So the basic story is that of Harry, Hermione and Ron roaming Britain trying to find and destroy the horcruxes that contain Voldermort’s soul and the effects that the Dark Lord’s return are having on the wizarding world in general. That’s pretty much it. It’s a pretty simple story and yet it manages to be complex in it’s simplicity. Wow, that might be the wankiest thing I’ve ever written.

Wanky or not, it’s true. The film manages to be both incredibly simple yet deep and complex at the same time. The biggest change from earlier films is that all of the action takes place outside of Hogwarts. Gone are the little whimsical touches that were littered throughout that school in general. Instead what you get is a far more realistically grounded film. Yes, you still have people using magic and that but there’s no keys with insect wings or talking portraits. It’s much more serious fare.

And with good reason. This is a very, very dark film compared to others in the series. For one thing, there’s a very fascistic overtone to Voldermort’s overtaking of the Ministry of Magic. The parallels are obvious with Nazi Germany. There’s a scene where they are actually creating propaganda entitled ‘Mudbloods And The Danger They Pose To A Perfect Pure Blood Society.’ So yeah, you don’t really need to scratch the surface too much to find the analogy.

What I am surprised by is just how far they’re willing to take everything for what is still technically a kids film. There are scenes of Hermione screaming as she’s tortured by having the word ‘mudblood’ scrawled into her skin, an opening scene where someone is killed because they promote the ideas of muggles and wizards ‘mating’ (as Voldermort puts it) and a beautifully animated sequence about three wizards and their encounters with Death himself. Beautiful but dark.

There’s been much talk about the number of scenes where the trio are just camping with some saying that the film is basically just that but I honestly didn’t feel as if that was dragged out at all. In fact the film seemed to be paced relatively well, perhaps a little slow here and there but not egregiously so. Still, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some problems with the film. For example, one of the horcruxes they find is a locket which, when worn, turns the person wearing it into a bit of a douche bag so my question is why wear it? Hermione had a magical Mary Poppins-esque bag so why not just keep it in there?

Importantly, this is also the first film where the story of the kids was the most interesting part of the film. In earlier instalments I found myself not really caring what the youngest generation of wizards and witches got up to, caring far more about the story of the adults. In fact I really wouldn’t mind a prequel that told the story of Voldermort’s rise to power the first time around and the death of Harry’s parents/ This time round, however, it was all about kids without much input from the adults at all and I went into the film thinking I might have some problems but the story was engaging enough that I didn’t really mind at all.

Still over all, it is a highly, highly enjoyable film. Just don’t see it if you haven’t seen the films that came before it because you really do need to know the story up to this point in order to follow it. I also have to say I wouldn’t recommend it for younger children, no matter how much they beg. Seriously, that scene with Hermione screaming continuously for what seemed like forever was almost too much for me and I like dark shit. Oh and thank fuck there’s no fucking Quidditch. That’s gotta make it one of the best in the series so far. Anyway, overall 4 pints out of five. Laterz.

The film opens with a montage all about George W. Bush winning his fourth consecutive election, the banning of public nudity and the many, many wars that America is currently fighting in. Yes, it’s satire people!

It then cuts to a military experiment which goes horribly wrong and Zombies happen! A military squad is called in to deal with the outbreak in a research facility and they largely manage to do. Unfortunately one soldier, by the name of Byrdflough (yeah, if there’s one thing this movie isn’t, it’s subtle) is bitten and he manages to escapes the facility before turning.

And where does he escape to? Why his local illegal strip club of course! Whilst there, he dies, is reborn and attacks the clubs star stripper Kat (Jenna Jameson). Now this virus attacks men and women differently for some bullshit reason that was explained earlier on. For men, it turns them into your bog standard Romero Zombie but women who are infected get to keep their mental faculties. They just hunger for flesh. Also they’re dead so they do begin to rot.

Anyway, the newly infected Kat, with absolutely no fear or inhibitions, becomes the biggest smash hit the club has ever seen becoming far more popular then she ever was when alive. Most of the other strippers decide to also become Zombies out of choice in order to be better strippers themselves. At the end of their dance, the Zombies pick a punter for a private session backstage during which they bite and kill them. The clubs owner Ian Essko (Robert Englund) locks all the turned customers in a giant cage which he conveniently has in the basement of his illegal strip club. I’m sure nothing can possibly go wrong.

Something goes wrong! The customer Zombies escape and go on a rampage whilst the stripper Zombies fight each other for dominance! Luckily the military squad from earlier shows up and takes out all the Zombies and they discover the virus was released intentionally by the Bush administration in order to distract the country from all the wars and bad stuff and that. Ugh. Now I get the feeling this movie was written by a 9/11 Truther or something.

So, is ‘Zombie Strippers’ a good movie? Really? You honestly have to ask that question? No, of course it isn’t a good movie. The acting is bad, the special effects are awful and the satire is stupid. And again, it’s another film which is sexualising the living dead! Yeah, it’s not so bad earlier on when they are freshly turned and still look relatively normal but they start to rot and people are still cheering and hollering for them. What the fuck? The smell alone would surely be enough to clear out the room.

I will say this. For the most part this movie knows what it is, misguided attempt at satire aside. It knows that it’s a cheesy, exploitation softcore horror film and it doesn’t try to be much else. I suppose I have to give it some credit for that. Also Robert Englund is pretty great, camping and overacting it up to the hilt. Two pints out of five. Laterz.

Some people are going somewhere for some reason. Other people are going somewhere else. People stop at a petrol station and the shopkeep is eventually a Vampire but not at first. He gets shot as does some goth chick. Then some more people pull up at the same petrol station and the bodies of the shot people are in the back room and there is a new shopkeep. Then an old man steals a girl from a woman and the girl is a vampire but the old man kills her. Following so far?

So then the first people, a father and daughter, who were going somewhere also get a girl, but this was voluntarily, from the same woman that the old man did. This girl is also a vampire and she has sex with the daughter. She also bites her while going down on her but this doesn’t affect her yet. So everyone goes somewhere for some reason and things happen but not really. Everyone sort of ends up dead but then there are other scenes which imply this might all be in the head of the daughter in a mental institute. Oh, and Zombies happen but not much.

So yeah. That’s the plot of ‘Vampires Vs Zombies’ or at least what I could pick up as watched it completely baffled. Everything about this movie feels like an endurance test and it’s only 74 minutes long. Oh, but it feels like more. It feels like so much more.

Everything about this film is handled incompetently. It’s not as bad as ‘Birdemic’ but it’s worse than ‘The Room’. The acting is atrocious, the editing is worse with random cuts to random people for what I can only assume are random people. The sound effects sound like they might have been stolen from a Mortal Kombat game and most importantly, nothing makes sense!

To watch this film is to know madness. You enter a surreal world where up is down and left is fish. Yo sit there bewildered as each random scene flashes before your eyes. Things happen, to be sure, but the question remains why are they happening? How are they happening? What the fuck are the rules of this world? Ok, so vampires can walk around in the sunlight and they don’t sparkle got it. Ok, that one vampire got shot in the head and it was killed so why are you attacking them with wooden stakes? Ok, the wooden stakes don’t even kill them, they just paralyse them, so again, why not use the guns? These are the kind of things that run through your head because it is never made clear exactly how this world works. Also there seems to be a Zombie Apocalypse going on in the background of this incomprehensible ‘story’ but no one really seems that bothered by it.

Gah! Thinking about this shit makes me mad and slightly dizzy. I give this film 0 out of 5 pints. Laterz.

Heres a slightly NSFW trailer:

Originally posted 30th October, 2009.

A newer entry into Halloweek today, the 2006 film about a boy and his zombie, Fido.

]]> http://cinepub.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/zombie-month-repost-fido/feed/ 0 Jamie FidoTitle 2 http://cinepub.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/zombie-month-films-to-keep-you-awake-the-christmas-tale/ http://cinepub.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/zombie-month-films-to-keep-you-awake-the-christmas-tale/#comments Sat, 25 Dec 2010 08:00:39 +0000 Jamie http://cinepub.wordpress.com/?p=1063 ]]> So this is Christmas and what have you done? If you’re like me then you probably got hammered and are currently nursing a hangover by getting hammered all over again. And why not? What better way is there to celebrate the birth of Jesus “Future Zombie” Christ then with massive amounts of booze. It’s what he would have wanted. Dude was clearly an alcoholic. How else do you explain all that turning water into wine?

Anyway, I’ll tell you one thing, it’s been a bitch trying to find a goddamn Christmas Zombie films. There were a few promising leads such as ‘Silent Night, Zombie Night” but every time I thought I’d found something, it proved impossible to get my hands on. Finally I was guided towards the subject of today’s Christmassy review, ‘The Christmas Tale’ brought to us by one of the directors and writers of Rec and Rec 2, Paco Plaza. It also stars Ivana Baquero a year before she starred in Pan’s Labyrinth so yeah, it’s pretty interesting from a ‘what Spanish people who’s work I’ve enjoyed since did before.’.

So yeah, as you may have guessed from the people behind it, this is a Spanish film. Set in 1985, it tells the story of five friends who discover a woman dressed as Santa trapped in a hole in the woods. They are about to set her free when two of them who have gone to report the incident to the police discover that she is actually a wanted criminal who has stolen a large amount of cash. They decide that the best course of action is to leave her trapped in the hole and black mail her for the money by starving her.

So what about the Zombies, I here you ask? Well, the film opens with a clip of a film-within-a-film called ‘Zombie Invasion.’ It’s basically a parody of old 80s horror films. Two of the kids get the idea that if they perform as Voodoo ritual, the woman will come back as a Zombie that they can control once she’s dead. Unfortunately, things don’t go quite according to plan.

And that’s all I’m really going to say about the film’s plot because once again, I feel it’s one you should search for and watch yourselves. The kids in the film are all pretty damn good actors, though again, it’s difficult to act just how good an actor someone is when they’re speaking in a foreign language but it all seemed pretty convincing to me.

The film is just as much a loving tribute to the films of the 80s as it is a horror film, the msot obvious being ‘Stand By Me’ and ‘The Goonies’. In fact, the kids in this film really come of as kind of a dickish version of The Goonies. Perhaps the film you wouldn’t expect to be referenced is the one that is referenced most blatantly, ‘The Karate Kid’. One of the kids in the movie is obsessed with the film, wears a karate headband and is often spouting phrases or carrying out scenes from it, including a quite noteable crane kick near the end. So yes, for someone like me who grew up with these films, this was really enjoyable. Throw in the Zombie angle as well and, well, it’s like you’ve made a movie just for me.

Basically, that’s all I have to say without ruining anything. This film is phenomenally entertaining and it’s only 71 minutes long so you don’t even have to devote that much time to it. If there’s one complaint I do have, it’s that perhaps the kids become pretty dark and evil pretty damn quickly but I suppose that’s the problem with a film of this running time. Altogether I’ll give it four and a half pints out of five. Laterz.

Oh and here’s a little PSA TeamUnicornFTW to help you have a safe Christmas in case of Zombie attack. Now, if you don’t mind, I have turkey to eat and beer to drink. So much beer. Merry Christmas and all that malarky!

Anyway, due to my current condition and the fact that writing is becoming increasingly more difficult, I’ll make this quick. The basic story is that five strippers working in a Podunk little town in Japan discover a secret room linked to their dressing room which houses the Book of the Dead. One of them uses it to raise the living dead and before you know it, Zombie Apocalypse.

Of course being as this is Japanese, it can’t just be your normal, everyday Zombie Apocalypse. Nope, it’s the kind that includes Zombie Samurai, a tentacle beats and most disturbing of all (and trust me, you know it’s bad when there’s something more disturbing in a Japanese film then a tentacle beast) a zombie women with a hell vagina that shoots flames. Yeah. That’s something I’ve seen now. Thanks Big Tits Zombie…

Oh god, I need to drink more. Bear with me…. Right, where was I? Yeah, this film is pretty fucked up. The special effects are terrible though. CGI blood everywhere and the most hilarious effect ever done for someone being run over that I’ve ever seen (imagine a still photo of a person being flipped on it’s back as the car goes forward). Hell, you can even see the strings on the tentacle beast puppet. Still, there’s the odd bit of nudity… Weird nudity, like a scene where you just get a close up of tits with blood spraying all over them. So yeah, it’s kinda like bukkake with blood instead of cum. Again, thank you movie.

The thing is, this film would actually probably be bad enough to be worth a look if it wasn’t for the 3D. Unfortunately it’s the old style red/blue 3D and you have to take the glasses off and then put them back on for certain scenes. Your eyes just can’t adjust quickly enough to so many changes during such a short film and so it fails. I’ll give Big Tits Zombies 3D two pints out of five. Laterz.

Recently Britain has been blanketed by that thing that all British people fear the most. No, I’m not talking about foreign types, I’m talking about snow. Seriously, this country just cannot handle snow. If the Nazis had attacked with snow instead of planes during the battle of Britain, we’d all be talking German right now.

Speaking of Nazis, there’s this film out called ‘Dead Snow’ which is about Zombified versions of them. See, Nazis and snow. It all comes together. That’s the film we’re going to be looking at today so it comes even more altogether. What a jolly time is being had by all.

A Norwegian film, Dead Snow was released in 2009 and follows the adventures of a bunch of medical students as they head out into the mountains in order to take a break from their studies during the Easter holiday. To be honest, the characters are pretty shallow. One really likes movies and there’s another one who’s afraid of blood. Oh, and I think one of them is kind of a hippy chick. She’s going out with fear of blood dude. They’re supposed to be meeting another guy’s girlfriend there but it’s shown that she won’t be arriving at the cabin due to Zombies.

A crusty old man shows up at the cabin and invites himself in for some coffee. Then he insults the coffee. That’s about the time that I’d tell he can fuck off but for some reason the students give him a beer instead and he tells them about the history of the area. Seems that the area played host to a bunch of Nazis during World War 2, Nazis who would beat on and torture the local people because… well, they were Nazis. Towards the end of the war, when it was pretty obvious Germany was fucked, the Nazis looted all the valuables from the town. This pissed some of the locals off and they rebelled against them. Those who survived the uprising escaped into the moment where it was assumed they froze to death.

Anyway, the group find a box hidden in the cabin filled with valuables. Soon the Zombie Nazis (or is it Nazi Zombies?) are upon them. The rest of the film kinda plays out as you’d expect. Zombies attack people, Zombies kill people, people kill Zombies. There are a few surprises, in particular a couple of characters who I really didn’t expect to die but for the most part it’s your standard young-people-in-the-woods horror film.

The movie even acknowledges this. As they are heading towards the cabin, the characters lose mobile phone reception and a discussion immediately starts about just how many horror movies start with people going to the woods and losing their mobile phone reception. There are also many, many visual references including ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and most obviously the Evil Dead series which is always fun to see.

One thing I will say for this film is that it is fucking gory. There are entrails and blood splattered all over everything. I generally have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to gore but there was some stuff in here that had me turning my head away from the screen, in particular something involving intestines and a tree. Ugh… Fucking hell…

Overall, it’s a fun enough film. It manages to be quite funny as well as gory, though it never really manages to be scary. It’s a nice little film to just throw on and watch if you don’t wanna think too much… though subtitles do make it a little difficult to just veg out completely. I will say that towards the end, I did find myself losing interest a little bit but when all’s said and done it’s a nice little distraction. Three and a half pints out of five. Laterz