Living Dead Series & Other Zombie Flicks - When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth....

[Calandrino]

Well I'll be damned! Not to turn this into a second porn and porn cows thread but damn, she actually DID have a mainstream film career in addition to porn. these days most girls who are doing porn are either bragging about it as "feminist" and "empowering," or saying it's just till they get a big break into something mainstream. Like being a stripper to pay for college or until they get a modeling contract.

I thought she was famous more for being a "porn star-turned-legit-actress" than being a porn star. It's not like Jenna Jameson doing cameos in real movies.

That's what I love about these older zpmbie/horror movies here we are almost 40 years after their release still talking about it still discussing and asking who's right and who's wrong.

NotLD '90 is pretty good but one its weaknesses was removing a lot of the original's ambiguity.

It's cliche to note that humans are always the real monsters in zombie movies, but it's better when that's because of a failure to cooperate effectively, not because humans are the main physical threat, which seems to be the case more and more.

I'm not surprised not to see it, but an interesting oddball movie would be I, Zombie, a weird, fucked up Fangoria movie that can't seem to decide whether it's a gross out or an art flick. It's about exactly what you'd think, a guy slowly degenerating into a zombie after being bitten by one, turning into a flesh eating cannibal while slowly losing his mind. I can't say it's exactly good but it's unique. Also it has that scene. If you've seen it you know which one.

I can't remember anything about that movie except for that, but yeah, I remember that.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I'm watching Army of the Dead. It's gleefully dumb. Just pure gore/action schlock. Imagine Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City if Umberto had 150 million dollars to make his movie. It is exactly that. In a good way in my opinion.

NB4 Red Letter Media review and Jay arbitrarily hates it because he hates Snyder because he reminds him of the jocks that bullied him in high school while he praises other schlock films of a similar nature. Don't get me wrong, I like Jay, we have similar taste in movies of course, but he has a real hate-boner for Snyder and Todd Philips.

 

[The Demon Baby]

I'm watching Army of the Dead.

I just watched it. So is this a prequel to Dawn Of The Dead or not? I can't definitively decide whether it is or not. There are a lot of indicators that it IS a prequel, but there are other indicators that it isn't. The movie doesn't come right out and say whether it's a prequel or not.
Thoughts?

 

[Product Placement]

Just watched Army of the Dead, guess it was okay over all.
What I liked:
Cast all mostly did a good job with what they were given, especially Dave Bautista
Movie looks overall really good, some spotty cgi here and there but less so than a MCU movie.
They used the setting really well
Despite not being the biggest budget of a netflix movie ($90million vs $150million they spent 6 Underground), it feels like the first blockbuster they have made
Has some nice idea for a zombie movie which feel fresh
Are some great little parts that really stand out, much like the opening of his Dawn of the Dead remake did
A number of pretty funny scenes and gags.
The use of Zombie by The Cranberries
Great intros for all the characters

What I didn't like
Main issue is 2 hours and half is way too long for what the movie is trying to do, and it spends too much time building up to the heist. Also a number of parts that just drag on for a bit too long.
Many of the plot points are too predicable and feel well trodden, such as the character that will betray everyone at some point, in this movie even many of the characters kind of guess that will happen but never do anything to stop it from happening.
Many of the characters end up being bland despite the good intros to them, really didn't add more depth to them past that intro. Feels like they are just there to be killed off, however if that is the case it takes them way to long to become zombie food.
I found the deaths of the team to be really weak in terms of gore

Netflix already have a prequel cartoon and a prequel movie in the works, also wouldn't mind a follow up from Zack Snyder, just hope they are a bit more balls to the wall and speedy.

I just watched it. So is this a prequel to Dawn Of The Dead or not? I can't definitively decide whether it is or not. There are a lot of indicators that it IS a prequel, but there are other indicators that it isn't. The movie doesn't come right out and say whether it's a prequel or not.
Thoughts?

Nothing to do with his Dawn of the Dead remake at least now, at one point it was set up at Universal Pictures back in the late 2000s which is who he did the remake with, so likely was a follow up during that time. But after netflix picked it up any links would have to been removed as they don't have the rights to that movie.

 

[MeganDodgedABullet]

" Mmm. Well, for me, the worst way would be for a bunch of old men to get around me...and start biting...and eating me alive."

A more innocent era when it was an obvious "joke". Was probably available for one milly on Epstein Island...

 

[Schmeckel]

" Mmm. Well, for me, the worst way would be for a bunch of old men to get around me...and start biting...and eating me alive."

A more innocent era when it was an obvious "joke". Was probably available for one milly on Epstein Island...

And she still had to put on a merkin. Shame.

 

[Schmeckel]

Double post - whatever.

I watched Army of the Dead. And I gotta say...that was fairly fun. It didn't reinvent the wheel by any means, but it was certainly a fun zombie romp. The set-up of the main characters was enjoyable, the action was decent even though a lot of it was CGI. Dave Bautista is slowly growing on me as a good action dude.

I wasn't too keen on the whole "alpha" zombie thing. Just came off as too much of a vampire colony sort of thing, took away from the zombie aesthetic for me. At the least Big Daddy (Land of the Dead) was still just a zombie. A zombie riding a zombie horse is cool in an RPG setting, but in a zed world...just kinda rubs me the wrong way. Just saying.

It's not a special zombie movie, but I think it's a pretty fun entry to the zombie universe. Probably one of the better Netflix joints that I've watched, so hopefully there's more like this to come.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

I thought Army of the Dead was mediocre. It's nearly two and a half hours long but really it's just a 90 minute film horribly stretched and padded out. It has a lot of shitty exposition where the film just sorta stops while two characters talk at each in an attempt to flesh them out, yet all the characters remain fairly boring and flat. The zombie 'lore' is pointless and ultimately leads to nothing (and it all feels like someone watched or read 'The Strain' and thought "neat, I like that"). Worst of all is that all the potential for the heist set-up and Las Vegas setting is almost completely unrealized and wasted.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Nothing to do with his Dawn of the Dead remake at least now, at one point it was set up at Universal Pictures back in the late 2000s which is who he did the remake with, so likely was a follow up during that time. But after netflix picked it up any links would have to been removed as they don't have the rights to that movie.

You defiantly see some connections as best as Zach could make, like having fast/smart zombies, and a team going up against them. The biggest glaring connection oddly enough is bringing in Richard Cheese to do a new version of viva las vegas. (His cover of down with the sickness appeared in Dawn of the dead 2004) So yeah it's as close as Zach could get to a follow up to dawn without pissing universal off.

Also first anna and the apocalypse now this? Kinda makes me wish someone would make a proper dead rising movie but well we have several. They're called Dawn of the dead (1 9 7 8 and 2004) anna and the apocaylpse and now Army of the dead....The only one i can't compare to any movies I know of is DR3.

also if anyone's interested found a cheesy zombie B movie from 2007 called... get this Flight of the living dead...eh? eh? get it?

sorry the only upload i could find is 250p im sure a higher quality version exists someplace

 

[Schmeckel]

You defiantly see some connections as best as Zach could make, like having fast/smart zombies, and a team going up against them. The biggest glaring connection oddly enough is bringing in Richard Cheese to do a new version of viva las vegas. (His cover of down with the sickness appeared in Dawn of the dead 2004) So yeah it's as close as Zach could get to a follow up to dawn without pissing universal off.

Also first anna and the apocalypse now this? Kinda makes me wish someone would make a proper dead rising movie but well we have several. They're called Dawn of the dead (1 9 7 8 and 2004) anna and the apocaylpse and now Army of the dead....The only one i can't compare to any movies I know of is DR3.

also if anyone's interested found a cheesy zombie B movie from 2007 called... get this Flight of the living dead...eh? eh? get it?

sorry the only upload i could find is 250p im sure a higher quality version exists someplace

That movie was garbage. And I loved it. It took two attempts at buying it on Amazon to actually get it delivered.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Why do you eat people?

Not People! BRAINS!

Brains only?

Yessss!

Why?

The Pain!

What about the pain?

The Pain! of being dead!

It...hurts to be dead...

I can feel myself...rotting!

Eating brains, how does that make you feel?

It makes the pain....go away!

 

[Schmeckel]

Send... More.... Paramedics.

 

[A Grey Cat]

Send... More.... Paramedics.

Meanwhile in day of the dead that same year



"say hello to your aunt Alica bub... Hello! Aunt Alica."

"Hullo?...aunt Alica? "

*can barley utter the words in a raspy whisper *

 

[AnOminous]

Not bad for a movie that was originally highly hated when it was first released

Much like current zombie filmss, it was being compared to its beloved predecessor by John Campbell. Now that it's nearly 40 years old, it now has the age to be a beloved classic itself, however much people bitched about it at the time. As John Huston's character Noah Cross said in Chinatown: "Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

NotLD '90 is pretty good but one its weaknesses was removing a lot of the original's ambiguity.

There's also no way they could really repeat the shock of Duane Jones getting shot at the end, which was really impactful the first time you saw it, or even the choice to have a black leading man at a time that actually meant something, and then not mention it at all. At the time, it could have been a career-ending decision, and really amounted to flipping off the entire movie industry. You were only supposed to do that in art films starring Sidney Poitier at that point.

 

[Exterminatus]

I thought Army of the Dead was mediocre. It's nearly two and a half hours long but really it's just a 90 minute film horribly stretched and padded out. It has a lot of shitty exposition where the film just sorta stops while two characters talk at each in an attempt to flesh them out, yet all the characters remain fairly boring and flat. The zombie 'lore' is pointless and ultimately leads to nothing (and it all feels like someone watched or read 'The Strain' and thought "neat, I like that"). Worst of all is that all the potential for the heist set-up and Las Vegas setting is almost completely unrealized and wasted.

Spoiler: Tiny spoiler

I thought the same actually, also I couldn't help but laugh that Snyder brought back the zombie baby thing from his Dawn of the Dead remake. Overall though it was definitely predictable and just felt kinda meh, like it wasn't a total train wreck of a movie but felt somewhat paint by numbers and bland.

 

[Schmeckel]

Spoiler: Tiny spoiler

I thought the same actually, also I couldn't help but laugh that Snyder brought back the zombie baby thing from his Dawn of the Dead remake. Overall though it was definitely predictable and just felt kinda meh, like it wasn't a total train wreck of a movie but felt somewhat paint by numbers and bland.

There's a few instances of

Spoiler

implied alien and robot zombie shit throughout. The zed fetus is one of those things, what with the blue-ish blood and all that.

As a stand alone, it was good. A better effort, at least, than we've been able to see most anywhere else the last couple few years.

 

[A Grey Cat]

kinda off topic because it's more about zombie literature, but I love the passage in Max Brook's zombie survival guide that pretty much points out why the whole "zombies rising from the grave." Thing doesn't work. Corpses are buried in steel coffins and covered with either sealing vaults or stone covers. Even Notld the most famous zombie movie with an attack in the cemetery never shows them crawling out of a grave. It's implied they escaped from the mortician's.

The only exceptions I know of are ROTLD which as Max points out only works because the coffins are rotted and wooden, and resident evil code veronica because the prisoners who died of T-virus infection where quickly buried in shallow graves wrapped in sheets with no coffins or covers at all.

 

[Mr. Confederate Man]

kinda off topic because it's more about zombie literature, but I love the passage in Max Brook's zombie survival guide that pretty much points out why the whole "zombies rising from the grave." Thing doesn't work. Corpses are buried in steel coffins and covered with either sealing vaults or stone covers. Even Notld the most famous zombie movie with an attack in the cemetery never shows them crawling out of a grave. It's implied they escaped from the mortician's.

The only exceptions I know of are ROTLD which as Max points out only works because the coffins are rotted and wooden, and resident evil code veronica because the prisoners who died of T-virus infection where quickly buried in shallow graves wrapped in sheets with no coffins or covers at all.

Return of the Living Dead shouldn’t be given serious thought. The bodies would have been crushed by the weight of the dirt the day they were buried as the coffins can’t support that. Also, there were skeletons with no muscles or ligaments on them that are somehow walking around

 

[BrunoMattei]

Return of the Living Dead shouldn’t be given serious thought. The bodies would have been crushed by the weight of the dirt the day they were buried as the coffins can’t support that. Also, there were skeletons with no muscles or ligaments on them that are somehow walking around

I mean, there's actual skeletons running around. Of course it's not even remotely plausible.

 

[A Grey Cat]

I mean, there's actual skeletons running around. Of course it's not even remotely plausible.

yeah at least in something like D&D or Jason and the Argonauts you can say "it's magic" holding the skeletons up so they can walk around without muscles or ligaments.

anyway back to zombies, you know what would bring new life into the genre? Going back and i mean way back before Romero's night and make a movie about the voodoo zombies like white zombie or revolt of the zombies. The whole worldwide apocalypse has been done to death so many times a simple story about a few people and a few zombies all working for a master who summoned them would be a nice change of pace.


The only drawback is how do you tell that story in "current year?" You make the voodoo priest who makes the zombies a black guy? You're accused of perpetuating outdated racist stereotypes of poor countries like Haiti. Make him a white guy? You're accused of "cultural appropriation" and or "white washing."