Another Italian zombie movie I really love is Zombie Lake. It is about a bunch of Nazi zombies that live at the bottom of a skinny-dipping lake. The entire film seems like one brilliant, Romero-inspired excuse to film girls without panties from underneath as they scissor their legs to keep afloat.
Seig heil, herr cinematographer!
That’s right - it was a legal settlement. Sorry, I wasn’t denying that the RoLD creators contributed to Romero’s Dead movies – just that Romero (the writer/director of the three “Dead” movies) had nothing to do with RoLD, and that RoLD’s setting wasn’t consistent with Romero’s movies, other than borrowing and altering (“you mean the movie lied?”) some background.
>I’m positive that Roger in Dawn of the Dead uses the word “zombie” to describe them
Romero deliberately didn’t use the word - I just checked the script (which is available online) and it is never used in spoken dialogue. If it slipped into the movie, which I don’t remember, it wasn’t intentional.
>I’m not sure about Day of the Dead. Racism again
Each of the Dead movies incidentally reflects developments at the time - Day of the Dead was intended (according to Romero) to highlight that even though science could make significant changes, it wasn’t always wise to do so.
>Now, if Desslock wants to come here and argue that “Zombie” isn’t really a Living Dead sequel, be my guest - when Dawn of the Dead was released in Italy as editted by Dario Argento and marketted as “Zombi”, it was a huge success and quickly spawned Lucio Fulci’s really gross cash-in "Zombi 2
Heh, how about an alternate reality “spin-off”. Have you seen both Zombi movies? I’ve heard great things about the Dawn of the Dead edited Zombi, but haven’t seen either.
I’m terribly jealous that you’ve seen Boyle’s flick, by the way, which I know the Aintitcool fanboys love. I was hoping it would have played at the Toronto Film Festival this year (where last year I saw another unreleased Boyle flick, Vacuuming Nude in Paradise), but nope.
Spinning around the web for this, I keep getting veiled references to zombie movies being something of a “commentary on the threat of nuclear contamination/annihilation.” Which, depressingly, is more interesting to me than the shlocky horror itself.
Anyway have links, references…?
I honestly thought that was also the case with all of the old Alien invasion movies of the 40’s and 50’s. Hmmmm…zombies, too, eh?
Whoa, rockin’ thread!
Is Zombie Lake better than Shock Waves, the other movie about underwater Nazi zombies made by Peter Cushing? And what is it about Nazi zombies that makes them amphibious? Is it because the Germans were so effective at using U-boats and that technology carried over into their zombies?
-TomAn army of underwater zombies also figures into the Illuminati book. That book is sort of a world conspiracy catch-all… Wonder where that weirdo conspiracy comes from exactly.
Yeah, I saw the script too - although you’ll notice that every single time they refer to the living dead, the SCRIPT calls them zombies. Not that this really has anything to do with your point that a movie only peripherqally about zombies never even calls them zombies, but I like to sit all clench-jawed, bloody-eyed and rectum-clenched while being pedantic.
As for the movie, I can’t seem to find it in Da Dub, but as I recall, Roger says something at one point about one of his raised-from-the-dead-friends looking “like some kind of… Zombie!!!”, almost as if he were struggling to describe the event with a completely irrelevant noun that he knows to be incorrect, which is why I remember it. I was like, duh, he’s more than like a zombie, nephew.
I dunno. I’m personally waiting for a living-dead sequel to Das Boot. According to Zombie Lake, they can synchronize swim long enough to start zombie-sucking on spread-eagled, aquatic vaginas, which is quite the skill, so I figure the average zombie can pilot a German U-Boat, piece-a-cake.
For the record, though, Zombie Lake is better than everything.
Spinning off topic to a non-Zombie movie, but still brain-eating movies, anyone here ever seen Brain Dead, with Aylmer, the brain-eating, talking slug? His rendition of Elmer’s Tune in a vomit-encrusted sink, as his host agonizingly screams from withdrawal pains, turned me on to that sonorous siren, Miss Peggy Lee. Great flick - so much better than Basket Case.
I’m personally waiting for a living-dead sequel to Das Boot.
Are there zombies in Below? I didn’t see it, but it’ll go into the Netflix queue, mainly because Darren Aronofsky worked on the script.
For the record, though, Zombie Lake is better than everything.
Hmm. Okay, it just went to the top of my Netflix queue. For the record, it displaced Y Tu Mama Tambien.
Spinning off topic to a non-Zombie movie, but still brain-eating movies, anyone here ever seen Brain Dead, with Aylmer, the brain-eating, talking slug?
I’m afraid I’m not a Henenlotter fan. Isn’t he pretty much a one-trick pony, with all of his movies being variations on Basket Case, but with increasingly outrageous masks? I recall seeing one of the Basket Case sequels and thinking it was like a community theatre production of a David Cronenberg movie.
-Tom
Damn. I kept seeing the thread title, and assumed that the discussion had to do with that wreched Sandra Bullock movie, and missed out on all the fun. Oh well.
But speaking of zombie movies, Japan has been turning lots of good ones recently, too. ‘Wild Zero’ staring the j-rock band Guitar Wolf, is pure campy fun. The scene where the band drops acid in a car surrounded by zombies is priceless. Watching this movie teaches us that Rock-n-Roll can overcome all obstacles, including zombies and alien invasions.
‘Versus’ is another japanese movie, but it’s really more like a Hong-Kong action flick- impossibly cool and pretty japanese gangsters and convcicts kicking ass (guns, swords, fists, you name it) in a zombie infested forest. Actually it ends up as something like Convicts vs. Yakuza vs. Zombies vs. Reincarnated Samurai vs. Immortal Sorcerers vs. The World. It’s a hoot.
Another good horror/action flick we saw recently is ‘Dog Soldiers’ in which a troop of brittish soldiers on a routine training mission in scotland runs into a pack of werewolves. It’s very ‘Aliens’, but with a less coherent plot and more likeable characters.
I was very disappointed with Dog Soldiers. There were some nice bits, but the story was a trainwreck and the editing was crap.
Best zombie movie: Night of the Living Dead. No question about it.
Oooo! Ooooo! I have to run off to work now, but I’ll write more later. But while my enthusiasm is still gushing, the Blind Dead series of Spanish zombie films are awesome! They are Satanic Knight Templars who were tortured and blinded to death during the Inquisition. Or something. Now they drink blood for revenge, and you have to be really, really quiet when they are around.
I never saw Shock Waves, so I went to the scientists for answers. These clinically quantified results are as following:
body count: 31
breasts: 20
explosions: 6
ominous thunderstorms: 0
actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
body count: 9
breasts: 0
explosions: 0
dream sequences: 0
ominous thunderstorms: 2
actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
Clearly, Zombie Lake takes the aquatic-zombie-world-cup. More bodies, more breasts (INFINITY TIMES MORE, according to my calculator) and more explosions. The only category that Shock Waves comes out as the victor in is the questionable “ominous thunderstorms” category, which I’m assuming would have made the plausibility of Zombie Lake’s twenty pairs of breasts too much of a stretch for Zombie Lake’s director, cinema-auteur J.A. Lazer.
Note that that Zombie Lake review says that Zombie Lake was turned down by Jesse Franco as “too cheap of a project” for him.
Agree. Avoid the “30th Anniversary” edition revised cut (with new footage!) like the plague, however.
What did you think of the 90s remake, by Romero’s make-up guy, Tom Savini? It’s decent, and has some haunting shots, but not as good (and the acting is even worse than in the original, notwithstanding Candyman in the lead).
OT: Steve, are you ever going to fucking register on these boards? Jesus. As much time as you spend here, I think you can spare the measly 30 to 45 seconds it would take to create an account.
Or, maybe not having an account is somehow part of your indie nonconformist street cred.
I made the mistake of buying the 30th Anniversary Edition the day it came out. Talk about a pile 'o shit–the new scenes are a joke. I still can’t believe how bad it is. (The recent Millennium Edition is fantastic, though.)
Like you, I think the remake is okay. I’m dreading the Dawn of the Dead remake, though…
I was very disappointed with Dog Soldiers. There were some nice bits, but the story was a trainwreck and the editing was crap.
Best zombie movie: Night of the Living Dead. No question about it.[/quote]
I watched Dog Soldiers last night and liked it a lot for a stupid, mindless werewolf flick. Of course the story sucked, and the plot didn’t hold water, but the action was great, and I cared about the characters. The soldiers’ Scottish slang and profanity were highly enjoyable, too. Low budget, but not too cheesy looking, due to the fast-cut editing (maybe that’s what William disliked), shadowy sets, and not showing too much of the werewolves. Whenever the action slowed down, the plot problems loomed up again, but whenever the werewolves were on the attack, this movie rocked in a very Aliens way.