Black Demons.

You may remember Umberto Lenzi from such films as “Nightmare City” and nothing else.  Regardless, Starkwell and Lovelock had a rip-roaring good time when they atched that, so, expectations are through the roof for “Black Demons”, one of the infamous director’s final pieces of movie.  It’s Brazilian Voodoo time.

[...]

[Main man Dick FREAKS OUT the local drum kids.  In turn, Dick is freaked out.]

Lovelock: That’s why I never pick up sea shells with weird paintings on them during a group of street kids’ drum and dance performance.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why.

Lovelock: I love that one of the local voodoo kids is sporting a Batman shirt.

[...]

Starkwell: Dick disappears, and his sister decides the best course of action is to bang the British dude all day?  Her brother might be named Dick, but she’s the dick.

Lovelock: I don’t know, if anything, British dude is the dick.

[...]

Since clearly having any backstory is unimportant to Mr. Lenzi, we don’t know why Dick is obsessed with Voodoo, or why any of them are even in Brazil in the first place.  The acting is also BEYOND atrocious.  The main girl actually fumbles her lines in a couple of takes, and Umberto didn’t even bother to re-shoot them.  This bugs Starkwell, Lovelock doesn’t care stating that “it doesn’t matter how we get there, as long as we get there.”  When Starkwell asked where ‘there’ was, Lovelock just shook his head and said “if you don’t know, then you’ll probably never get there.”

[...]

[Enter Jose and Sonia.]

Starkwell: Who goes “hiking in da’ woods” in a jean skirt and a jean jacket?

Lovelock: I don’t know, but Jose is shaping up to be my favourite character.

Starkwell: I don’t know… did you see the way he ordered the housekeeper around?  He seems like kind of a dick.

Lovelock: Pretty much everyone in this movie is a dick, except, well, Dick.

[...]

Dick then goes and plays voodoo music, off his tape recorder in graveyard.  And then graves burst into flames, tombstones bleed and zombies start emerging from the ground.  Simultaneously, without taking their eyes off of the screen, Lovelock and Starkwell high-fived each other.

[...]

[Sonia hears a noise and goes to investigate.  Outside. In her Underwear.  Then she is surrounded by zombies.]

Starkwell:  I bet she feels pretty stupid now for not having put pants on.

Lovelock: I don’t know, lack of pants might make her more agile and nimble

[Zombie crowbars her eyeball out.]

Lovelock: Scratch that.

Starkwell: Yeah… Agility does not seem to be her forte.

Lovelock: Wisdom neither.

[...]

[Jessica goes wandering on her own.]

Starkwell: In keeping with the theme of missing clothing Jessica decides to not wear a bra.

[She sees a zombie.]

Lovelock: Well she got away.  So what have we learned?  No pants – death.  No bra – life.

Starkwell: This film – DUMB.

[...]

Outside of the laughs that the bad acting got out of Lovelock and Starkwell, there wasn’t a whole lot going on, and they were getting CRAZY bored.  At one hour in, the zombies just claimed their SECOND victim.  This is insane considering that “Nightmare City” had a death count of about a million in the same amount of time.  The zombies in this film seem to prefer spending their time popping up into the screen holding axes and crowbars and staring menacingly.

[...]

Lovelock: Well, on the bright side, the zombies seem to like crowbarring peoples’ eyeballs out.  So the movie has that going for it.

Starkwell: When making a film’s pros and cons list… if the pro column only has “crowbar to eyeball deaths”, you’re in trouble.

Lovelock: Funny… I was going to say WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED!?!?!?

[...]

[British Kevin drives car into side of the road.]

Lovelock: Slowest crash ever.

Starkwell: Almost as slow as the pace of the film.

Lovelock: Nice.

[...]

Dick kills Jose and Jose displays some of the worst acting anyone has ever seen.  Lovelock and Starkwell re-watched his death about ten times.  It kept getting funnier and funnier.  Anyways, then eventually Stupid McGee and British Dumbfuck figure out Dick has gone evil.  Throw in a few explosions, a rip-off of Jack Nicholson hacking through the door in “The Shining”, some early nineties Mom jeans, and Dick’s eventual death, and you’ve got yourself an ending.  Not good, not the worst, but, it’s an ending.

[...]

Lovelock: Apparently zombies are like walking sticks of dynamite.

[...]

Now imagine “Nightmare City” if the zombies were explosive.

Zombie Hunter Rika.

There have been some incomparably shitty Japanese zombie films that I have already subjected Starkwell and Lovelock to.  With that in mind, allow me now to potentially show them another one.  They seem, well, not super excited.  This DVD jumps straight from mildly pornographic previews to the movie.  Definitely a good sign!

[...]

[Scientist Guy gets bitten by a zombie, turns to one in bathroom.]

Lovelock: Okay, okay, off to a decent start.

Starkwell: Yeah, except that it looks like it was shot with an iPhone.  By a five-year-old.

[...]

[Nerd watches a movie called THE ZOMBIE HUNTER.]

Lovelock: Wait… is he watching a movie, or the news?

Starkwell: Either way, it needs better production value.

Lovelock: I’m confused.

Starkwell: I know, reading subtitles and paying attention to what is happening is a lot to ask of you.

[...]

So these two school girls go to a remote village to visit one of their grandfathers who is apparently some awesome doctor.  He wears an eye patch and has a mistress half his age, so he definitely has that going for him too.  We are very quickly introduced to a zombie horde and some guys who will CLEARLY be comic relief throughout the film.

[...]

Starkwell: So many of these mid two thousandy Japanese movies have blue zombies.  It’s like they JUST NOW saw “Dawn of the Dead” and assumed that the zombies need to look like that.

[...]

As much as he hated to admit it, amidst some of Lovelock’s laughter, Starkwell admitted that “some of the jokes actually work.”

[...]

[Grandpa’s young wife is a gold digger, aiming to kill him, discusses her plan with Haircut Guy.]

Lovelock: Rika’s not going to like that.

Starkwell: Is that zombie touching himself?  This movie will not keep me around much longer if it keeps this up.

[Maids compare their bare breasts with one another.  Close-ups on nipples aplenty.]

Starkwell: Seriously, is this movie trying to get rid of me?

[...]

He stuck around.  The perverted stuff was short-lived enough.  Soon the zombies were at the Grandpa’s cabin and all hell started breaking loose.

[...]

[Slowest moving sword battle ever with zombies.]

Lovelock: Honestly, I think most nerdy white guys at a comic con could throw together a better sword battle than that.

Starkwell: I wouldn’t want to watch that either.

[...]

[Scientist Guy from the beginning is a zombie, and yet, he walks and talks and acts completely normally.]

Starkwell: Aw  HORSESHIT.  I’m one step away from bailing on this.

[...]

[Rika wakes up, her Grandpa surgically replaced her severed arm with ZOMBIE HUNTER ARM.]

Lovelock: Zombie Hunter arm? So... the movie that the nerd guy was watching WAS really happening... in life?  Either way, that arm looks like the rubber leg off of a fireman’s jumpsuit.

Starkwell: Seriously, is that supposed to look like a muscular arm?  Because it doesn’t.  It bends all funny in all the wrong places.

[...]

Then there was a make-out scene with Mistress Bitch and a zombie, and zombie bit out her tongue.  Then IMMEDIATELY after, he bit her in the neck, and as she opened her mouth, she stuck her tongue out.  With that glaring disregard for the viewer, Starkwell finally left, without saying a word.  Then a very long time went by before Lovelock even said anything, other than what sounded like a bored sigh.

[...]

[Horribly obvious stunt double does sword stuff in Rika’s place.]

Lovelock: The last time I saw a stunt double that obvious was in the ‘Buffy’ TV show, when they used to put a blonde wig on some buff dude and try to pass him off as Sarah Michelle Gellar.

[If Starkwell were here, he'd say something like "if they're going to get an obvious stunt double, at least they could have gotten one that knew what he was doing."]

[...]

For some reason the Scientist Guy decides to start eating people AND talk in an incredibly high-pitched voice AND repeat the word ‘delicious’ over and over again.  I think even Lovelock was now considering leaving.  Mostly, due to boredom.  Then he spent the entire final ‘battle’ laughing hysterically, because the Final Boss looked like something that would have fit in pretty well on the earlier episodes of the "Power Rangers”.  You know, the Mighty Morphin' kind.

[...]

Lovelock: The story made about as much sense as people that like shitting on one another.

[...]

Yep.  That sums it up just fine.

Dawn of the Dead.

I won’t bother telling you what this is.  I can’t imagine anyone would be reading “Zombie Hall” and have never seen this.  Today, Lovelock and Starkwell will be watching the US Theatrical Version.  Or at least, that’s what the Anchor Bay release says it is.

[...]

[Television station, in panic mode.  They are talking of the walking dead.]

Starkwell: I can count on my hands the number of men without a moustache or beard.

Lovelock: I got zero.

[...]

[Guy does ‘bunny ears’ behind doctor guy on TV.]

Starkwell: All Hell is breaking loose and this guy is all “Hee hee, bunny ears!  Now everyone will see him with bunny ears on TV.”

Lovelock: Well, pretty soon he'll be dead.

[...]

[Starkwell and Lovelock have decided to turn a blind eye to the white guy made up to look like…]

Lovelock: Native American?

Starkwell: Filipino?

Lovelock: Cuban?

Starkwell: African American?

Lovelock: Should we be talking about this?

[...]

[Enter the zombies.]

Lovelock:  I can see where Blue Man Group got all of their ideas.  And I don’t mean the ass kicking “Goblin” soundtrack.

[...]

[SWAT team bashes down door, door explodes with zombies.]

Starkwell: That one SWAT guy was clearly laughing.

[The two heroes find a room full of feasting zombies.]

Lovelock: Soooooooo… explain to me again why we would ever need to watch another zombie movie again after 1978?

[...]

[Fly Boy tackles a zombie.]

Lovelock: That is the lamest tackle I have ever seen.

Starkwell: Why wouldn’t he have just used the hammer?

[...]

Romero then introduces the mall, and there’s a little bit of an awkward line, wherein the character literally says “that’s one of those big shopping malls.”  Maybe it was still pretty new back then, and some viewers wouldn’t have known.  

[...]

[There was also a pretty great shout out to SPAM, bragging that you don’t need a can opener, and that it has its own key.]

Starkwell: Could this have been early product placement?

[...]

As the heroes bunkered down and secured the mall, enjoyed a shopping spree or two and offed some more zombies, Lovelock and Starkwell stayed quiet, mesmerized by the Godfather of the modern day zombie film.

[...]

[Hare Krishna zombie comes for Fran.]

Lovelock: That’s why I never give money to those guys.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why… in case they turn into zombies and come after you.

Lovelock: Well also because of those tambourines.

[...]

[Fran lights a flare, waves it in zombie’s face.]

Starkwell: Solid plan, Fran.

[...]

[Fran makes perfectly reasonable demands, Fly Boy flips the fuck out.]

Lovelock: What an asshole.  I hope he dies.

Starkwell: I’d like to see more from Professor Eye Patch on the TV.

[...]

[Roger yeehaws, a little too much.]

Starkwell: And just like that, Roger is broken.

Lovelock: Perfect, baby.  Perfect.

[...]

Starkwell: Two things, one, how the hell did Fran shoot so perfectly from so far away, for her first ever shot?

Lovelock: What’s the second thing?

Starkwell: How did the actor playing that one zombie not laugh?  He stared directly at Roger’s asshole with his mouth wide open.

[...]

Starkwell: They never really explained how and why FLAMES seems to scare them…

Lovelock: Romero invented this shit, he can make it up as he goes along as far as I’m concerned.

[...]

After they locked up the mall, and finished hunting zombies, Lovelock did at least five jump kicks and then rocked the air guitar.  Starkwell, the more pretentious of the two, played air keytar.

[...]

Starkwell: Of course Peter puts a fur coat on.

[...]

Lovelock: Peter referencing voodoo was a nice touch.

[...]

Starkwell: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but can we please hear more from Professor Eye Patch.

[Roger turns, Peter shoots, they bury him in a fake tree display, and then… have date night?]

Lovelock: So what, they’re like, "at last he’s gone”?

[Peter goes back to Roger’s grave and drinks.]

Lovelock: Never mind, that shit’s intense.

Starkwell: One for me, one for my homey.

[Fran turns down Fly Boy’s proposal.]

Lovelock: BURN!

Starkwell: I wouldn't marry him either. He tackles like a pussy.

[...]

Lovelock: She certainly smokes and drinks a lot for a pregnant lady.

Starkwell: Well, it was the seventies.  Oh also, you know, a zombie apocalypse.

Lovelock: Yeah, but that baby is the future of humanity, you want it to be as healthy as possible.

Starkwell: Good luck with that.

[...]

Apparently bored by the life of luxury they’ve created for themselves, they decide to run a flight school which of course draws attention…  The attention of RAIDERS!

[...]

[How could it get any worse?  It gets worse.  Wacky post apocalyptic gang comes for their mall.]

Starkwell: Holy shit!  Tom Savini with a switchblade comb!

[...]

[Peter refers to the zombies as zombies.]

Starkwell: Wait, I thought they never did that?

Lovelock: I don’t believe in nothing no more!

Starkwell: Seriously, my world is kind of falling apart.

[...]

And then in the stupidest moment in the history of asshole characters, Fly Boy starts shooting at the raiders.  Way to go, Ace, now we’ve got a war.  Two against a whole shitload.  I think Lovelock screamed out something like “What the Hell are you doing Fly Boy I hate you!”

[...]

Starkwell: Did Savini just call Peter “Chocolate Man”?

[...]

Lovelock: Here’s an idea, if there are zombies closing in on you in a shopping mall, don’t stop to check your blood pressure.

Starkwell: Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch just to have a shot of a severed arm in a blood pressure machine.

Lovelock: It's not even a good joke.

[...]

[Zombie Fly Boy hunts down Fran and Peter.]

Starkwell: Hands down, the most convincing zombie in the film.

Lovelock: Yeah, as a human actor, he’s just okay… as a zombie, he’s top notch.

[...]

[Best head shot ever.]

Lovelock: Every movie needs a head shot like that.

Starkwell: This again?  Dude, not every movie can pull that off.

Lovelock: Go ahead, try me.

Starkwell: “The English Patient”.

Lovelock: That’s easy.  Movie opens with a shot of The Count, he gets his head blown off, roll credits.  It would save SO MUCH TIME.

[...]

The movie ends, we’re all fucked.  HOORAY!  Starkwell and Lovelock were seriously holding hands and singing as the heroic music played while Peter ran to the helicopter.  During the credits / zombies in mall montage they were furiously talking with one another about their favourite parts.  So this is why Romero is a legend (well, at least a big part of it).

[REC].

Amidst all of the other documentary / found footage / lo-fi SHIT being made, an occasional gem emerges.  Such is the case, according to most, with the Spanish film “REC”.  There has since been a sequel, as well as an American copy, which, from what I know, is basically the same movie, just made by Americans and about a year later.  Lovelock has already given me a hard time about the fact that there will be subtitles at play here, but I think he’ll get over it once he starts getting the shit scared out of him.

[...]

[Reporter Woman, reporting on the fire department.]

Starkwell: I think I’d watch this show if it actually existed.

Lovelock: I think it would be cool if they had taken an ACTUAL late night program.

Starkwell: It does look like they went into an actual Fire House.

Lovelock: If those lame after hours shows had zombie content, they might be worth checking out.

[...]

Starkwell and Lovelock went quiet for a while.  The authenticity of it all intrigued them, and made them all the more frightened at the prospect that crazy shit was totally about to go down.  They seemed stressed for the Reporter, Angela, and her crew.

[...]

[Firemen are called to a building, where a woman is trapped or something.]

Starkwell: They picked the creepiest building ever.

Lovelock: I’m pretty sure all the buildings in Spain are like that.

Starkwell: I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.

[...]

[Old woman bites cop.]

Starkwell: This one hundred percent looks real.

Lovelock: Hold me.

Starkwell: Angry, screaming and scared Spanish people stress me out.  In a good way.

[...]

Then a body dropped in the background, from a much higher floor and exploded on the ground.  Lovelock actually screamed out “I LOVE MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Once this movie gets going, it never lets up.  A lot of what Starkwell and Lovelock were saying from here on out was stuff like “Yeah” or “Fuck yeah” or “Yes.  Yes a million times yes!”

[...]

Lovelock: It’s hard to take Angela seriously with those two pig tails.

Starkwell: She looks like Pippi Longstocking.

Lovelock: I was thinking “Wendy’s” logo.

[...]

The people in the quarantined building all start turning into zombies and turning on each other.  Camera man Pablo catches the action as the HASMAT team come in and make everyone more scared, Lovelock and Starkwell included.  They explain the virus as the outbreak BLOWS THE FUCK UP.  Starkwell and Lovelock decided they need to learn Spanish, pronto.

[...]

Starkwell: Hey, pigtails are gone!

Lovelock: She must have heard us.

[...]

Starkwell: They caught on pretty quick.  They abandon people within milliseconds of them being bitten.

Lovelock: Survival of the fittest.

[...]

The movie is intense.  The emotions are real.  Starkwell and Lovelock’s reaction?  Well eventually, they were excited and happy, once the FEARFUL SOBBING, CRYING AND SCREAMING from the ending subsided.  They already can’t wait for the sequel(s).  They liked it enough that they want to watch the American one for comparison’s sake.  I have a feeling that the documented conversation might be very similar.  We’ll have to wait and see.

The Dead.

A lot of people argue that when it comes to zombie films, there really is nothing new under the sun.  But what if that sun was in AFRICA?  We’re here to find out if the Ford Brothers have managed to make something special, or simply create another stale entry in a sadly overpopulated genre.  Starkwell and Lovelock just seem psyched to be watching something relatively new.

[...]

[Man walking in desert, draped in black.]

Lovelock: Ninjas and zombies?  Awesome.

Starkwell: Dude that’s not a ninja.  Ninjas don’t carry AKs and wear white pants.

Lovelock: Pfff… haven't you ever heard of snow ninjas?  They TOTALLY wear white pants.  Whatever, he’s totally ninja.   Did you see the way he snuck around that zombie?

Starkwell: That’s the slowest zombie ever… my grandma could sneak around him.

[...]

Then the film cuts quickly to a flashback, and there are people bleeding and it’s all intense.  They’re in a plane trying to evacuate out of West Africa but TOO BAD YOU’RE OUT OF GAS AND THEN THERE’S A ZOMBIE OUTBREAK ON BOARD AND ON THE GROUND ALL HELL IS BREAKING LOOSE AND THE PLANE CRASHES INTO THE OCEAN.  Kablammo.

[...]

Lovelock: Why haven’t we always been watching this movie?

Starkwell: Africa doesn’t have enough problems, now they get zombies too?  Depressing.

Lovelock: That’s one way to solve the hunger problem.

Starkwell: Dude.  Weak.

[...]

Main character dressed in some kind of jumpsuit washes up on shore and tries to avoid being eaten by the zombie horde wandering the beach.  As they attempt to piece together his background, Starkwell and Lovelock quietly and thoroughly enjoy the on screen activity.

[...]

Lovelock: Lesson number one, never walk through a cornfield during a zombie outbreak.

[...]

The zombies move slow.  Really slow.  This makes the group REALLY happy.

[...]

[Main character runs over a zombie’s head.  Steals his supplies.]

Lovelock: Why doesn’t every movie have a scene like that?

Starkwell: Not sure every movie could pull that off.

Lovelock: Name a movie.

Starkwell: "Regarding Henry".

Lovelock: Aw, that’s easy.  When they teach Henry to drive, he uses that new skill and  drives over the head of that dude that had sex with his wife while he was in a coma and tries to make up for it by giving him  a picture frame.

Starkwell: When do they teach him to drive?

Lovelock: Get this man some Ritz crackers!

Starkwell: I'm glad I didn't suggest "Driving Miss Daisy".

[...]

Lovelock: Lesson number two, don’t casually drive your truck into a muddy ditch during a zombie outbreak.

[...]

The main character is a bit stiff, and not the best actor, but Starkwell says “somehow it works.”

[...]

Lovelock: This is basically a "Lethal Weapon" remake.

Starkwell: Are you only saying that because there are two dudes, and one is white and the other is black?

Lovelock: Free South Africa you dumb son of a bitch.

[...]

Lovelock: I just realized that Joe America, aka Lieutenant Murphy, is the ninja from the beginning.

Starkwell: You just noticed that?

Lovelock: Well, at this point he was still just an apprentice ninja, with much to learn.

[...]

[Truck stops dead.]

Lovelock: That’s why I try not to run into every zombie and bush in sight.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why.  Also, I think the truck is fine, it just needs gas.

Lovelock: Exactly, don’t you know how much gas it wastes to push the pedal to the metal and run over a zombie?

Starkwell: Do you?

[...]

Lovelock: Lesson number three, don’t sleep during a zombie outbreak.  Especially not while driving.

[...]

The story continued on, the enthusiastic crowd of two sat deeply focused on increasingly creepy and haunting film.  Lovelock definitely let out a nervous fart or two, here and there.  Starkwell definitely let out a disgusted sigh or two, here and there.  At the farts, not at the movie.

[...]

[They swerve to avoid a zombie, crash into a tree / ditch.]

Starkwell: All of a sudden he decides not to run right into them?  A little consistency please, Captain America.

[...]

Daniel dies, and I swear I saw a single tear gliding down Lovelock’s cheek.  He claims it was because he was thinking about a time he got hit in the nuts, but we all know the truth.

[...]

[Lt. Murphy inherits a baby from an infected woman he runs into along the way.]

Lovelock: I must admit, “Three Men and a Baby” would have been a much better movie if the reason thy got a baby was a zombie outbreak.

[He gives baby away to a truck passing by, full of survivors.]

Lovelock: Why didn’t Guttenberg think of that?

Starkwell: Seems more like a Selleck move.

Lovelock: What?  If anything it's Ted Danson.

[...]

[Lt. Murphy crosses the desert.  Reaches base.]

Starkwell: Admittedly, crossing the desert is pretty ninja-like.

Lovelock: I fucking told you!

[...]

Then Lt. Murphy kills a bajillion zombies, mostly with his machete, and Lovelock punched a hole in the wall.

[...]

[THE EVIL IS EVERYWHERE AROUND THE WORLD EVERYWHERE FOREVER.]

Starkwell: And… SCENE.

Lovelock: Amazing.

[...]

Between the nice mix of CGI and old school effects, the beautiful locations, the eerie music, and the good writing, acting and directing… this was one hell of a fun ride.  Starkwell and Lovelock seem hopeful that the genre might still have some fun tricks up its sleeve.  Bravo, the Brothers Ford.

Zombie Diaries.

It seems like documentary style is all the rage in recent years.  While this “cheap” and “lo-fi” feel can produce genuinely scary stuff, most of the time, it just ends up looking cheap and lo-fi.  It can be cheap to make movies in this fashion, which might be why they have become fashionable.  Excited to see which side of the fence late two thousandies’ “Zombie Diaries” ends up on, Starkwell and Lovelock sit prepared, waiting, watching, judging.   Often farting.

[...]

[HASMAT suits collect sample from dead zombie.]

Starkwell: When that HASMAT guy reached his arm over you could see his exposed wrist.  Why wouldn’t the director try just a little harder for realism?

Lovelock: Scientists can make mistakes.

Starkwell: Right... but directors shouldn't make ones THIS big and obvious.  Just duct tape the gardening gloves to the suit.  Fuck, they probably did twenty takes and that was the best one they had.

Lovelock: I thought it was convincing.

Starkwell: That’s because you’re an idiot.

[...]

Starkwell: Bad British acting somehow always seems better than bad American acting.

Lovelock: I think it’s the accent.

[...]

The story progressed, the characters seemed likeable enough.  Starkwell and Lovelock sat quietly, waiting for something to happen.  The “cameraman” in the movie says he is constantly filming because he wants to document everything.  Starkwell wonders why that means they have to show it all to us... Lovelock says he wishes that CAMERAMAN would “discriminate a little more.  Who gives a shit about a bunch of arguing British reporters?”

[...]

[Lights go out in farm house, flashlight camera finds the first zombies.]

Lovelock: [… nervous fart… ]

Starkwell: HASMAT Suit continuity error from the beginning is still leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

Lovelock: Are we watching the same thing?

[Random cut to DIARY TWO which is one month later.]

Lovelock: Awww… just when it was getting good.

Starkwell: What the what?  So it wasn’t enough to make a documentary style zombie film?  That had to make weird scattered and disjointed timeline and chronology too?  Will we ever find out what happened?  Do we care?

Lovelock: It’s overcomplicating messes like this that lead to such scenes as "HASMAT guy with an exposed wrist".

[...]

[There’s an American guy now.]

Starkwell: See what I mean?  The American seems like a much worse actor than the others.  But in reality, they are probably ALL terrible.

Lovelock: Totally.  I think I’d get away with a lot more if I sounded British.

[...]

This “part 2” starts just as slowly as part one did, with the exception of one decent looking zombie getting his head blown off.  If we’ve learned anything from “part 1” it’s that it will randomly change to a “part 3” as soon as we start seeing some action.

[...]

[That’s exactly what happened.]

Starkwell: COME ON!  Shifting around the order of your movie into weird segments doesn’t automatically make it interesting, you assholes.

Lovelock: I’m more concerned with how boring it is, regardless of order.

[Director makes a Twin Towers reference.]

Starkwell: Dude, weak.

Lovelock: I’m still more concerned with how boring this all is.

[...]

Starkwell: Someone should tell these guys that ‘documentary style’ doesn’t mean it has to be out of focus and motion sickness-y.

Lovelock: Were they shooting at zombies?  I’m not even sure what just happened.

Starkwell: They should have ended this movie after “part 1”.

[...]

Starkwell and Lovelock were quiet then for a while, visibly annoyed at the movie, the characters and the dialogue.  Lovelock can be pretty easy to win over, but this movie is not giving him the good stuff.  Randomly it cut back to the characters from “part 2” and Starkwell just made a weird sound.  It sounded like a laugh, mixed with a painful cry of some kind.

[...]

Starkwell: Well at least they ate the shitty American.

[...]

This is the type of film that has some legitimately creepy and effective shots of horror, but they are surrounded by many legitimately boring and ineffective shots of bad acting.  The fact that some of it works just makes the rest seem more annoying, and the movie becomes a frustrating mess.

[...]

Starkwell: If you give someone a candy, but hand it to them in a bucket of shit, who’s really going to be able to come out excited about the candy?

Lovelock: What does that have to do with the movie?

Starkwell: Everything.  Everything, man.

[...]

[Now it keeps jumping from “part” to “part”.  Each time this happens, it makes Lovelock more confused and Starkwell more mad.  Dear director, you’re losing ‘em.]

Starkwell: The director lost me at “HASMAT suit guy shows bare wrist”.

Lovelock: He lost me at “CONFUSING MESS”.  “Zombie Diaries”?  More like “Zombie Diarrheas”.

Starkwell: I think it’s just diarrhea.

Lovelock: But what if there’s more than one diarrhea?

Starkwell: It’s like mud.  You throw mud on top of mud, you don’t get ‘muds’, you just get more mud.

Lovelock: This movie is muds.

[...]

[Basically you find out one of the dudes named ‘Goke’ is like an evil rapist murderer monster man.]

Lovelock: So in the end, the real enemy is ‘man’?  The real enemy is ‘Goke’?

Starkwell: The real enemy is the people that made this movie.

Lovelock: Maybe the real enemy is the person that asked us to watch this.

[...]

Shit, the troops are turning on me.  At least there is only fifteen minutes left which probably isn’t enough time for them to plan their coup.

[...]

[Back to one month earlier, the tail end of "part 1".]

Starkwell: [sarcastically] No, don’t trust the Goke guy, no don’t… [not sarcastically] WHO CARES?  FUCKING END ALREADY.

Lovelock: See they DID tie it all together.  It just happens to be tied together with a ribbon of diarrhea.

Starkwell: You’re really stuck on that word today…  Also, it’s not really all tied together.  This movie has more holes than-

Lovelock: A net full of diarrhea?

Starkwell: Dude, enough.

[...]

Well the movie ends, and it’s all depressing and shit.  Plus they spend way too much time focusing on the two dudes that love to torture and rape and what have you… Starkwell and Lovelock seem depressed too.  There’s a sequel that came out last year.  I think I’ll have to get them drunk if I ever want them to watch it.  Also, the cover of this fucking DVD is not even remotely close to what this movie ends up being.

The Ghost Galleon.

The year was 1974 and Amando De Ossorio wanted to add another chapter to his infamous Blind Dead series, so, probably, like all great directors, he thought to himself “Let’s put them on a boat.”  Ghost Pirates are cool, Zombie Pirates are cooler.  So hopefully the third instalment in the series lives up to the hype that I just gave this movie when explaining it to Starkwell and Lovelock.  If it doesn’t, then it will just be one more in the long line of shitty nautical zombie films.  Yeah “Zombie Lake”, I’m looking at you.

[...]

[Weird opening credits with demon skull and… CUT TO BIKINI MODELS.]

Starkwell: This is the least enthusiastic bikini photo shoot ever.

Lovelock: Well, the models do look like they were rounded up at the bus station, given a bunch of drugs and shoved into bikinis.

[...]

[We find out that Kathy the bikini model has gone on a top secret bikini photo shoot.]

Lovelock:  I guess those exist.

Starkwell:  What the fuck is going on?  This movie is insane.  Already.

[...]

[Apparently Kathy has been placed in the middle of the ocean on a raft as a part of some crazy marketing scheme for TUCKER’S SPORTING GOODS.]

Starkwell: I wonder if shit like that really happens.

Lovelock: Oh, totally.  I’m pretty sure Nike did it once with their Air Jordan shoes.

Starkwell: In the ocean?

Lovelock: Sure.  Why not?

[...]

[Girls in boat, Kathy and Lorena, get hit by old seemingly abandoned ship.  Lorena boards it with a grappling hook.]

Starkwell:  Who would board what looks like an old pirate ship to spend the night?

Lovelock: Spanish bikini models who accept top secret marketing missions to the middle of the ocean with no food or water.

[...]

The shots of the old pirate ship look like a toy boat floating in tub in a steamy dark bathroom, probably because it is.  Overall, though, the locations used in the film are pretty sweet so far.

[...]

[And then…]

Starkwell: Just once, I’d like to watch one of these Spanish movies and not have to see a rape scene, a rapist, a guy giving off rapey vibes, or awkward lesbian sex.

Lovelock: You should probably stop watching these movies then.

[...]

[Kathy on boat hears Lorena screaming from Pirate Boat.]

Lovelock: That’s why I never grappling hook onto old abandoned pirate ships.

Starkwell: Yeah, that’s why.

Lovelock: Well, that and scurvy.

[...]

Then there’s a scientist guy who gets mad at Tucker for suggesting that the girls saw fog when the SCIENTIFIC data suggests that there was no fog in the ocean that night.  But then, the very same scientist tells them about a GHOST SHIP that sails the water and that not everything can be explained by science.

[...]

Starkwell: “This is a serious science lab, I don’t have time for this nonsense…”  TWO MINUTES LATER “… Take me with you, I wanna see the haunted magic ship!”

Lovelock: Science looks like fun.  Make your own rules.

[...]

A little more than half an hour in and we see the Templars slowly rise from their tombs.  They look as cool as ever.  Lovelock and Starkwell gave the Blind Dead a standing ovation.

[...]

[Slowest chase ever, the Blind Dead chasing Kathy.]

Lovelock: It’s great to see the old gang back together.

Starkwell: Kind of makes me wish that the Blind Dead gang all had cool Blind Dead names, like Bones, Hoody No-Eyes, Random Beard, Jonesy or Captain Stretch.

[...]

Starkwell:  The characters seem to be taking the sight of a ghost ship rather well.  “Let’s board it.”  Seems dumb.  

Lovelock:  I’m sure it will turn out to be quite dumb.

[...]

Given that there is a solid twenty minutes in between Blind Dead appearances, and that the in between is mostly dimly lit shots of people moving slow, talking slow and being boring, Lovelock had to wake Starkwell when the Templars FINALLY decided to go after Noemi.

[...]

[Blind Dead kill Noemi.]

Starkwell:  That is, without a doubt, the longest, most boring, slow-moving and overacted death scene in the history of all the world.

Lovelock:  Well, at least she’s dead.

Starkwell: Fair enough.

[Blind Dead eat her recently cut off hand.]

Lovelock: Nice try, De Ossorio, but you lost at SLOWEST DEATH EVER.

[...]

Lovelock: I think this is where they got the idea for Scooby-Doo.

Starkwell: But there’s no dog.

Lovelock: He’s like the least important character in that show.

Starkwell: The dog is named Scooby-Doo.

Lovelock: All I’m saying is that I hope that at the end, they take the masks off the Blind Dead and find out that they’re actually the bikini models from the beginning.

[...]

[Starkwell got really mad at the movie when the Scientist used a burning cross to scare them back into their graves, but then IMMEDIATELY after that, the characters all thought, “How can we stop them?”]

Starkwell: Just flash a fucking burning cross in their face, it JUST worked.  FUCK YOU FUCKING MOVIE!!!!!

Lovelock: Ruh-Roh!

[...]

Then the movie wrapped up with the characters shooting the tombs into the water and then try to swim to shore.  What is worth mentioning is that the ship magically catches fire, and there was a shot of the ship burning, and it was the worst looking model I have ever seen.  Lovelock and Starkwell rewound about ten times to watch it over and over again, howling with laughter at the cheapness (or cheepnis, as Zappa would call it).  Somehow the Blind Dead end up in the real world on shore, and probably the whole earth is screwed.  

[...]

Starkwell: Worst of the series so far.

Lovelock: HANDS DOWN!

Starkwell: You agree?

Lovelock: Basically.  But mostly I said that because I want the Blind Dead to put their creepy skeleton hands down.  Why do they always have to hold them up like that?

Starkwell: Well, at least De Ossorio didn't show the Blind Dead cutting into a tit this time around.

Lovelock: I was just thinking to myself that this whole thing needed more sword into booby action.

[...]

The End.

Outpost.

How the Nazi zombie thing ever took off as a sub-genre will always be a bit of a mystery to me.  At least the more recent incarnations doesn’t have them coming out of the water like the AQUATIC Nazi zombie movies, a sub-genre within the sub-genre.  As far as Nazi zombie films go, Steve Barker’s “Outpost” is supposed to be as straightforwardly scary as they come.  No comedy here, just scary Nazis coming back from the dead to terrorize people, and in this case, Starkwell and Lovelock.

[...]

[British soldier takes group of soldier/mercenaries on a secret mission.]

Lovelock: When a creepy British guy tells me not to take a job, honestly, I probably wouldn’t take it.

Starkwell: Decent advice, I’d say.

Lovelock: Interesting mix of characters… It’s nice to see all of the countries getting along.

Starkwell: Yeah, for the right price.

[...]

The movie then gets really creepy really quickly, as the soldiers enter some abandoned bunker and find old Nazi experimentation and torture type shit.  Lovelock and Starkwell were LITERALLY at the edge of their seats.  I’ve never seen anyone lean towards a television quite that hard.

[...]

[Soldiers find pile of dead bodies, American Soldier finds Nazi flag.]

Lovelock: GAAAAAAAh that one’s alive.

Starkwell: Who stays in a place after finding all this?

Lovelock: Characters in a SCARY FUCKING MOVIE.

[...]

[British Mission Leader explains the weird device to British Soldier.]

Lovelock: So basically this guy is like a slightly creepy and evil Indiana Jones.

Starkwell: Indiana Jones fights the Nazis.  This guy is trying to harness their power…

Lovelock: No time for love Doctor Jones.

[...]

The dead body pile starts cricking, cracking and moving and Lovelock let out a little gasp of horror.  Then the Nazis have them surrounded in a flash of light and a gust of ice wind.  Then they’re gone and so is Russian Soldier.  Now Lovelock and Starkwell aren’t just on the edges of their seat.  They are off the couch in a chair squat ready to jump and run away scared.

[...]

[Eyeball gag.]

Lovelock: Rusty bullet to the eye.  “Outpost”, one, every other movie, zero.

[...]

The action then skyrocketed as Nazi zombies explode people’s brains with their bare hands and vanish without a trace.

[...]

[Turns out creepy bald guy is actually a Nazi, he kills the Scottish Soldier first.]

Lovelock: That’s why you never steal a Nazi zombie’s watch.

Starkwell: That’s certainly one reason why.

[...]

[They hatch a plan to stand guard while scientist dude does some sciencey shenanigans to stop the Nazi zombies.]

Starkwell: So the American Soldier is... into this?

Lovelock: I don’t know… but it certainly doesn’t seem like a good time to get stoned.

Starkwell: Yeah, “smoke’em if you got’em” shouldn’t be applied to a Nazi zombie life or death scenario.

[...]

Lovelock: I think if I ever wrote a movie with battle scenes, I would make it the first one to not have a commander screaming “HOLD…. HOLD… HOLLLLLLLDD…” at some point.

[...]

Well Captain Science sort of figures it out, but then the device explodes and the Nazis get back up, and proceed to have a STABBING FRENZY upon Irish Soldier.  Also everyone dies.  Horrifying movie.  Good horrifying, not bad horrifying.  Apparently there is a prequel set to come out this year. Starkwell and Lovelock exclaimed, in unison, that they cannot wait.