I watch em so you don't have to! Zombies from around the world

Went on a bit of a foreign zombie kick. La Horde from France, REC from Spain, and Rammbock:Berlin Undead from Germany.
   It probably goes without saying that REC is the best of the bunch. I must confess that I saw the American re-make "Quarantine" first and actually liked it. But REC managed to be creepier and better. The sense of claustrophobia is almost overwhelming. Shot in a real apartment building with actors who had limited foreknowledge of their fate, REC piles terror upon terror. Even the moments where the reporter and her cameraman find a place to rest are almost perfect examples of sustained tension. As with all these films, I did have a bit of trouble reading subtitles during the more intense scenes. But with REC, I often found myself forgetting to read for much longer stretches as I was just too wrapped up with the fear! 4 brains out of a possible 5
    La Horde is set in a small city in France. Criminals and cops get stuck trying to escape an overrun building together. My favorite thing about La Horde has to be all the brutal hand to hand combat with zombies. Most films show a bit of mele and then it all becomes guns and quick blows to the head. But there are some frightfully violent scenes where zombies are getting the shit kicked out of them by crazed gangsters or cops pushed to their breaking points. The movie does tend to leap from this gritty reality into almost cartoon levels of chaos that can suddenly take you out of the moment. But I still enjoyed it. 3 brains out of a possible 5
   Rammbock is a bit more low key than La Horde. But instead of heavily armed cops and gangsters, we have an apartment block full of regular citizens scrambling through attics and fighting their very family and neighbors for survival. In some ways , this is the most lighthearted of the three with odd moments of silliness, but well balanced with heavy scenes of watching people slowly break down from the pressures of being trapped with zombie loved ones. 3 brains out of a possible 5.
    I recommend all three of the flicks which is a new thing for me. I'm loading up the Netflix queue with a whole new round of zombie movies, most of which I'm hoping will be terrible, and I'll watch them so you don't have to.

Movie Pitch to Our Friend Hollywood

Hey Hollywood! While you're out remaking everything 80's, I found one you missed. Now, just hear me out. From terrible Dukes of Hazard, to a really fun A-Team, you've covered a lot of ground. I'm looking forward to Tron, and we'll just agree to disagree on those craptastic Transformers movies, but this is the big fish you didn't capture. We even wrote a script to make it easy. Me and Dekx will direct of course. So here it is. You ready?

Ok Ok Ok!

ALF.

Yeah! ALF. Everyone's favorite alien life form from Melmac. But we'll darken it up for modern audiences, so he be out for revenge on the Tanners. You see, the series ended on a bad note for ALF. The Tanners dropped him off on the side of the road so he could be picked up my other dudes from Melmac, but instead, the Army showed up and took him away. Fast forward 20+ years and ALF escapes, but he's not the friendly Gordon Shumway of old. No, this ALF is out for revenge. It's just like Kill Bill but with aliens, cats and crackwhores. Check out the poster!

Let us know when you want to see the script. Dekx had some cool ideas involving slow motion gun fights in a trench coat factory with doves flying and shit and we had some stuff with ALF eating cats and making little children cry. It's friggin' awesome!

Have your robots call our robots.

Moth

5 Things Missing From Zombie Flicks or: Put Me In, Coach!!

Hi there, Hollywood. Can we talk for a minute? There are so many beautiful, feasible ideas that are being neglected in the genre of Zombie movies and I'm worried you don't even know what you're missing. Every time a new film comes out I get my hopes up that I'm going to get a fresh new look at solving the age old problem of killing a fuckton of shambling, undead corpses and then I get the same old shit. So here are five things I would incorporate into a movie were I writing/directing.

5. Why the hell do so few people wear armor in zombie movies? I understand a lot of them take place during the initial outbreaks so people aren't prepared necessarily for such an ordeal (Although seriously, you should be. It's really just a matter of time, people.). But once we're a couple of weeks into the infection I want to see people in a minimum of leather, top to bottom. Zombies are driven by their insatiable lust for blood, guts and brains, but they are still running on the Human 1.21.036 chassis. There is only so much power the average zombie can deliver. Leather would divert a majority of bites and scratches while leaving the good guys the ability to maneuver effectively. If they get their hands on some Kevlar or those crazy fucking bear suits, so much the better.

4. I'd like to see something done several months after the ZombPocolypse in which pockets of humanity have managed to survive and congregate. In that context I want to see a methodical collection of supplies from a given region, say a couple of city blocks, and then I want to see that shit burned to the ground. Zombies can't sneak up on you if you can see for a quarter mile in every direction. What's the sense in leaving buildings up when all they do is make good hiding spots and off-camera teleportation landing zones for zombies? I'll tell you what's the sense. NONE!

3. Pikes and shield walls. Hey, not everybody is going to get their share of guns from the sporting goods store and you can find trees all over. Let's see some old school medieval shield walls in the absence of firepower! I'm talking about the head-to-toe castle doors. And peaking between each shield should be a man with a pike, impaling reanimated facemeat until the cows come home.

2. True, high quality marksmanship at a distance. Also known as sharp shooting. Imagine a combination of the sharpshooter scenes from Black Hawk Down and the "cover me, I'm going in," scene near the end of The Long Kiss Goodnight wherein Geena Davis keeps Samuel L. Jackson alive as he makes his way through an enemy installation. I want to see a one shot, one kill scenario with some teeth to it!! Who gives a shit why the lone man on the ground has to get to the far side of the zombie horde? For all I know it's to save the last known living puppy. Or to get his hands on his irreplaceable stack of PorNoire comic book series Madame Ovary, the ongoing saga of a combination titty bar and OBGYN office. What's important is that he's zigging and zagging. Bobbing and weaving. And zombies are falling all around him because his brothers in arms turn their hats backwards when it's time to get serious, just like Lincoln Hawk.

1. Any high-caliber/high-rate-of-speed, antipersonnel gun being fired effectively and efficiently into a writhing mob of zombies. You remember the one part of Matrix: Revolutions that you actually liked? Where the squiddies came piling into the dock and they were being mowed down by the dozen? Imagine a mini-gun in the hands of a highly trained and experienced expert with a person dedicated solely to reloading and another to covering stragglers. This should not just be a scene where they manage to hold out for five or ten seconds while the hero gets away. I want total annihilation, wave after wave of bodies evaporating from the shoulder up.

These things are well within your means, Hollywood, so why do you keep fucking around? Is it because you're worried that if you set the bar too high you'll be required to achieve that level of awesome again and again? If that's the case, then bring me in for the Big Win. I've been waiting feverishly in the bull pen and I have a case of zombie movie blue balls so severe I have to wheel around a liquid nitrogen tank to keep them in check. I know it's scary, being cuckolded in front of your beautiful lady, the American Audience, but let's face it; if I don't give her what she needs Boyle and Romero are just going to wait for you to start making Twilight 3: The Emoning and then poke her ass when you're not looking.

Glad we had this talk.

Hooray for Tuesday!

28 Weeks Later comes out on Tuesday. That means that by Wednesday morning I'm going to be a stressed out wreck of a man who stayed up all night watching zombie movies! Being very poor lately, I haven't bought any movies in a while (except Hot Fuzz), but 28 Weeks is a MUST.

MOTHbot <3 Zombies