Montana Zombies and Fashionable Fear

Someone hacked into local Emergency Broadcast Systems in Montana and Michigan to warn viewers that dead bodies were coming back to life as Zombies.

Not really surprising since Zombies are so fashionable these days. Not really surprising since Fear Itself is so fashionable these days too - we're pummeled with Fear at every turn.

Fashionable Fears arrive in a steady stream: schools aren't safe, guns are everywhere, not enough guns are available, snowstorms are named like hurricanes, nuclear weapons are everywhere, asteroids are zooming overhead, the world economy is collapsing, gay people are taking over, illegal immigrants are taking over, government-by-Obama is taking over, Obama was re-elected, drone strikes are targeting everyone, giant soft drink servings are illegal, diet soft drinks give you diabetes, there's no jobs, robots run factories, banks will rob you, the church is full of pedophiles, all sports are fixed, all athletes cheat, the wealthy are under attack, the poor are under attack, prisons are full, prisons are being emptied, the planet is melting, the planet is freezing, food is full of secret genetic mutations, water is poison, your phone/computer/identity has been hacked, you're being stalked by your ex, there's too much information, there's no information being shared, bullies are taking over, space aliens are taking over, you're too fat, you're too skinny, your neighbor is a doomsday prepper, Truth is out of style, you can't afford healthcare, everyone is addicted to prescription pills, radioactive tsunamis and mega-storms are being created by secret military weather machines .... the Apocalypse has begun ...

Fear is the fashion. Fear is a customizable brand.

Remain calm.

Remember, all you have to fear is Fear Itself.

Zombie Theme Parks and Country Music Zombie Ballads

Walking dead folks are quite popular - so popular that they could bring a wave of economic booms and boomlets.

One developer in Detroit is pushing hard to let the city fathers sell off some 200 acres of the more derelict sections of the city to build Z World Detroit -- a zombie-infested theme park. While his fundraising is pretty low so far, but the final outcome might just be that one day you and the family can trek to the Motor City and flee and fight zombies. The LA Times has more on the story.

The official website for Z World Detroit offers t-shirts, buttons and fun drawings like these via this promo video:

But what about the fans of country music with earnest singer-songwriter aspirations who also have zombies on their mind?

Then meet Amanda Richards, who has a new record out, a 'concept album' about the plaintive tunes of the last lone survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse called "Play Dead". Richards says her music is from the perspective of " ... a collection of old-school country songs about the zombie apocalypse written from the perspective of the soon-to-be last person on Earth who happens to be a country singer and a feminist.  The songs span nearly the entire history of country music: from boot-stomping old-timey banjo tunes to classic he-done-me-wrong ballads; endearing melodies sung with charm and poise countered by gory apocalyptic themes."

Songs include:

"Don't Leave Your Woman (When There's Walking Dead)" 
and
"Undead In My Bed"

Zombie Politics 2011

from The Walking Dead

A pair of recent editorials tries to crack the code to answer a "what does it mean?" aimed at the Occupy Wall Street and other spreading protests nationally and globally. But I'm not sure really that there is a code to crack.

Bernard Harcourt writes an editorial for the NYTimes that OWS is designed to be "political disobedience" - a rejection of the current state of American ideological political divisions, goals, and practices. "Ultimately, what matters to the politically disobedient is the kind of society we live in, not a handful of policy demands." Perhaps he is right.

Casey Seiler writes an editorial for the Albany Times Union saying a leaderless, shambling protest of the OWS stripes can accomplish little - that "Without direction, it's walking -- but dead." Perhaps Casey is right.

From my perspective, the Tea Party folks and the OWS are both expressions of the same deep dissatisfaction with American politics. Serious efforts to provide economic policies, devise solutions to complex global problems and limit the influences of corporate cash support are truly absent in today's political world. And none in charge seem to want to alter the current status in any way, instead doubling-down for more of the same, which leads to less than nothing and nowhere. Those in government, local and national, do not understand any of their failings and remain focused on one goal - election and re-election. Tragedy is poised for performance.

Sadly, as noted by Seiler, the overall effect looks far too much like the chaos of a society overrun by endless, mindless hordes of consuming monsters. The survivors want two things - survival and a way to reinstall some normalcy - but none have all the answers. Make your best guess, try and endure, and try to maintain some kind of human community.

At this point, as in most zombie movies, all I can say is "good luck with that".

A Zombie Love Song for Halloween

It isn't often a pop music band combines a fondness for 80s horror movies (like "The Evil Dead") with the bliss of a first romance ... is it?

In honor of the upcoming holiday, the ever-growing fame of zombie movies, and a great need of silliness in general, I present the band Codavita, and their first single and first video - "In Love With Fear". It's an infectious tune and by far the best Halloween song of 2008.

Camera Obscura: 'Diary of the Dead'; Get A Life-Size Indiana Jones; And Laser Cats!

"When there is no more room in hell, the dead will create a MySpace page."

Let's talk about zombies.

Shambling undead humans who rise up from the grave to feast on human flesh were once the fevered imaginings of odd readers and bizarre writers and film-fans such as myself. Today, zombies are cultural icons. All across the globe, everyday folks will slap on some gory make-up and gather for Zombie Walks, and the movies about them and with them are everywhere, some very funny, some very scary and some very poorly made. The literary world reeks of rotting flesh and survival guides flourish to the point one may well wonder if some people know they are still creatures of the imagination.

The guru of zombies is George Romero and his most recent movie hit DVD this week, "Diary of the Dead". His dark fantasies have fired up imaginations for decades, movies that have skewered society with visceral glee. Students and teachers and film critics and cultural anthropologists pontificate on the Romero Zombie with frequent essays and doctoral thesis papers. In Romero's movies, the story is more than just a scary tale told in the dark - they are also stories about us all, about how we react and respond to disaster and destruction.

"Diary" continues such themes with a digital skewer. It's the YouTube Internet Zombie Age in his film, and more than any of his previous movies, this one pushes the undead into a vague fearful background and the foreground is full of cameras and people obsessed with them. The story begins with a narrator who says the following images were all captured via a variety of media sources, which the narrator is compelled to send out via the Internet. We then see a group of would-be low-budget horror movie filmmakers whose shoot is cut short when the radios begin crackling with reports of the rising undead. Quickly, the group gathers up and begins to flee, all of their actions being "documented" by an obsessed director named Jason.

Just as quickly, the viewer gets inundated with images within images, frames within frames. Our hardy survivors meet other survivors, but no matter what they do or where they go, they begin to die and transform into the undead. It is the camera and the cameraman (or woman) who remain the focus of the film. Though horrified and terrorized, the characters can't stop observing themselves as they are being destroyed. In one scene a character shoots a zombie and then passes the gun to someone else, saying "It's too easy to use". Moments later, after another attack, someone passes a camera off to someone else saying the same line "It's too easy to use."

Romero conceived of his idea to be an online movie only at first, and his MySpace page remains quite active. He hits all the aspects of the constant barrage of information, from cell phones to blogs to videogames , citizen journalism and surveillance cameras. And he notes too that even if the zombies devour every human, all those digitized details will remain long after all life is gone.

Does all of that information have any value? Towards the end of the movie, a comment is offered that all the billions of voices captured and sent around the world have no provided more truth or more illumination - instead it has deafened us, made us less sure of everything.

For the DVD release, 5 short amateur films submitted via MySpace are included in the extras and they're pretty good too - imaginative and spooky and funny takes on the zombie apocalypse. And I do have some complaints about the movie - mostly that Romero found some really bad actors, some of the worst in any of his movies. But "Diary" is more about the hardware, not the software, and the hardware wins out in the end.

One other aspect of all of Romero's zombie tales I truly like is that there is never a really clear explanation of a cause or a solution. How one might survive is considered, but if it's even worth surviving has always been his biggest question.

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MOVIE NEWS

Also rising up from the long ago this weekend is Indiana Jones in "Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." If you just can't get enough Indy and crave more, then perhaps you can bid on a life-sized Indiana Jones to place in your own home. It's being offered on eBay, with bids starting at $50,000.

Another attempt at resurrection arrives from the director of not-very-good "Sahara", Breck Eisner. He's working on a new version of "Flash Gordon" and "Creature From The Black Lagoon." Keeping his career alive at this point is a notable feat.

A blogger worked some liveblogging for Quentin Tarantino's two-hour talk about his movies, which you can read here.

The movie "16 Candles" has just been re-enacted in 30 seconds by bunnies. The result is here.

See the latest on the new animated movie "Space Chimps and Patrick ", featuring the voices of Andy SambergWarburton. What I want to know is when will someone greenlight a feature movie of Samberg's SNL creation - "Laser Cats"??? I'll pay cash money in a heartbeat to see that!

Camera Obscura - Oscar Weekend; Return of Akira and Repo Man

I read an article recently where some film critic was bemoaning the hideous-ugly depressing nature of movies nominated this year for an Oscar award. As if, for instance, last year's winner "The Departed" was a slapstick comedy of errors. Which, okay, it sort of was.

Best-picture Oscars seldom if ever go to light-hearted fare. Praise for Art from a Business point of view is going to take itself Seriously. So it goes. I usually find the show itself interesting from various technical perspectives - the staging, the lighting, the attempt to make a somewhat dull awards ceremony into a visual event.

I do hope to see the Coen brothers take home many prizes for "No Country For Old Men". Since their first film, "Blood Simple" and onward they have created an impressive body of work as director and writers. Their scripts are truly astonishing prose on their own and their visual style seldom over-indulges so the viewer says "ahhhh, nice" - instead there is a tremendous subtle and understated brilliance. It's part of the reason their films are so easy to watch again and again.

Plus, the source for their film is Cormac McCarthy's novel, and McCarthy is far overdue for recognition as one of the best living American authors.

There is a madness to movie-making. You have to be a little crazy to leap into the ill-suited collision of Art and Business. And yet anyone armed with a camera and some creativity can make a movie. That's pretty much the storyline in the new movie opening this weekend from Michel Gondry, "Be Kind, Rewind". After accidentally destroying their stock of movies for rent, the guys who run the store start remaking every movie they can and offer those for rent instead.

Gondry's odd visual and verbal style, such as "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", is deeply self-referential. He makes movies about how we as individuals create a narrative, a movie, of our own lives.

That's why it doesn't matter what film wins an award - we have our own favorites, movies we made into Best Pictures, because for some reason we connect to them and they become expressions of ourselves.

OTHER MOVIE NEWS

First, a big shout out and thanks to Newscoma who pointed out a great movie blog, Cinebeats. It is ultra-groovy as it digs thru stacks and stacks of seldom-seen classic movies from the '60s and '70s. Their 4-part list of the Best DVD releases of 2007 is an excellent guide to must-have movies.

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After 20 years of cult fame, the Japanese anime classic "Akira" will turn into a live-action film, produced by and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He'll play the role of Kaneda and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets the juicy role of Tetsuo. The sci-fi storyline has elements ranging from "Rebel Without A Cause" to "Carrie" and much more.

The anime movie is forever entrenched as a groundbreaking and jaw-dropping animated film, which has had a huge influence on American films since it's release. If you have never seen it, you have missed one of the most impressive pictures of the last 40 years. So see it.

Now I don't think making it live-action will improve it one bit. Some stronger acting, yes, but there is no way the original could ever be topped.

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"World War Z", an "oral history of the zombie war" is getting a script from J. Michael Straczynski and is being produced by Brad Pitt's film company. The Max Brooks novel of a zombie apocalypse (noting worse than that!) is sort of like what would happen if Ken Burns did a documentary take on a George Romero-style war. Wonder if the movie will have that sad fiddle music?

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More proof of my geeky, nerdy love of odd films - I was happy to read that the great '80s punkish sic-fi movie "Repo Man" is getting a sequel. Director/writer Alex Cox, however, has made the sequel as a graphic novel (that's fancy talk for big ol' comic book).

Our hero Otto, who disappeared with the aliens at the end of the movie, now uses the name of Waldo and returns to Earth after spending some ten years on Mars.

The title to look for: "Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday".

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Good-bye and fond farewell to the Gill-Man.

Ben Chapman, who was the man in the monster suit in "The Creature From The Black Lagoon" died yesterday. I'll never forget when my family went to Florida one summer and we stopped at a place called Silver Springs. Once our guide told us this was the location for the Black Lagoon movie I was totally terrified and happy all at once. I could see and understand just how a camera angle and a good location can make movie magic.

Godspeed to the Gill-Man.

Camera Obscura - Online Horror Festival; Rolling Stones Documentary; Make A Dead Movie

It is true I have a film festival in my brain 24/7. It's way swanky.

If you don't, and if you always wanted to attend a film festival, all you need to join one is a computer connected to the internets. In fact, that's the only way you can witness Insomnifest, the world's first Online Horror Movie Festival.

12 movies are featured in the fest, which runs from Feb. 11 thru Feb. 24. The web site for the fest boasts a mega-trailer from most of the movies. I'm thinking this is not the kind of festival one attends hoping to meet the people who actually made these movies or the fans who seek them. At least they did not call it Splatterfest or Cheesefest, but perhaps they could have. And I don't recommend you use your computer at work to bask in the buckets of fake grue.

But you don't have to stand around in the snow like at Sundance, or wade through the beautiful people.

You can enjoy a virtual pressbox seat for the annual Berlin Film Festival, which starts today. The US normally ignores this festival, but the media is hyping it because Martin Scorsese is debuting his documentary of the Rolling Stones, "Shine In Light", and because Jagger's quip at a press conference that this is Marty's first film to NOT feature the song "Gimme Shelter" was actually funny.

The official website and trailer is here. One notable element to this doc - Marty is often onscreen, as the movie is as much about the show as it is about how he filmed the show. And guests like Buddy Guy, Jack White and others perform with the band too.

Sweeping Declaration: The Stones are the best rock band in the world. When your fave band has passed the 45-year mark, then let me know. Otherwise, the Stones are it. (That means if Hannah Montana is packing arenas every year for the next 44 years, she could be in the running. But we know that's not gonna happen. And she'll never have an album with a zipper down the front either.)

In other film festival news, SXSW in Austin is just a month away, and the full rundown on all 64 films is here. Winner of the Best Title Award already goes to Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.

Also showing at SXSW is the zombie movie my brother is in, "Dance of the Dead", filmed last Spring in Rome, Georgia. He gives the details on the day he spent as a zombie here.

Finally today, writer/director George Romero wants to see your scary movie. In a contest, which ends on Feb 29th, to promote his new zombie movie "Diary of the Dead", you can get your horror movie (of 3 minutes or less) included with the DVD release of Romero's latest.

All the details here at his MySpace page.

Smokin', Fishin' and of course, Zombies

Even though the smoking ban in public places in Tennessee does not go into full effect until October 1st, a woman who lit up a cigarette in an East Tennessee eatery found herself threatened with arrest. Though as best as I could discern, the law states an offending smoker is to be fined only.

WATE-TV filed a report on the story out of Newport. Two officers needed to arrest her? Perhaps she should be happy they didn't call out a SWAT team.

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On a competing Knox TV station, WBIR, the story they felt compelled to tell was about a group of gals who fish for catfish with their bare hands. Thre's even a DVD for it, called "Girls Gone Grabblin'". You have to admire (well, I do anyway) the ad copy, which says: "Be one of the first to watch & be amazed as 35 Southern Women bring you the thrill of catching catfish weighing up to 44lbs. with their hands and wrestling them to the bank."

Everyone say Yee-haw! A person would have to wrestle me to the ground if they ever expected me to eat catfish, no matter who catches it. Well, maybe Scarlett Johansson could, as long as she's willing to wrestle me to the ground first

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Speaking of news and women (and fishin'), it was the mighty newswoman, known as Newscoma, who clued me in last week to a zombie movie I had no knowledge of, a Lucio Fulci movie which boasts a scene of a zombie attacking a shark. Bets are the shark fired his agent shortly after this was made.



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Meanwhile, from up north, Ms. McGee points out that a manical shambling half-body zombie is available for purchase. There is a video on the website.

'Yeah, They're Dead. They're All Messed Up.'

As I am loathe to just jump in and participate in every goofy popular web/blog trend that rolls thru the internets, I am a fan of the zombie movie stuff, and since Newscoma did alert me that today is "Blog Like It's The End of the World!", then I am in. The premise, begun here, is that folks should blog like a full-blown worldwide zombie apocalypse is underway.

And hey, I've joined in for "Talk Like A Pirate Day" and "Wear a Gorilla Suit Day", so then why not this one?

Here's some things to consider -- at best, both electricity and fuel for vehicles will be utterly unavailable within a matter of hours. If you can find a bookstore to loot, which is likely as zombies don't read much, get yourself a copy of Max Brooks "Zombie Survival Guide". It has plenty of helpful info, but your reading time is gonna be limited. If you are traveling in a group, get one person to read as the rest of you flee for safety.

As Max has noted, one of your best defensive weapons will be a good, hefty axe. They need no ammo at all to work well.

Do not spend too much time bemoaning the fact you haven't already read Max's book, or that you did not join up to promote the Zombie Preparedness Initiative. Too late now.

In a recent interview, Max was asked:

"How can a layperson like myself distinguish between a zombie and a bureaucrat?

Max Brooks: Simply put, a zombie will try to eat you, a bureaucrat will try to ruin several hours of your day."

Trust me, a bona-fide zombie is not going to require a lot of pondering on the "hey is that a zombie?" issue. You'll know.

As I was thinking about what to write for this BLITEOTW Day, I wondered how the current media might handle the event. For instance:

The story on FOX News: "Well at long last, the Democrats have shown what they really are and what they really want -- they are the Undead and they want to eat you or convert you. These Demo-Zoms are anti-family and anti-American! .... oh wait, holy crap! Is that Ronald Reagan?? Looks like he has decided to rejoin the Democrat Party. And we can confirm that Hillary Clinton is registering the zombies to vote."

The story on CNN: "We have exclusive footage of the Anna Nicole Smith zombie and she's devouring an attorney and a .... hold on, hold on, Paris Hilton has a comment to make ...."

Drudge Report: Zombies eating brains! Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin, have NOT been attacked!

OK, fine, those are the easy jokes.

Now on to the blogging the zombie doom outside my doorway.

Here's how I would cover it:

"Outta here, suggest you do same."


ADDENDUM: A new zombie-comedy movie is set to open in limited release this weekend, called "Fido". A friend sent me a trailer for the movie, which is set in an alternate 1950s America. Some cosmic debris from a passing comet has turned all the dead into zombies, Fortunately, a giant corporation known as ZomCom, has established a method to 'domesticate' them and they are put to work as servants and menial laborers. A young boy named Timmy finally gets one of his own at his idyllic suburban home, who he calls Fido (played by Billy Connolly). Carrie-Anne Moss plays Timmy's mom. It looks pretty funny, so in honor of this day, here's the trailer:

Camera Obscura - My Brother Plays A Zombie

Making a movie about zombies, being in a movie about zombies -- all these things are hard, hard work.

Down in Rome GA (which was featured as a "checkpoint" in the new TV show "Drive", though it looked like it was shot somewhere near Mulholland Drive) filmmakers are working furiously to create a movie slated for release next year called "Dance of the Dead," as I have mentioned previously here on these pages. The story follows your typical high-school prom which gets overrun by hordes of zombies ... the movie web site is being constructed.

Weather and production problems did delay a planned April 13th shoot, but the movie is getting made and that means my brother David did indeed get a moment (and perhaps even more) of cinematic fame as a zombie in the movie.

Like I said, it's not easy making such a movie, nor is being an extra an easy task either.

David sent along an email containing a sort of diary of the day's events and a picture of how he actually got made up to appear in the film. The diary of the day is first and the pic he sent follows:

"I finally got in on the shoot last night--placed right behind the stunt zombies in the prom attack scene. Please, Mr. Editor, add another second or two to my fifteen minutes.

8-10 pm -- Lots of wondering if anything was going to happen & listening to the war stories of experienced extras straight out of Waiting for Guffman. One guy, though, had been an extra in Day of the Dead & had a couple of good ones.

10-12 -- 1st AD announces that they don't have enough kids. Could we call someone? I call [my son] Daniel, promising [my wife] CB he will be home by midnight.

He comes & we watch a couple of scenes being shot, then get in the
"clean prom" shoots, dancing wildly & bopping balloons in the air.

12:30 -- CB calls. I say, "Let's finish the take & then call her back."
Once the take is over he goes home (reluctantly).

12:30-2 am -- A couple more takes as a normal guy in the crowd.

2-3 am -- They start zombie-fying us. I'm really tired & pissed that
other guys get cool head appliances while I'm relegated to the "third
tier," with just dark pancake. But I'm there, so I hang out & wait.
Chris the makeup guy comes out with a little sprayer, exactly the same kind I use to spray Roundup, full of blood. Asks for volunteers. I eagerly respond & he lines us up in the parking lot.
I tell him, "Dude, you have to take advantage of my white hair--red on silver, right?" He totally douses me. They hurry us into the gym--I don't have a clue what I look like.
When the set guy is placing us--masks in front, third tier
way in back--he points to me and says "You, mask stand over--Jesus! That's not a mask! Ok, bloody guy! Come with me."

He sticks me right behind the stunt zombies who attack & get nailed in the scene where the prom zombies converge on the two heroes. I'm right behind the bride zombie who makes the first dash at them.

4-6 am -- Long story short, I'm right in the front line of action, &
when the fight turns bad & we all close in on the heroes, I'm the first one to lay a hand on them--in all of the numerous takes! The production photographer snaps my picture.

At last I understand the emotional life of an extra--the unending quest to aggrandize the trivial. This is a movie about a zombie smart enough to hang back until the heroes are too tired & crowded to fight back!
All those Discovery Channel sequences about hyenas pack hunting finally pay off.

More shooting days to come over the next three weeks. Start the
internet buzz!

I like the glasses -- adds that "Hey, I'm just an everyday kinda zombie" look.

The director, Gregg Bishop, has begun taking his first feature to a multitude of festivals and it's getting some rave reviews. It's called "The Other Side," but I gather they are still looking for a distributor.

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OTHER MOVIE NEWS

A longtime favorite and semi-cult classic movie about a computer which threatens the world, "Colossus: The Forbin Project" (1970) based on a trilogy of books by D.F. Jones is getting a major Hollywood remake under the team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. The reports say the new movie will draw on all three books of Jones' trilogy.

"The Forbin Project" is a minor masterpiece and holds up very well. Trivia buffs note the computer seen at the beginning of the movie was actually the payroll computer in use by the studio at the time (!!!). It starred Eric Braeden, who is best known today for a long running stint on "The Young and The Restless."

And do any of you ever recall seeing a sequel to "Forbin Project"? I know, and I mean I think I know I saw one, but have found zero info about it. Anyone got some info on that? Could be I'm wrong, but the memory I have is rather persistent that I saw one.

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Oddest news of the week -- Bono and The Edge of U2 are currently negotiating to write the music for a Broadway musical version of Marvel Comics' Spiderman. Sources say that director Julie Taymor is already signed up to direct.

Speaking of Taymor, she is fighting to have her name taken off the movie she just completed "Across The Universe," which is set in the 1960s and is loaded with Beatles music, and at the same time fighting to regain final cut of the movie. Studio chiefs say her version was just awful so they recut it and added a totally different soundtrack, all without telling Taymor.

Camera Obscura - 'The Massacre' Massacre; Beatles v. Zombies

I'm pretty sure I haven't ranted much of late about a really crappy movie. Today will change that. Also ahead today, what happens when the Beatles battle Zombies?

But first, a rant.

Even a most casual reader here will know (and close friends will also vow) that I am a bona-fide fan of horror movies. One movie in particular has always been a favorite, even one or two of the sequels were watchable. The original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" earned it's status on many levels - first on sheer suspense. Made on an ultra-low budget and containing a pure sonic attack on the senses with the blood-curdling sound of a raggedy chainsaw, too many myths of the movie claim how bloody and gory it is. But the fact is - the only time the saw cuts the flesh is when the grim character of Leatherface accidentally touches his thigh with the blade. It's always been the viewer's imagination that filled in the rest. Just watch it and see.

More on the sequels that followed in a moment, but first I have to dismember the worthless and tepid remake recently added to the endless volumes of weekly (weakly?) DVD releases, this one titled "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning."

I was reluctant to even watch it, after the likewise tepid and boring "remake" of the original with Jessica Biel from a few years back. Even that movie, as rancid as rotting flesh, stands as a genius-effort compared to the pure awful crap of "The Beginning."

How about some basics - this "beginning" is set in the year 1969, and yet every character, from vile Saw-family folk to the witless victims to even the sets in the movie are all clothed in the trappings of 2007. I halfway expected someone to dig out a cell phone during the movie.

Also, just who the heck are these Saw-family folk in this movie? Grandpa, from the original, is nowhere to be seen. Likewise Leatherface's brother is absent and his uncle too. Actor R. Lee Ermey, who can scare just about anyone and has one or two mildly funny lines, often looks at the camera as if he is considering taking a chainsaw to the filmmakers. I wish he had and stopped the whole deal.

There's not one moment of suspense in the movie - though the makers hurl tubs of blood and body parts across the characters and sets with the talentless glee of those who have never made or even watched a horror movie. And let me be clear - Main Problem Numero Uno is producer Michael Bay. Unless someone has a smoke-spewing, roaring ten-foot chainsaw at my neck, I will never, ever watch another of his movies.

One 1969-era sub-plot offered up is that two of the victims-to-be are arguing over the Vietnam War (at least for perhaps a half-a-dozen lines). One brother is jonesing to go back and the other is about to dodge the draft and burns his draft card. Here, I thought, is a chance to exploit and/or test his war views. Nope. Nothing is made of it. So it isn't really a sub-plot. It's just more sub-par writing.

The original has a mega-creepy and suspenseful scene of madness with a victim sitting at the "dinner table" with the Saw-crazy kin. This "prequel" does have a scene with a victim at the table and NOTHING happens. And of course, she escapes and runs in the dark to flee the scene (or perhaps hopes to flee the movie) and ol' Leatherface goes in chase. In the original, this was a harrowing chase - here, it amounts to nothing, zip, nada, zilch.

Early in the movie, the victims-to-be, get road-riled by a gang of bikers. Later on, the fleeing character contacts one of the bikers, and for a minute, I thought "here's a great chance for a scene!!" Tougher-than-leather bikers riding en masse to challenge the Saw-folk. Could have been the defining moment of the movie. What happens instead? One lone idiot biker guy walks into the Saw-folk house and basically says, "Hey! Anybody home?" and gets chopped up and, in short, NOTHING happens.

This idiotic mess of a movie is, at best, yet more evidence that filmmakers are replacing suspense, terror, and horror with endless scenes of gory torture whose outcome is as predictable as the eventual Beaver-Gets-A-Lecture-And-Learns-A-Lesson from 1950s tv and is ultimately as boring as that show. The episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" where Howard Sprague gets his own apartment has more terror and suspense than this dreck.


If you wish to see a sequel to the excellent original, the check out "TCM Part 2", which is a very underrated bit of madness, a Saw massacre imagined as a Looney Tunes cartoon. It is both suspenseful and very funny, and that opening scene on the bridge where the tune "No One Lives Forever" by Oingo Boingo is featured will (literally) take off the top of your head. Avoid all other TCM-titled movies.
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OK, some movie goodness.

First I loved "300" though I find it endlessly amusing that some critics consider all the he-men dudes in the movie walking around in "man-thongs and red cloaks" is homo-erotic. People - the images were all taken from the drawings of Lynn Varley --- and she's female! So maybe she likes looking at he-men in man-thongs and cloaks.

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The not-such-a-secret news was made much of this week that Stephen King's son is Joe Hill, an award-winning writer. His recently published novel, "Heart Shaped Box" is now on sale and film rights have already been purchased. The story concerns a fellow who discovers a ghost is for sale on the internets and he wants to buy it. A link to the novel's website is here. And you can read Joe Hill's bio here. (Great picture, by the way!)

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Speaking of biographies, a new look at the life of Bela Lugosi is on sale, which includes information from the files compiled on the actor by the OSS and J.Edgar Hoover and his G-Men. More details here.

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Wonder Triplet and fellow blogger Newscoma has a post worth noting, Proof That Vampires Don't Exist. She reports that some scientists use some rather dubious math to prove that if Vamps did exist, they would have long-ago depopulated the planet. All I can say to that notion is - human body farms. But, she also writes that some folks of the vampiric type can sure suck all the fun out of a room and that is indeed one sure way to depopulate a party!

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And, as promised at the beginning ... what happens when you mix together The Beatles and Zombies? You get "Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead":