Flogging the Corpse

There is nothing sadder than a long and loving relationship coming to an end. You can look back through the years with rosy tinted glasses and think, “We had so much fun. We had so much in common. Where did it all go wrong?” You look to the other half of this relationship and you barely recognise what is there, right in front of you anymore. Feelings of contempt and exasperation have now drowned the emotions of adoration and exhilaration, and there is nothing you want more than just snip it clean off like a wilted and dead flower.

When you have been in love since your childhood, it is painful to come to terms with the feelings of growing apart. The hardest thing to ever face is that it is time to let go and move on. I’m an adult now and I can see clearly that it has come to this. I can no longer dwell on the glory days when everything was new and so breath-takingly adventurous; I can now behold the reality in all of its disappointment. No longer can I keep kidding myself that I can learn to fall in love again, that all we need is time and we’ll find that spark again. No amount of booze will twist my vision into a gaudy kaleidoscope of wonder.

Sorrow floats, my friends.

Wait, wait, wait. Back up a second. You think this is some sort of “Woe is me! My beloved doesn’t love me anymore!” swan song? You actually think I would clutter up this temple to the horrific with that kind of teenage girl, tear-stained journal plea for your pity? Oh dear, sweet reader, I thought you, above all others, knew me better.

No, this is not a mere mortal relationship that I have grown enough to mourn. This is me finally coming to terms with the fact that it is time for me to break up with the undead. Get your coat and hat zombies, it’s time for you to go home and it’s a long cold walk back to the graveyard.

Let me rewind back a few years, many years….many, many years, when I was just a wee tiny horror pup.  Zombies had always had that spicy and slightly musty voodoo flavour that came from appearing in old black and white Bela Lugosi titles; this is how I knew them. I knew that the only real way one could be disposed of was to catch it, then fill its mouth with salt and sew it shut….right? Then, at a weekly outing to the neon and flickering cathode mecca that was the video store, I discovered something that would completely alter my view of zombies, something that would spark a decades-long love affair. My sweaty little paws had found the now legendary Return of the Living Dead.  That was it, it was love at first viewing and an obsession was spawned.

DO YOU WANT TO PAAAAAAAAAARTY?! Oh, yes, actually! Yes I do!        Return of the Living Dead 1985

It followed me from Scotland to England then all the way back to The Great White North. It shambled by my side through countless romantic relationships. It kept me distracted from my studies in high school, college and university with its adorable decaying flesh and cute, little, hungered groans. It was there happily munching on brains on every lunch hour at every job I worked. I was “That gal that really likes zombies.”  When it came to birthdays and Christmases, friends and family alike knew that if the gift was in anyway zombie related, it was a sure fire success.

Then the outbreak happened. 

In March of 2004, after years of neglect, the zombie returned. Two films from either side of the Atlantic premiered in one month: Dawn of the Dead and Shaun on the Dead.  Both films took the same subject matter, but each approached in an entirely different context. Dawn was the reimagining of the Romero classic with a huge Hollywood budget and angry, steroid stuffed zombies that are now referred to as “runners”. Shaun was the polar opposite: a romantic comedy set within in a zombie outbreak written and directed by a pair of zombie genre nerds. Both were huge successes and in turn sparked the tidal wave of animated corpses that would following their wake for what is now shambling towards nine years.

"Just look at the face: it's vacant, with a hint of sadness. Like a drunk who's lost a bet. "    Shaun of the Dead 2004

The thing about zombies is that they are an easy target; anyone can smear a little dirt and a little blood around their chops and SHAZAAAM!! Zombie. This was something that the film industry, both the big execs and the little man caught on to with lightning speed.  The popularity of the zombie exploded into ridiculous heights, something it had never done before, knocking its “sexy” undead cousin, the vampire, down from its crushed velvet throne of everyone’s favourite monster. It wasn’t just the movie makers that had latched on to this unstoppable corpse: there were comics, there were books, there were music videos, there were songs, there were video games…they had infected every single media available. It didn’t matter where you looked the infection had taken hold and was just claiming more and more victims with every day that passed.

At first I was thrilled. This little subgenre that I had been so desperately in love with for so long was finally getting the attention I thought it deserved. All those old flicks I had spent digging my way through the most precarious of archaic video stores to find even a bootlegged copy of, were now getting a proper release on DVD with multiple discs and features and neat boxes and ZOMG ALL OF THE THINGS!!! It was like I was being rewarded for championing the little, rotting guy for so long. People started coming to me for recommendations since they had been swept up in this wave of putrescence and there was me riding the very crest of it on a surfboard made of tattered human flesh.

But, it was a deadly momentum that continued to stumble at a terrifying velocity. Zombies were turning up everywhere: kids’ shows, advertising campaigns, food and beverages, clothing lines, kids’ toys, phone apps…and even in porn. Movie after movie was being churned out with every available and able hand jumping on to that bulldozing bandwagon. Anything that had been written on the subject of zombies was being snapped up to be adapted into film and television and none of it was particularly good.

Zombie baby....really? it was all going so well too.   Dawn of the Dead 2004

I can pinpoint the exact moment when the disillusionment began to set in, thank you George A. Romero for Land of the Dead or what I now call “The Beginning of the End”. This has been something I have been battling with for quite a while and the over exposure to zombies has left me feeling apathetic to each and every “new” zombie related release.  AMC’s The Walking Dead has to be WAY up there with the afore mentioned Land of the Dead in terms of massive disappointment.  Like with Land, I was so incredibly excited for its existence, I was a huge fan of the comics, so even just the notion that it was going to be there, on my television screen in full colour glory was pants  wetting exciting….then I watched it. Sure it’s pretty and the makeup designs for the creatures are just stunning, but the one thing that made the comics so incredible seemed to have vanished, the human face. It just feels like yet another zombie thing with a bunch of people you know are either going to be eaten by zombies or turn on each other.  Yaaaaawn….

No, no matter how pretty you are, no more love for you Walking Dead zombie lady.   The  Walking Dead 2010

As with any thing of a horrific nature, once you see it in full daylight for an extended amount of time, it loses whatever it was that made it frightening. It’s happened with vampires, once they were monsters of legend that came in the night to feast upon unsuspecting innocents then taint them into godless creatures in their own image: now they are pretty boys with wounded hearts that sparkle in the summer sunshine as they play baseball and sip a skinny no fat Starbucks latte. Zombies can now run, think, learn, fall in love and now with the new release Warm Bodies (a film based on yet another “young adult” book…ew) they too can be pretty. Not very monstrous at all, is it?

So as my facebook is swamped with my friends all getting their frillies in a twist about the new season on Walking Dead starting tonight, I have come to the very sad and long time coming conclusion that it’s over. That final headshot rings clear and my decades long love affair with zombies has come to a close. 

At least I still have werewolves.

Pardon? Merci. Je suis le Grande Zombie.

France. The land of romance, yes. The land of fine cuisine, but of course. The land of haute couture, undoubtedly. The land of bright new hope for horror, actually, surprisingly, yes.


ALORS!!! LES ZOMBIES!!! AIEEEEEE!!!!

Traditionally, when I thought of horror's European summer home, Italy has always been the flourishing hot house of festering delights.We have Dario Argento with his bouyant breasts and buckets of blood set to a back drop of heavy symbolism. We have Lucio Fulci that taught us that zombies can hold their own against sharks and that a doorframe can cause some serious eye trauma. We have Mario Bava, the grandfather of Italian horror, without whom we would never had had the decades of delights we gained from Hammer Horror films or his son, Lamberto's masterpiece, Demons. Let's also not forget Ruggero Deodato, who will always be held aloft for his gut wrenching symphony of carnage, Cannibal Holocaust. Some point in the last ten years, the Gauls north of the border have managed to coax all that is dark and disturbing to take residence in the seedier parts of Paris and back roads of the secluded French countryside.

My most recent foray into French horror was with La Horde. Being that I now live on the other side of the Atlantic, I came somewhat late to the party that started in 2009. Despite my tardiness and my belly ALMOST full to bursting with the over-saturation of those lovable, cannibalistic undead shamblers we affectionately call zombies, La Horde still managed to entice a spark of excitement.


No subtitled La Horde trailer could be found...and I am a lazy geek girl.

The plot follows an unofficial unit of Parisian police officers embarking on a swift hit of vengeance on a Nigerian drug dealer they hold accountable for a fallen colleague. Confined to the crumbling corridors of a condemned tower block in an equally decaying quarter of Paris, the unit find what should have been a swift and brutal take down, inevitably becomes an irreversible failure that leaves two of it's team barely alive.


Do not, I repeat DO NOT fuck with this man.

Their capture by the hands of their prey quickly becomes the least of their problems as the growing epidemic of undead that is amassing outside is dropped right in the centre of the cramped apartment both police and gangsters are holed up in. Realising the only chance of survival is to forge an uneasy coalition, both sides of the law battle through the apartment block in hopes of finding a way past the infected and into some sort of secluded safety.


I was originally only going to post one picture of "Ouessem", but how can you chose between this one and the one above? The man, and his moustache are legendary.

La Horde delivers beautifully with an unsettling cocktail of paranoia, anger and frustration that fuels some of the most breath-takingly honest violence I have seen in a film of any genre. Every swing of an axe, shot of a gun and pounding of fist is brimming with conviction and passion; every spat word and hateful glare is guided to the very core, without question. It's an incredible piece of cinema that focuses on the human element, making it a character driven piece rather than just another effects movie centered on seeing how far they can push the "gross out" envelope, and yet the creature design, especially the sound design for the zombies, was nothing short of delicious.


Your choice: forget this man has killed a few of your comrades and is an incredibly dangerous drug dealer in order to have him on your side to face the growing horde.....or face the horde on your own. Seriously, it's a no-brainer.

Maybe after watching this delight I will be able to coach myself into watching the handful of other franco-horror films that I have been too damned sissy to sit down and watch. Merci bien, La Horde, vous est Le Grande Zombie.


The leg...it has to go...








P.S. Whilst looking for the trailer to entice others to watch La Horde, I found the english dubbed version for those that for some reason, don't like subtitles. I didn't know whether to give myself a hernia laughing or feel a deep rooted english speaking person shame. Observe:

Dead in the Water

This was not the post I was hoping to be the very first, in the official reporting of all things fantastical and blood drenched. I have recently watched some positively phantasmagorical films that simply must be shared with the world, in all their gore splattered glory, but sadly, after checking in on a project that originally filled me to the brim with anticipation for something quite new and deliciously quirky, my plans have been put on a temporary hold in order to have something of a rant, instead.

The source of my sorrow is the ill fated Worst Case Scenario. I had first found teasing little trailers on Upcoming Horror Movies, little vignettes that delighted me to the very core with the promise of what seemed to be some kind of scientific nightmare of biomechanical zombie Nazis. . .I need to say that again just because it felt so damned good. . .biomechanical zombie Nazis. They were simply divine, a perfect blend of humour and stunning creature design, what appeared to be a tasty new twist on a genre that has recently been regurgitated in various shades of gangrenous green and ghastly gray, each new offering worse than the last one. At a time when I was feeling as if I was finally reaching saturation point with one of my beloved horror monsters; the stiff shuffle, husky moaning, brain devouring zombies, the promise of this film sparked up a new hope that someone was going to resurrect the genre with new and beautifully designed undead.

An announcement on the official site cites lack of financial backing or more accurately, the lack of investors actually following through on their promises of financial backing, for the shelving of the film. For almost six years the makers struggled to get this project off the ground and I guess after six years of successive let downs, they have finally conceded and placed Worst Case Scenario on hold for the foreseeable future. Just to give you some idea why I am so incredibly, incensed, outraged and to the point of biting someone's nose off over this news, take a look at the sheer beauty of the trailers of what could have been possibly the best zombie movie since George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

Gorgeous, aren’t they? Did they not entice rapturous little utterances of “ooh” and “aah” from you? Does it not fill your centre of the circulatory system with infinite sadness that those two trailers are all Worst Case Scenario will ever amount to? Welcome to my world. I guess we will just have to make do with the next glut of turgid Hollywood offerings of remakes of classics that never needed touching or morally pillaged renditions of non-American movies dumbed down and crammed with pretty stars to appeal to the North American market. I promise. . . next edition will be full of smiles and excitement over spurting blood, gnashing teeth and high pitched screams, or your money back.