ZAM Review—World War Z: Unrated Version (2013) **

This review was originally written for and published in Zombie Apocalypse Monthly.

UR, 122 min.

Director: Marc Forster

Writers: Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, Damon Lindelof, J. Michael Straczynski, Max Brooks (novel)

Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kurtesz, James Badge Dale, Ludi Boeken, Fana Mokoena, David Morse, Matthew Fox, Peter Capaldi, Pierfrancesco Favino, Ruth Negga, Mortiz Bleibtreu, Sterling Jerins, Abigail Hargrove

In the year since the theatrical release of Brad Pitt’s big screen adaptation of Max Brooks’ zombie apocalypse fictionalized history novel “World War Z”, the general consensus on the film version has been that of disappointment. This is despite the fact that the film grossed over $200 million in the U.S. theatrically after an expensive reshoot of the film’s original ending. In fact, it was more like a reshoot of the entire last act of the film, which was totally rewritten.

ZAM Review—Birth of the Living Dead (2013) ***

This review was original written for and published by Zombie Apocalypse Monthly.

NR, 76 min.

Director: Rob Kuhns

Featuring: George A. Romero, Larry Fessenden, Mark Harris, S. William Hinzman, Gale Anne Hurd, Elvis Mitchell, Jason Zinoman, Samuel D. Pollard, Chiz Schultz

Film critic Gene Siskel had an idiom about the success of a film that stated that the best measure of a film was to imagine if a documentary with the same actors having lunch would be more entertaining. Of course, when it comes to zombie films, that is what you’re watching—the zombies having lunch. The man responsible for realizing this vision was George A. Romero, who rewrote the rules of zombies into our modern notion of what a zombie is—a dead person who has been reanimated and desires only to dine on brains (and the rest of your flesh) while the only way to stop one is by destroying their brain. This is basically what Romero came up with in his first film, 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead”—originally titled “Night of the Flesh Eaters”. Watching this documentary, which includes a great deal of footage of Romero just talking by himself, you’ll find he’s as entertaining as his movie.

ZAM Review—White Zombie (1932) ***

This review was originally written for and published at Zombie Apocalypse Monthly.

NR, 69 min.

Director: Victor Halperin

Writers: Garnet Weston (story & dialogue), William B. Seabrook (novel “The Magic Island”)

Starring: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert Frazier, John Harron

When I was in high school—way back in the late ‘80s—I was an avid comic book collector. Some of my favorite comics were those focusing on vintage crime heroes, like The Shadow. During their 10^th Anniversary, the independent comic book publisher Eclipse put out a Shadow type of one-shot based not only on the vintage crime hero The Prowler, but also on the cult classic horror movie “White Zombie” titled quite simply “The Prowler in White Zombie”.

It wasn’t a great comic book. The Prowler was such an obvious rip-off of The Shadow and didn’t carry half of The Shadow’s mysterious nature. The villain, however, was taken directly from the “White Zombie” movie’s Bela Lugosi character, who looked like one of the coolest of the actor’s career in B-horror flicks. I had never heard of the movie at the time and quickly looked it up.