Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead is a 2014 Norwegian sequel to Dead Snow and Dead Snow 2: War of the Dead directed by Tommy Wirkola. It stars Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Martin Starr, Ørjan Gamst, Monica Haas and Jocelyn DeBoer. The film will be making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January 2014…
The gruesome Nazi zombies are back to finish their mission, but our hero is not willing to die. He is gathering his own army to give them a final fight.
Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz (also known as Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz) is a 2013 British horror film, first shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Directed by Kieran Parker from a screenplay by Rae Brunton (writer of Outpost and Outpost: Black Sun). It stars Bryan Larkin, Iván Kamarás, Michael McKell, Velibor Topic, Laurence Possa, Ben Lambert, Alec Utgoff, Vince Docherty, Gareth Morrison, Leo Horsfield and Vivien Taylor.
In the film, “we discover the horrifying origins of these supernatural soldiers and see them in ferocious gladiatorial battle against the most ruthless and notorious of all military special forces: the Russian Spetsnaz.”
‘With producer and story credits on the first two instalments Kieran Parker makes his directorial debut and you can tell he knows the Outpost films inside and out. This is a plus – in terms of style and pace it slots in seamlessly with the previous movies – and also a minus: the film’s muted, muddy, khaki colour scheme has made the series rather monotonous. However it’s probably the most action packed yet with plenty of claret flowing and multiple zombie fatalities.’ Henry Northmore, The List
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‘The relentless, brutal and lovingly-rendered gore is all done in-camera too – fans of blood spurt will have plenty to delight over. The dialogue is riddled with more than a few action movie clichés, but this is no bar to enjoying the fast-paced, grimly serious character drama and epic bloodletting. For gore fans, this is a treat.’ Bram E. Gieben, The Skinny
‘There’s nothing more worthwhile to say about Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz. The story is weak, the script is pathetic, the muck-faced sprinting zombie is embarrassing and the sound design is a mix of gunfire, loud noises and shouting. It’s a shame, as the original film was a distinctly underrated and highly original little piece of work. With the direction it’s headed for this and the preceding entry, consider Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz the final nail in the coffin for what began as a promising franchise.’ Dread Central
Dracula II: Ascension is a 2003 American-Romanian horror film, directed by Patrick Lussier. It stars Jason Scott Lee, Stephen Billington and Diane Neal. Roy Scheider – star of Jaws, its sequel and whose career began in low budget horror with The Curse of the Living Corpse - has a cameo role as a priest. Filmed in Romania by Castel Film Studios, the film is the sequel to Dracula 2000 and was executive produced by Wes Craven.
A small group of overzealous scientists hope to use Dracula’s desiccated—but still alive—body to discover the secret of immortality. Elizabeth Blaine, working at the New Orleans morgue, receives Dracula’s ‘corpse’ from her friend and co-worker Luke following the events ofDracula 2000. (This is a departure from the epilogue of the first film, in which Mary Van Helsing explains in a voiceover that she had returned Dracula to London and assumed her father’s duties as Dracula’s keeper.)
Elizabeth examines the body and pricks her finger on a fang in what is supposed to be a human mouth. This leads her to alert her boyfriend Lowell, who is suffering from an ultimately fatal degenerative sickness. Lowell claims a wealthy investor wants to fund their research into the mysterious corpse (assuming the explanation for its condition is natural rather than having anything to do with the supernatural). They spirit the body away.
On their heels is Father Uffizi, seemingly the Vatican’s official vampire hunter. He has been given the task of not only killing Dracula, but granting him absolution (the Church realizes that Dracula is in fact Judas Iscariot). This will allow the vampire to rest in peace. What the Cardinal giving Uffizi this task may or may not know is that the priest was scratched by a vampire fang in a previous hunt. Each day he exposes himself to the sun, burning out the vampiric infection while he screams in pain.
Luke (who secretly loves Elizabeth) doubts that Dracula is a purely natural phenomenon. He surrounds the now-awake (but severely weakened) vampire with folkloric wards like mustard seeds and knots. Elizabeth, meanwhile, feels increasingly strange as the infection in her grows, as does her attraction/bond to Dracula…
Critical reaction to Dracula II: Ascension has been mixed to negative. Rebecca Isenberg of Entertainment Weekly said, “Dracula II is dripping with clichéd scare tactics, from abandoned houses to bathtubs filled with blood, [and] death scenes are equally predictable.” John Puccio of DVD Town said, “The movie is a tired collection of tired clichés bound together by tired characters in tired roles. By the time the eighty-five minutes of movie are over, you’ll be pretty tired, too. Nothing happens that is in the least bit frightening. … [T]he filmmakers splatter the screen with buckets of blood, severed heads, and gory, close-up autopsies, but while all this may be gross and disgusting, it’s not scary.”
Patrick Naugle of DVD Verdict said, “In Dracula II: Ascension, co-writer/director Patrick Lussier has crafted an only mediocre sequel that is sub-par in every respect: acting, plot, and special effects. In place of an interesting story is a movie that takes the character of Dracula, binds him to a cross, and keeps him locked up for most of the feature’s running time. While the filmmakers’ intentions were good, I can’t really recommend this sequel to horror fans looking for true cinematic terror.” Craig Villinger of Digital Retribution called the film “a disappointing sequel and a disappointing vampire film in general”, adding: “Despite the obviously limited budget, Lussier has tried to make a visually impressive feature, and to an extent he succeeds, but ultimately the film is dragged down by an uneventful script, poor performances, and a terrible ending which offers the viewer no closure whatsoever.”
“Laughingly disjointed and painfully displaying its cheapo Eastern European production values, this is a jaw-droppingly inept sequel to a film that wasn’t any good anyway. Wes Craven should be ashamed he lent his name to this facile non-starter and even more embarrassed that he did so again for Dracula III! It works as an unintentional comedy but sadly for all the wrong reasons.” Adrian J. Smith, Horrorpedia
Undead Pool aka Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. The Undead (original title: Joshikyôei hanrangun) is a 2007 Japanese erotic comedy horror film directed by Kôji Kawano from a screenplay by Satoshi Owada (Cruel Restaurant). It stars Sasa Handa, Yuria Hidaka, Ayumu Tokitô, Mizuka Arai, Hiromitsu Kiba, Hidetomo Nishida, Sakae Yamazaki, Tôshi Yanagi and Kiyo Yoshizawa.
A laboratory mix-up means that a vaccine is accidentally swapped with a virus causing a high school full of students and teachers to turn into flesh-eating zombies. But all is not lost: New student Aki discovers that the swim team is immune to the plague. With the school rampaged by ravenous monsters, the girls engage in an over-the-top orgy of gory violence to save the day…
Aki, brainwashed and trained (in that order) to become an assassin, is transferred to an all-girl school, just as a virus that turns the young ladies into entrail-twirling zombies has been making the rounds. Everyone – teachers included – are made into gleeful zombies, tearing into necks, chopping off limbs, and decapitating students with metal rulers. Everyone, that is, except the swim team. Turns out the school pool’s chlorine makes them immune to the zomb-virus.
The cartoonish gore is straight grindhouse stuff and is amusingly entertaining. One female teacher uses stringy guts pulled out of a chainsawed stomach to accessorize her fresh-stained wardrobe. The evil scientist turns out to be doubly so, and faces off with Aki in the end, who’s not too happy about that whole “brainwashing through rape” Japanese technique. Aki, without any clothes worth mentioning, has a secret retribution weapon up her, uh, sleeve.
Just so you know, this fine film is in Japanese and the version available does not have sub-titles. As if that’s gonna stop you watching it.
Jeff Gilbert, Drinkin’ & Drive-In
Buy Nihombie! triple-film DVD pack from Amazon.com
Buy Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. The Undead on DVD from Amazon.com
Dead Snow 2: War of the Dead (Død Snø 2) is a 2013 sequel to Dead Snow (2009) directed by Tommy Wirkola (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters).
The sequel follows the sole survivor of a Nazi zombie attack who battles an even larger army of zombies with the help of a professional gang of American zombie killers who call themselves the Zombie Squad.
Wirkola said of the new script: “[It's] bigger, scarier, funnier, more action-filled and gorier than the previous one.”
Maniac Cop 2 is a 1990 American action horror film directed by William Lustig and written by Larry Cohen (It’s Alive; God Told Me To; Q: The Winged Serpent). It is the sequel to Maniac Cop (1988) and stars Robert Davi, Claudia Christian, Michael Lerner and Bruce Campbell.
Lustig considers this to be his best film, saying: “It was the film [where] I felt as though myself and my crew were really firing on all cylinders. And I think we made a terrific B-movie”. Maniac Cop 2 is the first film in the series to suffer cuts by the MPAA with some of the violence trimmed to get an “R” rating, most notably the police station massacre, which appears in its entirety as a flashback sequence in Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (which was also originally rated NC-17).
Surviving being impaled by a pipe and plunging into a river, the undead Matthew Cordell acquires a junked police cruiser, and continues his killing spree through New York, attacking a convenience store in the middle of a robbery, and killing the clerk (the thief subsequently being killed in a shootout with police). As Cordell stalks the streets, Officers Jack Forrest and Theresa Mallory are put back on duty by Deputy Commissioner Edward Doyle, who has the two undergo a psychiatric evaluation under Officer Susan Riley.
While out at a newsstand, Jack is knifed through the neck by Cordell, leaving Theresa distraught, and prompting her to decide to appear on a talk show to inform the public about Cordell, the police having kept Cordell’s supposed return covered up (Commissioner Doyle was involved in originally framing Cordell and sending him to Sing Sing). While en route to a hotel in a taxi, Theresa is joined by Susan, and the two are attacked by Cordell, who kills the cabbie, and forces Susan and Theresa off the road. After handcuffing Susan to the wheel of a car and sending her into the busy streets, Cordell kills Theresa by snapping her neck. Gaining control of the car, Susan crashes, and is found and given medical attention.
Elsewhere, a stripper named Cheryl is attacked in her apartment by Steven Turkell, who has strangled at least six other exotic dancers over the course of several months…
“Complicating matters is a subplot involving serial killer Steve Turkell, played by an utterly awesome and grotesquely whimsical Leo Rossi (Halloween II). By a weird coincidence that’s never fully explained — but frankly, doesn’t matter either — he befriends the brutish Cordell so that the plot has the two ultimately break into prison and wreak greater chaos. Not only does this lead to more entertaining action sequences but also amazingly adds to the movie’s overall enjoyment. Director William Lustig and producer/writer Larry Cohen return for this follow-up and deliver a motion picture rarity. Maniac Cop 2 is as good, and possibly better, as its predecessor, with heightened action and suspense, making it one of the more fun and pleasurable B-exploitation actioners of the late 80s.” M. Enois Duarte, High-Def Digest
“Maniac Cop 2 is a thinking man’s exploitation film, improving on the 1988 original.” Variety
” … the ‘serial killer team-up’ sub-plot gets a little annoying, but the story regains a sense of purpose towards the climax, which brings a spectacular and logical closure that the first film lacked. I rate Maniac Cop 2 over most Friday the 13th and Halloween sequels in the category of most entertaining ‘undead killer’.” Mark Hodgson, Black Hole Reviews
Buy Maniac Cop 2 on Blu-ray + DVD combo from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
Maniac Cop 2 was released by Blue Underground as a Blu-ray/DVD combo on November 19th 2013, with a new 4K high-definition transfer from the original negative supervised by cinematographer James Lemmo, in 16×9-enhanced 1.85:1 widescreen with DTS-HD 7.1 Master Audio (plus the original Dolby Surround track), enhanced for D-Box motion-control systems.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is a 2011 American fantasy adventure film with macabre undertones represented by the living dead. It is the fourth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Gore Verbinski, who had directed the three previous films, was replaced by Rob Marshall, while Jerry Bruckheimer (Cat People, 1982) again served as producer.
In the film, which draws inspiration from the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is joined by Angelica (Penélope Cruz) in his search for the Fountain of Youth, confronting the infamous pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane) who practices voodoo magic, has an army of undead seamen and wields a magical sword that controls his ship…
‘The emphasis here is on age and weather beaten experience. Of course, it is difficult to discern this or anything else clearly, given that the plot itself is so chaotic. There is sometimes a sense that what you are watching is a kaleidoscopic, two-hour-plus trailer.’ Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
‘This is all what you’d expect with some nice set-pieces, including an impressive mermaid attack, expensive special effects (though the 3D version of the film seems slightly redundant never using the format very much) and numerous star players who are enjoying dressing up. But it lacks a spark of originality and – at just over two hours – even Jack’s antics begin to wear a bit thin.’ Laurence Boyce, The Baltic Times
“While there is fun to be had in On Stranger Tides and it’s exciting (for a moment) to see Captain Jack Sparrow on the big screen again, the entire production seems to suffer from exhaustion. The actors don’t carry the same enthusiasm for their roles, the once creative fight scenes have faded into ordinary action clichés, and the story focuses entirely on moving the plot forward without developing any of the characters or the larger fantastical “pirate’s life” world.” Ben Kendrick, Screen Rant
“For some, this may be a step up from the wilful psychedelic idiocy of ‘At World’s End’, the previous film in the series. But at least that had imagination: ‘On Stranger Tides’ is simply lifeless, a reductive, insulting moneymaking exercise with as much charm and depth as a slot machine.” Tom Huddleston, Time Out
Wikipedia | IMDb | Wikia (zombies) | Related: Captain Clegg | Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter’s Cove
Vampires is a 1979 made-for-television play, broadcast by the BBC as part of their Play For Today strand. Concerning the obsessions of two school boys who suspect their neighbourhood is inhabited by a real vampire, the play was directed by John Goldschmidt who went on to become a celebrated director and producer of documentaries across Europe and America.
Play for Today was a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration. 1979 saw the broadcast of Vampires, one of the best remembered episodes.
With mum away for a night with her new boyfriend, young siblings Stu and Davey (real-life brothers, Peter and Paul Moran) and their friend, Dingo, develop something of an obsession with vampires, after viewing Christopher Lee in Dracula, Prince of Darkness on late-night TV in 1970′s Liverpool. When Dingo goes home, Stu winds up his younger brother by pretending to be under the influence of the Count. As he struggles to get to sleep, the sound of the inebriated elders returning home acts as a strange counterpoint to the world of suspense they have pretended to be in.
The next day, the brothers get into some scrapes whilst attempting to spend their dinner money (£1!) on sweets at the local shop – when this falls flat, they elect to bunk off school, only to be rumbled by Dingo’s big brother who is cruising around in his impressively 1970′s wreck of a car. Stu remains determined to avoid school and takes himself off to see one of his mum’s old flames, ‘Uncle’ Georgie (the most famous actor in the piece, comedy titan, Paul Shane from Hi-De-Hi and many other middle-of-the-road BBC vehicles) who gives him pocket money in a scene which is oddly touching yet almost cruelly sad. The joke shop seems a fitting place to spend his newly found wealth and he purchases a pair of plastic fangs from a man you really wouldn’t want your child giving money to. Spending the rest of the day playing at being the undead in the park, he returns home to apply ‘blood’ to his face to top off the effect.
Also arriving home are Davy and Dingo (who is clearly a bad influence!) who tell him they saw a vampire in the local cemetery earlier and they should go back to check immediately. Return visits to the graveyard confirm that, yes, there is indeed a vampire at large, as what else could a tall old, mute man dressed in black (second most famous face in the play, character actor John G. Heller – also in Clint Eastwood vehicle Kelly’s Heroes) possibly be doing there?
The following day, their teacher has a heart attack and dies at school assembly (how I wished this happened, back in the day) and the boys tell their younger, interim tutor that this is doubtless down to the diabolical influence of the local vampire. It is also mentioned that Stu has dreamed of his father who is buried there, another tell-tale sign of supernatural goings-on. The teacher nods in the disturbed manner. The pair rope their friends in to hunt down the vampire before he can cause any more havoc, a charade which predictably ends in farce, the planning and organisation sadly lacking and the local coppers chasing them off in all directions. Back home, the boys reflect of the bizarre events of recent days and how they could possibly be wrong…but who’s that at the door..?
Filmed in a flat, unremarkable way in the flat, unremarkable (apart from the football club) area between Stanley Park and Liverpool FC’s football ground, this is stellar television, all the more remarkable due to the lack of professional actors on display, the majority never appearing in a production again. A play which hints at much but discloses little, the picture of a working class family and their mother’s passion for drink and a habit of failed relationships is all too real, a no-frills glimpse at lives which never promise much and require any means of escapism to make tolerable.
Whether any vampires are present seems immaterial – there are far more frightening things out in the big bad world. The huge Victorian school building will have you choking on the clouds of chalk dust, the transition of old-school teaching and new, less conservative methods heralding in a world of new opportunities, evidently no more than the reflection in puddles suggested by the rest of the film. A fun and entirely well-judged school boy chat about the differences between horror and science fiction should probably become the given dictionary definition and the whole thing is wrapped up in the even more eye-popping real-life incident concerning the ‘Gorbals Vampire’.
Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia
With thanks to TV Cream for several of the pics
Uncle Sam is a 1996 horror film directed by William Lustig, and written by Larry Cohen. It stars William Smith (Grave of the Vampire), David ‘Shark’ Fralick, Leslie Neale, Bo Hopkins (Tentacles, Sweet Sixteen), Matthew Flint, Anne Tremko, Isaac Hayes, Timothy Bottoms (The Fantasist, Parasomnia), P.J. Soles (Halloween), Tom McFadden, Morgan Paull, Richard Cummings Jr., Robert Forster (Alligator) and Jason Adelman.
In Kuwait, a military unit uncovers an American helicopter downed by friendly fire at least three years ago. As the wreckage is inspected, Master Sergeant Sam Harper, one of the burnt bodies within, springs to life, kills a sergeant and a major, and returns to an inert state after muttering, “Don’t be afraid, it’s only friendly fire!”
Weeks later, Sam’s body is delivered to his hometown of Twin Rivers, which is preparing for Independence Day. Sam’s wife Louise is given custody of the casket containing Sam’s remains, which are left in the home of Sam’s estranged sister Sally, who lives with her patriotic young son, Jody. Sam reanimates in the early hours of the Fourth of July, and proceeds to kill and steal the costume of a perverted Uncle Sam. Sam then makes his way to a cemetery, where he murders two of three juvenile delinquents who had vandalized tombstones, and desecrated an American flag.
During the Independence Day celebration (which a corrupt congressman is visiting) Sam beheads the third delinquent, kills Jody’s teacher (who had opposed the Vietnam War) with a hatchet, and shoots Sally’s unscrupulous lawyer boyfriend in the head. Despite these deaths, the festivities continue, but are thrown into disarray when Sam uses the fireworks gear to blow up the congressman, and a flagpole to impale Louise’s deputy boyfriend. As this occurs, Jody is told by his mother and aunt that his supposedly heroic idol Sam was in fact an alcoholic psychopath who physically and sexually abused them, and only joined the military so he could get a “free pass” to kill people…
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‘Complementing Cohen’s note-perfect string of nationalistic platitudes, Lustig’s surprisingly evocative widescreen compositions are peppered with an absurd parade of Americana—fireworks, potato-sack races, even a morose, wheelchair bound young boy as a ludicrous representation of the stereotypical Vietnam vet—almost all of which become the instruments of death to an amassed populace that feels no qualms about celebrating its own legacy of militaristic vengeance but draws the line if it threatens to soil their bubble of blithe privilege. Oh, and it features a gliding, dreamlike chase scene on stilts that, no doubt to Sam’s chagrin, momentarily thrusts the video cheapie straight into the realm of swooning Euro-horror.’ Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine
‘And the pace was slower than expected, building character and mood rather than just having Sam running around killing folks nonstop (which is what I was actually expecting). I appreciate that. There are a couple of “Hi I’m – *killed*” characters, but for the most part they are given a few scenes before being offed, and only one character is killed for no reason (the others are flag burners, crooked politicians, or other “Anti-American” types). Again, this was most unusual for a slasher movie, and even more surprising when you consider the ridiculous concept.’ Horror Movie a Day
‘Theoretically, Uncle Sam’s creators are using the format of the slasher film to make us re-examine our notions of patriotism, of sacrifice, of honor and glory and all that crap, while simultaneously forcing us to come to grips with the idea that most of the alternatives that have thus far been postulated are equally full of shit, and that the people who espouse them are as likely as not be stupid, lazy, selfish, and immoral. In and of itself, this isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but anybody with the cognitive horsepower to think in those terms in the first place has probably been thinking in those terms for quite some time, and is likely to be turned off by the fact that Uncle Sam makes its characters on both sides of the issue employ only the worst, least defensible arguments to state their cases, and to couch those feeble arguments in the most simplistic, juvenile terms imaginable.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting
Dead Banging – original title Metaruka and also known as Metalca – is a 2013 Japanese comedy horror film written and directed by Eiji Uchida (Greatful Dead). It stars Ryusuke Komakine, Shôko Nakahara, Shûgo Oshinari, Kyoko Watanabe (real-life all-girl rock band, Gacharic Spin).
Plot teaser:
Nosebleed, a formerly unpopular rock band instantly gains a cult following after the lead vocalist, Kana, recruits a zombie, Tetsuo, as their death metal vocalist, even though he is the same undead monster that killed her former band members. Meanwhile, government agents frantically search for their runaway zombie experiment…
Reviews:
“There is some bloodshed here, but not too much. This is all about the comedy. And the music. Yes, I’ll admit it. One or two of the songs had me tapping my feet and smiling. The girls pretending to be rock stars may be a bit rubbish with the instruments (seriously, could they have not at least got someone who was ace at Guitar Hero?) but they make up for it with enthusiasm and energy.” Kevin Matthews, Flickfeast
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Plot keywords: all-girl rock band | bitten by a zombie | comedy | death metal | gig | head banging | heavy metal | living dead | Metallica | moshing | Nosebleed | rock music | stage diving | System of a Down | undead | zombie
