J.R. Bookwalter, Akron’s finest filmmaker, strikes again. Zombie Cop, his third feature, is something of a redheaded stepchild in his oeuvre. According to Bookwalter, he was in an unhappy place with his filmmaking at the time. He had been contracted to shoot six movies in seven months for distributor Cinema Home Video (prolific b-auteur David DeCoteau, owner of CHV, executive produced), and that experience left him so burnt out he almost left the business for good. It’s no wonder, then, that he has mixed feelings about Zombie Cop. The word ‘disowned’ appears here and there in the tubes, but that seems to be an exaggeration. He may not like the final product all that much, but his name is still on Zombie Cop, warts and all. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Zombie Cop”
Tag: Zombie Flick
October Horrorshow: Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte dellamore
Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is drifting through life. No college degree — no high school degree, even. He admits that he’s only ever read two books in his life. One, he didn’t finish, and the other was the phone book. Did he finish that?
A dead end life inevitably leads one to a dead end job. In Francesco’s case, that’s as caretaker for the cemetery in the Italian town of Buffalora. His assistant is Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), a sensitive idiot whose only spoken words are the first syllable of his name, spat out like a child saying, “Nyaa!”
It would be a normal and dull job if all the pair had to do was bury the dead and keep graves clean, but, in Buffalora, the dead have the habit of coming back to life and clawing their way out into the light. So, every night, Francesco and Gnaghi have the unenviable task of smashing the brains of the undead and sticking them back in their graves. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte dellamore”
October Horrorshow: Bigfoot Vs. Zombies
Mark Polonia has been in the cheap movie game since the mid-1980s. Ultra low budget horror and sci-fi is an indelible part of his identity as a filmmaker. For almost forty years (previously with his twin brother, John — rest in peace), he has cranked out movie after movie, some garnering praise above and beyond expectations, while some are gutter trash. But, they are fun gutter trash. As of this writing, he has directed twenty-seven movies in this decade alone, and a whopping seven of them have IMDb ratings below 2.0. That’s not easy to do.
Mark Polonia reminds me of a fellow student at the School of Visual Arts, way back in my haughty fine arts days. He was a slightly below average artist, for what one gets at a place like SVA, but I felt that most of his issues could be solved by slowing down a bit. He was in such a rush to push out all these visual ideas he had bouncing around in his head that he never took the time to step back and refine what he was putting down on canvas. Just taking an extra day or two to stare at and think on a piece would have done wonders for its quality, I thought. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Bigfoot Vs. Zombies”
October Horrorshow: The Dead Next Door
Many creative people hail from the rusted industrial corpse of Akron, Ohio. Some of them even get famous. Musicians, mostly. But, when it comes to filmmakers, there is one name, and one name, only, associated with Akron. And it’s not Jim Jarmusch, despite what the list of people from Akron on Wikipedia would suggest. This filmmaker has not only made more movies than Jarmusch (who I like as a filmmaker, by the way), but made many of them in his good ole hometown. His name is J.R. Bookwalter.
His first feature, released in 1989, is the classic low-budget, ultra-gory Dead Next Door. Produced, written, and directed by Bookwalter, production began in the summer of 1985 when Bookwalter pitched Sam Raimi on the film. Raimi, gaining an executive producer credit, agreed to pony up the cash, and shooting began in spring of 1986 after some fits and starts. More problems cropped up, as often happens in productions like this, but the majority of the film was in the can by that autumn. 1987 and 1988 were for reshoots, more tinkering, and editing. Finally, sweet release on video in November of 1989. That’s a labor of love, folks. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Dead Next Door”
Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons 2, aka Dèmoni 2… l’incubo ritorna
Could lightning strike in the same place twice? Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento must have thought so. It only took them a few months after the release of Demons to start work on a sequel, hoping to mirror the success of the first film. How did they plan on doing so? By remaking the first film.
Released just a year after Demons, in 1986, Demons 2 sees the return of Lamberto Bava in the director’s chair, working from a screenplay credited to Argento, Franco Ferrini, Dardano Sacchetti, and Bava, himself. The previous film had set up a sequel at the end, where the demon-possessed zombies of the first film escaped the doomed theater and spread across the city of Berlin, and it is implied that civilization itself is collapsing. Bava and company decided not to build on this. Instead, Demons 2 takes place in an apartment building in Hamburg. The events of the first film are alluded to, but that’s about it. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons 2, aka Dèmoni 2... l’incubo ritorna”
Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons, aka Dèmoni
I praised Lucio Fulci for his storytelling in Manhattan Baby. But, truth be told, I wouldn’t mind it at all if every film I watched for The Italian Horrorshow were as wild and unhinged as Lamberto Bava’s Demons, from 1985. Bava proved with his film that it isn’t necessary to have a complex, or even coherent, plot for a horror flick to be a success. In fact, this jumble of sensory overload is one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen from one of horror’s golden ages. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons, aka Dèmoni”
It Came from the Camcorder: Redneck Zombies
According to Lloyd Kaufman, so some of it is probably true, Pericles Lewnes and George Scott wandered into the offices of Troma one day in the late 1980s with a finished movie they wanted Troma to distribute. Kaufman and his business partner Michael Herz agreed, on the condition that Lewnes take on unpaid work at Troma to work off the money Kaufman was sure this movie would lose for the company. And, thus, Redneck Zombies was unleashed upon the world.
Directed by Lewnes from a screenplay that has to be a pseudonym for either he or Scott, Fester Smellman, Redneck Zombies is one of the more ambitious efforts, gore-wise, that has been featured in It Came from the Camcorder. In tone, it fits right into the Troma stable, as Lewnes was very much a fan of their work. As the title implies, this movie is about zombies, who happen to be rednecks. Continue reading “It Came from the Camcorder: Redneck Zombies”
October Horrorshow: The Video Dead
Zombies have been portrayed in every which way from here to Timbuktu. It’s not necessary for a filmmaker to have a unique take on zombies in order to make a successful zombie film. When they do bring some new quality to the old trope, it instantly makes the film better. The Video Dead, the 1987 b-horror flick from writer, director, and producer Robert Scott, doesn’t have a lot of zombies, but they all have distinct personalities, and the way they are introduced is quite fun.
Famous writer Henry Jordan (Michael St. Michaels) is minding his business at home one morning when a delivery van arrives with a crate. Inside is a ratty television that, unbeknownst to Jordan, was supposed to be delivered to the Institute for the Studies of the Occult. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Video Dead”
October Horrorshow: Zombi 3
What’s great about a zombie flick is that it doesn’t need much of a plot to be a success. It can just lurch from set piece to set piece until the main cast is winnowed down enough to call it a day. That makes zombies a perfect subject matter for Italian director Lucio Fulci.
Zombi 3 is the 1988 entry in a film series that requires its own Wikipedia page to make sense of. According to the internet, so it must be true, the screenplay was developed by Rossella Drudi, but it was her husband, Claudio Fragasso, who got the credit. Lucio Fulci is the only credited director, but, again according to the internet, he delivered a 70-minute cut that producer Franco Gaudenzi was not happy with. So, Gaudenzi enlisted Fragasso and Bruno Mattei to carry out reshoots, with Fragasso handling most of the work. The result is an 84-minute long film that makes up for its lack of cohesion with a boatload of blood and guts. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Zombi 3″
October Horrorshow: Sniper Corpse, aka Corpse Sniper
Sniper Corpse or Corpse Sniper…whatever this thing is called, thank goodness for the bottom feeding filmmakers that will let nothing, from lack of a good screenplay, lack of talented actors, lack of a budget, and lack of storytelling skill, keep them from making their movie. The art of film is being preserved by these creators that love movies, that see what makes the big screen, good and bad, and think to themselves, “I can do that. How hard could it be?”
From writer, director, and producer Keith R. Robinson, Sniper Corpse tells the story of Diane Keeley (Eleri Jones), an English war widow whose husband was killed in action a couple of years previously. Things got snafued, as they are wont to do in the military, and the British Army lost her husband’s corpse. It turns out they’ve lost a number of corpses of late, and Diane takes it upon herself to find out what’s going on. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Sniper Corpse, aka Corpse Sniper”