Mutants (2009)

French "Infected people" Horror. I usually have a boner for French Horror. This one didn't knock my socks off. The first 10 minutes were great and then it turned into a downward spiral of decomposing humans and an odd third act. The gore was pretty good though

6.5/10

#FrenchHorror #Hummus #Zombie

Reviews with Ballz: Land of the Dead

For two decades after Day of the Dead, George Romero didn't do any new movies with zombies. I'm not sure if that was because Day of the Dead didn't get great initial reviews or if he was just burned out on zombies. Maybe it was a combination of both. But when it was announced that Romero would be doing a new zombie movie called Land of the Dead (2005), I was very excited. By that point, I knew the first three films very well. Being able to finally see one in theaters meant a lot to me back then and it still does.

With a cast made up of people like Dennis Hopper (Blue Velvet), John Leguizamo (Summer of Sam), Asia Argento (Demons 2), and Robert Joy (The Dark Half), Land of the Dead is a welcome entry to the Dead series. Set apart from the others by many years, it still manages to bring some of that charm that the first three movies contained inside a modern environment. Was it as impressive as the first three movies, especially Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead? Not quite, even with a big company name like Universal behind it. But it wasn't bad either, coming from a guy who hadn't touched zombie movies for twenty years.

So quit picking your nose and join me for another... Reviews with Ballz!

While Night of the Living Dead is the beginning of the zombie problem, Dawn of the Dead is a few weeks in, and Day of the Dead is at least several months in, Land of the Dead takes place several years into the zombie apocalypse. By now, people have learned a new way of living, or at least a way of "pretending to be alive", as Riley Denbo (Simon Baker) says in the very beginning of the movie. A crew with a weapon-rigged vehicle called Dead Reckoning raids abandoned towns for supplies all while trying to avoid being chomped on by the still very active living dead, Riley and Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) working with the crew, acting sort of as the leaders, though right away, the two are shown to not really see eye to eye. Of course, the supplies aren't really just for them, but they're for everyone inside of the secured city that they operate out of, especially the rich fuckers who live in the fancy tower called Fiddler's Green.

Instead of the scientists versus military scenario presented in Day of the Dead, this has more of a the poor versus the rich scenario. The poor are people like Riley and Cholo who live in a rather dirty, rundown environment outside of Fiddler's Green, though it has some areas of entertainment, like shooting paintball guns at zombies, while the rich are people like Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), who is pretty much the head of Fiddler's Green. The poor versus the rich isn't exactly an original concept, but it's pretty interesting when you throw it into a zombie apocalypse, showing how the future could possibly work if a zombie apocalypse ever really did occur. And the zombies do play a large role here, showing how they've also learned in their own way.

This movie had the biggest budget of any of the six Dead films so far, at $15 million, but a bigger budget doesn't automatically equal a better film. While the first three movies had very memorable soundtracks, this one has the generic, forgettable soundtrack issue that all newer movies seem to have. It's nothing bad, but it just doesn't stand out at all. Most of the characters also don't feel as polished as they could be. Cholo and Kaufman are easily the the best two characters and part of that is definitely because of the actors who play them, as well as Riley's sidekick, Charlie (Robert Joy). The gore is merely okay. There are a couple standout moments of gore throughout the movie though. Overall, where the previous films all felt like upgrades in those areas, the only real upgrade here is the plot, which was really just the next logical step.

And there's really not a whole lot else to say about this movie other than that Tom Savini makes a cameo as his character from Dawn of the Dead. First time a character carried over in one of the Dead movies. Unfortunately, he wasn't behind the movie's special effects. This movie does have quite a few flaws, but I still enjoy the hell out of it and it blows Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead out of the water. Maybe George Romero will wait another decade or so and then try again, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Especially since he's now got some comic book series called Empire of the Dead that involves some shit with zombies and vampires. I've never looked at it and from what I've heard, it's probably best to continue avoiding it.



If you've seen and enjoy the first three movies, then you might as well see Land of the Dead too. You'll probably appreciate some of what it has to offer. I don't know. Maybe I'm a little biased since it was the first and, so far, only George Romero movie I've been able to see in theaters, but I think it's fun enough for what it is and I always watch it too after I've watched the first three together. There's a theatrical cut and a director's cut. Might as well go for the director's cut. It has a small extra scene and some extra shots of gore. And that concludes this four-part review series! If you've been keeping up with these, thanks for reading.

My Rating: 4/5

#Review #ReviewsWithBallz #Sequel #Zombie

Reviews with Ballz: Day of the Dead

If Dawn of the Dead was an upgrade of Night of the Living Dead, then George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985) was an upgrade to zombie genre as a whole. Even better make-up for the zombies and better gore effects? Check. A polished score by John Harrison that never feels out of place? Check. A great cast of characters who all grow on you in one way or another (yes, that includes this movie's main and, well, only living female character, unlike those two before...)? Check. This movie has it all and that's despite having its budget chopped in half, forcing Romero to change much of his original script to fit the lower budget, keeping only some of the characters and the basic ideas of the original script.

This was the first Romero movie I actually owned, having blind bought it on VHS in a store at the mall, and much like the previous two movies, it had me hooked from the start, despite my young self being completely fucking horrified by the amount of gore in the movie. Seriously, after seeing this movie enough times, it caused me to become almost completely desensitized to gore in other movies. But even before I knew as much about the Dead movies as I do now, I knew that this was a movie much better polished and better put together than its predecessors. Starring Joe Pilato (Wishmaster), Richard Liberty (The Crazies), Gary Klar (Miami Blues), John Amplas (Martin), Taso Stavrakis (Knightriders), and a bunch of other cool people who I don't recognize from anything else, this movie wasn't received very well when it came out, but in more recent times, things have changed for it.

Try not to "choke on 'em" while you read this entry of... Reviews with Ballz!

As void of life Dawn of the Dead might have seemed, especially towards the end of the movie, Day of the Dead starts right off with showing just how fucked up things have become as we see shots of a lifeless city, the only activity seen coming from alligators who have wandered into the city and the undead. Sarah (Lori Cardille), Miguel (Antonè DiLeo), John (Terry Alexander), and McDermott (Jarlath Conroy) land their helicopter in this city, the former two getting out to try to find anyone who might still be alive, only to quickly discover what we already know: there's no one. Getting the hell out of there, we then soon see that they operate out of an underground bunker built in a system of caves and learn that they've been searching for other survivors for a while now.

The underground bunker is inhabited by both scientists and the military, the military outnumbering the scientists by quite a few, which causes a lot of tension between the two groups. The scientists trying to study the zombies don't help with the tensions either as the military would much rather just "shoot the mothers in the head". John and McDermott live on their own in the caves, away from the two groups and their tension. It leads to some great drama though, making it feel more like a drama movie with zombies in the background at times. The arguments between Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) are especially entertaining. That's not to say Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead don't have great moments of drama, but with Day of the Dead, it's an almost constant thing.

The budget this time around was $3.5 million, which is significantly larger than what the previous two Dead films had, but as I said before, it was originally twice as big. Supposedly the reason for the budget cut is because George Romero wanted it to be released unrated. The original script still involved an underground bunker and several other elements present in the movie, such as the scientists and military both living there, but there were more characters and some of them were quite different. Sarah, for example, came to the bunker from the outside with Miguel while in the movie, she's already a scientist there and he's already part of the military. It's not hard to find online and is a pretty interesting read if you're ever curious about it. It definitely would have been interesting to see actually filmed, but at the same time, maybe it's for the best that things went the way they did.

Tom Savini returned to do the special effects in Day of the Dead. I don't know if it's the bigger budget or if he just learned a lot in the seven years between this and Dawn of the Dead, but zombie make-up in particular is easily the best I've seen in any zombie movie or TV show. And then there's John Harrison's score. It has a very 1980's sound to it and it works perfectly, always helping set the mood for whatever scene it's used in. These two things combined with the plot and characters give it what I would call a slight edge over the great Dawn of the Dead. And speaking of the characters, I already mentioned how even Sarah grows on you in this movie, but it still must be said. After useless Barbra and almost just as useless Fran, Romero finally wrote a female character that could hold her own quite well. I don't know if this is because he was trying to show some kind of evolution of females in world of zombies or if he got criticism on his other two movies, but for this, Sarah is easily my favorite female character of the series.

I could sit here all day writing about this movie's characters and their traits and what I think is great about each of them and fuck, maybe I will someday. That would actually be a lot of fun to do I think. But for now, all I can say is, definitely see this movie if you haven't before. There will probably never be a zombie movie better than this one. It's supposedly George Romero's favorite of his original Dead trilogy and it's definitely my favorite too.

My Rating: 5/5

#Review #ReviewsWithBallz #Sequel #Zombie

Reviews with Ballz: Dawn of the Dead

George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was released exactly ten years after his first zombie masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead. In many ways, it's an upgrade of the first movie. It's in color, there's a lot more violence, the locations are grander, and the music is now a combination of stock music and music recorded by Italian progressive rock band Goblin, who were brought in by the movie's producer, Italian horror director Dario Argento. When I first saw Dawn of the Dead around 2000 or so, I didn't even realize that it was a sequel to anything, but I knew from the first moments of the movie inside of the television studio that I was watching a movie that was going to be nothing like anything I'd ever seen before. The music alone told me that. And it only got even better from there.

Starring Ken Foree (From Beyond), Scott Reiniger (Knightriders), Gaylen Ross (Madman), and David Emge (Basket Case 2), with Tom Savini (From Dusk Till Dawn, who also did the special effects in this), John Amplas (Martin), and Taso Stavrakis (Knightriders) in small roles, it's the ultimate zombie movie. With its greyish blue zombies, pink blood, and shopping mall setting, Dawn of the Dead has quite possibly left behind an even bigger footprint in the history of zombie movies than its predecessor, again showing just what can be accomplished on a low budget and again proving that back then, George Romero knew exactly how to make his zombie movies stand out from the rest of the zombie movies that were cropping up during that time.

Stock up on your lighter fluid and Spam and get ready for another... Reviews with Ballz!

While Night of the Living Dead is the beginning of world's zombie problem, Dawn of the Dead begins a few weeks in. People are still in the cities, TV stations are still on air, and the police are still trying to battle crime, but right away, you can tell that there's an overall feeling of hopelessness. People are shown to be easily agitated and acting illogical. As I said before, the movie starts in a television studio, where Fran (Gaylen Ross) works and it's quite hectic, between the interview they're trying to air with a doctor to provide information to the public and people walking out on their jobs after having enough of the chaos in the studio. Eventually, her boyfriend, Stephen (David Emge), shows up to tell her his plan to escape with her. With them, they bring their cop friend, Roger (Scott Reiniger), and his new friend, Peter (Ken Foree).

Escaping from the city together isn't the end of their troubles though and exhausted from everything that's occurred, they eventually discover a shopping mall. Deeming a part of it to be safe enough, they decide to rest up there. After all, any place that's away from the living dead is a good place, right? Of course, there are strings attached to this little hiding spot they find, such as the fact that the rest of the mall is full of zombies and from how things have played out up to this point, it doesn't look like anyone will be coming to help them out anytime soon. I think the fact that it's just the four of them alone for most of the movie adds to the overall hopelessness of the situation.

With a budget a little higher than Night of the Living Dead, this time at $650,000, George Romero really does go all-out with Dawn of the Dead. In a way, it's hard to even compare it to the first movie, because while it sort of works as a companion piece as far as the style of the two movies go, with the low budget, great use of library music, and again setting the bar for zombie movies, it's also very much its own beast. You can really tell that Romero put as much heart into this as Night of the Living Dead, if not more considering the fact that he ended up with a script filled with specific details that caused it to be way more pages than the movie's length was actually intended to be.

Now, I mentioned in my Night of the Living Dead review how useless Barbra was and how George Romero almost did the same exact thing with this movie. Well, here, the problem is with Fran. She's almost just as fucking useless as Barbra! Again, I get that she might be in shock. But what she's gone through compared to what Barbra went through seems like nothing. When Stephen is trying to fight off a zombie and tells her to run, but she neither runs nor tries to help is just one of many instances when I feel like they would have been better off leaving her ass behind at the television studio. I do say Romero almost did the same thing for a reason though, because unlike Barbra, Fran does prove to be useful a few times in the movie.

Though I never owned this movie on VHS, I rented it on VHS plenty and I've watched my DVDs plenty too. Including the Ultimate Edition, which comes with three cuts of the movie (theatrical/director, European, and extended cuts), I own five different DVDs of it. I also have an edit that combines footage from all three official cuts into one, extremely long movie. I personally prefer the theatrical cut though. It's easily the most well-polished cut. Well, why the hell are you still reading this shit? Even if you've seen it, go watch Dawn of the Dead now!

My Rating: 5/5

#Review #ReviewsWithBallz #Sequel #Zombie

Reviews with Ballz: Night of the Living Dead

In wanting to do something special on Trash Epics for October, I've decided to write a four-part series of reviews, which will cover the first four movies of George Romero's Dead series: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), and Land of the Dead (2005). I'm skipping Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009), both because they kind of reboot the series and because no one cares much about them anyway. And I'm not going to beat around the bush here: I love this series. It's easily my favorite horror series and these reviews will most certainly reflect that.

Night of the Living Dead is, appropriately, the first movie that I saw in the Dead series. I only have a few vague memories of that first time, but I do very clearly remember being frightened by it and I'd say for good reason. A cemetery, a farmhouse, no vehicle to get away in, no way to contact anyone for help, and the recently deceased wandering around, pursuing and attacking anyone who's still alive. All perfect, classic, horror movie elements, elements that have been inspiring, ripped off, and spoofed many times since, because Night of the Living Dead is, for good reason, considered the beginning of what people now think of as your typical zombie.

Grab a gun, board up your doors and windows, and join me for another... Reviews with Ballz!

Night of the Living Dead starts off with brother and sister, Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbra (Judith O'Dea), headed down an isolated road to a cemetery to visit their father's grave. Ominous music plays in the background, taken from a stock music library like all other music in the movie, and it's a simple but very effective scene, perfectly setting up the terror that's about to unfold. As Johnny parks the car in the cemetery, the announcer on the radio comes on, talking about how they're back after some technical difficulties. Nothing to be alarmed about, Johnny shrugs it off and joins Barbra in finding their father's grave.


They aren't in the cemetery for long at all before Johnny decides to start fucking around by teasing Barbra and trying to scare her. This is when he says one of the famous lines of horror cinema history: "They're coming to get you, Barbra!" The perfect line to start George Romero's multi-movie zombie nightmare. Eventually, we move on to a nearby farmhouse, where we meet Ben (Duane Jones), Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), and several others. While the other actors all do a fine job with their roles, it's Jones and Hardman who really steal the show. Every scene they're in together is just great.


Night of the Living Dead isn't my favorite of the Dead series, but as I said before, I love it. Everything in it just works really well. The plot, the settings, the music, the actors, the minimal effects. It's impressive what can be done with just $114,000. Sure, that kind of budget wouldn't get you far now, but I feel like low budget then and low budget now have two very different meanings or they at least have two very different mindsets behind them. The movie isn't very gory, especially when compared to the later movies in the Dead series. You aren't thinking about that when you're watching this however because of how great everything else is, though since Tom Savini was originally supposed to do the effects in this as he did for the next two movies, it does make you wonder what he might have been able to do with the budget they had to work with.

My only real complaint about this movie is the character of Barbra. It wasn't the actress who was the problem, but the character herself and how she was written. I get that she's in shock over everything, but it gets old fast. It's like when there's an annoying, useless kid in a serious movie. Realistic? Maybe. Fun to watch though? Not at all. At least Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead improves upon her character, giving her some actual purpose instead of having her just sit around talking crazy. And what really pisses me off is that Romero damn near pulls this same exact shit again in Dawn of the Dead! But more on that issue in that review.

If you've somehow never seen this movie, then you really need to get on that, because you're really missing out of a piece of classic, genre-defining cinema. Avoid the 30th Anniversary Edition of the movie though. I've never seen it myself, but I've never heard a good thing about it.

My Rating: 4/5

#Review #ReviewsWithBallz #Zombie

Dawn of the Dead: The Video Game (or is it?)



In 1986, Ubisoft released their first video game, simply titled Zombi, which was also the European title for George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The game doesn't exactly follow the movie's plot, because remember, this was 1986, before an actual plot was a priority in video games, but a lot of the same things happen. Four survivors of a zombie apocalypse land on the roof of a zombie-filled mall, where they proceed to do things like steal guns from a gun store, block the mall entrances with trucks, and place the bodies of the zombies inside a walk-in freezer.

The thing is though, this isn't really Dawn of the Dead at all and is really more of a giant rip off. The four characters might somewhat resemble the four main characters in Dawn of the Dead, especially if you're playing the original black and white version of the game, but their names aren't even close to the names of the characters in the movie, instead named after the people who originally developed the game. Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick, and Patrick... yeah, that's not really even close, is it?




The inside of the mall looks nothing like the mall in Dawn of the Dead either. Now you could just say they couldn't get the rights for any of that, but to that, I would say, it's a giant rip off! Seriously, I'm surprised Romero hasn't sued Ubisoft over this game. The only reasons I can think of that he hasn't are: the plot's different enough, as they're at the mall just looking for gasoline for their helicopter, he doesn't think the game is a big enough deal to bother suing over, or he's simply never even heard about it. The third option wouldn't surprise me.

So now that we've established what a rip off of Dawn of the Dead this game is, let's talk a little about the game itself. You can control all four characters by simply clicking on the icon of the one you want to control. There's even parts where you'll need to constantly switch between two of them to get a task accomplished and to me, considering when the game came out, that's a pretty advanced idea.



The game focuses heavily on point-and-clicking and puzzle solving, though you can fight the zombies too with guns and melee weapons. The guns are the better choice, of course, since it's possible to never have to actually fight a zombie if you can always put them down with a head shot first. If you fuck up the head shot, the zombie will start clawing and growling at you, draining your health, until you do manage to put it down.


You actually have three status bars per character, but I really don't know what they stand for exactly: F, H, and S. Food, health, and stamina? I say food, because you can actually click on food in a couple stores in the game to refill your status bars some. I'm probably way off on what they really stand for though.





Other than losing all of your health, you can also die instantly in a few ways. One is when you're outside moving the trucks in front of the entrances. If you walk past the edge of the mall, you're dead. That might sound like a simple and easy rule to follow, but on a couple sides of the mall, there's no way to know where the edge is other than just figuring it out through trial and error, and it's not exactly easy to tell on the other sides either. You can continue the game with the other characters if you lose one, but before a certain point, I think it'd be impossible to complete the game with any less than two still alive.

One thing I've not been able to figure out in the game is this store with beds. Your characters can lay down in them, but if they do, you might as well just consider them to be dead. They might get up again eventually, but by the time they do, you'll probably have grown bored and quit the game anyway. This might have something to do with your stats, maybe the S, but I've never waited around long enough to find out.


I think my biggest complaint about this game is triggering the final part of the game. If you've seen Dawn of the Dead, you can probably guess what that means: bikers. I was following a pretty vague guide the first time I played and it didn't even give a hint as to how you trigger the final part. Even after I knew, I couldn't get to the final part, so I finally just started the game over entirely and it worked. Despite that, I still don't know precisely how or where it triggers.


Do I recommend this game? Overall, it's really not a bad game. If you're big fan of Dawn of the Dead, I say definitely check it out. Otherwise, I still say check it out if you're curious and bored, but you're not exactly missing anything ground breaking either if you skip it. There's a couple gameplay videos on YouTube too anyway. I used an Amiga emulator and rom myself to play it, which was one of the colorized ported versions from 1990.

Thanks for reading. Until next time.

#DawnOfTheDead #VideoGame #Zombi #Zombie

Lucio Fulci Films

Like him or hate him, I think it's hard to disagree on Fulci's films belonging on here. By the description alone of the site made by @Renzo_Capetto, Fulci's films belong.

old school horror movies, gritty exploitation films, and especially bad movies

Yep, that describes most of Lucio Fulci's films.

Personally? I'm pretty middle-of-the-road on his stuff. I liked 'Zombie' a lot and, to a lesser extent, 'The New York Ripper' the first time I saw them, but I hated 'City of the Living Dead' and 'The Beyond'. I've seen some of his other stuff too, like 'Don't Torture a Duckling' (hated), 'Manhattan Baby' (actually thought it was okay despite the overall negative reception I see towards it), and 'The House of Clocks' (also thought was okay). I'll be focusing on the first four movies I mentioned here though, as I've seen them the most and am more familiar with them.

The main reason I'm writing this is because I've been re-watching some of his stuff lately. I'll try to keep this spoiler-free.

To start... 'Zombie'. My first Fulci movie and my favorite Fulci movie. I remember renting this on tape and I loved it from the start. The zombie vs. shark and splinter in the chick's eye scenes are probably what most people think of when they think of this movie. So do I, actually. But there's so much other stuff going on too that makes this my favorite of Fulci's stuff. The mud-caked, worm-ridden zombies. The whole idea of the island setting, that something like that could happen on some island like that somewhere and most of us would be completely unaware until it's too late.

And let's not forget the main theme used in the movie. I like all of the music in the movie really, but that main theme especially just works really well I think. Fabio Frizzi is the man behind the music in 'Zombie'. He did the music for some of Fulci's other films too, but none of those scores are as memorable to me as 'Zombie's' score. Except maybe 'The Beyond's' score, but we'll get to that soon.

The second Fulci movie I saw, a couple years after first seeing 'Zombie', was 'The New York Ripper'. I don't think it's nearly as good as 'Zombie' or even the next movie I'm going to talk about, nor is the music as memorable, other than the opening theme, done by someone other than Frizzi, some guy named Francesco De Masi. Its crazy murders are pretty bloody and gory though and... that's kind of all I can think to say about it. The movie's nothing great or original, other than the killer sounding like Donald Duck, which is more laughable than anything, but it's entertaining enough that I don't hate it.

Now for 'City of the Living Dead' and 'The Beyond'. I know a lot of people love these two movies and I've always felt kind of weird for not appreciating them at all. To put it bluntly, I found them to be boring and poorly written gorefests. I love gore in movies, but not when it's the only thing going for the movie. Well, I recently decided to give them another watch and, especially with 'City of the Living Dead', I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I had in my previous viewings of it.

With 'City of the Living Dead', I think part of the problem was that I expected it to be more of zombie movie, especially with that title, when really, the zombies are just a minor aspect of it. It's more about the priest and whenever you see him, you know some bad shit's about to go down. And with that in mind, I think I can appreciate the movie a lot more than I used to, because as the movie's main villain, I do like him. The gore definitely doesn't disappoint in the movie either. All of that said... I still think the movie's ending is dumb and poorly played out. Maybe I'll learn to appreciate it more over time too, but I think it might take a lot more time.

And finally, 'The Beyond'. I'm still not a big fan of this movie. I 'get' it. I just don't really get into it like I do with 'Zombie' or now, 'City of the Living Dead'. As with the other three movies I've mentioned, it's got good gore. Also as I said before, the score definitely sticks out. But the whole plot... I just am not into it. I guess you could say 'well, with a Fulci movie, the plot isn't supposed to be great, it's all about the violence'. Maybe so, but a movie that's almost an hour and a half that has a poor story, but great gore isn't going to have much replay value, at least for me. I am a fan of some scenes, especially the parts in the hospital, as well as the opening kill, the bathtub scene, and the spider scene. Oh, and the ending, that's a lot better than 'City of the Living Dead's' ending. But even those scenes don't draw me in like 'City of the Living Dead' has managed to do. Maybe with another re-watch or two...

I won't lie and call myself an expert on Lucio Fulci's work. I've seen I think seven of his movies now. I forgot to mention 'Zombi 3' before, though it's hard to truly call that a Fulci movie since he didn't even finish directing it. I've also seen 'Wax Mask', which he helped write and I've heard was also supposed to direct before he died.

I would like to see Fulci's 'House by the Cemetery'. I've got a download of it, I've just not gotten around to it yet. Soon though.

#CityOfTheLivingDead #Gore #LucioFulci #TheBeyond #TheNewYorkRipper #Zombie