Andy Gapin

It turns out that many people aren’t a fan of zom-coms/zombedies/zombie comedies these days. Many think the sub-genre of the zombie sub-genre has gone too far. I disagree. I like to laugh and I like gore and I like zombies. When it comes the matter, sometimes I feel rather Plessy about it and sometimes I feel more Ferguson; that is, sometimes I like my gore and comedy integrated and sometimes I’m in a more “separate, but equal” mood. A well-done zombie comedy is a nice way to bring on the zombie-goodness while still providing laughs for both myself and my fiancée who isn’t big horror fan.

Aaah! Zombies does a great job of this and it brings an entirely unique idea to the table that I’ve never seen before…or even heard of. The flick takes on the perspective of the zombies instead of the still living. Some movies like I, Zombie have been based upon the premise of following the transformation into a zombie, but this is different. Except for about the first five to ten minutes of the movie, Aaah! Zombies is based wholly around a group of friends (and a random weirdo they pick up along the way) who have already become zombies. The transformation takes about thirty seconds.

At first, they don’t even know they are zombies, they are walking around and interacting with each other, but the reality is, they are in fact the undead and the rest of the world sees them as such. This is actually handled rather well. Most of the time, the movie is in color and we see our friends as looking like normal people and moving at a normal speed. Sure, they may sustain some injuries along the way that they can’t feel, but for the most part, they look normal to themselves and each other. However, many scenes flash us a black and white glimpse of what they really look like to others. They are slow-moving, decaying zombies complete with groans and the desire to eat flesh. Obviously, there is a bit of a discrepancy here–the undead are simply unable to move at the same pace as the living–and this is handled perfectly. To the undead, the rest of the world appears to be moving at a breakneck speed around them. People walk and talk super fast.

This is the kind of thing that could easily become a mess and not work at all, but it’s done right and the writing and comedic performances are done more than well enough to pull the whole thing off. It’s actually done so well, that you barely even know it’s a low-budget affair.

In an odd way, and for lack of a better way to describe it, the film is almost like a mash-up between Re-Animator and Clerks. It’s mostly just friends hanging out and being zombies, but it borrows some ideas from movies like Re-Animator that aren’t strict with their zombies. For example, the undead in Aaah! Zombies can function without their bodies and their limbs can be controlled even after being detached from the rest of the body. If you’re stickler for the rules of being undead, you may be somewhat peeved, but it’s all in good fun.

This is definitely worth checking out and with it currently being available on Netflix Instant Watch, you really have no excuse.

Rating: A-

Here’s the trailer:

So I should have gotten this out yesterday, but I just didn’t get around to it.

Let’s talk The Walking Dead, shall we? Forget the fact that it’s based on a comic, this is a TV show about zombies. How do you keep something like that up? I friggin’ love zombies and zombie movies, but making an entire TV series based on them isn’t an easy idea. What do you focus on? You can get away with no real substance in a 90-minute zombie flick, that’s pretty easy, but to keep people coming back week after week for a TV show, you need more than just the blood and gore.

One episode in, The Walking Dead already makes it clear that it’s got it. The focus is less on zombies and more on the characters, their relationships, and their survival. The zombies could really be replaced with anything and much of the show would still work. That’s how you do a TV series. Let’s not kid ourselves, the violence, blood, guts, and gore were all there in ample quantities. There was some pretty serious brutality that took me by shock. I was extremely impressed by some of the action that was pushing up against the boundary of what normally makes it onto TV. I liked that. But what I liked even more was that this wasn’t the focus. The first episode immediately sets up camp and says “hey, I’m here for the long haul, we’re setting up sustainable drama here.” It’s impressive to see the pilot episode not pull out big guns right off the bat to sucker viewers in. Instead, we get something that really feels like a solid indication of what to expect going forward.

Simply put, The Walking Dead’s premier was amazing, everyone involved seems to just get it. There was a lot of hype to live up to here and the hype has been building up for the course of almost this entire year. After watching the 90-minute premier, I feel like this may have been under-hyped.

Let’s consider this one nailed.

There comes a point for everyone when it’s just time to retire. Most of us strive to retire before we hit this point and go out on a high note, but sadly, many just keep going. For George A. Romero, the point to quit making zombie movies has come.

Survival of the Dead just isn’t very good. It’s watchable, yes, but it’s just kind of pointless. It doesn’t bring anything to the table. Each of the of the Dead movies has had purpose and reason for existing. Each covered a specific phase of the zombie apocalypse. Night of the Living Dead covered the very beginning of the outbreak with Dawn of the Dead following up on how society would fall apart after the initial outbreak. Day of the Dead gave us a glimpse into what happens after humans lose control and most all society has fallen apart and Land of the Dead covered man’s attempts at putting small and isolated, but feudalistic pockets of civilization and society back together. These four movies were all very solid and existed along a pretty obvious timeline. Diary of the Dead was decent, but served mostly as a nice look at Romero’s vision of a zombie outbreak in the 21st century amongst the user-generated content generation. The people would be the news source, documenting their personal struggles and experiences. If you take the actual timeframe of when the movies were made and simply apply the overall ideas from each one to a timeline, Diary of the Dead fits in nicely around the Dawn of the Dead phase of the zombie apocalypse. These five movies work great together as a series. They really do. This is what Romero got right.

Now, what Romero got wrong…Survival of the Dead. Where does this fit in? What is the theme here? What’s the point of this movie even existing? Romero tries to give a frame of reference by flashing back to the mercenary National Guardsmen who briefly appeared in Diary of the Dead. This is actually the story of those men, which would place this movie parallel to Diary of the Dead. I do like the connection between the two movies and I get the idea of trying to show another group of people’s experiences, but this movie just doesn’t bring anything to the table at all.

The film is rather boring save for a few decent encounters with the undead, but even the undead in this film are completely unimaginative and boring. These are Romero’s worst undead. They barely even care about the flesh of the living and seem to be about as dangerous as an empty box. The storyline revolves around these National Guardsmen as they get mixed up with two feuding families. Obviously, this doesn’t go terribly well for them, but there is hardly anyone in this movie that you actually care about. As a viewer, there are no characters to make a connection with. Each one either sucks or is just boring.

It seems as though Romero is really stuck on the idea of zombies developing low-level cognitive abilities as this idea has now made its way into half of the Dead movies. At this point, we’ve seen him run with this idea twice. The point has been well received and there is nothing new here, if anything, we’ve taken a step backwards with the idea.

I’m still trying to figure out Survival of the Dead‘s reason for existing. Anyone got anything?

Rating: D+

This shirt came from RIPT. I have so many zombie shirts already, but I really liked this one so I had to go for it.

2009 was a pretty fucking awesome year! Seriously. I’ll probably make another post about the rest, but there were some amazing movies and some great records that came out.

Top 10 Albums

A lot of people are making lists for the decade, but I decided that I just couldn’t do that. It was too difficult of a task. So I stuck with just doing a top 10 favorite records for the year. In previous years, I’ve done bigger lists, but I’m keeping it small this year. And, as usual, this is a list of my favorite records, kind of like a personal playlist, rather than ones that I would say are the best.

Anyway, the list is below and I’ll also be counting this list  on The Playlist with The Reverend on 90.3 The Core tonight at 9pm! Make sure to tune in. I’ll be playing one song from each album.

1. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone – Anti
2. Frank Turner – Poetry Of The Deed – Epitaph
3. The Lawrence Arms – Buttsweat And Tears – Fat Wreck Chords
4. M. Ward – Hold Time – Merge
5. Coconut Records – Davy – Young Baby Records
6. Monsters of Folk – Monsters Of Folk – Shangri-La
7. Dear Landlord – Dream Homes – No Idea
8. Conor Oberst And the Mystic Valley Band – Outer South – Merge
9. NOFX – Frisbee/Coaster – Fat Wreck Chords
10. Future Of The Left – Travels with Myself and Another – 4AD

And besides those, there are a few honorable mentions:

• Cheap Girls – My Roaring 20s
• Sonic Youth – The Eternal
• The Decemberists – The Hazards Of Love
• Mason Jennings – Blood Of Man
• Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
• Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
• Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
• Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

You know, I almost wanted to put Lady GaGa on that list somewhere. I think I’ve spent some serious time in the second half of this year discovering a love for her. I never would have thought that I’d think so highly of her, but she’s pretty friggin’ awesome. However, I just can’t say that The Fame Monster was that great overall. It’s good for a few really great songs, but there’s also a lot of filler. Oh well.

And 2010 is already looking like it’s going to be a great year with new records by Murder By Death, Minus The Bear, Against Me!, Spoon, She And Him, and more already announced. I can’t wait!

Top 10 Movies

I actually had a much harder time making my list of top 10 movies for the year. There were a TON of good flicks this year and there were so many that I just didn’t have time to see either! Ultimately, these were my favorites:

1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Star Trek
3. Up
4. The Hangover
5. Dead Snow
6. Zombieland
7. District 9
8. Paranormal Activity
9. Fantastic Mr. Fox
10. Coraline

And of course, some honorable mentions:

• Whip It
• (500) Days Of Summer
• Watchmen
• Last House On The Left
• Whatever Works
• The Wrestler

So there you have it, my favorite albums and movies of the year. I’m hoping to post another entry about other things from 2009 if I get a chance over the next week. But until then, don’t forget that I’ll be counting down that top 10 albums list tonight on The Playlist with The Reverend on 90.3 The Core!

Look at this shirt from woot. It’s got everything! There’s really nothing left to ask for. I think it may slightly edge out Threadless’s This Is How The World Will End shirt. Maybe.

I actually got this shirt a couple weeks ago from Tee Fury, but I’ve been kind of lazy about posting it. It’s a pretty decent one though. I also have another coming from Woot that may be one of the best zombie shirts ever. It really covers all your bases. I’ll make sure to post that one as soon as I get. But besides these two, I’m really trying to cut back my t-shirt buying. It’s not even totally a money thing as it is that I’m running out of places to store them and I’m on about a two to three month long rotation now.

I know it’s been a little while since my last update, but there hasn’t been too much to write about. I didn’t do my radio show last week and the only movie I’ve watched is How To Lose Friends And Alienate People with Simon Pegg–the only real reason I had interest in it. I have literally nothing to say about it except for how overrated Megan Fox is. The movie wasn’t great and it wasn’t bad. It just was. I also started writing a short entry about a pink urinal that I used last week and how the urinal is one of the manliest objects to exist since by definition is for men only and woman physically can’t use it properly. But then I got lazy and didn’t really finish it.

Oh well, I’m doing my show tonight, so I’ll post the playlist tomorrow and, this weekend, I’m going to try to see Men Who Stare At Goats, Planet 51, or Pirate Radio. I’ll post about whatever I get to see.

See ya then!

Here are a few new shirts I’ve picked up in the last couple of weeks. The first one, I got at the Threadless store in Chicago. You can’t really tell much in the picture, but it’s a guy on top of a car surrounded by zombies. I don’t even know how many zombie related shirts I have at this point. And the third one, I got at the Lawrence Arms 10th anniversary show.

You know, if you had asked me a year ago, before I had even heard of Zombieland, if I would have said “yeah, I think Woody Harrelson could wreck some zombies.” Now, ask me this after seeing Zombieland and the answer becomes something more along the line of “why the hell isn’t Woody Harrelson in every zombie movie?” Seriously, it’s a no-brainer. Dude knows how to kill some zombies.

Zombieland is one of those movies where you get so hyped up for and so obsessed with it before seeing it that the day before it comes out, you start to worry that it can’t live up to your expectations. Don’t worry. You will not be disappointed. Zombieland does everything right. It really does. Zombieland actually delivered more than I could have hoped for.

The obvious thing to do here would be to draw comparisons to Shaun Of The Dead. And while that’s not the most inaccurate statement ever, Zombieland isn’t just a U.S. version of Shaun Of The Dead. While both are more romantic comedy than zombie-focused, Zombieland stands on its own without needing a comparison.

Zombieland gives us a lot of great zombie kills, but keeps it light on the flesh eating. In fact, there are actually very few human kills to be seen in the movie. The ones we get are excellent, but like I said, the movie doesn’t focus as much on the zombies, it sticks with good old-fashioned romantic-comedy. This keeps the gore down a bit, but it’s not missed either. It just goes to show, that you don’t need gore for a good zombie flick…and you also don’t need to actually kill any of the characters either.

Bill Murray’s cameo was absolutely wonderful and Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin were all wonderful too, but the start of Zombieland is Woody Harrelson. This dude was born for this role.

Rating: A+

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of days. It’s not the first time, not by a long shot, but yesterday involved a seriously in-depth conversation about the topic, putting it firmly into my consciousness.

Let’s think about this, what exactly would a zombie vampire be? And we need to make the distinction between a zombie vampire and a vampire zombie. The former being first and foremost a vampire that became zombified and the latter being a zombie that got turned into a vampire. I’m going to say that while the second scenario would work out quite well for the zombie, this is rather unlikely.

It’s also important to note that the relationship between zombies and vampires must be a bit awkward. They have no direct reason to interact with each other. Neither is any good to the other. Zombies need the flesh of the living and vampires need the blood of the living. Since both are technically dead, a vampire is no good to a zombie and a zombie is no good to a vampire. However, since they both seek out the living as a food source, they are in competition. Once either of them get a hold of a living human, that’s about it. There is no sharing.

But this isn’t about zombies vs. vampires and their relationship with one another, this is about a hybrid.

Let’s say that a human were to get bit by a zombie and thus become infected. But let’s say that this human wasn’t killed right away and was living for a while still. Now at this point, he/she is still perfectly alive and therefore still a potential vampire target. If a vampire were to take a delicius little sip of this human’s blood and decide to turn the human, then the human would become a vampire that is still infected with the zombie virus. And the first vampire would have sucked infected blood. We could have two zombie vampires here!

Well, maybe not so fast. If a zombie is a re-animated corpse, that would require the vampire to die to become a zombie. This isn’t too likely, seeing as how a vampire is the living dead. So how would the vampire be affected by the zombie virus? Would it be infected at all? Would the vampire take on some of the zombie’s qualities? There are a lot of questions here.

What qualities could a zombie vampire have? One of a zombie’s biggest weaknesses is that its flesh is rotting and it therefore won’t be around forever before it simply falls apart. But it is pretty reasonable to say that a zombie vampire’s flesh would not rot at all. A vampire is not living and has no trouble with rotting flesh, there is no reason to believe that a zombie vampire would be any different. Now, we have a zombie that has no expiration date.

One of the zombie’s biggest weaknesses after the rotting is the fact that rigor mortis has set in. This is possibly the main reason why zombies are traditionally so slow. But in our case, with the zombie vampire, rigor mortis may not be an issue. There is no dying here and that means there is no rigor mortis. This zombie isn’t going to be a stiffy. Vampires are known for their incredible speed so now we may have a zombie that retains it’s full speed. Even in a worst case scenario, a zombie vampire would be faster than a human.

What if the vampire is of the bat-turning-into variety? Does the zombified version of this vampire retain this ability? If so, a flying zombie is second in scariness only to a shark that can walk on land.

What kind of brain power does a zombie vampire have? If there is no death process and no rotting, it is likely that a zombie vampire retains a fully functioning brain as opposed to just the brain-stem.

What does a zombie vampire need to survive? Suddenly, both blood and flesh are consumables. A living human is now both a meal and a beverage. Much less of the human is wasted. Now you’ve got a green zombie!

How is a zombie vampire killed or at least neutralized? Is destroying the brain or removing the head enough? Does the brain need to be destroyed with a silver bullet?

There are a lot of important questions here and not a lot of answers. Clearly, a lot more (scientific) research will need to be done. At this point, it seems as though a zombie vampire may either not even be possible at all or take on very few zombie traits.

Stay tuned for a followup post.