Horror Hotel Cinema - Zombies: A Living History

The worlds doomed, man....

Everywhere you turn these days there are lunatics eating peoples faces, chem-trails blazing through the skies spraying us with God knows what, and the constant threat of chemical weapons being used on us by faceless unknowns, (most likely our own Governments).

You can't surf a news site without running into some zombie-like craziness. Hell, the internet is alive with talk of teh coming apocalypse! Time to study up, kids. Get your shit together and prepare for the coming Hell-on-Earth.

Me, I learned all I need to know from George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD. While these undead bastards are eating my friends and neighbours, I'll be holed up in a shopping mall, armed to the teeth with Jack Daniels, Sub-Machine Guns and Xbox 360 games. Step into my mall, living or undead...I'll blow your fucking head off.

For the rest of you, this documentary should help you get up to speed on your survival skills. Learn the history of Horror cinema's most enduring monsters; their weakness', motives and machinations.

Meet Jonathan Maberry....writer of some of the greatest zombie fiction ever written in his Benny Imura Saga,, (reviews of first two books here). Meet George Romero, creator of the...ah hell, you know who he is already. Meet some random chinese badass whose more than happy to teach you how to ruin a zombies day with a variety of household items.

And if all that aint enough, you'll also get to learn about the genesis of the zombie myths from a plethora of cultures! Does it get any better? No...no, its doesnt.

Get smart, get watching....

Review : Juan of the Dead (2011)

Director:

Alejandro Brugués

Writer:

Alejandro Brugués

Stars:

Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Jorge Molina and Andrea Duro

50 years after the Cuban Revolution, a new Revolution is about to begin.  

Meet Juan, a down on his luck Cuban living a life of simple means. Juan is the sort of guy who survives. He's survived wars, he's survived a marriage, he's survived poverty, and he's determined he's gonna survive the zombie apocalypse that has brought his home-city to ruins. Perhaps there's even money to be made....

Right off the bat, your probably thinking, 'Juan of the Dead? Its clearly a rip-off of Shaun of the Dead!', and no ones gonna blame you for that. Its what I thought.

Review : The Pact (2012)

Director:

Nicholas McCarthy

Writer:

Nicholas McCarthy

Stars:

Caity Lotz, Casper Van Dien and Agnes Bruckner

As a woman struggles to come to grips with her past in the wake of her mother's death, an unsettling presence emerges in her childhood home.

Good ghost stories are few and far between, so you may be inclined to bypass the latest American offering in the sub-genre, THE PACT, on your way to more fresh, original shores, but this one is definitely worth a look.

Far from the big budget bombast of INSIDIOUS, this low-budget chiller takes the more subtle route, raising hairs through claustrophobic camerawork and good old fashioned, 'less-is-more' dread.

In essence, THE PACT is a simply told haunted house story, and it does admittedly lack originality in its early scenes, but where it fails to impress as an original tale, it truly shines as an exercise is nuanced atmospherics and style.

Ghost stories will be with us forever, and there's only so many variations on the theme. Of late, filmmakers have to push themselves further in the idea department to keep an audience on their toes. What director Nicholas McCarthy sets his sights on in the first two acts is, instead, a deep sense of unease, punctuated by moments of stark, scary as hell horror. He's a man with a sure eye for what makes a truly frightening film work, and its evident from frame one that this guy has the skills to go all the way.

Review : Wrath of the Titans (2012)

Director:

Jonathan Liebesman

Writers:

Dan Mazeau (screenplay), David Johnson (screenplay), and 4 more credits »

Stars:

Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson and Rosamund Pike
 
Perseus braves the treacherous underworld to rescue his father, Zeus, captured by his son, Ares, and brother Hades who unleash the ancient Titans upon the world.

Right of the bat, let me state that I hated the CLASH OF THE TITANS remake on its release. It suffered from lifeless performances, a lackluster script, some seriously dodgy CG, (Medusa looked like a damned PlayStation 2 cut-scene), and action sequences that felt supremely underwhelming, (not least in the limp-dick finale). It was a mess, but in retrospect and with my nostalgia-fueled rage somewhat tempered by the passing of time, Ive come to see it as a minor nuisance, rather than an all-out clusterfuck.

Most of the Earths populace deemed it to fit into one of these categories - Clusterfuck or nuisance.

No one thought it was worth a damn, and less than no one wanted a sequel. Yet here we are. The big bucks that CLASH brought the studios has spoken and must be obeyed. How utterly predictable.

Whats not predictable is the sheer soul freezing shock that WRATH is actually a much more accomplished than its predecessor. In fact, I found it to be something of a blast. I know, I know..I'm crazy, but bare with me a second and let me explain.

Review : Men in Black 3 (2012)

 

Director:

Barry Sonnenfeld

Writers:

Etan Cohen, Lowell Cunningham (Malibu comic)

Stars:

Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin
 
Agent J travels in time to MIB's early years in the 1960s, to stop an alien from assassinating his friend Agent K and changing history. 

I gotta be honest with you, I cant remember a great deal about the original MEN IN BLACK. I vaguely remember it being watchable, and having a groovy closing scene feauring universes inside universes, but I was a card carying X-FILES kid, and the comedic vibe the film shot for really twisted my melons the wrong way. See, for me, 'Men in Black' were serious fucking business. People to be feared. Not least because I lived in constant fear they'd fuck up my plans of heading to 'Devil Mountain' and having my ass abducted off this war rock we call 'Earth'.

A film that painted these dark and mysterious bastards in comedic tones was not something my none-more-serious persona was willing to accept. So MEN IN BLACK sorta pissed me off. That said, it was a fun film, if you could get over the handling of the subject matter and that godawful Will Smith song that came as part of the package. It was what it was...throwaway Hollywood fluff. Nothing more, nothing less.

I never saw the sequel. I own it, (dont ask me how), but I never got round to watching it.

Review : Piranha 3DD (2012)

 

Director:

John Gulager

Writers:

Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, and 3 more credits »

Stars:

Danielle Panabaker, David Hasselhoff and Matt Bush | See full cast and crew

After the events at Lake Victoria, the prehistoric school of blood-thirsty piranhas make their way into a newly opened water-park.

I gotta admit, I'm one of these lower life forms who got a hefty amount of kicks from Alexandra Aja's PIRANHA remake. (You can read my review right here, troops!) It hit all the B-movie sweet spots, and in the right mindset, and with the right buds, (and beers), it was a shamefully enjoyable throwback to the gory glory days of old. Naturally, when I heard there was a sequel coming down the pipe, I was pleased as punch. A good creature feature is always a fun few hours, and this sequel is directed by the guy behind the FEAST Trilogy, which seems like a perfect fit for the tongue-in-cheek material we're dealing
with here.

Not to mention all this shit :

More gore.
More tits.
More Christopher Lloyd
More Ving Rhames.
David-fucking-Hasselhoff playing himself.
No post-converted 3D eyeball rape-age.
And its called PIRANHA 3DD