The Living Dead Girl

 

Very Gone Girl

The Living Dead Girl
aka La morte vivante
France 1982 Directed by Jean Rollin
Redemption Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Big story spoilers but, honestly, who watches a Jean Rollin film for the story?

I remember watching this one quite a while ago and being blown away by the emotional performance on this one... something I’m really not used to having to be dealing with on a Jean Rollin film. Revisiting it now on a gorgeous US Blu Ray from Redemption (some of Rollin’s films are still, bizarrely, cut in the UK... so really, don’t buy British)*, I’d have to say that the emotional performance at the heart of the film by the title character is maybe a little diminished in power but I’m mostly putting that down to knowing exactly where the movie is going. It’s actually a bit of a mixed bag though and I’d have to say now that, although I was remembering a lot more from this movie than I actually got, it’s still a resonant film but it pales a little in the wake of Rollin’s previous film, the truly emotional The Night Of The Hunted (reviewed by me here).

Although there are no actual vampires again in this movie (Rollin would return to his favourite night creatures later in life), it does still continue his idea of having a duo of protagonists in the film... who also double as a duo of antagonists, it has to be said, depending on your point of view. The two in question are two childhood friends and... it’s heavily implied... lovers. They are Catherine Valmont played, impressively, by Françoise Blanchard and Hélène, played by Marina Pierro (the actress/later muse of Walerian Borowczyk).

The film starts off with Catherine deceased for two years before she is accidentally resurrected by three gentleman dumping toxic waste drums into the family crypt... in the most improbably manner and in a coincidental and less than credible series of incidents when they are trying to steal whatever is on her, completely non-decomposed body. Don’t go there... it’s a fantasy movie, after all. Anyway, in her newfound, revived by fumes, zombie status, she kills one by gouging his eyes out, another by tearing his throat out... the third has already died by having his face accidentally melted in the chemical spill.

The film plays out like a series of bizarre coincidences, as Catherine returns to her house... more like a castle... and eventually kills the estate agent who is staying at the place while she is trying to sell it, as she is making love to her boyfriend. Then Hélène turns up and discovers Catherine has been resurrected from the dead and, their bond reunited, reminds Catherine how to speak, in a sequence not totally unlike, in Blanchard’s impressive performance, the famous blind man sequence in the 1931 version of Frankenstein (reviewed by me here). Shenanigans ensue as an actress/photographer is trying to find and take more pictures of the dead Catherine who she snapped in the field earlier in the film. Meanwhile, Hélène is starting to gather human victims for her dead friend in order to keep her alive, when it’s found that birds or animals are not good enough as a decent food stock.

But it’s not the story, which kind of hangs together in spite of how it sounds here, that’s the thing that keeps you watching. Nor is it all of the performances as, like Rollin’s early pictures, it’s all a bit hit and miss in that department, with some people doing good and others... best left uncommented on. But Blanchard and Pierro are spot on and the film explores the relationship and the way that Catherine’s zombie is increasingly, through her own growing self awareness (and attempted suicide by drowning... something which doesn’t really work when you’re already dead), seeming less of a bad person while Hélène is actually becoming the evil one of the two, attempting to procure living victims for her friend (indeed, Catherine actually cuts one of them free to help her escape before Hélène returns again).

The film ends with a moving moment where Catherine, driven by her own hunger, eats her willing friend and is left totally alone in the world with an uncertain future. It’s a bleak, nihilistic ending with Catherine screaming at the bloody demise of her friend by her own hand and, I guess it is quite powerful at that.

The film is somewhat atypical of Rollin in some ways. I mean, there’s some nice camerawork, for instance, when Hélène has left a body for Catherine she goes into a small tower filled with pigeons to get away from the screams and, looking up at the ceiling, the camera rotates on a POV from her viewpoint... which is cross cut with the camera rotating the other way at the same speed as we watch Cathrine eat her latest victim. However, there are also various things which I don’t remember seeing Rollin typically do that often, if at all, such as zoom shots, repeats of a shot in slow motion with a phased sound in the background to emphasise a moment early on in the film... and a section of the film shot in jerky, hand held camera and edited to give a kind of chaotic vibe. So, yeah, I guess he was trying something new here too... although there is some confusion about a simultaneous American version made on the same sets at the same time on a different camera in English and shot with a different, quite hostile and aggressive director by all accounts, which never got released... so I’m wondering if some of those shots maybe made their way into the French version.

Another thing is that the goriness of the violence is quite high for Rollin and one wonders if that was a natural progression to be more explicit in the graphic violence or whether that was a condition imposed on him by the producer? It’s kinda interesting but, shot by Rollin, it nevertheless looks incredible. The score however, by one of Rollin’s earlier musical collaborators, Philippe D'Aram, seems a trifle ‘against the grain’ in certain parts of the film. Also, there’s a musical group playing in the village square who have obviously been overdubbed with something completely different... the big giveaway being that they’re seemingly playing an instrumental track but this doesn’t stop the singer belting out whatever song she was singing, with absolutely no vocal on the audio. Um... yeah, okay.

Either way, The Living Dead Girl looks fantastic with Rollin’s usual penchant for the naked female form coming to the fore, mingled with buckets of blood (usually splashed all over said female forms) and some beautiful looking shots. It’s a nice enough movie and, still unusually for Rollin, has an emotional depth to it barely approached by the majority of his movies... but I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a jumping on point if you’ve not seen any of his other masterpieces, for sure. Great if you’re a Rollin fan but maybe best to seek out some of his other movies first, if you are not in the vicinity of that particular fanbase.

*Actually, the recent Indicator editions, which are also quite beautiful in their limited edition versions, seem to be free from cuts in the UK... although it’s very telling as to which of the more famous Rollin titles have not been released by them over here yet. So far they’re safe releases so far but, you know, do your research.

Zombieland - Double Tap

The Tappening

Zombieland - Double Tap
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
2019 USA
UK cinema release print.

Wow. it’s been ten years already, to the month apparently, since the first Zombieland hit cinemas and received a warm welcome from audiences across the globe. It had a certain easy charm and a lot of gut wrenching humour in the movie but it’s taken a while to get to this sequel, which is also set quite a time after the first film, with the four main actors reprising their roles... Woody Harrelson as Talahasse, Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, Emma Stone as Wichita and Abigail Breslin as Little Rock. Normally when a sequel takes a long time in its gestation period, the cast and crew are always quick to say that they were waiting until the script was properly developed and right and, you know what? I wouldn’t have minded it a bit if they’d have claimed the same thing about this one because, if anything, Zombieland - Double Tap is even funnier and at least as smart and self aware as the first movie.

This film starts with our four friends making their way through the post apocalyptic Zombieland and using The White House as their home before things get messed up and the two girls take off again. Columbus re-finds love... okay, re-finds sex... when he discovers the hilariously airheaded Madison, played by Zoey Deutch and things get even sillier as the writers do not use her as a throwaway character and she has a role to play in this... including making Wichita jealous when she regroups with the other two.

Why does Wichita come back? Well, Little Rock has found love with a peaceful but impossibly naive pacifist who is taking her to the ‘safe haven’ of Babylon, populated by peace loving folk who burn all their weapons and turn them into jewellery. Trouble with that is... things are getting even more dangerous out there in Zombieland, with a new breed of hard-to-kill zombies beginning to appear. So the remaining four go on a road trip to catch up with her and, on the way...

... they meet a few new characters, in addition to Madison. There’s Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch, for example, playing bizarrely similar characters to Talahasse and Columbus, which may seem like a bit of an obvious ploy for comedy antics and, indeed, it is... but like the first film, the writers are well aware of what they are doing and make sure the audience know they are not trying to dumb it down for the viewing public. The scenes with these two are actually very funny and they don’t outstay their welcome. Also, one of my favourite actresses, Rosario Dawson, gets a pretty decent role here as another new character, Nevada... so I was happy.

There are quite a few shout backs to the original movie in this one... so if you haven’t seen it in a while, you might like to re-watch it quickly before going to see this... like a wonderful scene where our main protagonists find out that Columbus’ accidental killing of Bill Murray (playing himself) in the first movie has spawned a verb amongst the surviving human population in those areas. There’s also Columbus’ rules and various typographic shenanigans lit up on screen via the use of CGI which really move the film along and tug at the funny bone in some cases (try and read them all because there are some great throwaway lines hidden in the words here).

Now, it would be true there are no real surprises in the movie... a ploy where something happens to one of the characters halfway through the story to cause their hasty exit from the film for a while didn’t fool me one bit, for example, with exactly what I thought was actually going on (down to the specific manifestation of symptoms... trying not to spoil it here) actually turning out to be the case. However, because the script is so intelligent in terms of the dialogue and the way that dialogue functions, which seems to be a trait built into the cynicism of the characters, thus allowing the audience to know that they are ‘in on the joke’... means that even the ‘not so surprising surprises’ are not exactly disappointing and, honestly, just add to the fun here. In fact, I rarely laugh at comedies (even when I love them) but this one did get a good number of chuckles from me during the screening.

Also, like the first one, the film doesn’t skimp on the goriness normally associated with the zombie genre (even zombie comedies like this one) and, although it does kind of 'normalise' the violence somewhat... in a non-jaded manner... it does also get a few laughs on occasion, especially when Columbus is running us through the zombie-types which they have now become known to the group as.

And, this was a near perfect movie for me. If I had to say the one thing that disappointed me about this one, then I’d have to say it’s that there are no references to Twinkie Bars in the sequel, given that they played such an important role in the first film. Honestly though, it doesn’t really matter here because the quality of the script is such that I’m willing to forgive small character continuity traits like this and, as Columbus points out in his running voice-over narrative at the start of the film, the characters have moved on a little since the first one. There was even a true moment of suspense towards the end of the film when the fate of one of the main characters hangs in the balance... which was pretty good going from the director here, since it’s a comedy.

So there you go. That’s me more or less done on Zombieland - Double Tap other than to say, if you liked the first movie then you’ll probably really like this one and, a quick word to stay around past the credits... there are mid credits and post credits extra scenes, both a shout out to a specific, audience pleasing sequence in the first film so, you know, don’t run for the exits when the end credits start playing out. Also, if you do stay, know that it’s actually Woody Harrelson covering a song over the end credits too so... you know... stay in your seat for a bit.

The Dead Don't Die

Fourth Wall Of The Dead

The Dead Don't Die
USA/Sweden 2019 Directed by Jim Jarmusch
UK cinema release print

Warning: Some very slight spoilerage.

I’ve always liked Jim Jarmusch as a writer/director, since first seeing his early masterpiece Down By Law in the late 1980s. I’ve not seen all of his movies... there are a few gaps... but I have seen and enjoyed most of them. Every now and again he will make a movie that seems to be a complete side step from his usual fayre. The first time I noticed this was in his truly excellent Ghost Dog - The Way Of The Samurai but he also took me by surprise by making a ‘vampire movie’ a few years back called Only Lovers Left Alive (reviewed by me here). Both of those films were much more commercially minded, it seems to me (either by design or by fluke) but each still transcended their genre trappings and held the key elements that I tend to associate with Jarmusch’s work over the years...

Those being: They were funny, poignant and highlighted the alienation of people sharing different languages and cultures even as they drew together.

So when it was announced that Jarmusch had made a zombie movie, I was interested... not just because I happen to like that sub-genre of horror movie anyway but because I knew, coming from Jarmusch, that it would be like no other zombie movie that ever came before it. Well... I got that right.

The film stars Bill Murray and Adam Driver, both regular collaborators with the director (check out Driver’s role in the directors last non-documentary movie Paterson, which I reviewed here) as two cops who are the main police presence in their small town of Centerville, along with the only other cop in town played by Chloë Sevigny. And they are all supported by a star studded cast, many of whom have worked with the director before, including Danny Glover, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, RZA, Selena Gomez, Iggy Pop and Caleb Landry Jones (in a wonderful turn as a petrol and film/comic book merchandise dealer who wears a Nosferatu t-shirt). And, as you would expect from a cast like this (or pretty much any cast under this director, actually), they are all pretty amazing. Between them, Murray and Driver keep the mood sombre with their perpetually downbeat expressions and this helps maintain the minimalistic, gloomy atmosphere of a town, one of many, which has suddenly been overrun with a plague of zombies.

Now, I think this film is going to really divide people and there’s an element that even I, while laughing out loud at a lot of the wonderful humour on display here, found somewhat annoying. I’ll get to just what that is in a minute but let me first look at what this film both shares and, often, doesn’t share with the zombie genre in general.

Well, the common traits are a marked goriness when the humans are attacked although, conversely, when older zombies are out walking there is just dust instead of blood, which is possibly more accurate (I’m not sure, not being an expert on the undead myself). There’s also... and this is quite blatant here and almost being done just to check off boxes, it seems... the comparison of zombies who, like their nearest on-screen antecedents in the George A. Romero zombie flicks, are a satire of various aspects of our culture. Indeed, Jarmusch almost goes over the top to prove a point here by comparing some of the zombies to mobile phone/social media users and demonstrating this while it’s already been established earlier on in the text of the film what the ‘wifi’ so desired by the walking dead has already failed in the town.

However, it does do a lot which the modern, post-Romero zombie movie doesn’t often do. For example, it gives us a pseudo-scientific reason for the outbreak of the undead (which somehow comes in two stages in its ressurectional properties and thus renders the narrative nonsensical anyway... possibly what Jarmusch wants here) whereas most modern zombie films don’t try to find a rationale behind the undead shenanigans, they just deliberately side step it and cut to the chase. Here, Jarmusch has introduced the concept of polar fracking throwing the earth off its axis and this somehow raising the dead. Honestly, though... I think this is just another excuse to heavy hand the various metaphors used within the genre and, in some ways poke fun of it.

And that’s where I have my main problem with this film... the lack of respect for the genre. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with a director like Jarmusch seeming to say that films made in these kinds of genres are dumb and I’m more than happy for him to have a pop at them. However, the way in which he does it, with a blatant disregard for his own story mechanics where its later shown that... quite literally... anything goes (and if you’ve seen the movie I’m talking about both the final exit scene of Tilda Swinton’s character and the awareness of its non-feasibility in the script by Adam Driver’s character). And this is a big problem for me because, as I’ll get to in a minute, this kinda feels like the director is insulting the intelligence of the kinds of people who would turn out for a film like this... or at least that’s the way it felt to me, anyway.

Also, there’s a lot of referential, postmodernistic jokes in the main body of the film and while the director has done this just a little in the past, usually with a lot more of a story impact than the ‘thrown off’, almost Tarantino-esque way he does it here, I think this dumbs down the movie somewhat too. Again, don’t get me wrong because I had a little chuckle when I saw the late, great director Sam Fuller’s name on a tombstone but this film seems to be loaded with this sort of stuff and, outside of the obvious and loving references to Pittsburgh (where Romero plied his zombie trade), there seemed to be to be way too much of this kind of thing and it felt like the high calibre director was kind of slumming it, to some extent. Jarmusch is better than this, is what I kept thinking... it just seemed a little out of character for him.

Okay, so there were a few walk outs in the audience when I saw this (I’m pleased to say because, if someone like Jarmusch doesn’t get some walk outs then he’s almost failed) and I think this may be due to the quite blatant self awareness of some of the characters, Adam Driver’s in particular... and their inability or disinterest in helping themselves out in terms of where the script is taking them. So, yes, Adam Driver and Bill Murray’s characters both show, from very early in the film, that they are characters in a film and this kinda grates in the way it’s done. We’re not being asked to share in any peril or the particularly humourous modes of speech that the various characters explore (including cycles of repeat phrases which got me smiling quite a lot, it has to be said) because we can’t invest with them in any way as characters. In fact, we are being asked to interact with them on a more metatextual level, it seems but... only when it doesn’t get in the way of the on-screen action... which is a bit like the director is trying to ‘eat all the pies’ and not helpful in creating a film which holds together tonally, despite the minimalistic air of cynicism and acceptance that Jarmusch pulls from the air almost effortlessly.

Despite all these criticisms though, I personally really enjoyed The Dead Don't Die. It’s not ever going to make the top of my list in terms of favourite Jarmusch movies but it’s an entertaining piece and I think long time fans of the director shouldn’t have as much of a problem with it as a more commercially minded audience expecting to see a ‘cool zombie movie’ might have. Recommended to cineastes who are not worried about seeing what I think is personally too many directorial experiments thrown together into the same film. It’s interesting, funny and entertaining so, honestly, what more could you want from a night out at your local cinema?

Extinction

Harmony Heir's Prey

Extinction
Spain/USA/Hungary/France 2015
Directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas
Sony Region 2 DVD

Warning: Very mild spoilers... which you’ll almost certainly see coming, anyway.

Okay... this is another one I got into through the music because Varese Sarabande released the score by Sergio Moure towards the end of last year. So I waited for it to hit the cinemas over here and, of course, after a while I found out that not only hadn’t it got a big screen release in the UK, it was already on bargain bucket DVD on Amazon. So, yeah, finally got to see the movie that the cool music went with and... I was not disappointed.

Based on the novel Y Pese A Todo by Juan de Dios Garduño, who also co-wrote the screenplay, Extinction tells the story of a few surviving people after a couple of apocalyptic events hit worldwide, one of which is akin to a zombie virus. So, yeah, this is very much an I Am Legend variant in some ways. It’s got not so great word of mouth or critical celebration, it seems to me, but having watched it I have to say, it’s one of the more interesting little horror films that we’ve had released over here recently (albeit on a ‘straight to home video’ format in this country) and I really don’t think it deserves the attention, or lack thereof, that it’s been getting.

Like most good zombie films, there is no reveal as to how the zombie virus got started and we start off with a strong opening scene as civilians are being escorted by the military on a couple of buses. On that bus are Patrick (played by Matthew Fox), Jack (played by Jeffrey Donovan), Emma (played by Valeria Vereau) and Emma’s tiny baby Lu. Any fan of horror films knows a military escort on two buses with a couple of armed guards on board to protect the passengers is bound to go wrong and, as you might expect, it’s not long before the military escort are picked off and infected by flesh chomping undead and the passengers are on their own and fighting for their lives...

We then cut to nine years later and the sleepy village of Harmony.

I say sleepy village because it now has a population of only three people... Jack and Lu, who survived the bus attack from the opening sequence and, in a separate compound, Patrick and his faithful Welsh Border Collie, known as... um... dog. Good a name as any, I guess. I suppose that's four survivors, then, if you count Patrick's four legged friend. It’s clear something has happened between Jack and Patrick so that they are estranged in this manner and, although you think you can probably guess exactly what that is after you’ve seen the full, opening sequence... it’s actually not quite that variation of the events that you think must have happened. It all amounts to the same thing, though, and you’ll see that play out in one of many flashbacks as the movie continues on its, pretty interesting, path.

One thing is for sure, though, and that’s the cold and snow which these last three survivors are living in. And that’s where the existence of a second apocalyptic event is revealed to the audience. The Earth somehow managed to have a ‘big freeze’ and this, effectively, second ice age (well, it snows a bit but I guess you could define it as that) is what killed off all the zombies all those years ago. Although this doesn’t stop Jack and Patrick taking every precaution just in case, you know, someday the zombies return. Which you know they’re going to, right? Except... maybe not in the form you would expect.

It’s very much a character driven piece and the writers and directors take time to let the actors fill out their roles and allow them to live in the audience’s mind before the inevitable rug-pulling scenes kick in. Lu is now nine years old and so Jack is taking all his time educating her, worrying about her and attempting to keep her out of trouble... overcompensating for disaster in her upbringing a lot due to his own experiences. The nine year old version of the character is played by a young actress called Quinn McColgan and, it has to be said, she does amazing work in this role. The unkempt Patrick, on the other hand, keeps himself from going insane by hunting for food and by broadcasting a radio show every day... even though he knows he has no listeners. And that’s pretty much where the status quo of the movie is before... the inevitable happens.

Yes, it’s not too long before the three protagonists who are heirs to the town of Harmony fall prey to a new threat... or rather the old threat come back in new clothes. The zombies aren’t as extinct as we thought. Rather, in the almost decade that the three main characters have been surviving, the undead have evolved into a new kind of creature. Good news is that their bites aren’t infectious anymore. Once one of them chows down on you, then you won’t turn into another zombie thing... if you survive the experience, that is. Bad news is... they’re blind, albino, bestial creatures who can climb most surfaces and who hunt by sound. Not so hot then.

When an additional, fourth character comes into the mix, played by Clara Logo, and warns of the oncoming pseudo-zombie creatures, things get intense... especially when nine year old Lu is accidentally locked in the basement with at least one of the creatures...

What happens next is something I won’t spoil here but there’s more character building and emotional glue to be attended to in this quite taut story, which has a classic look in terms of the snowy streets and environment these characters inhabit. When you see Patrick with his big beard and his dog riding a snow bike and brandishing a rifle, you can’t help but think of John Carpenter’s classic remake of The Thing or the movie may remind you a little of a George A. Romero zombie movie... but with a little more snow.

The acting is great and Vivas finds a way of bringing even the most pedestrian of scenes to life with a sense of ‘something out there’ and a moving camera which, while at times annoying during some of the hand held scenes, really lends the movie an almost voyeuristic feel that this kind of subject matter really works well with. Sergio Moure’s score adds to the atmosphere when required and certainly helps effectively dramatise the situations through a specific musical palette. It’s also pretty good as a stand alone listen too, obviously, otherwise... you know... I probably wouldn’t have bothered seeking out the film in the first place.

When all is said and done, Extinction is a well crafted and more than competent spin on post-apocalyptic horror/science fiction cinema and true fans of the genre will hopefully like this one a heck of a lot more than the critics obviously did. The relationship between Jack and Patrick isn’t as clichéd and completely obvious as the opening sequence might lead you to believe and, slowly but surely, the film reveals the real way in which events have unfolded over the years and why Jack doesn’t even want Patrick talking to him and Lu, let alone coming near his house. Definitely a solid recommendation from me and, now, I have to leave it there so I can go listen to the score again.

[•REC] 4 aka [•REC] Apocalypse

Ship[•REC]ed

[•REC] 4 aka [•REC] Apocalypse
Spain 2014
Directed by Jaume Balagueró
Entertainment One
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers for all the [•REC] movies occur in this review.

So here we have the fourth in the successful Spanish horror franchise, this time directed as a solo venture by Jaume Balagueró, after his directing partner on the first two movies directed the third entry in the franchise, [•REC] 3 Genesis (reviewed here). According to the Spanish title of the movie as found on the straight to BluRay print released this week, the actual title of this movie on the opening credits is [•REC] 4, so it’s somewhat bemusing that the subtitle which translates this title card reads REC: Apocalypse, for some reason. Maybe the UK marketing people thought we were allergic to numbers although, it becomes quite evident right from the outset of the movie, that this is not in any way a stand alone movie... you need to have seen the previous three to get the most out of this one, for sure.

Like the third movie, which jettisoned the ‘camera eye, found footage’ horror approach after about twenty minutes into that movie, [•REC] 4 makes no attempt to bring us back into that style and is told in third person mode right from the start of the story... although much of the various plot twists do make use of surveillance camera technology and even the ‘found footage’ shot during the first film... so it at least keeps the idea of the titles of these movies going, at least.

This movie is, however, still shot mostly with jerky, hand held footage... the difference being that it is not once shown to be footage from a character’s camera. The camera is very reactive and follows various characters at close range to ensure bringing us into the situations with them but, unusually, chooses to often cut away to master shots and establishing shots, right within the same scenes and at a rapid pace. This style doesn’t in any way jar, though... especially since a lot of the long shots looking on in a more voyeuristic manner are equally jerky in comparison, to ensure that all the footage cross cuts effectively, I expect.

[•REC] 4 starts off towards the end of the first (and therefore also the second and third) part in the timeline, with a small team of soldiers going into the original building, one of whom “rescues” TV reporter Ángela Vidal... played once again with much presence and cuteness by Manuela Velasco. However, you may remember from [•REC] 2 (reviewed here) that, contrary to being killed as was implied by the ending of the original [•REC], Angela is now inhabited by the parasitic creature who lived in the “Medeiros girl”, who started the original ‘Religious virus’... and the film keeps iterating this over and over, even though she says she can’t remember anything about the previous events. After the pre-credits rescue, both her and her rescuer wake up on a ship which is quarantined out at sea. The scientists on the ship are trying to perfect an anti-virus and it becomes clear in the narrative that this is still set only a short time after the events from both the first two films, in the apartment block, and the third movie... as the mother of one of the main protagonists of [•REC] 3 also finds herself on the ship.

As you would expect, the virus gets out of control again and the ship is isolated from outside help, quite deliberately in this case, by the very people who are trapped on board the vessel. Obviously, this enclosed space kind of setting is a bid to go back to the general claustrophobic shenanigans of the first two [•REC] films but, alas, without the “found footage” camera eye and the slow crawl kind of lurking dread found in the first two entries, it doesn’t matter what setting you put the action in... it’s not a scary zombie movie like the original and instead, it’s more in keeping with the common and garden variety of zombie movies which the original entry in this series made such a refreshing change from. So basically it’s a shoot and run picture... but it’s not an unimpressive one, once you accept it for what it is.

The main problem I have is that the trick of this one relies quite heavily and single handedly with the audiences belief that Ángela Vidal is the evil element working against all the other characters but, without wanting to give too much away, it proves to be the undoing of any logic to the film because there is another factor which the audience may or may not be aware of but, in terms of the choices made by Ángela during the movie, her actions prove to be much more consistent with her mental state in one situation and, it turns out, pretty much inconsistent with what is really going on. It’s like the director is deliberately feeding the audience red herring after red herring without worrying that in order to follow these kinds of steps, the character would have to be acting in an entirely illogical manner. So it’s a bit of a problem, for me at least, in terms of character motivation in the way in which Vidal works and interacts in this movie.

All that being said, though, it’s still a really nice little horror piece. Despite it being touted as the last in the series, there is a least a little wriggle room given for a sequel although, it would need to be a complete reset to make that work, methinks. However, in terms of being a nice, standard, formula survival horror movie, it does pretty well. It helps that you care about the characters somewhat and, even though it’s somewhat predictable, it is a genre which can thrive on this kind of repeat variation and it’s shot with a certain style and has a much more, low key and appropriate (though possible not as much fun) musical score than [•REC] 3 supporting it throughout... yeah, we’ve come a long way from the franchise’s roots as found footage, that’s for sure.

For all its faults and successes, I think that overall it’s no better or worse than the third film in the series and that’s still pretty good. It’s such a shame though, that the intense scariness of the first installment and the smart, playfulness of the format of the second installment, have been abandoned in favour of more standard “zombie cinema” attractions in the third and fourth in the series. For anybody who loves the [•REC] films, though, and the horror genre in general, then [•REC] 4 (aka [•REC] Apocalypse) is still a good, solid genre entry and shouldn’t disappoint too many horror fans, I should think. I’d have much preferred it to get a cinema release, like the first two movies did, though... audience reaction in films of this nature are always a good thing to look at.

Zombie Flesh Eaters (aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie)

Breakfast At Fulci’s

Zombie Flesh Eaters (aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie)
1979 Italy
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Arrow Blu Ray Region A/B/C

When I finally caught up with seeing Blake Edwards 1961 romantic comedy Breakfast At Tiffany’s a number of years ago, my first impression of the film was, “Wow! This is just like Zombie Flesh Eaters.” I’ll come back to that thought for you in a minute.

Lucio Fulci has always been a bit of a hit and miss director for me, although I have started coming around to his work more in recent years (this stuff was almost impossible to get uncut and in its correct aspect ratio before the dawn of the multiregion DVD) and I think some of his films, such as the giallo Lizard In A Woman’s Skin (reviewed here) are among the finest of the genre.

When I first saw Zombie Flesh Eaters, as it is quaintly and luridly known here in the UK, it was with the reputation of being a once banned video nasty which a lot of the kids at school had already seen on uncut pirate video in their very early teens. I caught up with it almost two decades later when it was shown on a cable channel but... it still had the notoriously censored “wooden splinter slowly penetrates eyeball” scene sliced out of it by our less than beloved censors. I’ve said this before, a long time ago, but I think it bears repeating here... the removal of what is ultimately a fairly cheesy technical and practical effect actually serves to render the scene a lot stronger because your imagination tends to fill in the blank and it takes on a certain power as a scene without it. Nevertheless, there’s no way I was going to be left having watched only a censored version of the movie so I immediately bought the American DVD edition which was uncut, and my appreciation for the movie grew over the years.

I’m now on my third home video print of the film, Arrow’s new Region Free Blu Ray edition, which my cousin got me in a nice “steelbook double disc” edition for Christmas. There is, ironically, a ‘seamless branching’ error on the first disc, containing the film, which means the initial purchase of this “uncut zombie classic” will actually be missing the first 6 seconds of the post-credits establishing shot. Luckily, Arrow have now come clean about this and there is an address where you can send the first disc back to them and they will, hopefully, send you a replacement disc when the second pressing is done (was still waiting for mine to come back when I started writing this review but, hey! It’s here now with 6 seconds fully restored).

Contrary to popular belief, this movie was not “initially” made to cash in on the Dario Argento cut of George Romero’s second zombie feature Dawn Of The Dead (also known as Zombi) in its Italian release. The script was already being well worked on and looked at before that film hit cinemas. However, the players in the Italian film industry are never ones to let the opportunity for a ride on a successful band wagon get away from them so Zombie Flesh Eaters was released after Romero’s film with the title, in Italy, of Zombi 2... in the hopes that people would think it was a sequel (the irony being, of course, that Dawn Of The Dead was already, in itself, a sequel to Romero’s groundbreaking Night Of The Living Dead). In the US I believe it was just released as Zombie and over here it ran afoul of the Video Nasties list when it was released to early home video as Zombie Flesh Eaters. A small case could be put forward, if one wanted to bother to try to tenuously link this movie to Romero’s film, that this movie “could” be seen as a prequel to Romero’s Dead films, since the movie closes with hordes of zombies invading New York over the Brooklyn Bridge (presumably stolen shots because I believe there was some trouble when Fulci’s production didn’t bother to get a license to shoot any footage in the US) but it’s a frail link at best and I don’t think Romero would approve of the mere idea of voodoo being the cause of the zombies in his movies.

So, getting back to my opening statement... looking at this film again after a good few years reminds me straight away why I feel that Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters and Edwards’ Breakfast at Tiffany’s are like two peas in a pod. It’s all to do with the way the shots are framed and designed. Everything in this movie is composed around vertical lines which often serve to truncate the frame into sections for the placement of people and objects within a shot... and this is exactly what I remember the Blake Edwards film doing too. Fulci seems hell bent on finding vertical splitters for a good deal of the film, heck he’ll even split shots with highlighted “hero” palm trees in the jungle scenes, or ensure that the jeep which our heroes ride in has one of those two piece windscreens so that he can compose people in this fashion. Other times, when it’s just two people talking in a room, for example, he’ll use texture and colour change on the wallpaper behind them to artificially create this kind of blocked in space and patiently drop his actors into different sections. It’s a great triumph of cinematography (which is more than most pictures of this kind of subject matter might have gotten treated to in terms of design) but it also serves to give the film a certain sense of subconscious claustrophobia to it... as everyone seems to be closeted away in their own separate space.

The film has Tisa Farrow (Mia’s sister) and the lovely Auretta Gay but its two principle assets are the English actors Richard Johnson (yeah, the cool dude who played Bulldog Drummond in the sixties and who played a major role in the original Robet Wise version of The Haunting) and Ian McCulloch (who was in stuff like The Survivors and who went on to star in a couple of other Italian horror-exploitation movies including the ludicrous and eminently watchable Contagion). Johnson and McCulloch really lend credence to the plot and laughable dialogue in this movie by investing everything they have to say and do with a certain amount of conviction and weight.

Of course, one of the movie’s standout and most celebrated scenes starts off with Auretta Gay showing off a couple of her principle assets with her topless scuba dive routine (which is nice, I admit). This leads into an extraordinary scene where she comes face to face with a shark. Things get intense (and nice to look at) as she tries to evade the shark and goes to hide behind a bit or underwater coral... and then you get the ‘hand on the shoulder’ moment and she is in battle with... an underwater zombie. Yes! She manages to evade both the zombie and the shark to get back on her boat but this leaves us with a shark versus zombie scene, where the zombie bites the shark and comes out the clear winner. Yeah, that’s right. This film has a Zombie VS Shark scene. How can you not want to watch a film that has that? How cool is this?

The rest of the film after this scene is not an anti-climax as you’d think either, with two great gory set pieces being the famous house invasion/eye gouging scene and the ancient graveyard scene with the famous iconic ‘zombie with maggots in its eye’ that usually makes the cover of most releases of the film (recently referenced in the charming zombie remake of Romeo and Juliet, Warm Bodies, reviewed here). The sense of claustrophobia and intensity increases as the film goes on (aided by those fantastic shot designs) and the ending is pretty good too, with the film's two survivors (I’m not telling you which two) facing a less than certain future in their boat with a living dead friend threatening to batter his way up from below and nowhere for them to run to.

Zombie Flesh Eaters may seem, these days, to be a bit of a cliché in terms of genre classics to keep an eye out for (quite literally), but it still packs a wallop and though I’d have liked to have seen the Ian McCulloch commentary track from the old Anchor Bay release making the cut on the new Blu Ray edition (or at least a new commentary track, maybe), Arrow have done a good job with this release (seamless branching error aside) and some of the extras on here, while still being repetitive in terms of what has come from various releases in the past, are well worth your time... as are the little, cute animations this company likes to create for some of the featurettes on their titles. If you’ve not seen this movie before and, especially, if you’re a native of the UK and haven’t seen it uncut before, now’s your chance to catch it in as good an edition as your likely to get... just remember to check the opening, pre-credits shot out and send it back if you’ve got one of the discs with an error on it.

Resident Evil: Retribution 3D

Vile Bodies Of Evil In War

Resident Evil: Retribution 3D 
2010 Germany/Canada
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
Screening at UK cinemas now

Warning: Here be evil spoilers!

So here we are again. This is the fifth movie in what I think I’m right in saying is the most popular and lucrative series of films to be based on a computer game series ever. On the other hand, the original games are so overloaded with cultural references to various horror movie classics over the years, the most obvious being the large influence of George A. Romero’s zombie movies, that it’s sometimes hard to realise where the line between the two formats and their various homages blur, in actual fact.

What I am certain of, is that this film, while not as good as a lot of the others, is still a solid and respectable entry into the series. It’s walks a very risky tightrope between trying to correct things and undo things which have been added to as elements as the series has progressed, while at the same time driving those knitted together components to give the series new directions in which to continue. That it manages to do this actually quite well, while still managing to pack the flick with what is extensively wall to wall action, is somewhat good news.

The trailers for this promised the return of many characters who had died in previous episodes of the film series, which I’ve reviewed here (1, 2 & 3) and here (4). Although I had some idea in the back of my mind how this could work, the explanations for the reemergence of characters (played by Michelle Rodriguez, Colin Salmon, Sienna Guillory and Oded Fehr etc) who were sliced, diced, defected to the umbrella corporation or exploded, and so forth, in the previous movies... was actually better handled than I expected. It was good to see these faces again and, for anyone else who thinks they’ve figured out what the deal was here, all I’m going to confirm is, yes, these actors do have multiple roles in this installment.

We also get answers, of a sort, or a least a little more elaboration, of the non-sequitur of the giant sized hammer dude from the last movie and also this film goes some way to give more context to the brilliant “Tokyo in the rain” opening credits sequence of Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D. Interestingly, the sequence in this film where this opening was addressed has the added musical attraction of using the same composers' music for that sequence, layered in over the top of this one. The music in this one by Tomandandy (literally, a two man team of composers called, um, Tom and Andy) is quite serviceable, although I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did their last one. But congratulations to them because I think I’m right in saying that this is the first Resident Evil movie to retain a composer over from the previous film. So while this movie, as all of the sequels, feels like a reinvention of the last, it has the musical glue to keep continuity with the last one more, finally, and that’s helpful because this one starts off exactly where the cliffhanger ending from the last one left us.

Talking of which, the credits on this one are quite nice and also fairly arrogant in that they show a slowed down action sequence which runs backwards (in excellent 3D for a change, just like the last one) until it gets back to where we left it... we then have Mila Jovovich’s Alice character (yeah, this one continues with the slight allusions to Alice In Wonderland in it, with the Red Queen once again popping up as the computerised villain of the piece) recapping the previous installments... like she always does. We then catch back up to the last film again and see the action sequence ran back at full speed this time, but going forwards to propel us into the rest of the movie proper... it lasts maybe less than a minute this time, though.

The performances are all good again, (especially Michelle Rodriguez in the non-villainess version of her, um, character) and the action sequences all excellent and, it has to be said, unrelenting... although I did find some of the passages in the movie a little light on emotional context and thus a bit dull. This film also undoes, right at the end when they’re setting up the sixth film in the series, my main concern about the last one... by reintroducing the “T-virus” back into Alice’s system and returning her “super powers” to her... although one of Michelle Rodriguez’s characters also has those super powers, so she will obviously be back as a villain at some point, I suspect.

For a movie which reunites so many cast members, it seems unusual that Ali Larter was not in this one properly. I can’t quite remember, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t die at the end of the last one, did she? The absence of this character is conveniently circumvented right at the start when Alice is literally blown out of the action on the ship from the last movie and thus we don’t know the final fate of her companions. I’m pretty sure they will bring Larter back when they do the next one though... at least I hope they do.

Another and, frankly, much bigger loss to the series is that there’s no “Alice Versus Zombie Dogs” fight in this one. This is the first Resident Evil not to have a little scene where Alice fights off zombie dogs... and that kind of disappointed me to be honest. Their inclusion in the last three were so obviously forced in their because the fans love them... so it’s a shame they’re absent here.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about this one. If you’ve not seen the last one, even though this does have a handy recap, you’ll probably be lost in it and even if you aren’t, you won’t have any emotional set up to the characters. If, on the other hand, you’re already a fan of the series in general... well it’s not as good as some of them but, even so, it doesn’t let the side down and serves as a good set up, I assume, to whatever the next part of the arc is... which seems to look like it’ going to include some kind of war with flying dragonish looking things (I don’t think they were zombie Pterodactyls anyway... hard to tell). So, no worries if you’re into the Resident Evil movies already... this one’s still a hefty installment. You can watch without peril.

Samurai Bikini Babe VS Zombie Hordes!

Chanbara Beauty 2008 Japan

Directed by

Yôhei Fukuda

Jolly Roger

DVD Region 2

I’d never heard of this movie but something moved me to an instant purchase a month or so ago, when I noticed it in the HMV sale. Perhaps it was the tagline that so subtly captured my imagination and inspired a quest for the beauty and visual poetry promised by its delicately written copy... so here’s the tagline for the movie which runs across the top of the cover...

“Babes, Blades and Bikinis - What more do you want?”

After I’d let the soulful melody of these words wash over my consciousness like laying down in a field of poppies... I had to admit to finding myself in exact agreement with the sentiments expressed in this exquisite one liner.

Then there was the picture on the cover which was, not too surprisingly, a bikini clad babe with her blades out. Okay... so the tag line obviously didn’t lie to me so far. Even if she was wearing a cowboy hat.

Then a quick read of the synopsis on the back of the box imparted to me the important message that these particular bikini clad babes with their blades are in the business of chopping up and generally re-killing hordes of marauding zombies. In fact this movie, which is a remake of a popular video game apparently, has the title in the US of “Onechambara - Zombie Bikini Squad” - wow, they get all the unique selling points wrapped neatly into their title over there then. So all of this was, of course, another big plus sign for the inevitable purchase.

But the thing that really swung it for me... the one thing which really tugged at my reason and appealed deeply to my intellect, was the fact that, in the HMV sale, this movie was going for only a fiver!

So there you have it. I bought myself a copy of Chanbara Beauty (along with a copy of the Kiezlowski Three Colours Box Set which was also in the sale) and I’ve now watched it in all its glory.

So where does that leave me exactly?

Well first up... remember that tag line which ended up with the tempting and seemingly rhetorical question - “What more do you want?” Well, I have to in all fairness answer, having now seen the thing, that I would really have liked a fuller and more plausible story to hang the ridiculous set pieces onto, please!

Ok, then. Chanbara Beauty is set in a post-apocalyptic George R. Romero-ish world where zombie hordes infest the planet and the Chanbara Beauty of the title does her best to help people out by wandering the country with her fat, blonde, comic relief guy (come on, you can’t resist a big, fat, comic relief Japanese guy with blonde hair) and killing as many zombies as she can.

Ok so far. The plot is a little less intricate than I’d have liked until we find that her sister was kidnapped by the films generic mad scientist villain who uses her unique clan's blood for zombification experiments (it’s his experiments which have caused the abundance of infectious zombie hordes) and who makes her sister “strong” so she can kill their father who didn’t love her as much as the other and be the babe-villain this film so obviously needs so a big fight can happen at the end.

On the way in their zombie killing quest, our two heroes (the beauty and big fat geezah) come across a babe gymnastically toting a sawn-off shot gun (think Gun-Fu, Equilibrium style) which can shoot an insane number of shots before ever running out of ammunition and who has a common quest of vengeance for the cold despatch of the evil scientist... so they all join forces and kill zombies together.

Which all sounds fine until you realise the Chanbara Beauty of the title also has some kind of magical clan sword which uses the properties of her blood and looks a bit like a light sabre when she gets really gung ho about things (like killing zombies). Her midichlorian blood count must be way off the scale!

Her arch-nemesis, being as she is her sister from the same clan, can also do this stuff with her sword, so when the final showdown comes at the end of the film, the two girls are teleporting all over the place and hurling bolts of bloody, psychic energy at each other. I think if the film would have at least, by this point, tried to give some explanation as to what the heck was going on by the time you see the swords in action, I would have let the film off the hook a little with regards to a lot of the stuff on show here... but at no point does the movie try to explain any of this stuff or even comment on its existence. It just takes the track that, “of course any bikini-clad babe with her blades out is going to be able to magic those blades up using the power of here mind and the bizarre “blood-light” from her body. Isn’t that how the world works normally, after all?”

No it really isn’t. This makes no sense at all. I suspect an explanation for it might exist in the Instructions Booklet for the original console game but, if it did, then the director of the movie has not seen fit to share that with us.

There are some nice things about this movie - for example, during a moment of zombie slaughter towards the end we get a chance to see Chanbara Beauty in action with a birds eye shot as she is hacking up zombies and a whole load of zombie arms get hurled upwards at us and into the camera. At no time in this movie does anyone show even the remotest interest in obeying those pesky laws of physics.

All the blood is CGI, as a lot of that thing seems to be going these days (more’s the pity), but the movie tries to go better with the whole camera eye thing by having that CGI blood quite frequently splashing all over the camera lens. It gets a bit tiresome and repetitive after a while though.

Red blooded males all over will find the main character frustrating because she has giant novelty fur trim on the tops of her bikini... this has the annoying quality of both highlighting her ample cleavage while at the same time hiding it completely from view... forever. This feels a bit of a sly and underhanded way of diluting the pleasures promised by the tag line on the box!

At the end of the day, Chanbara Beauty is an ok film... for £5 in an HMV sale. If I’d have payed any more for it I would not be as amused as I was by the movie!