zombiefreak.com

Looks as though 2007 is shaping up to be the year of the zombie movie. With flicks like 28 Weeks Later, Fido and and a pile more on the horizon how could one think any differently.

This one, American Zombie, has a couple of unusual bits of trivia attached to it.

One is that it was produced by a Korean company planning to produce a number of English language films in the near future.

The second tidbit is that the film was written and directed by, Grace Lee of 2005’s The Grace Lee Project. Yes, a female. That is very rare in the horror genre to say the least. But, I know chicks dig horror too. My wife likes it lots.

Grace’s film appears to take a look at the genre from an entirely different and somewhat sensative angle. Humanizing zombies? Sure. Why not?

Here’s the trailer:

Funny! Zombie prejudice definitely needs some exposure. They are, after all, people too. After a fashion at least.

From GreenCine Daily:

“I won’t say with any confidence that American Zombie is an allegory about Muslims or undocumented immigrants or anything else specific,” writes Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir. “It might just be a goof on the silliness of contemporary media that gets a little broader and darker as it goes along. But the mere fact that [Grace] Lee can make both a media satire and, in the end, a creepy horror flick, while at least alluding to bigger social issues, suggests the breadth of her wit and intelligence.”

Grace is blogging her experiences at Slamdance and seems quite please d with the film’s reception after its world premiere last Saturday:

“The audience was great — they really seemed to get the movie and were troopers, after a couple of nervewracking technical problems. While they were fixing the sound, Austin Basis, who plays Ivan, started passing out one of his Slamdance special edition ‘zines and people went apeshit. People have been coming up to him at the festival, asking for more copies of that thing. Now I want him to do a special edition for every festival.”

For a full interview with Grace Lee check out this article at Bloody Disgusting. In the article Grace alludes to the possiblity of a “Canadian Zombie”. Holy shit! Count me in. I am the zombiefreak and I am Canadian. Audition please. Acting chops don’t fail me now…

Congratulations to Grace and everyone else involved with American Zombie. Sounds like more success is just around the corner. Way to go!

Who said the zombie genre was dead? It keeps on coming back to life one way or another. As it should. No irony there.

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More fast zombies. But don’t be discouraged, this time it looks plausibly done. This film, directed by newcomer Steven C. Miller, has piqued my interest on a number of levels. Automaton Transfusion, according to the posts and reviews on horror-movies.ca anyway, was made in 9 days for a mere $30,000. From the look of the trailer that’s actually quite an accomplishment. I’ve noticed that a few of the “reviews” have been written by people who were involved in the film so we’ll wait to see more independent opinions though the one’s I’ve seen are fairly positive.

Here’s the synopsis:

In the early 1970s when everyone in America was worrying about what was going on in Vietnam, the United States Army was secretly developing a way to reanimate the dead. The hope was to have the dead fight instead of the living, but the experiments were shut down when the reanimated corpses were unable to control their hunger for human flesh.

Thirty years later the army has decided to reopen the project. Grover City, because of its remote location, would be the home of their main testing facilities. Without warning the experiments go horribly wrong in Grover City and the DEAD are now on the rampage, eating everyone in sight.

With the town overtaken by Zombies, a group of High School seniors take it upon themselves to fight back and find a cure for this deadly disease.

Automaton Transfusion is a non-stop adventure of four friends battling there way through swamps, forests, blood, and ZOMBIES to survive!

And here’s the trailer:

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Nicely done. This trailer had me at the obligatory homage to Evil Dead’s Ash. Although I didn’t like the bit about it claiming to be the defining horror film of a generation. I’ll overlook that as the rest of it grabbed my attention. There was a definite intensity to the deliciously gore filled action thanks to the energetic camera work. Hopefully the entire film is this relentless.

Surprising as well is that the filmmakers snagged such a boatload of extras to portray the all important zombie hordes in the film. Props that eat can be expensive. I’ve seen many a craft service table decimated by only 20 background performers and this looked like far more. My bet is there was a pizza sponsor in there somewhere. Good thing too, without zombies you don’t have much of a zombie movie.

Thankfully there were no recognizable stars (see my post on the upcoming Day of the Dead remake below) to take us out of the action. It also appears that this is a film full of down and dirty zombie chomping action. Exactly what the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake seemed to promise but sadly ended up prematurely blowing it’s wad all over itself after only 20 minutes. I’m crossing my fingers hoping the trailer isn’t misleading.

All in all it doesn’t look half bad. I’ll check this one out for sure when it comes around, not only because it looks like a decent zombie film but also for my interest in seeing if a film made for that small amount of money in such a short amount of time can actually achieve its aim beginning to end.

There’s no official release date yet. I’ll keep y’all posted.

Thanks to Zombie-A-GoGo for the heads up on this flick.

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WARNING: If you care, there seem to be spoilers in this unrated trailer. So before you click play consider that. Although I don’t know how you can spoil a piece of shit. It’s kind of spoiled already.

This happens to be a zombie movie I’m not looking forward to. A remake of the third (Hooray for Bub!) in Romero’s original trilogy of the living dead. I know. I know. There’s Land of the Dead and the upcoming Diary of the Dead, but the first three are the iconic films.

Anyway, with B grade stars Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames leading the way this movie looks like it’s going to be a steaming bucket of zombie diarrhea. You know darn well that’s got to stink.

The “From the Director of Halloween H20” tag line at the top of the poster is enough to warn real zombie movie fans and anyone who watched H20 that this is going to be horrendous.

There’s are reasons this film won’t work. First of all it seems to break most or all of the rules established in the classic zombie films that fans have come to love. Just a few of the rules broken in this trailer are:

• Fast and Strong Zombies - Zombies are uncoordinated, a little weaker than a living person, slow and shuffling. It is by the stupidity and carelessness of the victims and often being outnumbered that leads to their demise or infection. It is never that they cannot get away. Even late films like the awesome Shaun of the Dead prove that slow zombies still work. Fast zombies can work too, like in 28 Days Later and almost in Dawn of the Dead (2004), but the story has gt to be strong enough to support it.
• Too Much Information - We don’t need to know what the cause of the zombie outbreak is. Just get on with the action for God’s sake. Sometimes less is more. A little bit of mystery adds to the tension. The fact that the characters in the film don’t know what the hell is happening gives far more substance to each role.
• Lack of Story Focus - To make a decent zombie film you don’t need stars, big effects, sexy twenty somethings or even big effects. The Hollywood teen horror film formula never makes for a great movie. Throw your money and energy at the story. It’s supposed to be about how the living react to the stress of a zombie outbreak. We get to see the true nature of folks in extreme situations. Having some underlying social message is a necessity as well. For example one of the themes in the low budget grand daddy of zombie films Night of the Living Dead (1968) was racism.

 

I’m sure the film will have other flaws that will piss off old school zombie fans like myself as well. I remember when I saw the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake I was disappointed with that as well, but at least it appeared they tried. This one just looks like not only did they break the rules they’ve never even seen the rule book.

Don’t get me wrong. I will see this film somehow, just to see if I’m right about this. I’m hoping some of my connections come through with passes to a premiere so I don’t have to pay.

I know this is contempt prior to investigation, but I can assure you I won’t like this movie. Not one bit.

Thanks to Zombie-A-Go-Go over at Zombie Friends for the heads up on the trailer and wiki article.

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That looks encouraging. War of the Dead from Finland and director Marko Mäkilaakso is a WW2 zombie soldier film that started shooting in November. Fast work on the teaser. Thankfully the cast is mostly English speaking as I’d rather spend my time watching the action than reading.

This film looks much like Worst Case Scenario, a Dutch film with a theme, slated to shoot in 2007. Two European WW2 zombie flicks to be excited about now. I’m not sure I can handle the anticipation.

These links come to you by way of Twitch and Rue Morgue Magazine’s blog.

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Worst Case Scenario - A much anticipated Dutch zombie flick presented by Brian Yuzna producer of Re-animator and directed by Richard Raaphorst. It takes old rivalries between Western European countries to new heights.

The Germans have invaded their country, stolen a world cup from them and now they’ve taken over Dutch beaches. Can it possibly get any worse? You bet your ass it can.

In the final of the World Championship soccer games Holland and Germany are going to war. A visiting American and his family try to get away from the nationwide frenzy, but traveling to a North Sea island they wind up in situations far, far worse.

As someone who bleeds half Dutch I’m truly looking forward to this. It’d be awesome if I were able to get over there and play a zombie in the film as the site offers, but alas, cash is tight right now. Regardless, I’ll be first in line to see this gem when it comes into theatres. hell I’d even preorder it from Amazon right now but the darn thing isn’t even made yet. Good luck folks. Hope you’re out of development hell soon.

Here are more links to trailers and promos:
teaser trailer | cgi promo | cgi promo in hd

NOTE: To watch the trailers on their site you’ll need quicktime to view the files and the files are rather large although well worth the download as the quality is high.

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