Grindhouse-inspired trailer for LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW

This Halloween, the new trailer for the zombie videogame Lollipop Chainsaw has been released on the web. Here it is in full bloody colour with a Grindhouse-inspired narrator:

Finally! The 'ParaNorman' Teaser is Here!

From the studio that made Coraline, there's a new quirky and spooky kid's movie on the horizon with a zombie element. ParaNorman is about an odd boy named Norman who must defeat a curse that threatens his hometown with, among other things, zombies!

I've been very excited for ParaNorman, and this teaser -- set wonderfully to "Season of the Witch" -- has really whet my appetite for some stop-motion zombie action.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN from The Zed Word

The Zed Word wishes you a very Happy Halloween. Hope all you ghouls and goblins have a great night tonight!

Zombies Carved from World's Biggest Pumpkin

(source)

In honor of Halloween, check out this record-setting pumpkin carving by Ray Villafane. Villafane sculpted this masterful zombie display out of the World's Biggest Pumpkin, which had been on display at the New York Botanical Garden. It took Villafane 15 hours to bring out this pumpkin's inner zombies. The zombies, all sculpted out of pumpkin, come crashing through the pumpkin shell dripping in ooey, gooey, pumpkin flesh. A perfect tribute to zombies this Halloween season.

Halloween Radio: The Zed Word on INDI 101.5 FM

Tonight, I'll be a guest on the radio program "Artwaves" to participate in a Halloween horror panel,

Tonight's topic: horror media aimed for children.

If you're in the Hamilton, ON region, tune in to INDI 101.5 FM at 7pm or listen to the online streaming broadcast to hear the discussion.

Bowie or Pirate Zombie?

I can't decide.

Newfoundlander vs. The Zombie Apocalypse

Dis post is dedicated to all da Canadians who read The Zed Word.

For those of you not of the Canuck persuasion, this is Newfoundland.

And this is a Newfoundlander vs. The Zombie Apocalypse.



Shockin' dat is, b'y

A Decade of Zombie Love

Zombie fans eat their hearts out

Recently, I was quoted in the article "A Decade of Zombie Love" from The Sheridan Sun Online.

In the article, I give my thoughts on the enduring popularity of zombies and what is stimulating our desire for the dead.

"Unlike other monsters, zombies are essentially twisted versions of ourselves. They're humans peeled away to our nihilistic core: mindless violence and consumption," said Allen in an email interview."

Read the full article

Sexy Vamp Videos: LeeAnna Vamp & the Undead Girls

Brrrr. It's starting to get chilly outside, isn't it? Well, let's get that hot blood pumping again with a double bill of sexy videos featuring LeeAnna Vamp & the Undead Girls.

First up, sexy blood sucker LeeAnna Vamp challenges two lovely undead ladies to the ultimate monster mash: a pillow fight.





I know you want more, you insatiable sexy monster lover. How about this clip of LeeAnna Vamp & the Undead Girls rolling out to ZomBcon 2011?





I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a little fuzzy inside.

BEWARE OF ZOMBIE POODLE

It's a zombie-dog-eat-dog world out there.

Meet Xerxes, the Zombie Poodle. Owned and groomed by Amy "Bullet" Brown, the president of the National Association of Professional Creative Groomers, Xerxes the Zombie Poodle is all ready for Halloween with this intricate and ghoulish hair pattern.

According to the NAPCG Facebook page, Xerxes's unique look was achieved over several months of regular grooming to create the pattern, and he was coloured using non-toxic products in three seperate 1 hour sessions. With the dog's well-being in mind, Brown has transformed Xerxes into one spooky undead doggie.

The last time I saw a zombie poodle was in The Boneyard, and it was far less impressive.

A Poodle for the Post-Apocalypse

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Interactive eBook App

In the era of the iPad, you don't just get to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you get to experience it with the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Interactive eBook.

This new app features:

• Hundreds of illustrated pages full of interactive, zombie mayhem.
• Buckets of gory animation. 
• An original musical score and sound effects. 
• Complete text of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies AND Jane Austen's original classic!

Whet your APPetite with this educational video:

Hamilton Zombie Walk 2011 + DEAD GENESIS Screening

It's time! It's time! Dust off the old funeral tux and shake out the burial shroud. It's time to get gorgeous and gory for the 5th Annual Hamilton Zombie Walk and Charity Food Drive (presented by Horror in the Hammer).

DATE: October 29th @ Gore Park (starting at 2pm).

Join the Hamilton Horde for another year of Halloween horror and help us take a bite out of hunger by bringing a donation of nonperishable food items to Gore Park. All donations will go to support local food bank. Don't forget to donate some food before you take to the town in search of brains!

WALK ROUTE: Zombies will depart Gore Park around 2pm, shambling North on James St N, down York, and then to Dundurn Castle.

POST-WALK FESTIVITIES - SCREENING AND RAFFLES

After the walk, FRIGHT NIGHT THEATER will be screening the excellent Canadian zombie film DEAD GENESIS at The Staircase (27 Dundurn Street North L8R 3C9)

Seven months have passed since the dead took over. Many cities and states have been abandoned and left to die. Several self sufficient hunting groups have been established to take on the threat in a war aptly referred to as the 'War on Dead'. Jillian Hurst, a former news writer and amateur documentarian, has set out to make a pro-war propaganda film to support the W.O.D. She joins up with a pack of renegade hunters known infamously to North America as 'the deadheads'. The moral dynamics and hardships of fighting in a war against the undead are told from several different perspectives.

Screening begins at 4:30pm. 

Admission: $5 zombies, $10 humans. Discounted rate for children. 

Admission is for access to The Staircase Theatre for the movie. Raffle tickets for zombie prizes will be sold separately at The Staircase.

AFTER DARK FESTIVITIES

CORKTOWN PUB: Do you want to party? Well, it's party time at the Corktown Pub (175 Young Street). Come join your fellow undead and check out the live bands and have a few drinks. Hamilton zombies get a $5 discount at the door.

Hamilton Zombie Walk SPONSORS

Anchor Bay Canada
ArtGreen Productions
Crash Landing
David Moody (author HATER)
Depraved Clothing
Gothic Gourds
Horror in the Hammer
Medallion
MegaZombie
MonsterMatt.com
Quirk Books
Scott Kenemore (author ZOMBIE, OHIO)
She Died Productions
The Day After (artist Christopher Zenga)
Therevenantmovie.com
Try This On For Size
Twisted T's
The Zed Word - Zombie Blog
Zombies of the World

Gory Zombie Music Video: The Active Set - "Famous for Dying"

In the music video for "Famous for Dying," indie band The Active Set do just that....die gruesomely at the hands of some flesh-hungry walkers. That's a combination we don't see nearly enough: indie music and gore.

Trailer Tuesday: ATLANTA ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Looks cool. I really wish I could go to something like this. Head's up Atlanta! Zombies coming your way.

TV Terrors - History Channel's "Zombies: A Living History"

Tuesday night at 8pm, History Channel is airing an exciting new documentary perfect for the Halloween season -- Zombies: A Living History.

Zombies: A Living History is an examination of modern society's most terrifying monster: the living dead. Why are we so afraid of zombies? What are the origins of the living dead in our history, culture, and popular fiction, and how could a real zombie outbreak spell doom for humanity? 




To answer these questions, Zombies: A Living History brings together zombie experts like Max Brooks (World War Z), Jonathan Maberry (Dead of Night), Roger Ma (The Zombie Combat Manual), JL Bourne (Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile), Kim Paffenroth (Dying to Live: Last Rites), Rebekah McKendry (Fangoria), Steven Schlozman (The Zombie Autopsies), Daniel Drezner (Foreign Policy), and The Zombie Squad.

Don`t miss the premiere of Zombies: A Living History tomorrow on The History Channel.

Run For Your Lives! POV Video of Zombie Obstacle Race

In the immortal lyrics of Iron Maiden, "Run to the hills, run for your lives!"

Check out this video from the Oct 22nd RUN FOR YOUR LIVES 5K zombie obstacle race in Baltimore.




Run For Your Lives 2011 from Alexander Turoff on Vimeo.

Runners brave enough to test their speed and agility must navigate a series of 12 obstacles on a 5k course. Between them and the finish line are angry zombies looking to tear away their flags, and those flags are the only things standing between life or death.

The Run For Your Lives zombie obstacle race tours the USA throughout the year, so check the website to see if it will be bringing the zombie virus to your neck of the woods in 2012: runforyourlives.com

War of the Dead (Review) - Toronto After Dark

War of the Dead (2011)

*World Premiere*

(former title: Stone's War)

Director: Marko Mäkilaakso

RATING:
2.5 / 5 zedheads




Can a movie go wrong with Nazi zombies?

Contrary to what you might think, yes. It can go very wrong indeed. You need only look to films like Oasis of the Zombies (1981) or Zombie Lake (1981) for historical precedent that Nazi zombies can’t save a bad movie. However, Nazi Zombies have been enjoying a new Reich of their own with the popularity of cult favourites like Dead Snow. Into this curious genre fascination with the Nazi undead comes WAR OF THE DEAD, which had its World Premiere during the Toronto After Dark Film Festival On October 22nd. While War of the Dead is nowhere as bad as Oasis or Zombie Lake, it’s still a complete dud.

War of the Dead is a muddled and cliché-ridden action/horror war film set during WWII. A team of American and Finnish soldiers are sent on a secret mission to destroy a bunker behind enemy lines in Russia. The bunker, although in Russia, is a Nazi German facility where ungodly experiments into reanimation are taking place. The film begins well enough with an impressive sequence depicting one of these experiments where a poor, tortured soul is forcibly converted into the living dead. The film starts to go downhill when we’re presented with one of the longest, non-scrolling text prologues I've ever seen. From this on-screen text, we learn that the Nazi project has been shut down and the bodies ordered destroyed and buried. At least, I think that’s what happens. From this point on, the plot becomes increasingly confusing.

When der fuehrer says we is de zombie race
We heil, heil right in der fueher's face

The infection that was perfected in the bunker escapes the subterranean facility when a dog bites into the hand of one of the buried infected bodies. This same dog takes a chunk out of one of the allied soldiers at the beginning of the film, transmitting the infection and turning him into a 28 Days Later-style zombie who spreads the infection to the enemy. When the Russian (or are they German?) soldiers reanimate, they wipe out their former comrades and then turn on our protagonist's platoon. After the carnage, we're left with a handful of survivors including Martin Stone (Andrew Tiernan), the American soldier; two Finnish soldiers, Lieutenant Laakso (Mikko Leppilampi) and Captain Niem (Jouko Ahola); and a Russian soldier named Kolya (Samuel Vauramo) who our heroes rely on to navigate them out of unfamiliar enemy territory overrun by tree-climbing, acrobatic undead monsters.

Psssst. What's my line?

The story should be simple enough to follow, but there’s a terrible lack of visual storytelling in War of the Dead and a series of anti-climactic, throw-away scenes gumming up the works. For example, the dog that transmits the infection is owned by an old man living in a cabin. The old man, we see, is buildings curious pentagon-shaped clockwork mechanisms. A lot of attention is put on these mechanisms and, later, a pendant shaped like these mechanisms that our heroes find being worn by Dasha (Magdalena Górska), Koyla's girlfriend. This young woman also has photos of the old man, who we have to assume is her father although I don't recall this ever being stated. Then, once our heroes penetrate the bunker, they find a photo of the same old man in a Nazi uniform. What does it all mean? What is the mystery of these clockwork devices? What is the relevance of the pendant? Aside from these questions, we've also learned that the zombies bleed a strange black substance that, in one scene, moves of its own inky volition, like the Venom symbiont from the Spider-Man comics. [Sidenote: Stan Lee is thanked in the credits of War of the Dead. Coincidence?]. What is animating these creatures? Only head shots will put them down, but are they alive or dead?

What's in the box? What's in the box?

As it turns out, the answers to these questions are either anti-climactic or beget more questions. The important clockwork mechanism is simply a key that opens a wooden box containing…….something. It’s too dark to see, but the heroes speculate that the black stuff in the box is what the Nazis used to create the zombies. You'd think that whatever it is would be important, but it's promptly forgotten for the rest of the film as soldiers run around a subterranean labyrinth shooting at fast-moving undead who are as aerobatic and limber as spider-monkeys. Wait, weren’t the zombies supposed to have been killed and buried by the Germans? Why are there still live Germans in the bunker and so many undead creatures running free? What was the point of burying the bodies top-side if they could be safely contained in the bunker? To make things more complicated, the zombies act inconsistently. An infected survivor from our heroes' platoon follows our heroes from a cabin in the woods, through the forest, and into the bunker for a showdown in which this zombie never once acts at all like the others. While the other creatures are quick and feral, this comrade-turned-zombie is slow and fights with deliberate hand-to-hand skills and focused determination. He does not bite but rather beats the shit out of the lone American soldier. Why? And why is there even an American soldier fighting with the Finns in Russia in a German bunker?

It's darker in here than an episode of CSI

Do the discontinuities and lingering questions of that last paragraph frustrate you? That's how I felt as I tried to follow the thread of War of the Dead. My frustration doesn't begin and end with the story either; it extends to the film's cinematography. The action sequences in War of the Dead are dark, murky, and so blurry I had to remove my glasses at several points and rub my eyes as I pondered whether the cinematography was truly that unfocused or if I was having some kind of stroke. It's almost impossible to tell who is fighting who. It's headache-inducing. Whether topside or in the bunker, everything is coloured in an tedious shade of grey or cast in murky shadows. This atmosphere does nothing to contribute to the tension; it only manages to rob the action sequences of their impact and visual entertainment. For an action/horror film, the action is painfully hard to see and the scares aren't scary.

To top it all off, the characters are dull stereotypes. Except for the Kolya (Samuel Vauramo), the Russian prisoner-turned-ally, or heroes are flat military archetypes trying to out-machismo each other. Stone, in particular, is the loose canon with a death-wish and a stale one-liner for every occasion. For a film with an English and Finnish cast that's shot in Lithuania, War of the Dead is as homogeneous as any other quickly-slapped-together Hollywood action film.

Except War of the Dead was not quickly slapped together. It took years for the filmmakers to shoot and finish War of the Dead as a result of cast turnovers and inconsistent funds from producers. By the director's own admission, War of the Dead was hell to make. It was shot in 2007, but it wasn't shown to an audience until the Oct 22nd world premiere at Toronto After Dark. I wish I could say that director Marko Mäkilaakso's hard work paid off, but that would be disingenuous. War of the Dead is stale, cliché, and hard to follow -- both visually and narratively.

But hey, it has Nazi Zombies, right? That's got to count for something.

Toronto After Dark 2011: Zombie Appreciation Night

To coincide with the Toronto Zombie Walk, last night at Toronto After Dark was Zombie Appreciation Night: a double bill of zombie movies. And zombies got discounted admission.

Last night, zombie lovers got the chance to see two new undead films and shorts. First, it was the Canadian premiere of DeadHeads, the buddy zombie comedy from writer/directors Brett Pierce and Drew T. Pierce. DeadHeads was preceded by the zombie short "Play Dead" about a group of dogs trying to survive the zombie apocalypse after their owners are killed.

Zombified Adam Lopez (festival director) and his zombie minions

DeadHeads was a very entertaining and goofy comic romp about Mike (Michael McKiddy) and Brent (Ross Kidder), two zombies who have retained their personalities and ability to speak. Mike and Brent go on a road trip to find Ellie (Natalie Victoria), the love of Mike's (un)life.

After the crowd-pleasing screening of DeadHeads, co-writer and co-director Brett Pierce took to the stage for a Q and A. Alongside Pierce were actors Natalie Victoria and Markus Taylor. Taylor received a round of applause for his role as the soft-headed and soft-hearted zombie named Cheese.

Brett Pierce describes the hard work it took getting DeadHeads made

Markus Taylor, Natalie Victoria, and Brett Pierce swap production horror stories

Pierce talked about his passion for the film which was a financially long and hard ordeal to create while Markus Taylor described the difficulty of doing fight scenes in blinding contacts. Natalie Victoria talked about the hazards of kissing zombies.

The second film of the night was the World Premiere of WAR OF THE DEAD, the almost-never-made WWII zombie film from Finnish director Marko Mäkilaakso. War of the Dead was preceded by the short "You Are So Undead," a cautionary tale for the Twilight generation about going "all the way" with vampire boyfriends.

War of the Dead, I'm sad to say, was a major dud. Filmed in 2007, War of the Dead went through years of funding problems, reshoots, and casting changes before finally seeing the light of day at Toronto After Dark. Despite the hype, War of the Dead was mediocre verging on the the terrible. In the film, an alliance of American and Finnish soldiers is sent on a secret mission to destroy a Nazi bunker in Russia. Evil experiments in reanimation have escaped the bunker and are spreading a 28 Days Later-style infection across enemy lines.

War of the Dead director Marko Mäkilaakso drops F-bombs

As an action film, War of the Dead was almost impossible to watch. Save for a few scenes, the majority of action sequences were so dark and so blurry that it was impossible to see who was hitting who or what was going on. The plot was as muddled as the picture, and characters were dull stereotypes whose only traits seemed to be "machismo" and "man-pain." I never thought I'd be bored by a Nazi zombie film, but War of the Dead proved it was possible. I'm disappointed that the film wasn't more engaging or more exciting as payoff for the nightmare the filmmakers faced in getting War of the Dead made.

Finland Represent! (L-R): Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen, Jouko Ahola, and Marko Mäkilaakso 

Far more entertaining than the film itself was the Q and A with director Marko Mäkilaakso, actor Jouko Ahola, and cinematographer Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen. Although professing love for his film, Mäkilaakso seemed as exasperated with the film as I was, no doubt on his end relating to the Sisyphean-struggle he had getting it made. Dropping copious F-bombs throughout the Q and A, Mäkilaakso's sarcasm and jaded cynicism were surprisingly refreshing, but the movie was still a bore.

A lovely young zombie I shared conversation with in the snack line

While it's a shame that the big film of this year's TAD Zombie Appreciation Night was a dud, I give big props to Toronto After Dark for continuing to appreciate zombies and give them a dedicated night of celebration in conjunction with the Toronto Zombie Walk.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

Toronto Zombie Walk 2011 (Photos)

There were two mass movements mobilizing yesterday afternoon in Toronto. First, there was the Occupy Toronto movement, which was marching on City Hall. Second, there was the Toronto Zombie Walk in which zombies marched through the city in search of brains.

I was in Toronto for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, but I couldn't make the screening of Redline in time as a result of snarled traffic. Instead, I caught up with the Toronto Zombie Walk already in progress as it shambled up Spadina and into Chinatown. I shadowed the zombies all the way back to Trinity Bellwoods Park. Here are some of my favorite pictures for the afternoon. The full album can be seen here.