A Gross of Zombies: Reviews of 144 Zombie Movies

By Andy McKinney, Harrison McKinney and Jackson McKinney

These 144 reviews of zombie movies will educate the reader as to which films are worthy of the time of the movie watcher. Some zombie movies are just as good as any other kind of movie, some watchable but not great, and some are absolute rubbish. Be warned, author Andy McKinney names names and tells it like it is. As he says about some zombie movies, "I watched this one so you won't have to." Enjoy these reviews from a man who is himself a fan as well as a reviewer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504971966

Andy McKinney

Stephen Lewis, a resident of Scottsdale, AZ, grew up in Portland and Ogunquit, Maine. Several years ago, Authorhouse published his first novel, “The Palestine Exchange.” “French Fried” is his second novel in collaboration with the talented Andy McKinney. Andy McKinney has authored “The Armed Forces of Iran,” “A Gross of Zombies: Reviews of 144 Zombie Movies,” “Time Smash Malta” which is a time travel book exploring sixteenth-century history and the short story “Bulldog.” He lived in Alaska for thirty years. The long winters gave him plenty of time to read. He is proud to collaborate with Stephen Lewis on “French Fried.” McKinney now lives in the cool mountains of central Arizona with his five cats, two dogs, one beautiful, patient, wife, and a peacock.

Book preview

A GROSS OF

ZOMBIES

REVIEWS OF 144 ZOMBIE MOVIES

Andy McKinney

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©

2016 Andy McKinney. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/13/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7195-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7196-6 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

28 Days Later (2002)

28 Weeks Later (2007)

A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)

Aaah! Zombies aka Wasting Away (2007)

Abraham Lincoln Vs. Zombies (2012)

American Zombie (2007)

Army of Darkness (1992)

The Astro Zombies (1968)

Attack Girls Swim Team vs. the Un Dead (2007)

Battle of the Dammed (2013)

Big Tits Zombie (2010)

Bio Zombie (1998)

Birth of the Living Dead (2013)

Blood of the Zombie (1961)

Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Boy Eats Girl (2005)

City of the Living Dead (1980)

Cockneys Vs. Zombies (2012)

Dance of the Dead (2008)

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Dead Alive (1992)

Dead Before Dawn (2012)

Dead Men Walking (2005)

Dead Season (2012)

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014)

Dead Snow (2009)

Deadgirl 2008

Deadlands: The Rising (2006)

The Descendents (2008)

Detention of the Dead (2012)

Diary of the Dead (2007)

Die and Let Live (2006)

Die You Zombie Bastards (2005)

Disaster L.A. (2014) (AKA Apocalypse L.A.)

Doghouse (2009)

Dr. Blood’s Coffin (1961)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010)

Eaters (2011)

Electric Zombies (2006)

Evil Dead (2013)

Evil Dead II (1987)

Evil Dead (1981)

Exit Humanity (2011)

Fido (2006)

Flight of the Living Dead (2007)

Game of Thrones (2011)

Ground Zero (2010)

Hard Rock Zombies (1984)

Hell of the Living Dead (1981)

Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels (1999)

House of the Dead (2003)

How to Make a Zombie Cocktail

Humans vs. Zombies (2011)

I Am Legend (2007)

I Drink Your Blood (1970)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

I Zombie (2015)

Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Juan of the Dead (2010)

King of the Zombies (1941)

Last of the Living (2008)

Let Sleeping corpses Lie (1974)

Living a Zombie Dream (1996)

Maggie (2015)

Motocross Zombies from Hell (2007)

My Boyfriend’s Back (1993)

Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)

Night of the Dead: Leben Tod (2006)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Night of the Living Dorks (2004)

Oasis of the Zombies (1983)

Onechanbara: Samurai Bikini Squad (2008)

Otto or Up With Dead People (2008)

Outpost II-Black Sun (2012)

Outpost III: Rise of the Spetznaz (2013)

Outpost (2007)

Plaguers (2008)

Planet Terror

Platoon of the Dead (2009)

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

Quarantine 2: Terminal

Quarantine (2008)

Quick and the Undead (2006)

Raiders of the Damned (2007)

Re-Animator (1985)

REC (2007)

REC 2 (2009)

REC 3: Genesis (2012)

REC 4: Apocalypse (2014)

Resident Evil (2002)

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Resident Evil: Damnation (2012)

Resident Evil-Extinction (2007)

Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005)

Revenge of the Living Dead Girls (1987)

Rise of the Dead (2007)

State of Emergency (2011)

Stripperland (2011)

Survival of the Dead (2009)

The Amazing Adventures of the Living Corpse (2013)

The Battery (2012)

The Dead 2 (2013)

The Dead Hate the Living (2000)

The Dead (2010)

The Horde (2009)

The Living Dead Girl-(1982)

The Mutant Chronicles (2008)

The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 (2011)

The Zombies Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London

Tokyo Zombie (2005)

Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters (2002)

Undead (2003)

Vampires vs Zombies (2004)

Warm Bodies (2013)

Wisconsin Project X (2011)

Wise Guys VS Zombies (2003)

Woke Up Dead (2010)

World War Z (2013)

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)

Z Nation (TV)

ZA: Zombies Anonymous (2006)

Zombeavers (2014)

Zombi 3 (1988)

Zombie 5 (The Killing Birds, Uccelli Assassini) (1982)

Zombie Apocalypse (2011)

Zombie Brigade (1986)

Zombie Campout (2002)

Zombie Diaries (2006)

Zombie Hunter (2013)

Zombie Nation (2005)

Zombie Nightmare (1986)

Zombie Strippers (2008)

Zombie Undead (2010)

Zombie Wars (2006)

Zombie World (2015)

Zombie (aka Zombi 2, aka Zombie Flesh Eaters) (1979)

Zombiegeddon (2003)

Zombieland (2009)

Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009)

Zombies, Zombies, Zombies (2008)

Zombiez (2004)

Zombie Movies

Acknowledgements

I dedicate A Gross of Zombies to my two sons, Jackson McKinney and Harrison McKinney. They have encouraged me along the way, keeping my spirits up when the project seemed beyond my abilities. Their cheer and good humor carried me along.

Each of them has contributed a review to the book, with their own special and unique perspectives. Thanks guys.

INTRODUCTION

I hope readers will find some entertainment value in A Gross of Zombies and perhaps some interesting facts as well. Most of all I hope readers will have an idea of which of the hundreds of Zombie movies out there are worthy of their time as watchers in the dark. Some Zombie movies are every bit as good as any other kind of movie. A lot of them however have been made with too little money and too little talent for most people to be able to enjoy. As a movie reviewer I boldly point to the bad and the good and name names.

Zombie movies come in many guises. The old school films which began with White Zombie hold close to the tradition of the folk myths of the Caribbean region. The very name Zombie comes from the tropical islands we today know for rum and sandy beaches. Those Zombies, though quite dead, could be ordered around. They come closer to docile slaves than the raving brain eaters of latter tradition. These Caribbean Zombies have a close association with Voodoo. We still see variants of this theme even in more recent years. If you’d like a more scientific explanation of this phenomenon check out The Serpent and the Rainbow. That one will scare the jeebers out of even the most jaded fan.

Very similar stories and legends pop up in some Congo basin African societies. Some powerful witches in the traditional cultures of parts of present day South Africa are said to be able to create animated but deceased slaves but I know of no films on this subject. This sounds to me to be a very close analog to the more familiar to us Caribbean Zombies.

I like the traditional style Zombies best myself but the various sub-genres are also worthwhile. We now have enough Nazi Zombie movies to form a little sub group. The Italian and French Zombie sexploitation films of yesteryear sill have watchers and have enough weight and momentum that even in the new century film directors seek reasons for young actresses to disrobe for little or no reason. Many fans find this fascinating. Some Zombie films make fun of Zombie films and if well done can give us a good laugh which we always need. REC and many others aim with success to scare us. Good scary Zombie movies do just that, to our delight.

Since the whole idea of walking dead people is preposterous on its face, the precise cause of the plague isn’t all that important. Some films postulate a virus, a parasite or a germ of some sort. Some films have a supernatural cause, demons inhabiting the bodies of the dead as in Jennifer’s Body. Sometimes the cause stems from beyond our planet, from the unknown depths of space. But for my money, the least said about the cause the better. What is most important about Zombies isn’t how they got here. The most important thing about Zombies is not getting eaten up by one of them. Avoiding getting gobbled up will focus a person’s attention all by itself, never mind the cause. Shouldn’t we pay more attention on running and hiding in times of stress rather than spending too much screen time in speculation? I think so.

The producers of World War Z spent something on the order of $200,000,000, which by any reckoning makes a huge pile of money. The film they made has delighted movie goers all over the world, to their financial relief. At least two movies reviewed here had purported budgets in the $5,000 range. One supposedly was made with things found around the house. So we have an enormous span in resources devoted to particular films. There exists a similar enormous span in talent of the film makers and beyond that of the intent of the film makers. Sometimes the film makers hit the mark they set for themselves, sometimes they miss. But worst of all are the time when the makers don’t much care if they make something watchable or not. Sadly, we have more than one in this record that aims to put something, anything on film in order to extract a few dollars from the Zombie film fanciers.

The films done with verve, imagination and talent shine no matter what the budget the makers had. Shaun of the Dead and the Cuban film Juan of the Dead are two such but there are many more.

This book is best used to inform and warn the Zombie fan. We are very forgiving as a group. We just want to have fun and be entertained. Take a few minutes before you invest your time in a movie with an interesting title. Look it up. It may be worth your time but the contrary might also be true. We don’t have to have a perfect movie to enjoy it but there are some that simply suck an hour and a half from your life. Avoid them, I will tell you in the following pages which to avoid at all costs. As for the rest, you can just have fun and watch out for the splatter.

28 DAYS LATER (2002)

T he 28 days refers to the time from a PETA style attack on a laboratory housing primates until the beginning of the film’s action. The government laboratory in the UK uses the primates to simulate humans in a quest to make a dangerous bio weapon. They do make a dangerous bio weapon. The animal rights activists, in their moralistic fervor, accidentally release the virus into the human world. The virus causes tremendous rage on the part of the victims. Think of fast moving, enraged, homicidal Zombies. They are not just hungry; they want very badly to kill.

Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland say they modeled their story on The Day of the Triffids, a 1951 book by John Wyndham and the subsequent 1962 film. There are certain similarities, never mind that the Triffids are mobile plants from outer space.

One British horror magazine rates 28 Days Later as the second greatest Zombie flick of all time. Most of us find this a defensible claim. We give it a strong four brains. A few technical quibbles prevent the golden halo of a five brain rating. Make no mistake, this film pops to the very top of the heap in the genre and also makes the grade as a general film.

Director Danny Boyle is astonishingly good. He directed the harrowing look at drug addiction in his very well regarded Train Spotting. He won the Oscar for Slum Dog Millionaire, an outstanding film which garnered 8 Oscar nominations. 28 Days Later picked up seven awards in the UK, the USA and Europe. The awards covered direction, acting and cinematography, a very complimentary mix of favorable views.

The principle actors, little known in 2002, have gone on to major success. Cillian Murphy has significant roles in both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Naomie Harris plays Winie Mandela in the 2013 biopic on Nelson Mandela and is now in the Bond films as Money Penny.

So, we have a genius director using young but very talented actors. Give them a thinking man’s script by Alex Garland (Ex Machina 2015) and we have a world class film. In 28 Days Later we even have allegory-there is a dream sequence about a large flock of sheep harmoniously grazing. Garland gives us plenty to think on there in the midst of a Zombie apocalypse. When we lose our fellows, our primate band, we lose a very great deal of ourselves.

The terror of the infected is matched by the bestial behavior of the survivors. In the climactic scene, the Murphy character exhibits the chief symptom of the infected, homicidal rage. He so closely mimics the behavior of the infected that we think for a while that he must have been bitten.

A recurring image in the film is the famous Greek statue of Laocoon and his sons struggling against his fate in the form of a giant, poisonous sea snake. Laocoon has every muscle of his body, every fiber of his being, fighting the snake, a snake of overwhelming power and unreasoning aggression. Boyle is asking us to fight ill fate to the bitter end. As human beings we should never, ever give up. Thanks Danny.

The producers allowed a mere $7.5 million to make the film, a pittance by modern studio standards. But genius will often surprise us. Great imagination and wonderful insight can make a great film without spending a great deal of money. But it brought in $83 million at the box office. We in the audience know the difference between gold and dross.

This R rated exceptionally fine Zombie movie gets the coveted four brain award for film excellence. It runs for one hour and 53 minutes of hand squeezing intensity. This is a great Zombie movie.

Boyle made a sequel 28 Weeks Later which we find similarly praise worthy and you can find the review elsewhere in these pages. He has in mind rounding out the trilogy with 28 Months Later at a future date. We can hope.

28 WEEKS LATER (2007)

V irtually unknown writer/director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was entrusted by producer Danny Boyle to write and direct the sequel to his fabulous 28 Days Later. Most fans consider 28 Days Later to be one of the best Zombie flicks ever. 28 Weeks Later justifies the confidence that Boyle showed in the little known Fresnadillo.

This version of the tale picks up some six months after the outbreak. (The Zombie like behavior is caused by a virus that causes intense rage in the infected along with people munching.) The infected seem to have a compulsion to attack, rend and viciously destroy their vicitims. Biting seems to be a side issue with them, but an important issue. These are fast Zombies as we recall from 28 Days Later. Viscious fast Zombies Hell bent on destruction make very tough opponuts.

Rather than a wide brush showing of the disaster 28 Weeks Later focuses on a single family. The delightfully named Imogen Poots plays the young daughter who with her brother are reunited with dear old dad in a safe zone created in London by the US Army. The infected have pretty much died off by now and all seems to be getting back to normal. Shots of the streest of London, empty of living humans, and the ominous musical score go a long way to make the desperate even hopless but certainly somber mode of the film. A Zombie apocalyspe is no laughing matter.

But human folly steps in, as it often does. The dad and kids make it to a safe zone set up in London by helpful American troops. But people can and do make terrible mistakes.

Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty) plays the dad with character flaws. Australian born Rose Byrne (X-Men films, Spy) is a helpful American medico. Idris Elba (The Wire, the Thor films) plays the American commander in London, even though he is actually a Brit himself. Good work with accents there. And Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) appears as an American soldier. The cast is amazing for a Zombie flick. As we like to say, this is a good movie with Zombies, not a good Zombie movie. Zombie make-up meets and exceeds studio levels and all technical aspects of film making are similarly top notch.

28 Weeks Later achieved two awards. It got the Empire Award in 2008 for Best Horror film. It also plucked a Spanish award for the Spanish language version, something called the Eloy de Iglesia. I am not the only one who liked this one very much. People paid $64 million at the worldwide box office to see it, which is big time good for a movie and unbelievable for a Zombie flick.

This R rated stunner runs a Zombie average of one hour and 31 minutes.

28 Weeks Later we rate at a superior three and a half brains. This one should reside in your permanent collection.

A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (1973)

F air warning, we can call this a Zombie movie only by a very generous stretch of our best wishes. A young school girl named Christina has been summoned to France or maybe Spain upon the death of her father whom she had never met. Now officially an orphan she must be present for the reading of the will. As it happens, she notices that her blind uncle feels quite cold to the touch when she greets him with a kiss. That and a snarky remark that the family members do not have much of an appetite sums up the Zombie references until the last scene of the film, which explains all. More or less.

Christina von Blank plays the young Christina in this moody, atmospheric and intellectually ambitious excursion into soft porn hiding in a horror film bathrobe. The fit as a fiddle young von Blank has her clothes off in many of her scenes. A typical scene has her in bed naked as a jay bird and then some dream sequence evolves, sometimes involving her simply walking around in the woods in her caftan. Another sequence has her lying out-starkers-surrounded by candles in some kind of dream of human sacrifice scene. Actress Britt Nichols plays a family member of unknown relation who also spends much of her time un or partly clothed to our benefit. Poor Linda Hastreiter, who plays ‘the blind girl’ not only gets naked but has Nichols lap up her blood. And she doesn’t get in the credits!

We might think that a Jesus Franco film has a high likelihood of incoherence. Some might blame the lack of story coherence to the film’s French language dialog and inept English language sub-titles, but they would be wrong. Franco wanted to make a kind of Italian New Wave horror flick with plenty of naked girls wandering around and he did just that. The film style and the dead pan acting reminds one of a third rate Italian depiction of the Da Da movement from the 1950’s. But Franco livens things up by having Christian von Blank taking a skinny dip in a pond of lily pads. All very existential and very pretentious. But fans of full frontal nudity will not mind, or full backal nudity or fans of lesbo Zombie stuff either. In the finest of French traditions none of the actresses have notable tan lines.

Franco made something like 160 films, his last in 2013 at the age of 83 shortly before he died that same year. He made a lot of low budget horror films but also a few films we might have heard of like Venus in Furs a 1969 film with James Darren, Maria Rohm and Klaus Kinski. He also spent part of his career making outright pornographic films. Sometimes his adult themed horror skirts close to the line. To the end he often handled both the writing and directing, including both tasks in his last film Revenge of the Alligator Ladies.

Franco cast himself in A Virgin Among the Living Dead as Basilio, a retarded mute who does odd jobs for the dead but highly functioning family members. Other family members besides the blind girl and the uncle include the Britt Nichols character who dresses, acts and is made up like one of the night clubbers from La Dolche Vita. She had no appetite but she does chain smoke, unusual for the undead.

A Virgin Among the Living Dead lasts a short one hour and 20 minutes and should be rated R for extensive and prolonged nudity. No Zombie chewing at all.

The story didn’t make much sense but the photography shows exceptional skill, maybe even genius. Franco does not easily fit into one of the standard boxes. The sound occasionally staggers into the worst quality, a feature I detest. I give it a fair two and a half brains.

In some versions of the film some Zombie splices from the 1980’s pop in. This adds nothing to the story but does let some very traditional Zombies lurch around. Think of a random film clip insert. Franco must also take responsibility for Oasis of the Zombies which is a strong contender for worst Nazi Zombie flick ever made. See the review elsewhere in these pages.

AAAH! ZOMBIES AKA WASTING AWAY (2007)

A aah! Zombies is one of those in between films. It is in between the garage scale flicks done by penniless, talentless people with nothing to recommend them and genuine professional films. This one has a lot to recommend it. The writing is well above average. The set up is very original. When a group of friends accidentally ingest the Zombie creating serum they don’t realize that they have been Zombiefied. They realize that something is wrong but the Zombie effect dumbs them down so far that they think that everyone else is infected but that they are ok.

A cool innovation is that when the group is dealing with one another the film is in color and they look and sound normal. When the group is seen by normal people, the film is in black and white and the victims look and sound like Zombies. I liked that. The mistaken perception of the friends makes for plenty of comic opportunities which writer/director Matthew Kohnen uses to good advantage. Kohnen has a couple of other directing and writing credits for short films.

Leading actors Matthew Davis and Julianna Robinson are actual professional actors, even if we might not recognize them. Davis played his Zombie character with more than a whiff of the comic style of Dwayne Hickman’s Dobby Gillis. Robinson gets to play a beautiful Zombie, perhaps a first.

The other side of the story is the terrible acting on the part of most of the other players. And crappy sound, which we just plain hate, it spoils the magic when we have to strain to understand the action. Aside from the jokes which are often quite funny, the story line is meandering and more stupid than it needs to be. Note to Kohnen as a writer-stay on track and keep it simple.

Aaah! Zombies is not rated but there are no naked people and the gore is very mild. It runs for a fast one and a half hour. This promising film rates a minor hit with two brains. The production values, acting and story line preclude a higher rating in spite of some clever parts of the script and strong acting by the two leads. These people deserve