Return of the Living Dead II (1988)

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Hey after “Return” ended, there was really nowhere left to go. The characters were dead, zombies were taking over the world, and the government nuked an entire city. And it’s heavily implied that the rain over head would carry the nasty zombification over in to another city and a whole new batch of zombies would come up to look for brain matter. Dan O’Bannon and co. really left “Return” with nowhere else to go as it sealed up the ending nice and tight. So what else for a studio to do when they want to sap more cash from a zombie film? Remake the first film! Sort of. That makes sense, I’m assuming. In some warped manner.

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Detention Of The Dead (2013)

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Director Alex Craig Mann’s horror zombie comedy would probably like to be considered an amalgam of “Shaun of the Dead” with “The Breakfast Club.” And while those attempts at claiming both territories are admirable, his film never quite lives up to aspiring for both heights at all. Mann’s film starts out respectably, taking beats from “Shaun” with moments of school activity interrupted by zombies lurking in the background and stumbling in to class. And then suddenly everything goes to hell. The problem is while it seems to enjoy “Shaun” very much, it’s never as humorous or clever. When it has the chance to compensate for that flaw by focusing on rich and complex characters, it doesn’t do that as well as it should, either.

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Perished (2011)

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Despite its brutally predictable ending, the Australian short zombie film “Perished” is a grueling and terrifying horror entry. Once again, a storyteller has the idea to feature less zombie carnage and explore the minutiae of survival where every little step dictates whether you live or die by tooth and nail of the walking dead.

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The Battery (2012)

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I wish more zombie movies could be like Jeremy Gardner’s “The Battery.” The problem with most modern zombie films is that the writers forget that the humans should be the centerpiece of the film, and not the zombies. Director Jeremy Gardner’s “The Battery” is the prime example of how to handle this kind of genre entertainment with a low budget. Rather than flood the screen with zombies, the monsters are used sparingly and for great moments of terror and memorable scenes, while Gardner focuses primarily on character, building two complex and unique people we can love and hate, in many ways.

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Zombies Un-Brained 12 Film Flesh Fest (DVD)

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This October, zombie fans are able to scoop up the newest film compilation from Mill Creek Entertainment. With over sixteen hours of classic and not so classic zombie movies, this is for the horror fans looking for more with their bucks. The 1962 shocker “Carnival of Souls” is a classic spook fest, about a young woman who crashes in to a lake and survives to tell the tale. Trying to make sense of the incident, she finds herself being stalked by pale bug eyed zombies, all of whom are identical and desperate to take her. For reasons unknown (until the very end), she can’t escape their grasp.

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Afterlife with Archie #1

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Spawned from a mock variant cover last year, “Afterlife with Archie” is another of the many unique attempts by Archie Comics to re-claim their relevance. After wisely acknowledging that there are such things as gay people in their universe, Archie is now embracing the horror genre. Thankfully, this crossover isn’t disastrous like their crossover with The Punisher. This is more demented with a hint of genius like “Marvel Zombies.” I don’t know how long this series can go before it gets boring, but so far I’m loving the dark nature of the Archie Universe.

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Top Ten Horror Characters We Hate

We all have those movie characters we hate. Horror movie fans especially know the feeling of watching a horror movie and having to endure those obnoxious useless characters that we’re desperate to see perish. If we’re unfortunate enough it’s three or more people we want to die, and if we’re spared, it’s only one. Sometimes they’re whiny, or loud, or useless. Sometimes they’re unfunny, or shrill.

Sometimes they contribute nothing to the survival effort, sometimes they bug the other characters, or do nothing but moan about their own problems. Or sometimes they’re just there to pander to audiences. Every horror movie has that character you wish would just disappear or die a horrible death, and as such we’ve compiled a list of our top ten horror characters we hated. And these are characters we still hate, no matter how much we may enjoy the movies.

FRIDAY-THE-13TH-PART-IV-THE10. Teddy – Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Is it any wonder everyone in the movie gets to sleep around except this character? Even Crispin Glover gets to sleep with one of the girls in the group, and yet the character who spends most of his time judging people on their relationships ends his sub-plot watching silent porn, and being stabbed to death by Jason.

jack_black_0039. Titus Telesco – I Still Know What You Did…

I like Jack Black like I like apple pie. I’m not crazy about it, but I enjoy it whenever it’s around. But Black as the dreadlock donning rastafarian is one of the worst elements in an already stupid horror movie, and his death is a wonderful release that ensures the writers were intent on murdering everyone who made us roll our eyes. Somehow Brandy was spared.

000FDT_Kerr_Smith_0158. Carter – Final Destination

I can understand anyone being freaked out in this situation. You beat Death, and now Death is coming for you in as twisted a way as possible, but Carter really does nothing but make things difficult for literally everyone and gets Sean William Scott decapitated. Okay, maybe he’s not all that bad. In either case, he shockingly survives until the end. Thank goodness he never appeared in the sequels.

index7. Glen – Seed of Chucky

Hell, the writers couldn’t decide on giving Chucky a son or a daughter, so why not give him a transgender sexually confused puppet for a child? That’s funny. I assume. “Seed of Chucky” is a miserable enough movie, but Glen as a whole is a poorly conceived running joke that was so stupid he didn’t even take over the series for Chucky and Tiffany like the producers obviously planned. The studios were smart enough to hit the reboot button before Chucky ended up in space.

Randy-Scream-26. Randy – Scream 2

Randy was only in “Scream” to explain the references to audiences unfamiliar with horror movies. He serves literally no function other than to stand around explaining every single plot twist and connecting it to a horror movie. Why is he friends with this group? If that isn’t enough, he ends up in college with Sidney Prescott, and once again, he does nothing to help the cause but try to find the killer, and is dumb enough to be murdered in the middle of a crowded college campus. But at least he had the foresight to film a tape of his last words… to explain the story for the audience yet again.

dewey5. Dewey – Scream

How this fool made it all the way to the end of “Scream 4” is beyond me. In the first film he was a lucky survivor, in part two he was a tragic survivor, and by part three it was clear that writer Kevin Williamson just didn’t have the balls to kill him off. Even in “Scream 4” he evades the new killers at every turn and manages to survive to see the closing credits. Yes, it’s so meta to have the least competent character survive and become the hero, but it’s boring when you know by the third film that nothing bad is going to happen to them.

TUEkp4. Lindsay and Jenny – Human Centipede

Never drink anything you didn’t mix yourself. And most importantly, don’t trust the man living way out in the middle of nowhere. No matter how nice he seems, he is German, after all. The pair of girls in Tom Six’s ode to stupidity really do nothing but make some of the stupidest moves imaginable, even when it becomes clear to about anyone with common sense that the doctor they’ve happened upon while being stranded is in fact mad and psychotic. And rather than simply run away and come back for her friend, one of the girls goes back to free her friend ultimately sealing her fate as the middle of the centipede. Getting crap forced in to your mouth just about sums up Tom Six’s movie.

kelly-freddyvsjason13. Kia Waterson – Freddy vs. Jason

Kelly Rowlands can’t act, thus she adds almost nothing to a movie that really needed all of the energy and charisma it could get. The movie was fun, but a risky experiment, and it paid off. No thanks to Rowlands who plays one of the most insignificant best friends in horror history, doing nothing but complaining, and only has a small moment with Krueger who almost tears her nose off in a dream. In an effort to piss off Freddy, possibly the stupidest moment of the movie, Jason thankfully puts the audience out of our misery and smashes her in to a tree.

H52. Tina – Halloween 5

The only reason Tina is such a large part of the movie is that she was canoodling with the director off screen. There’s no reason why this moronic shrill irritating self centered human manifestation of nails on a chalkboard should have survived until the very end. With Ellie Cornell asking to be let off of the series, the final films basically cut off one of the more likable characters, and replaced her with Tina, her best friend. It’s odd she never appears in “Halloween 4,” or is ever mentioned, but suddenly she’s Jamie’s best friend and big sister? I don’t get it. Not to mention she must have been aware of the fact she and her big sister had a run in with a masked psychopath, and yet does everything to avoid listening to common sense. Even when she’s being sweet, you just hope Michael comes and skewers her with a pitch fork.

DOTD20041. Everyone from Dawn of the Dead 2004

For survivors, it’s a wonder how any of these morons ever survived a single day in this zombie infested world. These zombies run at full speed and chomp on you, and yet they can barely catch this group of idiots that can’t even get together and devise a solid plan of escape from this mall. They spend the whole movie trying to get to Andy in the gun shop, but don’t figure in the fucking sewer that leads to his shop, until air head Nicole goes to save her mongrel dog Chips. She even drives over there on the truck smashing through zombies and makes it inside Andy’s shop. Hello?! Why didn’t anyone try that?! And they don’t have hobby shops in the mall? How about a high powered toy helicopter to carry a stupid sandwich to his roof top?

Or a race car with a meat loaf strapped to the top to get to Andy? Hell, feed him the dog. And Andy never had a CB radio to contact the group? What, you can build a tank like MacGuyver, but you can’t figure out how to get food to a guy across the parking lot? Ana is probably the shittiest nurse in history, who doesn’t even check up on character Andre’s wife once, considering she’s about to have a child in a world without medicine, doctors, or life support. Genius Michael builds a tank that has the survivors holding active chainsaws in a moving truck. Lo and behold two of the characters are offed during the final chase because their inability to hold a damn chainsaw still. Right, give the chainsaws to the thin woman and feeble elderly man. That’s brilliant. No one ever commandeers the underground parking lot until the lights go out, perhaps to check for gasoline or a working car to escape with. It just goes on and on. Worst remake ever.