Trailer Tuesday: The Dead Walk

PP&Z Game for iPhone

Looks like the Bennett sisters aren't just content to kick zombie ass within the pages of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or its prequel Dawn of the Dreadfuls (review).

Now they're coming to your iPhone and iPod touch as a video game.

Digital development specialist Freeverse is behind it, and describes the title as "a rollicking action title with the perfect blend of zombie slaying action and touching romance narrative". Which means 2.5D combat with a dash of hot Victorian cutscene drama thrown in for good measure. [via Kotaku]

I wonder what Jane Austen would have to say about iPods?

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like tweeting! How much sooner one tires of anything than of an app! When I have an iTunes store of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent Wi-Fi connection" - Jane Austen

EAT ME! BBQ Apron Winner!

Congrats to T. Waters for winning our EAT ME! Bbq apron contest! The apron was graciously provided by the producers of the zombie comedy EAT ME! (review)

I guess we all know who'll be grilling in style with the zombies rise.

How to Speak Zombie (Review)

 

REVIEW

How to Speak Zombie (2010)

Written by Steve Mockus
Illustrations by Travis Millard

Chronicle Books: 2010

RATING:
4/ 5 zedheads





Often, zombies are stereotyped and stupid and brainless. Few people, however, realize the nuances and subtlety to the zombie language. In fact, I hear they have over 20 words for "brains."

Therefore, if you need an introduction to the language of zombies, check out How to Speak Zombie by Steve Mockus and Travis Millard. How to Speak Zombie is a fun little novelty book illustrated in full colour by Travis Millard. Hardcover and printed on board stock,  the book is light on text and heavy on design, but the book's endearing gimmick is that it comes with a built-in sound module to plays clips of spoken zombie phrases (go here for a sample). Each phrase corresponds with a section of the book that explains other phrases best suited for a number of zombie social settings, such as the mall, the beach, and the coffee shop.

There's not a lot to read, but Mockus's concise text is appropriately funny and lets Millard's artwork, which is very evocative 1970s underground comics, carry the bulk of the book's charm. How to Speak Zombie is a great coffee-table book for zombie fans.

Magnet picks up [REC] 2 for US

According to Magnet's press release, they've picked up the US distribution rights for Spanish horror sequel [REC] 2 (review)

Magnet plans an early July theatrical release for the film, which will be released through Magnolia/Magnet’s Ultra VOD program, debuting a month prior on VOD platforms nationwide.

Note the video-on-demand option, which is similar to the way Magnet is distributing Romero's newest flick. Honestly, VOD is probably the smartest way to distribute genre films these days.

Although I was altogether unimpressed by [REC] 2 when I saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival,  I do hope that Magnet's publicity arm doesn't just dump the film unceremoniously into the market the way Sony did with [REC] after the release of its American remake, Quarantine.

Zombie Survival Flow Chart (Game Informer)

Gudiebooks aren't for everybody. Some of us are more visual planners and strategists. The good people at Game Informer realize this and have provided us with a flow chart to help us plan for survival in a world overrun with zombies. (image links to original site for full-size flowchart)

Trailer Tuesday: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (review) goes on sale today. This  prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies shows how the Bennett girls became trained in the deadly arts of zombie killing during their first encounter with the flesh-hungry dreadfuls!

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD Zombie Identification field manual

mPRm Public Relations has released a clever downloadable guide for identifying zombies to promote the release of George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead (review). Available on the home video market in the UK, Survival premiers in North America on VOD, Xbox, Playstation, and Amazon on April 30th and in Theatres May 28th

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE

Zombie Cuisine Week Finale

Well, that about does it for Zombie Cuisine week. Thanks to everyone who contributed links, art, video, interviews, and screeners for this fun look at zombies and food. Don't forget to enter my EAT ME! BBQ apron contest. You still have time: the contest ends March 29th.

Also, if you missed any of my reviews or features this week, check out the following list of all Zombie Cuisine Week content.

March 15

•  Zombie Cuisine Week: Let Them Eat Flesh!
• Top 4 Zombie Beer Videos
• Die-ner (Get It?) (REVIEW)
  
• Zombie Food Guide's Zombie Cupcakes

March 16

• Interview with Tony Faville (author Kings of the Dead)
• Cake Boss: Zombie Cake
  
• Hungry Actors: The Zombies of EAT ME!

March 17

• Gore-Met Zombie Chef from Hell (REVIEW)
• Long Pork Presents "Zombie Chef"
  
• GhoulToons by Fake Larry - 28 Minute Meals

March 18

• Zombie Food Pyramid
• Zombies, Get Your Drink On!
• REVENGE OF THE MEAT HAND

March 19

• Undead Master Chef by ManEggs
• FleshEater (REVIEW)
• EAT ME! Brand New Trailer
  

March 21

• Key Chain: Zombie Lego Chef
• Host the Perfect Zombie Dinner Party
  

Key Chain: Zombie Lego Chef

From the BOXHOUNDS Etsy store, you can buy your own Zombie Chef key chains in the form of little customized lego figures.

Aside from offering several zombie key chain figure, you can also buy other customized figures such as Conan O'Brien and The Baroness.

The Perfect Zombie Dinner Party

Zombies are not known for being good dinner guests at the best of times. They often drop by unexpectedly, they're slow to leave, and they always eat with their hands. If you must have zombies over for dinner, however, follow these tips for hosting the perfect zombie dinner party.

1.) CHOOSE THE RIGHT DINNERWARE

Don't bother setting out utensils or glassware. Although every book on dining etiquette devotes at least a chapter to the proper arrangement of utensils and utensil protocols, zombies don't know a salad fork from a spleen. Zombies are just going to dive in hands-first and shovel your delectables straight into their slack-jawed mouths. To best prepare for this eventuality, focus your efforts instead on other more functional dinnerware. Rather than ruining your linen Italian table cloth, throw down luscious red industrial tarp on the table instead. Also, invest in some thin translucent plastic sheets to drape over your walls and windows to catch back-spatter. Zombies are known for combining the messiness of eating finger food with the sloppy self-expression of finger painting. While the table tarp and wall tarps keep your dining room clean of gore stains, the back-spatter on the wall tarps will double as post-modern art for after-dinner discussion.

When choosing your dinnerware, remember that zombies are quite narcissistic. Despite their rotting faces, they just can't stop looking at themselves (why do you think they travel in such large packs?). Cater to the undead's ego with zombie-themed dinnerware. For example, Etsy merchant Soule produces zombie plates that would be perfect for any zombie dinner party. After your guests have cleaned their plates of entrails and guts, they'll see a zombie looking back at them, which is guaranteed to provide them with some post-meal self-affirmation.

Check out Soule's Zombie Plates at her ETSY SHOP.

2.) LIMIT DIETARY CHOICE

Zombies are neither good decision-makers nor eaters with discerning taste. When faced with multiple food options and decisions (such as an array of appetizers or a professional wine selection), zombies tend to become confused and violent. They may just as easily turn on you if it is easier to drink your blood than decide on a bottle of Sangiovese, Chianti, or Barolo. In terms of food, zombies also have no sense of taste. They will just as easily eat your brains as the brain of the dead cat in the alley behind your house. Therefore, offer a limited menu to your zombie guests to meet their basic needs. There's no need to get too fancy. A simple selection of eyes, intestines, hearts, and brains will more than satisfy your zombies without confusing them.

Also, don't prepare too much food. Zombies have no concept of "full". According to Rob Sacchetto's The Zombie Handbook (review), "zombies actually only need about one-tenth of what they devour, but they lack any neurological trigger to feel 'full'. If allowed unlimited food, they will continue eating until they burst." Keep in mind that the zombie is always eating. Unlike human guests, your zombie friends are not saving their appetites for the dinner party. Your undead guests were probably eating before they came, were probably eating on the way over, and will most likely continue eating after they leave. Knowing this, be cautious in selecting your portion sizes. You don't want that half-steak of calf flank to be the meal that finally pushes a zombie over the bursting point. If your guests do experience some explosive indigestion, your table and wall tarps should protect your family photos and carpet from excessive splatter.

3.) TALK TO THE DEAD

While the majority of your zombie guests will be speechless or moaning corpses, some of your zombies may have retained the capacity for human speech and conversation. While the rest are greedily slurping down entrails and gnawing on gristle, make conversation! When conversing with zombies, remember the following rules:

• Be a Good Listener: Many of your talkative guests will be missing portions of their faces, lips, or even tongues, which makes speech a laborious task. Be a keen listener to avoid confusion or miscommunication. Pay specific attention to the language of the zombie's body (or what's left of it).

• Talk about Brains: Just as asking about a guest's children is a sure-fire icebreaker for living people, broaching the topic of brains is a no-fail way of starting conversation with the undead. Zombies will talk about brains until their jaws fall off. The taste of brains, the texture of brains, the size of brains, the brains of celebrities and public figures -- prepare yourself for more conversation than you ever thought possible about grey matter.

• Avoid Controversial Topics. If there's one way to end up on your own menu, it's offending your guests. The Living Impaired can be quite political. They are quite passionate about a variety of causes, but they don't tend to encourage debate. They are more likely to eat the brains of those who disagree. To keep on the undead's good side, avoid topics such as the popularity of head-shot training courses at your local YMCA, the use of zombies for medical and governmental experimentation, the similarities between zombies and vampires, and abortion (the latter applies to any social situation).

By following these simple guidelines, your dinner party will go from being a bloody massacre headlining the evening news to the talk of the town in the most influential zombie circles. Should you ever need to host a Zombie Dinner Party, know it can be done without losing life or limb (at least not yours!).

EAT ME!: Brand New Trailer

The brand new trailer is out for the zombie comedy EAT ME! (review).An indie band attempts to escape Brooklyn when it becomes overrun with radioactive zombies.

FleshEater (Review)

REVIEW

FleshEater (1988)

Director: Bill Hinzman

RATING:
2/5 zedheads




It's 1988. 

The hair is big. Denim jackets are big. Tom Hanks in BIG is big. Zombies are...well....just big enough of a draw for low-budget filmmakers hungry to make a quick buck in the home video market. Into this market comes Bill Hinzman, the original graveyard zombie from Night of the Living Dead, looking to satisfy his own hunger to write, direct, shoot, and edit a film capitalizing on his cult status as the first zombie to appear in Night of the Living Dead.

What we get is FleshEater (aka. Zombie Nosh). It's a shameless ripoff of Night boasting approximately one gratuitous shot of bare tits on screen for every 16 minutes of the picture, double that in unintentional laughs prompted by poor dialogue and hilariously bad acting, and surprisingly better special gore effects than it deserves.

The story (if you can call it that) begins with a group of ten teens in rural Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania who are taking a tractor hay ride into the woods for a night of drinking and making out. Before we get to the action, the worst part of the film is already apparent: the sound. The sound dubbing and recording on this film is ridiculous. For example, we are treated to two (count'em: two) shots of a tractor in the distance moving into the foreground, but we can hear all the contrived, inane chatter of the tractor's teen passengers as if they were standing directly in our ear at all times. For the rest of the film, dialogue will sound dubbed-over in tones and volume completely out of place with the rest of the scenes.

Anyways, after Exposition Eddie regales his friends with a story of murdered teens that has no relation to the movie, an awkward dance sequence commences involving three girls dancing and holding their boyfriends hands while their boyfriends sit defiantly on their asses. Rural White Boys can't dance apparently. Way to pick'em girls. The dance ends with one girl's lame strip tease before the teens split up to look for fire wood. Little do they realize the Flesh Eater himself is on the prowl! Earlier, a farmer pulling stumps with his tractor unearthed the grave of Bill Hinzman's zombie who has been entombed under some vaguely mystic runes the farmer dismisses as the work of college kids on his property. Hinzman is hungry for flesh, and everyone he kills becomes a zombie and gets up and kills (wow...deja vu).

By this point, the film's dialogue and acting had me literally laughing until I could not breathe. FleashEater is about as close to the Troll 2 of zombie movies as I've ever seen. Every line, every word, every intonation just seems....wrong, as if uttered by a space alien who just learned English from Nigerian spammers. Highlights of the film include Denise Morrone as Carrie with her placid, "No..no...no" at the sight of her boyfriend being impaled by a pitchfork-wielding zombie. I also got a kick out of characters truly believing that one board against a window equals a good barricade, the repeatedly flat Pennsylvanian exclamations of "Oh Mah Gawd," and the constant soundtrack of zombies growling even though their mouths aren't open. That acting in this movie is supremely bad, but you laugh when you cringe.

Eventually, the teens board themselves in a farm house (that sounds familiar), but they are all quickly slaughtered except for two couples in the cellar protected by the power of the boyfriend's shiny mullet. If you think these characters will become heroic protagonists in any way other than just standing around, you're wrong. The rest of the film follows the zombies as they eat random people and are then pursued by a posse of rural hicks (Wait a second, now I know I've seen this movie before....).

Did I neglect to mention that this film takes place on Halloween? It's easy to forget until the costume party massacre scene when you realize that Erica Portnoy's looping musical score is desperately trying to claw at something John Carpenter would compose for Halloween.

A burned barn, a series of kills, and an exploded zombie heads later, our two protagonists emerge from the ordeal alive and ready to face a brave new day.... until they are promptly shot down by the redneck posse (Oh come ON now! That's a SHAMELESS RIPOFF!)

 

I'll give FleshEater two points. One: it has better special effects than it deserves. Gerry Gergely works some fine gore effects with little money and little time. For example, on Shriek Show's surprisingly and needlessly well-produced DVD retrospective of FleshEater, Gergely describes making two burned corpses in one and a half days with no budget by using seat cushion foam and spare parts in his shop. And they do look good. Second: Bill Hinzman carries some level of presence as the lead zombie in this film. Maybe it's just the fact we celebrate him as the first zombie in Night of the Living Dead, but he seems to carry some credibility and, dare I say it, some level of acting as the Frankenstein-esque undead flesh eater of the movie

However, these two points are not enough to compel me to recommend FleshEater. FleshEater is a dumb movie full of dumb people doing dumb things. While I will recommend the equally cheesy and inept zombie film Burial Ground: Nights of Terror only for its over-the-top sex and weirdness, FleshEater does not come close enough to being the Troll 2 of zombie films for me to give it the same recommendation. If you're a fan of bad films and can find amusement in them, try out FleshEater. If you're looking for a good film, stay far away.

If FleshEater were food, it would be a novelty Hamburger Telephone. You can't eat it or get any nourishment out of it, but it's worth a few laughs.

Undead Master Chef (Maneggs)

click for full resolution

Maneggs.com

REVENGE OF THE MEAT HAND

Oh no! It's back! Not Martha's Meat Hand. As nauseating to look at as the first time I posted about this gruesome dish, it still makes my stomach crawl. It's those onion finger nails. I gotta go puke.

Check out my original post: Not Martha's Meat Hand

Zombies, Get Your Drink On!

It's lunch time. Maybe you're out at a restaurant reading this on your Blackberry or iPhone. Put a little zombie into your lunch with one of these two zombie-themed drinks.

The Zombie Cocktail

Here's a tasty recipe for a Zombie.

* 1 part white rum
* 1 part golden rum
* 1 part dark rum
* 1 part apricot brandy
* 1 part pineapple juice
* 1 part papaya juice
* ½ part 151-proof rum
* Dash of grenadine or other syrup

Except for the 151 proof rum, mix ingredients and other liquids in a shaker with ice. Pour into your favorite glass and add the 151-proof rum. Be careful not to smoke and drink: that high-proof rum is flammable! Serve on the rocks and garnish with cherry.

Here's a video tutorial from Art of the Drink using different fruit juices, some lime, and forgoing the dark rum.





The Tarman

Inspired by the iconic Tarman zombie of Return of the Living Dead (I don't count his bastardized cousin in ROTLD 2), this drink recipe is found in the The Cane Spirit Guide (recipe). Using dark rum, the Tarman is an inky alternative to the fruity taste of the traditional zombie. Check out the recipe and try it for yourself

I hope you enjoy. Just remember: please eat brains responsibly. Don't reanimate and drive.

Zombie Food Pyramid

Good morning! Ready for breakfast? Make sure to follow this chart and ensure you that your breakfast is a balanced meal of brains and intestines. 3 out of 4 zombie doctors agree -- breakfast is the most important meal of the day (of the dead).

GhoulToons by FakeLarry - 28 Minute Meals

Fake Larry's Ghoulzone site is home to his consistently funny and surprising series of GhoulToons. Like his GhoulToons, Fake Larry is also one of the consitently funny and suprising people I know.

Check out Ghoulzone!