A group of strippers, two hookers, a bouncer, and a pimp run in to a strip club after hours. The start of a funny joke? It’s the premise for “Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!” a surprisingly well made and entertaining horror comedy considering the miniscule budget that it works on from the minute one. Notice how the strip club is the same exterior as the ice rink from the prologue. But who cares? “Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!” is a classic grind house throwback that features a group of mismatched survivors and malcontents going up against an endless horde of the walking dead.
Tag Archives: Horror
Aaah! Zombies!! (2007)
There’s something absolutely genius about director Matthew Kohnen’s horror comedy in which he concocts a formula that’s been done before, and yet feels absolutely brand new. We’ve seen it a thousand times: the government is devising a new toxin for war fare and before they realize it they’ve created a breeding fluid for zombified soldiers. Choosing instead to do away with it, they camouflage the chemical as baby formula and drive it off to a deserted locale. Thanks to inept truck drivers, a barrel falls off the truck and in to a local town behind a bowling alley.
Horno (2009)
Director Terrence Williams shows real promise on occasion, especially with films like “The Hood Has Eyez,” and with his newest film entitled “Horno,” he has an interesting concept but one that doesn’t pan out to an interesting movie. I wish I could have loved the shameless disgusting tripe that was doled out as something Troma angled, but in the end it’s just a good concept with a pretty faulty delivery. Williams has the right idea by inventing a concept within a concept, almost like a meta-movie, but the fact remains that hornos are a relatively established concept. Joe D’Amato infamously did it with films like “Sexy Erotic Nights of the Living Dead.”
The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season (DVD)
From Anchor Bay Entertainment comes the much touted adaptation one of the most groundbreaking comic books of the new millennium. A thinking man’s horror comic book and teeming with literary value and mainstream appeal, “The Walking Dead” was a series begging to be made in to a big screen version from issue one. Thankfully AMC Networks latched on to the Frank Darabont led production and turned it in to a television series.
What began as a gamble on the horror genre and on a mostly underground comic book, has become a juggernaut that has benefitted the horror community for the better. The highest rated AMC network premiere of all time, and charged by a plethora of seasoned character actors from Jeffrey DeMunn, Laurie Holden and Andrew Lincoln and up and comers like Emma Bell, Jon Bernthal, and Steven Yeun, “The Walking Dead” has been an unstoppable pop culture force.
Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula (2011)
Ah that Dracula sure does get around, doesn’t he? He’s met more historical figures than Forrest Gump. In the grand tradition of “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula,” “Emmanuelle vs. Dracula” and “Batman vs. Dracula” comes the lost adventure of two of the world’s most notorious criminals and their confrontation with the lord of darkness. Timothy Friend’s horror crime thriller is in the hokey tradition of absurd battles and there hasn’t been one more absurd since Bonnie and Clyde’s meeting with the undead. Tiffany Shepis stars as Bonnie along Trent Haaga as Clyde in their efforts to thwart off rival criminals and the lawman as they travel across the country. Now down on their luck after a series of unfortunate events leave them penniless and without a car, they meet up with an old friend promising them a big job robbing a local bank.
Transylvania Twist (1989)
Along with being one of my earlier horror movie memories, Jim Wynorski’s “Transylvania Twist” also happens to be one of the earlier horror movie satires that predates “Scary Movie” by almost ten years. It lampoons the slashers of the eighties, it tackles horror movie clichés to a fine art, and even props a few music videos here and there. A mix of “Kentucky Fried Movie,” some “Monty Python,” and a dash of “Young Frankenstein,” Wynorski’s “Transylvania Twist” is an admirable and often giggle inducing attempt at spoofing the entire horror genre and the fads of the mid to late eighties by staging some raucous old fashioned television commercials (with a horror twist of course), while also positing its own plot line in the process. After a hilarious prologue involving a hapless busty traveler and three demented slasher icons getting more than they bargained for, we meet Dexter Ward, a young man who visits his dead uncle at his funeral and is shocked to discover his uncle has yet to kick the bucket.
Vamp (1986)
As a kid, I spent my time around many adults who used to rent videos from my neighborhood video stores. And often times they’d have viewing parties where they’d all hunker down, pop in one video after another and experience whatever title they took a chance on renting sight unseen. And as a child born in 1983 I spent a lot of my time watching with them. As such “Vamp” from 1986 is one of the earliest memories of a movie that continues lingering in my mind to this day. The climax of our protagonists escaping from the vampires in the sewer attempting to reach daylight has been etched in to my brain along with the lowering platform finale of “Day of the Dead.”