From Zombos Closet

September 2007

Resident Evil, Extinction (2007)

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Resident Evil Extinction poster image of Mila Jovovich with guns and mean look.Zombos Says: Fair

I knew I had to steel myself against another blistering disappointment in horror movie entertainment. I headed to the concession stand and bought my usual reviewer-comfort food: small Cherry Coke, check; box of Junior Mints, check. I then sat in the last row, far from the screen, symbolically distancing myself from this third installment in a series that has, so far, failed to capture the eeriness and gut-wrenching involvement of the video game it sprang from. I was half-way through my box of Junior Mints, around the time when Alice–lithesome Milla Jovovich–was holding herself in her arms–her clone self, that is–that I realized kicking zombie butt can be fun to watch, even if the dialog, characters, and set-pieces are uninspired to the point of lameness. Let’s face it: the franchise keeps going only because Milla Jovovich is the prettiest and sexiest zombie butt-kicker on the screen today.

Dressed in short-shorts, boots and garters, and two really big, sharp Kukri knives that Jim Bowie would have been proud to own, she presents quite the picture of the fashionably-dressed zombie slayer about town, or desert in this case. Unfortunately the T-Virus has spread well-beyond Racoon City, and now the entire planet is screwed big time, as well as the dwindling bunch of ragtag survivors traveling in a convoy that also would have made Mad Max proud, too.

It all begins promisingly with the nefarious Umbrella Corporation still trying to convert the millions of zombies it helped create into domesticated companions, and trying to perfect their Alice–zombie butt-kicker extraordinaire–clone army (in case their domestication plans fail, I suppose). The original Alice is on the run, trying to avoid the Umbrella Corporation’s equally nefarious and ubiquitous spy-satellites that still run while the rest of the planet doesn’t: damn, those Duracell batteries are good.

After a brief warm-up with a Rob Zombie-styled redneck white trash family and their dead but eager dogs, Alice comes across a notebook that points to the promised, zombie-free land of Alaska. And you thought Alaska was only good for crab and salmon, didn’t you? Of course, with 30 Days of Night soon to hit theaters, that would have made quite a tie-in, don’t you think? Zombies and vampires going at it, and Alice kicking, hacking and slashing all the way. Yummy.

Back to reality. As Alice continues her trek across the now sandy reaches of a decimated Nevada, she hooks up with her old MySpace bunch of Racoon City survivors, whose  caravan is in desperate need of food and fuel. Here’s where the film gets mired in the usual hackneyed theatrics; that  let’s-check-out-the-“deserted hotel,” all two of us, and make sure to get bitten by a zombie while you’re distracted, so you can ignore the impending danger–no one will notice you turning green and attracting flies–and turn into a dead flesh-muncher at a really critical time to screw things up kind of usual.

What’s not so usual is Alice’s newfound X-Men-like telekinetic ability which sure comes in handy when she remembers to use it, and, hey, what’s with those cloudy-eyed birds that have been eating nothing but zombie carrion–oh, sh*t! Run!

Just when you think director Russell (Zen in the Art of Killing Vampires) Mulcahy and writer Paul (Castlevania) Anderson are blindly going through the zombie-shuffle, that Hitchcockian interlude with predatory zombie birds is a hair-raising thrill a minute, especially when Alice shows up to save the day.

But things go back to status quo when Alice and the survivors pull up in a desolate Las Vegas, only to get caught unawares by dozens of ravenous zombies dressed as Mr. Goodwrench by the Umbrella Corporation. While I sat wondering how they got all those uncontrollable zombies dressed in overalls, Alice battled them and the corporation’s attempt at mind control.

Her friends didn’t fare too well while she struggled with that one, but it does send her, very pissed, back to kick Umbrella Corp’s butt, and square off against the evil scientist who tried to capture her. He, of course, is now mutated into the usual BIG and UGLY, possibly dead, creature with evil intentions. Oh, and she runs into her clones. Lots of them. In fact, that’s the best part of the film: the ending. I hope it sets up the fourth installment. If it does, it’ll be a knockout.

All in all, spending some time with Milla Jovovich is always enjoyable. While the make-up on the zombies is cursory,  and the action sequences needed more kick (as Gingold points out, the Las Vegas locale isn’t used well at all), this installment in the franchise is more enjoyable than the lacklustre Resident Evil: Apocalypse. So I didn’t really need to fall back on my Junior Mints and Cherry Coke much.

Disclaimer: We apologize for this reviewer’s apparent lack of professional interest in any of the other actors, like Oded Fehr (who does a wonderful scene with a lit cigarette, a fuse, and groping zombies), in this film. While we agree that Milla Jovovich is an eyeful, it is important to recognize the talents of those supporting victims and zombies that made her look so good. Had we taken our eyes off of Jovovich, we’d be able to name them ourselves. We did notice Ashanti. She looked lovely, too.

Graphic Book Review: Zombie Tales Vol. 1

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Zombos Says: Very Good

No other horror subgenre elicits more fodder for cinema than those nihilistic automatons of sheer irrational fright and disgust. Whether born of thumping voodoo drums, cosmic radiation, or the crisp tinkling of test tubes, the walking dead have brought metaphorical life to many cinematic, philosophical, theological, and fictional works. No other unreal monster instills such chills and thrills as a shambling or sprinting—and badly decomposing—undead aunt, uncle, or significant other that has eyes and teeth only for you. From social commentary to gore, zombies are the cat’s meow when it comes to biting allusive storytelling and visceral visuals combined.

Boom! Studios’ Zombie Tales Volume One takes full advantage of this ironic oasis of socially  relevant dead people by collecting, into a nicely-sized book, stories that run the gamut of zombiedom motifs, including loss of identity, religious dilemma, and gruesome humor. It’s a rare treat to find a collection that provides stimulating horror entertainment across every story. The Walking Dead trades come to mind as one of the few that can do that. Zombie Tales Volume One accomplishes the same feat, and while each story is not above average, many are, and all are competently good.

My favorite would have to be Daddy Smells Different. That foreboding title aside, one of the challenges in doing a short graphic story is to provide enough build-up, within the limited span of panels, to enable an effective ending; one that will leave you thinking—and feeling—a little off the well-trodden trail of typicality. Writer and artist, John Rogers and Andy Kuhn, create a 1950’s-style tale of terror with their snappy narrative, told in the first person by a little boy who goes through a more challenging change than puberty. It’s poignant, a little sad, and provides a kicker ending that leaves you uncomfortable. Both artwork and narrative work horrifyingly well together and capture a bit of that old EC Horror Comics magic.

I, Zombie:Remains of the Day, a three-part story written by Andrew Cosby and illustrated by three capable artists in their different styles, is a sublime dip into the bizarro world of zombie humor. Another tale told in the first person narrative style, it depicts the trials and tribulations of one poor dead-head whose hunger goes deeper than just sweetmeats. Here, loss of identity becomes more replacement by a different one; one you definitely could say is a life-style change, or maybe “dead-style” would be more accurate. With a little tongue in cheek dialog, and decomposing anatomy, the story provides a happy ending only possible in your zombie imagination. One amusing scene has zombie bunnies poised for mayhem. It reminded me of a similar, albeit much more serious scene in Kim Paffenroth’s Dying to Live novel.

Another three-part story by writer Keith Giffen, and artist Ron Lim, is a darkly-humorous, more philosophical exploration of a zombie mind slowly becoming dissolute; a once-living personality slowly dissolving into nothingness. Parallels can be drawn to the reality of alzheimer’s disease as the real horror of becoming a zombie is explored in Dead Meat: the loss of one’s self, one’s uniqueness.

Religious dogma is the underpinning for The Miracle of Bethany, written by Michael Alan Nelson and drawn by Lee Moder. I recall one reviewer mentioning this story could be construed as blasphemous in its use of Lazarus as Zombie O, but fiction can never be blasphemous; only reality can. It’s a story that looks at how a miracle can become a curse if the spirit—and flesh—is weak. We all stand naked in the Garden of Eden after all.

Religion also plays into Zarah’s decision-to-be-made For Pete’s Sake. Writer Johanna Stokes and artist JK Woodward explore that decision—how long do you hold out hope for the one you love in the face of despair—before you can move on with your dramatically altered life? Here, the zombie apocalypse has created a new culture of “them and us”, with people moving from building to building across foot-bridges built from roof-top to roof-top, while the ravenous, ungodly zombies walk streets below. Life goes on, as best it can. I can think of some ungodly places on earth now that closely parallel the unreal world Zarah finds herself in. What would your decision be?

While there are other rewarding stories in this engrossing anthology, the last one will leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth as another, once happy, little boy fights to find his way back home in A Game Called Zombie. This one hearkens back to The Twilight Zone, but there is no Rod Serling here to neatly tie things up. Instead, little Travis must contend with zombies that no one else can see; worse yet, they can see him. Is he hallucinating from the onset of schizophrenia? Where did his dad go? Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes. What was chasing you is now standing in front of you.

Comic Book Review:
Papercutz Tales From the Crypt 2

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Tftc2 Zombos Says: Good

“What the hell?” It was three a.m. in the morning. I woke up from a fitful sleep because someone was banging on my bedroom window. I threw the bedsheets aside and reluctantly got out of bed.

“Finally! Boy, you sleep like the dead,” rasped the Crypt-Keeper as I opened the window. “Hey, watch it down there!” He was standing on the top rung of a too short ladder. Three stories below, the Old Witch and the Vault-Keeper were trying to hold the ladder steady. “Bungling dolts! And they wonder why I always get top billing.”

“Look, if this is about that review I did for issue one—” I started saying.

“Tsk, tsk, a bloated corpse under the bridge, Zoc, bloated corpse under the bridge. Though the boys at Papercutz were not happy. Not happy at all. Lucky for you I convinced them to put down their torches and go home.

“Then who’s that?” I pointed to a man standing at the foot of the ladder, holding a flaming torch high in one hand and flipping me the bird with the other.

“Oh, he’s just one of the artists. They get so temperamental, you know. Look, Zoc, baby, you’ve simply got to check out our second issue. We’ve—” The Crypt-Keeper swayed to the left, then swayed back. “Will you idiots hold the ladder steady!” he yelled. “And you with the
torch, why don’t you put it down and help them? Don’t just stand there! I’m working here!”

The man dropped the blazing torch and quickly grabbed hold of the ladder.

“For hell’s sake, where was I?” asked the Crypt-Keeper.

“You were selling me on reading issue two of Papercutz’ Tales From the Crypt.”

“Oh, right. Look, Zoc, I’m not getting any younger. This is my last chance at a comeback. Would it kill you to just take a look?” He handed a copy of issue two to me.

“Well, alright, but couldn’t this have waited until—say, what’s burning?”

We looked at each other, then down below. The ladder was on fire.

“Jimminy crickets!” yelled the Crypt-Keeper. He lost his footing and fell. Lucky for him, he fell on top of the artist, the Old Witch, and the Vault-Keeper, so that helped cushion his long fall.

“Well then,” I mumbled as I closed the window. I sat on the edge of my bed, now wide awake, and started reading Papercutz’ Tales From the Crypt No. 2.

Right off the bat I’ll say it’s a giant mausoleum step up from issue one. I wondered if that wonderfully ghoulish ghoul on the cover was indeed a giant—you don’t see many giant ghouls attacking apartment buildings—but no, just artistic license, though it does tie into the lead story.

Instead of three short stories like issue one, there are two longer stories. Both offer up just deserts endings, but the first hearkens back to a 1960’s-styled social theme, while the second is a more daring take on a contemporary social reality that perplexes the sane minds among us. And there’s a frightfully funny letters page, The Crypt-Keeper’s Corner, that’s very entertaining.

In The Tenant, writer Neil Kleid and artist Steve Mannion whip up an old-fashioned tale that has the long-gone tenants of cheapskate landlord James Winchell’s slummy property at 666 Colt Street griping for better service. And their bitching is enough to raise the dead.

The flow of panels is good, and the witty story fits the art style of heavy black lines well. With more pages to flesh out the mood and pacing, it serves up a little taste of the original Crypt-Keeper’s sense of irony without being too morbid or gross. The encounter with one dead resident in the basement is a highlight and handled with lots of energy.

One aspect of a comic book story often overlooked is the lettering job. Mark Lerer’s work effectively conveys the emotions and tone of James Winchell’s comeuppance along with the illustrations. Now if they could get the Crypt-Keeper’s loony introductions into his same lettering style, that would be super.

Even the Crypt-Keeper’s puns are better this time around, and more care is taken with his zany antics. The Crypt-Keeper’s Corner letters page is hilarious, and brings back a strong element that made the original comic so enjoyable to read. In this issue, the gasps of disbelief regarding issue one, sent in by fans of the original EC Tales From the Crypt, are priceless, along with the Crypt-Keeper’s responses.

In the second story, The Garden, writer Fred Van Lente and artist Mr. Exes combine to jolt a dumb sap who bought into the ‘deaths for paradise’ insanity, which motivates many suicide bombers, into an unexpected reality. The story has a surprising depth, and Mr. Exes’ art, a heady mix with touches of Max Fleischer kinesiology, Gil Kane, an acid trip, and manga blended madly together, jolts us as well as Richard, the guy who thought he was in paradise, when he discovers what he really got himself into. There’s a tad more gruesome in this one, too.

Mr. Exes artistic style grated on some readers of the first issue, myself included, but I must admit that given the right kind of story his panels carry a lively charge that moves beyond conventional boundaries. Just pick up Abra Cadaver: The Afterlife Adventures of Harry Houdini No. 1 and you will see what I mean.

“What are you reading at this ungodly hour?” asked Zombos, coming into my room.

“Here, you will enjoy it.” I handed him the issue. He took it and sat down in the settee by the window.

“Oh, so that’s why the Crypt-Keeper, the Old Witch, the Vault-Keeper, and some idiot trying to put out a fire on a burning ladder woke me up. I thought I was dreaming. Let’s wake up Chef Machiavelli and have him bring up a pot of hot coffee.”

“Capital idea,” I said and rang his bedroom. It was the common lot this morning for everybody.

Hostel (2005)

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Zombos Says: Very Good

Thank you. It’s very exciting for me to be here, especially since I know that there are some people from Slovakia who probably want to kill me for making this movie. In America, Hostel is a very terrifying horror film for many people, but I truly believe it could become one of the great comedy classics here in Eastern Europe. I’m sure you have questions, and about why I made Slovakia look like all of a sudden it’s from the 1950s, and what it might do to the tourist industry in Slovakia, and I look forward to answering all your questions and hopefully I will not get tortured to death. (Eli Roth, ‘Smash hit horror Hostel causes stir among citizens of sleepy Slovakia’)

Whistling. I hate whistling in a horror movie. It’s such a pleasant activity, a normal activity; one that reflects a satisfied, joyful—even exuberant state of mind in the whistler. That’s why it’s so frightening and effective in the opening scene of Hostel. To hear that simple tune casually whistled by one of the “janitors” as he nonchalantly cleans the guest suites, routinely rinsing away the red splatter and body chunks down a drain, will freeze your blood. Just another day at work: just another day in hell; especially for the tourists. And you thought the plane trip was torture.This chilling contrast between the innocuous whistling and the gory evidence of disturbing activity is frightening, setting the gruesome tone for the film. Callous indifference is the theme here with people unconcerned that intense suffering and death are their job. They make money from it so it’s okay; providing human cattle to be slaughtered by bored Über-rich seeking ever more intense emotional experiences, dehumanizing themselves in their avid consumerism.

What redeems this film from being a gratuitous exercise in explicit gore and sadistic violence is Paxton, the survivor. He starts out as another hedonistic consumer, but gains a precious sense of his soul while losing two fingers along the way. He is forced to care: he cares enough to take time while escaping to pick up his severed fingers; he also cares enough to rush back into the charnel house, after narrowly escaping the caress of a chainsaw, to save a girl he hardly knows.

His decision sets up one of the more intense and nauseating scenes in a film filled with them. When he finds her, she is missing half of her face, and one eye dangles precariously from its now burned-out socket. That dangling eye does present a problem. Okay, what do you do? At this point I had my hands over my eyes, but through my fingers I could see the flash of scissors as Paxton decides what he must do. You know what’s coming, but Roth extends the tense moment into an excruciating eternity.

Roth tickles our fear-bone: the fear comes from being helpless while someone can commit any form of injury on you, and fear also comes from the knowledge that the amoral townsfolk in this creepy village gladly share in this consumerism-from-hell scenario. Even the children are sadistic monsters, roaming the town and demanding tribute; willing to harm or kill for a bag of candy. Being a foreigner in Hostel is a death sentence. The chilling words spoken to Paxton by one of the rich clients sums up the moral decay best: “Be careful: you could spend all your money in there.”

But after a film like Hostel, where do you go? How much torture and depravity can an audience take in a horror film? I’m sure Roth will try and find out.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007)

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Zombos Says: Fair

Half-way into the movie I started to wonder why I wasn’t feeling the love. Where was the lingering taste of candy corn on my lips, the smell of burning pumpkin innards, charred by candle flame, in my nose? Certainly there was no suspense, or even anticipation of it, from the unstoppable bogeyman as I watched Rob Zombie’s re-imagining of John Carpenter’s 1978 retelling of The Hook urban legend, Halloween. Of course, Zombie didn’t have actors like Jamie Lee Curtis or Donald Pleasence to bolster his story, but since he spent much of the film focused on the unkempt Daeg Faerch as the young Michael Myers, perhaps that’s a moot point. Or maybe not?

Making Myers more psychotic serial killer than ghost-like supernatural force to reckon with may be the cinematic equivalent of getting toothpaste and dental floss in your trick or treat bag instead of mouth-watering chocolates and sugary sweets. With Zombie’s penchant for dysfunctional, white-trash families, and potty-mouthed, libidinous characters you really really don’t care about, and lingering stares at his all too familiar blood-splattered tableaus, the hairs-rising-on-the-back-of-your-neck quality of the original story has been carved out and replaced with the pedestrian graphic violence prevalent in today’s horror repertoire.

Subtlety is not one of Zombie’s stronger directorial abilities. He prefers to show everything, raw and bloody, and provide a rationale for why Michael Myers slices and dices like crazy. With a stripper for a mom, a Bowery bum for a father, a very loose unsisterly sister, and school chums that despise him with a passion, Michael will either become a born-again Christian, or a serial killer. While some may argue both cases can be the subject for a horror film, Zombie chooses the latter, and promptly drains the Jack-O-Lantern life out of the franchise.

The adversarial quality of Carpenter’s film, exemplified by Jamie Lee Curtis struggling to survive the normally festive Halloween night, and Donald Pleasence earnestly warning of the bogeyman, sustained the tension and suspense of Michael’s return to Haddonfield. Zombie erases this adversarial plotline by perfunctorily moving from sex-romping victim to sex-romping victim in well-orchestrated, but uninvolving mayhem as Michael goes after his now grown up baby sister. There is no anticipation of violence here, and therefore no suspense or real scares from the unexpected. Michael kills anything in sight so knowing what he’s going to do next is a no-brainer. He’s going to kill everyone in sight. Ho-hum.

Malcolm McDowell’s Dr. Loomis is more social worker than psychiatrist, and doesn’t have the vulnerability that made Donald Pleasence’s more fearful Loomis more interesting. When McDowell tells Michael—after the body count has been steadily rising—that “I’ve failed you,” I thought to myself “Ya think?” Zombie’s Dr. Loomis laments why Michael is so screwed up he can’t be helped; Carpenter’s Dr. Loomis realizes Michael is just plain evil, he’s dangerous, and needs to be locked away forever. Which one do you think would sustain more tension in the storyline?

The trend toward making serial killers humongous in stature also works against subtlety here. Tyler Mane’s Michael Myers is visually imposing, but evil is most devilish when it comes in  average height. And how the hell did little Mikey grow so big anyway? Mask-making is hardly a resistance-exercise, and that’s all he did in his little cell; make paper-maché masks of all kinds to hide his face.

Zombie does toss in a few nods to the original film, and makes good use of the original soundtrack. There’s also a nod to his former band, White Zombie, as  Murder Legendre briefly pops up on a television screen. Zombie continues this theme as classic horror movies appear on television screens here and there. Numerous cameos include Micky Dolenz and Sid Haig.

Zombie knows his craft, but relies on trash-violence and unsavory characters to tell his story every time, demeaning the level of
artistry Carpenter showed in the original. Giving Michael Myers a sordid background, filled with animal cruelty and vicious murder, removes the mystery behind the mask, making this just another slasher film whose action  could have taken place at any time during the
year. But this movie’s monster is supposed to be the Halloween bogeyman, damn it.

Re-imaginings like these make us realize what makes a classic so classic. That, at least, is a good thing.