The Walking Dead: Mid-Season Checkup Looking Grim

On Sunday, AMC aired the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead, pulling in 6.6 million viewers in the process. While the show is clearly popular, there have been worrying signs that The Walking Dead is starting to slow down and devolve into a shallow after-dark soap opera.

In this post, I check in on the mid-season finale to overview the season thus far and check for symptoms of the show's decline. Major spoilers are ahead so continue at your own risk.

   
SPOILERS BEGIN

Today's Exclusive Tee Fury Shirt: The Original Zombie Walk

Thanks to Sasha of the Final Girl Project for pointing out that today's exclusive Tee Fury design is zombie-centric!

Every day, Tee Fury puts an exclusive t-shirt design up for sale, but when the day's offer, the shirt's gone for good.

As of this posting, you have nine hours left to order this exclusive "Original Zombie Walk" t-shirt that pays homage to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

www.teefury.com

Trailer Tuesday: TOXIN 3D

Lieutenant John Paxton wants revenge against the government he and his men swore their lives to defend. The very government that abandoned and betrayed him, leaving him to die after a secret biological warfare experiment went horribly wrong. John will discover revenge is a journey that will ultimately leave millions infected, countless dead, and the lucky few survivors struggling to find the last safe corner for humanity.

TOXIN 3D is coming soon from IndustryWorks Pictures.

www.toxin3d.com 
www.industry-works.com

Be a Character in a Future Jonathan Maberry Novel

Jonathan Maberry, author of acclaimed zombie novels such as Patient Zero, Rot & Ruin, and Dust & Decay is auctioning off the chance to appear as a character in one of his upcoming novels.

The proceeds of the auction are going to help fellow horror writer Sheldon Higdon and his family recover from two financially expensive surgeries Higdon underwent earlier this year after a serious back condition left the writer unable to walk or sit.

If you've been dying to be a character in a Jonathan Maberry novel, make sure that you bid on this unique opportunity.

Now Available in the US: Dead Genesis Special Edition DVD

Christmas has come early: the special edition DVD of the fantastic zombie film DEAD GENESIS is now available for order in America. Until now, it was only available in Canada. (click for my review)

As an added bonus, if you order the DVD before December 17th, you can get a second copy of the movie for half-price!
 

Dead Genesis, which screened in October to enthusiastic response at the 2011 Hamilton Zombie Walk, depicts The War on Dead through the eyes of a documentarian (Emily Alatalo) who travels with a rag-tag hunting pack that seeks out and exterminates hordes of the flesh eating undead.

The special edition of the DVD includes these features:

• 2 audio commentaries from the filmmakers
• “Eating Children” featurette
• deleted scenes
• bloopers

To see the movie I called one of the best independent zombie movies I've ever seen, visit www.deadgenesisthemovie.com

The Addams Family Musical is Snappy and Spooky

They're creepy and they're kooky, and now they're musical! 

Yesterday was the Toronto premiere of THE ADDAMS FAMILY MUSICAL, running November 16 to 27, 2011. DanCap Productions has brought this snappy and spooky Broadway hit to Toronto, and I had the pleasure of being in attendance for opening night. As a long-time fan of everything dark and spooky, I grew up delighted with the modern Addams Family movies yet disappointed by the declining quality of its sequels and spin-offs in recent years. The Addams Family Musical, however, breathes welcome new life into Charles Addams's iconic family obsessed with the dark and deathly.

Mysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky.

Beautifully elaborate Gothic sets, heavy mist, thunder and lightening, and delightfully creepy puppets help bring to life this original musical comedy. Not much scares a man like Gomez Addams, but in this story he stumbles into a personal nightmare when daughter Wednesday falls in love with an average, normal young man. Worst of all, she starts to act strangely. She smiles. She laughs. She wears a yellow dress. She's - gasp - happy! When Wednesday confesses to her father that she plans to marry her average beau, Gomez is trapped between honoring his daughter's wishes by keeping the plan a secret and honoring his vow of honesty to his ravishing wife Morticia who wants Wednesday back in black like the rest of the family. When Wednesday's boyfriend and his parents come over for dinner, it's a macabre meeting of the families full of laughs, exuberant musical numbers, and high-energy choreography featuring ghosts, puppets, and immersive sets that draw a noose around your neck and pull you head-over-heels into the kooky world of The Addams Family.

Morticia's plunging neckline gives Elvira a run for her money

The Addams Family Musical embraces its kooky premise with an energetic fusion of the macabre and mirthful. The script and lyrics by Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice, and Andrew Lippa are almost vaudevillian as the musical takes winking jabs at politics, married life, sex, and romance, but it's also surprisingly sweet. While the lyrics were hardly memorable in most cases and the story never manages to grab us as firmly as it should, the music (a fusion of dark, moody chords and spicy Latin beats), the choreography by Sergio Trujillo, and the production design absolutely steal the show. It's as much a feast for the eyes as it is the ears.

On and off Broadway, The Addams Family lights up the crowd

Standout performances of the night include Douglas Sills as the peculiar patriarch Gomez Addams and Blake Hammond as Uncle Fester. Taking cues from the iconic portrayal of Gomez by Raul Julia in the movies, Douglas Sills -- looking not unlike Rhett Butler -- plays up Gomez's Latin roots with a hint of John Astin's wry charm from the classic Addams Family TV series. Striding across the stage as a man of passion, Sills electrified the crowd with his maniacal laugh and fatherly tenderness. Speaking of electrifying, Blake Hammond received an enthusiastic ovation for his portrayal of Fester, who acts as a Greek Chorus commenting on the story. Hammond is at the center of a show-stopping musical number in which Fester romances the moon and actually appears to fly above the stage to frolic with his lunar lover.

A chorus line of corpses

Other critics have charged the musical with being corny, and it is. There's no escaping that fact. The jokes are often cheeseball lobs, but The Addams Family on TV and on film has always been a corny premise. I, for one, have a love affair with corny humour like this. Thankfully, the energy of the cast and the excellent set production help propel a somewhat undercooked plot above its limitations. Not only was mist rolling off the stage and into the crowd last night; there was an infectious energy coming off stage that won over the crowd.

The Addams Family Musical isn't perfect, but it's two hours and 30 minutes of unbridled fun, music, and spooky spectacle. For a family that likes to hang out in the cemetery, The Addams Family are alive and well on stage for the Toronto engagment of The Addams Family Musical. I guarantee you aren't going to find anything as lively, engaging, and rousing at your local multiplex.

The Mad Ghoul (Review)

The Mad Ghoul (2011)

Director: James P. Hogan

RATING:
3 / 5 zedheads



Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Invisible Man. These are the names you probably think of when you recall Universal Pictures. Few people, on the other hand, remember the lone zombie from Universal's 1943 horror/sci-fi/drama The Mad Ghoul. I can't blame them. Stacked up against Universal's roster of classic monsters, the Mad Ghoul is bland as stale toast. The Mad Ghoul, as it turns out, is a tepid tale of terror released at the beginning of Universal's decline into monster mash sequels and B-movies, but it's a film of note if for nothing more than its intriguing premise and for being the first zombie film to be released by Universal.

I love the smell of open heart surgery and taboo science in the morning

Ever feel powerless and think the world is conspiring against you? Well you have nothing on Ted (David Bruce), a young would-be surgeon whose life and will is wrenched out of his control by the conniving chemistry professor Dr. Alfred Morris (George Zucco). Dr. Morris turns Ted into an unwitting guinea pig during his experiments with an ancient Mayan gas. The gas induces a state of living-death paralysis rendering Ted a subservient zombie slave. The only thing that can bring Ted back to normal -- but only temporarily -- is a solution derived from a combination of the Colonel's secret blend of herbs and spices and a FRESH HUMAN HEART!

Zzzzzzzzzzombie

 Dr. Morris doses Ted with the gas in order to steal his girlfriend, a rising singer named Isabel (Evelyn Ankers). When Isabel confides in Morris that she no longer loves Ted but doesn't want to break his heart, Morris takes it upon himself to use the gas on Ted to induce a convenient sleeping-illness. That way, Ted is removed from Isabel's life so Morris is free to pursue Isabel for himself. Unfortunately, Ted will die completely if left to waste away without regular doses of the heart-solution, and Ted is too valuable to Morris as research and as a ploy in his attempt to woo Isabel, so he must keep Ted "alive." Therefore, as Morris and Ted follow Isabel on her singing tour, Morris commands the zombified Ted to rob graves and kill to obtain the fresh hearts needed to bring Ted back to lucidity. With the police beginning to narrow in on the culprits of these ghoulish crimes, Ted begins to realize that Morris is manipulating him during his unconscious, zombie blackouts, so he prepares a plan to free himself from Morris's evil clutches.

The Shadow Knows!

 The Mad Ghoul is not a particularly frightening film, even by the standards of 1943. That Ted and Dr. Morris's hunt for fresh hearts is a ghoulish plot device, and there's some inherent suspense involved when Dr. Morris attempts to use Ted to kill Isabel's new lover, but long stretches of the movie involve long conversations set in plain labs and living rooms instead of the creepy locations you'd expect. Of course, being a Universal film, there are the requisite scenes set in misty graveyards, but they are few and far between. The whole tone of The Mad Ghoul tends toward drama rather than horror, but the drama's fairly run-of-the-mill. The inadequacies of The Mad Ghoul are even more apparent when you compare The Mad Ghoul to another zombie film released the same year: Val Lewton's I Walked with a Zombie. Whereas I Walked with a Zombie is moody, creepy, well-acted, beautifully shot, The Mad Ghoul is plain, unambitious, and only moderately creepy.

Sleepy. You are getting very sleeeepy.

Despite the harvesting of hearts, The Mad Ghoul is not a gory film; it hails from the era before George A. Romero re-imagined zombies as flesh-eating monsters. The Mad Ghoul adheres to the traditional depiction of zombies as mindless slaves as in such films as White Zombie. Here, the terror should come from the concept of losing one's own will to another. Ted is a man rendered powerless in his own life. While awake, his girlfriend is in love with another man and secretly slipping away from him. While asleep in his zombie state, he is at the mercy of Dr. Morris and commanded to kill. Intellectually, the idea is frightening, but The Mad Ghoul is more interested in dwelling on the love triangle than the existential horror in which Ted finds himself. To make matters worse, Ted is a very boring zombie. The director's idea of distinguishing live Ted from zombie Ted is mussing up his hair, colouring him pale, and instructing him to sleep walk through his scenes. For scarier zombies of the same era, see White Zombie or even I Walked with a Zombie.

There's not a lot to recommend The Mad Ghoul over the better and more interesting black-and-white zombie films from the pre-Romero zombie era, but then again The Mad Ghoul only clocks in with a running time of about an hour. There are worst ways to spend an hour, but then again there are better.

Zombie Music Video: Andrew Jackson - "Enough Blood to Keep 'Em Coming"

Hey zombie fans, check out this fresh and zombie-filled music video for Andrew Jackson's "Enough Blood to Keep 'Em Coming" filmed at the 2010 Toronto Zombie Walk.




I was at the 2010 Toronto Zombie Walk, but I wasn't lucky enough to make it into the video.

For more of Andrew Jackson's music, visit www.andrewjacksonrock.com

Zombie Herd or Zombie Horde?

A group of crows is called a murder. A group of caterpillars is called and army. A group of coyotes is called a band. But what should we call a group of zombies?

A recent episode of The Walking Dead on AMC has re-opened this debate after one of the characters referred to a group of traveling zombies as a "herd." A herd of zombies. I, however, have always preferred the term "horde" to describe a group of zombies on the move in search of food. So which is the better term?

This is a HERD

I believe that "herd" is an inaccurate term to describe the throng of zombies about to bust down your doors and drag you screaming into the night. On a purely emotional level, "herd" sounds passive and non-threatening. By definition, a herd is a "large group of animals that live together or are kept together as livestock." A zombie herd seems to suggest a large group of zombies standing around waiting to be slaughtered rather than a roaming band of monsters that is going to eat you alive. If anything, from a zombie's perspective it is humans who are the herds.

This is a HORDE

So, "herd," as a term, sucks. Zombies are best described as a horde. While the term "horde" means simply "a large group of people" or "an army or tribe of nomadic warriors," the word is connotative of swarms of bodies conquering and pillaging. Even the pronunciation of the term is more fitting for a group of zombies. The combination of the "h" consonant and the "o" syllable requires you to expel the sound from your throat, as if coughing or spitting something up. "Horde" is akin to the sound one would make clearing the throat of mucus.

For my money, zombies are best described as a horde, not a herd. But what do you think? Leave a comment below explaining your preferred terminology.

The Dead Rise: Pictures from Hamilton Zombie Walk 2011

Oct 29th was the Fifth Annual Hamilton Zombie Walk and Charity Food Drive. The walk began at 2pm in Gore Park in Hamilton, ON before our horde of over 200 zombies shambled North on James Street and then West on York to historic Dundurn Castle. The night concluded at The Staircase Theatre with a crowd-pleasing screening of Dead Genesis and prize giveaways.

John Migliore (L) and I (R) pose in our zombie best

Last year, I was the organizer of the walk, but this October I took a step back in order to once again join the walk as a member of the Hamilton Horde. My costume was inspired by experiments I did a few years ago in using liquid latex and toilet paper to create a ghastly burned-to-the-crisp skin texture. Using a big bottle of liquid latex, a pre-bought mouth appliance, a roll of toilet paper, and a jacket I found abandoned outside a pub that I then torched in my back yard, I worked for two and a half hours to pull off my makeup. I was just one of many awesome undead who turned out for yet another great year of zombie appreciation.

Shot of my costume pre-touch up and before the next peeled away

Ronald McZombie

She put her eye out

Unhappy that my neck skin is peeling

Two generations of zombie

Hunter!

It`s a nice day for a blood wedding

A zombie from Dead Island shows off his two life bars

Brain Slug from Futurama

Wayne, one of our tireless Zombie Crossing Guards

Zombie Virus: Refreshing!

Zombie Mountie, eh

My friend in her Fido-inspired dress and collar

Zombie Nurse Courtney

Fido meets Charbroiled Zombie

Getting groovy with these hip greaser zombies

Wayne wins the big raffle prize of the night, a custom mask by MonsterMatt Patterson

The Real Laww's Zombie Rap Video

I'm not much of a music fan, and I don't follow rap music, but I know what I like. And I like The Real Laww's "Professional Hater" (feat. Toon). The rhymes from this North Carolina rapper are as infectious as the zombies that appear in the video.

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (Review)

REVIEW

Warm Bodies

By Isaac Marion

Vintage Books: 2010

RATING:
5 / 5 zedheads


I never expected to discover an inspiring tale about the strength of the human spirit in the story of a brain-eating corpse.

Warm Bodies, the first novel by Isaac Marion, is an impressive debut by any measure. Marion blends the zombie horror genre with the conventions of a genuine love story to create a story that is sweet, sad, and sometimes sick, as dictated by the zombie genre. I found Warm Bodies to be equally engrossing as it was gross. Warm Bodies is also an unexpectedly heartfelt and funny tale about the importance of love and the necessity of dreams. As cliche as it is to say, "I couldn't put it down," it's true; I consumed Warm Bodies like a zombie consumes a hot steaming brain.

In the story, 'R' is an unlikely hero. First of all, he's dead. Second of all, he's a zombie with a hunger for human flesh and brains. He has no memories of his past life and knows nothing of his name save for the first letter. While humanity struggles for survival in walled-off strongholds, the undead "live" amongst the ruins of civilization, such as the old airport where R spends his days aimlessly riding the escalators up and down or staring off into space for hours at a time. But R is special. Unlike other zombies, who shamble aimlessly through their dreary un-lives, R can still speak. He's starting to form thoughts. Ideas. Hopes. He doesn't just pick through the remains of civilization and act out old routines like the other zombies who are operating on some kind of fuzzy instinct. Something in R is compelling him to change and re-discover his humanity.

While participating in a zombie attack on a group of human survivors, R meets Julie, a living girl. Amidst the gore, carnage, and thoughtless gorging, Julie inflames R's nascent senses. For reasons beyond his understanding, R is compelled to rescue Julie from the zombie attack. She's a beating warmth in his otherwise cold and empty existence, but for once R doesn't want to consume that warmth like so many other people he's killed. Instead, he wants to bask in that warmth. An awkward but sweet relationship begins to develop between R and Julie. Every day together, R resurrects some of his lost humanity, bringing him closer and closer to a momentous transformation that will change everything people thought they knew about the undead.

Refreshingly, Warm Bodies is not a Twilight-style love story. It's doesn't play to half-baked concepts of tween romance while marginalizing the monstrous nature of its heroes. Instead, Isaac Marion's novel is a mature, albeit optimistic, take on love that doesn't shy away from the brutality and horror of zombies. R is a monster. He kills people and eats their flesh and brains because zombies are driven to replace the missing life within them by consuming the life of others. At the same time, he's a sympathetic monster not so different from you or I. He's sad and lost, and he does what he does out of instinct, not malice. Despite his sympathetic qualities, which grow more apparent as his humanity returns, he's still a compromised romantic lead. When he meets Julie for the first time, one of the reasons he's drawn to her so intensely is that he just recently ate her boyfriend's brains and assimilated all his memories and feelings. How's that for a first date faux-pas? Somehow, despite the fact that R killed Julie's boyfriend, and despite the fact that R is literally a rotten corpse, Marion manages to make the relationship between R and Julie feel very sincere and genuinely loving.

I was also very intrigued by the zombie society that Marion describes. While the dead are mostly mindless, they form an empty parody of human civilization, re-enacting aspects of human life like Church, marriage, sex, and parenthood, but all very listlessly. The zombies are presided over by a hierarchy of old and twisted zombies called the Boneys who wordlessly enforce a standard of existence that R throws into chaos by refusing to eat Julie. Meanwhile, back in the human settlements, the older generation is clinging to outdated and stifling concepts of survival. In both ways, Warm Bodies makes a statement about the importance of youth, vitality, and fresh-thinking.

Warm Bodies is a wonderful book. For those hard-liners who scoff at the concept of compassionate zombies, let alone a zombie love story, Warm Bodies proves that the fusion can be immensely successful. Warm Bodies is a funny, touching, horrific, and tender reading experience that is a welcome addition to the glut of bleak, nihilistic zombie books already in circulation. If you like films such as Fido or Day of the Dead, I strongly encourage you to read Warm Bodies.

The Ocean Black: Crowdfunding a New Zombie Movie

The filmmakers behind a new zombie project are looking for funding to create an ambitious, feature-length zombie movie titled The Ocean Black




The Story 

It’s been a week since Amber, Don and their young son Aaron barricaded themselves into their apartment. Seven days of family meals and board games while outside an epidemic has turned humanity against itself. Just the dead, roaming with their violent hunger, remain.

Now, as the family’s food goes scarce, they must venture outside to survive. The new dangers strike quick. A pack of undead nearly overwhelm them, killing Aaron in the attack. Destroyed without their son, and with no home to return to, the couple begin a journey towards a distant coastal town. It’s while traveling through these graveyard cities that a new nightmare emerges.

A perverse sense of survival turns Don into a monster, and Amber must find the strength to be truly alone.

If you're intrigued by the proof-of-concept trailer, you can back the project on Kickstarter.

Trailer Tuesday: Dead Heat