ever. They all have distinct looks and characteristics, instead of just being a series of similar looking actors in makeup. There's one in particular with a huge post-mortem scar on his (frighteningly hairy) chest that seems to have been prominently featured on much of the overseas marketing and is something of a zombie movie icon as a result. And Guthrie the loonie is just creepy.

So, even though it's genesis is entirely linked to the success of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and it clearly borrows many elements from that justifiably legendary film, LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE is still original enough to stand on its own, and beautifully constructed enough to put it far far ahead of the multitude of crappy Italian zombie flicks out there.

:: Jason Hyde 11:49 AM [+] ::
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THE FUTURE OF TOMORROW - TODAY

Or, the future that really should have been, but wasn't. At least not yet.

Anybody who knows me even slightly knows that if there's one great disappointment in my life, it's that the future has really sucked. Instead of flying cars, silver jumpsuits, meals in tiny pills, personal jetpacks, widespread transporter technology (or transmat, as they call it in Doctor Who), girls in silver mini-dresses, luxury hotels on the moon, colonies on Mars, robot maids and butlers, commercial space travel, and monoliths and space babies around every corner, we get, well, a future that looks much like the past, only with slightly smaller, crappier cars. People are still wearing baseball caps. Sometimes backwards. Women still wear faded and torn blue jeans (in fact, they actually buy them that way. What kind or world is this?). You still see girls with bad Farrah Fawcett hair. New buildings don't look any more futuristic than what was made 20 years ago. Pollution is still a problem. We're still using commercial airliners from 15 years ago. And I can't just step on a platform and be whisked away to Tokyo for lunch and maybe a session in one of those rooms where stressed Japanese business men go to break things. What happened?

The answer is probably pretty complicated, but I think it can largely be boiled down to one thing: we didn't appoint Gerry Anderson Director of All Things Future. Few people have ever understood how the future should look, sound, and be as thoroughly as Gerry Anderson. Thankfully, Sara Ludy is one of those people, and lucky for us, she's expended a tremendous amount of time and effort into reminding us of how the future should be via her wonderful animated short film THE FUTURE OF TOMORROW - TODAY.

Our story takes place on the tiny planet Otbod in the year 2122. This we're told via spacey narration provided by the multi-talented Ms. Ludy herself. On the barren surface of Otbod shines the city of Nyon. Nyon is ruled by the Controllers, sinister black figures with elongated red triangles over their faces. The controllers and their enforcers, holographic entities called Hollows have turned Nyon into a police state where the citizens have little freedom and direct most of their time and energy towards the synthesis of the mysterious drug Lorardrine. Lorardrine is required by the Controllers for reasons unknown to the citizens of Nyon.

The lands beyond Nyon are known as Sohma, home to a race of beings known as Sohms. The Sohms have become aware that an asteroid is hurtling towards Otbod, and so their leader Ikaria sends a scout named Blinx into Nyon to find anything that might destroy it.

I-o and L-o are twins who work in a Loradrine Lab but are regarded as mutants because their eyes shine white instead of red like other Nyons.

I really won't say anymore about the plot, because everybody should try to see this movie under any possible circumstances. The animation is beautifully minimal-looking, but incredibly fluid and evocative, with colors that would make Anderson himself blush. Every character is beautifully realized, with a wide array of space helmets for many of them, if you're into that sort of thing, which you should be. I-o and L-o wear simple white garments with minimal geometric patterns on them. The Sohms Ikaria and Blinx are much more vibrant and colorful, and I'm particularly fond of Ikaria's cool crown. On a space helmet. That alone should make you want to see this film. Then there are the hollows. And they are cute.

Except for the narration, the rest of the film is silent, accompanied only by some amazing and catcy electronic music, also provided by Sara, in case you were thinking that there was something she couldn't do. The soundtrack is most impressive because of it's simplicity and timelessness. It's mainly composed of ambient soundscaping mixed with some themes that range from catchy and dangerously addictive to melancholy and haunting, depending on the scene. It's superb electronic pop, drawing equally on elements of 60s and 80s electronic music, while still managing to exist completely apart from time or trend.

The lack of dialogue works perfectly, since the story's very concise and easy to follow to anyone who's seen any science fiction cinema. It takes some of the best archetypes of the genre and works them into something entirely fresh and immensely entertaining. And it never once drags. The pacing is tight, the images flow fluidly, and the soundtrack is awesome. What more could you want? If you need more, there's an amazing post-credit koda that should bring a smile to even Takeshi Kitano's face. If it doesn't bring a smile to your face, then you're cold and dead inside.

I've seen THE FUTURE OF TOMORROW - TODAY about 10 times in a couple of different forms, and I feel very honored to have been able to observe its genesis from a single image to the wonderful work that it is now. If there's any fault to be found in it, it's that it's not available everywhere for everyone to see, because it's the kind of work that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible.



:: Jason Hyde 11:48 AM [+] ::
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