Boyfriend has a zombie contingency plan. So last night for no reason whatsoever we started planning what we'd do in the event of an overnight zombie attack and we were stuck at my place with no real weapons and my car with no roof. And I tell ya, if there is a zombie attack I'll be lucky to have Boyfriend at my side because he has some badass skills.
Unless I turn into a zombie. Then he evidently has no qualms about chopping off my head and leaving me in the street.
Anyway, during our planning session one idea beget another and suddenly poof! Awesome zombie movie idea.
But zombie movies have been done before and with varying degrees of success many times throughout the history of the horror film, so the question becomes how to make our zombie story any different from the gazillion other zombie stories? Everything I came up with at first was too much like Shaun of the Dead.
So Boyfriend and I kept passing ideas back and forth. It was like a scene out of some boring indie movie. He was going on about what he would do in certain zombie infestation situations, and I was zoned out thinking of how I could plot this out without being too derivative. And somewhere in the two conversations we were having with ourselves we came together: A high concept zombie film.
French Biopic can wait. It's waited this long. I'm going to do something that will be loads of fun and make money first. As soon as Game Night hits the festival circuit and wows everybody with its awesomeness and THEY give me lots of money to make a movie I'll be pushing Bamboo Killers for me to direct and then I'll hold up Zombie Movie for Boyfriend to direct. And then people will give me money for French Biopic. And then pigs will sail through the skies on beautiful gold-trimmed wings.
I mean, everything will be awesome because I'm going to will this all into being. My optimism knows no bounds.
Although I might puzzle THEM all by going from Pulp Fictionesque chapter film about sex and violence and drugs to high concept zombie movie to French royalty biopic, but I'll deal with that when the time comes. By then THEY'll love me so much THEY'll just throw money at me when I bat my little eyelashes.
Now I fear I must do lots of research which consists of watching every decent zombie movie ever made. It's going to be a rough weekend.
Well, you've seen SHAUN OF THE DEAD, so you've seen one of the best. There are the four Romero films. There are various Italian zombie movies, many of which were made during the late 70s-early 80s which are pretty straight-ahead, light on character and very, very gory. One that I've always liked which you should definitely check out is the original RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD from 1985 which, like SHAUN, is very funny but not really a spoof.
ReplyDeleteEasy: A bunch of teenies lost in forrest, find a abandonded house and have to fight against ONE zombie. Comedy.
ReplyDeleteEvidently Boyfriend has all the zombie movies at his house. His house may contain the entire action section of Best Buy.
ReplyDeleteI like 28 Days Later, but am informed that it is, in fact, less zombie movie, more disease infestation film.
Who knew?
zombie movies scare the FUCK out of me.
ReplyDeleteEven Shawn of the Dead. I was laughing...and still scared.
I dunno - all the "zombie" movies of recent years have mostly been about people being "infected" to reach their zombie state. While it's mostly reanimated dead that are the infected, I think "28 Days Later" would still qualify. And following the success of that one and the sequel "28 Weeks Later", I hear that "28 Months Later" is in the works...
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, a zombie movie could make bucks, if done right and with some originality.
More research: the Resident Evil series. It's another "infection" zombie series, but lotsa fun action stuff. Third movie comes out this summer. And I always liked Milla Jovovich.
What about a riff on the "vampires and/or werewolves walk among us" movies - except it's zombies that are doing the assimilating into society? It would explain a lot of the people working at banks, post offices, gas stations and fast food chains... There could be zombie rights, zombie revolts, zombie terrorists and just plain zombie stupidity...
For a way different take on zombies, more along the lines of voodoo from which they originated, check out "The Serpent and the Rainbow". It's about 20 years old or more by now, and I think the lead was Bill Pullman. No comedy, very dramatic.
I heard of The Serpent and the Rainbow but didn't know it was a zombie film. I'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really a fan of Resident Evil, though. Not sure why. Just don't like it.
I did see Milla Jovovich at Target once. She's freaking tall and looks just as hot in person as she does onscreen.
The thing that irks me about zombie films is they move so fricken slow. Why the hell did the good guys always have trouble getting away?
ReplyDelete28 Days later fixed that in a hurry. Fast and hungry, that's the way I like my zombies.
This-- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068370/ “Children shouldn’t play with dead things”
--was the first zombie move I saw as a young boy. Oddly enough it came out the year I was born. The fact that I even remember the title and specific scenes in this movie 25 years later is disturbing.
I wasn't suppose to be watching these kinds of movies (too young) so I stood in front of the TV, one hand on the VCR ready to turn it off should my parents show up. I suspect this added to the intensity of the film because it scared the shit out of me.
Check it out if you can. No idea if/where to get it. Good luck on with the zombies.
Remember…fast, hungry, and feral.
-Jim
Side Note: The director of "Children shouldn't play with dead things", Bob Clark, also directed mine and TNT's all time favorite christmas classic "A Christmas Story".
ReplyDeleteAwesome.
-Jim
Em, you MET Milla? I'm sooo jealous... ;-)
ReplyDelete"Serpent and the Rainbow" is not technically a zombie movie in the "dead rising from graves and attacking shopping malls" kind of way. But it is about a doctor investigating a powdered drug used by witch doctors to "make" zombies - under the influence of the drug, the victim appears completely dead, and yet is aware of things going on around him. It's actually based on a true story - the drug is tetrodotoxin, and was being investigated as an surgical anesthetic. The powwder takes effect with skin contact, and renders the victim dosed with it paralyzed, with life signs too reduced to be detectable without modern medical hardware - no visible pulse or respiration, no response to pain.
The "zombie" angle is that people found in this state would fail all simple tests for life - wouldn't even flinch when stabbed in the eye socket with a needle (really hard to watch) - and would be buried alive, aware of the entire act. Often, while trying to dig out, people would suffer O2 deprivation and become brain-damaged, if they didn't suffocate and die altogether - thus the zombie myth is born... Many people thus afflicted, because of the culture, would genuinely believe themselves to have been turned into zombies, and would do the bidding of the voodoo priest that made them that way.
No, very atypical for a zombie movie. But a riveting story, as I recall - I haven't seen it since it was in theaters, but I remember it being damn good at the time.
And here I thought I was the only one with a zombie contingency plan.
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