zombies

With the upcoming release of Romero's Survival of the Dead (review), zombie fever will once again rip through the horror community as everyone complains that the creator of the zombie has ruined his own ever-evolving creation. Naturally, no release of a film in a popular zombie franchise can be without its viral marketing materials.

To coincide with the release of Survival of the Dead in theaters on May 28th and VOD, XBOX Live, Amazon and Playstation on April 30th, Magnet has released the handy-dandy Zombie Identification Field Manual to ensure your complete safety when dealing with the zombie apocalypse. Never again will you confuse your drooling great grandfather or drunk roommate for a zombie, as the field manual highlights the attributes necessary to discern the living from the undead.

Survival of the Dead takes place in a desperate, nightmarish world where the dead walk the earth, relentlessly attacking the living. It is the story of Plum Island – a beautiful refuge whose isolation allows two powerful families to maintain a semblance of order in the wake of the zombie holocaust. But as the inhabitants slowly die off, the two clans become sharply divided: the O'Flynns believe that the undead must be destroyed without exception, while the Muldoons insist that afflicted loved ones be kept "alive" until a cure is found. The result is an escalating showdown with echoes of a classic Western stand-off that erupts in brutality and violence.

The guide can be viewed or downloaded here or by clicking the image up there in the top right. Check out more on Survival of the Dead at its official Facebook page and the official website. The red band trailer can be found here.

"People are for loving not for eating," says Ben O'Mara's horror-comedy short, Primal Urges -- a smart play on the well worn zombie trope that flips conventional ideas about the masculine and feminine and toys with the insecurities of its lead characters. O'Mara is a writer and academic in addition to making award-winning films, which have been screened at festivals across Australia. You can check out some of O'Mara's other work on his website.


Jeremy Lanni's Tell-Tale Art boasts a dark soundtrack, which is reminiscent of all the Italo-horror flicks I'm lusty for. I guess it helps that guitarist Dick Wagner of Lou Reed and Alice Cooper fame wrote the score. Lanni describes the film as "a surreal black comedy inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's classic story The Tell-Tale Heart." You'll see why after you watch it, genius. Find out more about Lanni and his other films on his website.

Check out both short films after the jump and leave the filmmakers some love in the comments section. DO IT.

The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas is something of a Mecca for movie geeks. In addition to first-run theatrical fare, the Drafthouse regularly showcases cult, foreign, and classic films. For the last four years, Alamo programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday and if you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, this night was invented just for you.

So I decided, since I am already a fixture at the Drafthouse, despite their best efforts to get rid of me, why not provide coverage for this weekly treat? The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience's reaction; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: Burial Ground.

MySpace Horror and Bloody-Disgusting have a special treat for zombie lovers and Romero fans this morning, a brand new red band trailer for Romero's latest zombie epic Survival of the Dead.

The new clip is more of a teaser than a full-fledged preview, but it does feature lots of walking corpses--and I think we're all pretty interested in that. I'm not going to say anything else about it--just jump past the break and watch it for yourself. Make sure you're of age, though--it's got one of those age-gate deals to keep the young 'uns out.

Survival of the Dead focuses on the inhabitants of an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead and eating their kin. The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure.

Romero's sixth zombie film makes its Video On Demand debut on April 30th. The feature will also have a limited theatrical release beginning May 28th--all courtesy of the good folks at Magnet Releasing.

Filmmaker Richard Ledes and co-producer Lila Yomtoob are part of the team behind Rot & Decay Films and a new short, Haiti and Horror Movies. You can watch the six-minute video about the influence of Haitian culture on horror films after the jump.

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Ledes explains in the video that he became conscious of a special connection to Haiti as a director about to make a horror movie. The director is talking bout his upcoming feature, Foreclosure, which tells the story of a broken family trying to stay together while a curse and the ghosts of a haunted house try to tear them apart. In Haiti and Horror Movies, Ledes details several films that have had a relationship to Haitian culture -- in particular, the reimagining (and often misrepresentation) of Voodoo. Ledes goes on to describe his amazement that the horror media was not discussing this subject and was shocked that the only person who was making the horror and Haiti connection was Televangelist Pat Robertson, who has been very vocal about making "demonic" connections to the Haitian people.

You can learn more about Ledes' new feature, Foreclosure, on the fim's official website. Hit the jump to watch the Haiti and Horror Movies short and read my recent interview with the director.

It seems like it was only a matter of time before we got around to having holiday-themed zombie films. After all, filmmakers have already put the walking dead into almost every other scenario you could have imagined (and probably a few that never occurred to you), so it seems like all that was left to do was stage the inevitable zombie apocalypse on a day like Christmas.

That's exactly what Joe Zerull's horror-comedy A Cadaver Christmas has in store for audiences. The feature, which finds a janitor, a bartender, a drunk, a cop, a criminal, and a student security guard joining forces to stop a zombie outbreak on Christmas Eve, finished principal photography back at the end of July. It's currently in post-production with no official release date in sight.

A Cadaver Christmas started life as a three-minute short film featured in the 48 Hour Film Project Competition. Response was so positive that Zerull and company decided to expand it to feature length. If the trailer (which comes from Twitch) is any indication, the decision was a wise one.

Jump past the break to check out not only the new preview for A Cadaver Christmas, but the original short as well. Hopefully this title will be spreading the ghoultide cheer as we get closer to 2010's holiday season. Swing by the official site for more details.

A U.S. court ruled that zombies have the right to free speech (if you consider grunts, groans and gurgles speech) after a group of protesters dressed as the undead were arrested by police. This ruling allows them to revive their lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and their police department, reportedly seeking $50,000 dollars for each person arrested.

During the protest in 2006, the group wore makeup, fake blood and the usual living dead garb while wandering a mall telling shoppers to "get your brains here" and "brain cleanup in aisle five." The protesters carried audio equipment like loudspeakers and phones which police described as "simulated weapons of mass destruction." They were arrested for disorderly conduct and jailed for two nights. I guess these were slow zombies.

The judicial court dismissed the zombies' claims of "false imprisonment" and "First Amendment retaliation" but the appeals court sided with the undead: "An objectively reasonable person would not think probable cause exists under the Minnesota disorderly conduct statue to arrest a group of peaceful people for engaging in an artistic protest by playing music, broadcasting statements (and) dressing as zombies."

The seven zombies were protesting consumerism during the 2006 Aquatennial in Minneapolis -- an annual festival celebrating the city's famous lakes, rivers and streams. Huh?

[Yahoo News]

Mark Lilly works at the Department of Integration and is trying to help the good citizens of the Big Apple -- some of who also happen to be werewolves, vampires and demons. His zombie roommate (who he found on Craigslist) and his sexually aggressive demon boss (also his office fling) are just a few in the cast of quirky characters (human and non-human) that keep him quite busy. You can catch the trailer for the series after the jump. I'm glad that the show features other characters like conjoined robots and mermaids in addition to the standard horror fiends. Also, does anyone else love that '2 Legit' t-shirt?

I think the animation is alright (someone loves Charles Burns), but I'd love to see a live-action version of this story on the big screen. Mark's zombie roommate, Randall Skeffington (voiced by Kurt Metzger) is played as a lovable slob, but he's still the kind of guy I would play video games or watch movies with. When I think of roommates in films, I instantly think of someone highly annoying. Actors like Renee Zellweger (she would always be asking for advice), Hugh Grant (zzzz...), Alan Tudyk (I love Joss Whedon but I can't stand this guy), anyone from the cast of Friends and Franklin from TCM (die!) would make supremely irritating co-habitators. What about the role for best demonic boss/love interest? The brunettes have my votes: Monica Bellucci, Edwige Fenech, Salma Hayek and Julia Voth.

Now, what about your picks?

When the trailer for Ben Hibon's animated zombie epic A.D. debuted earlier this month (check it out here), the Internet got excited. While the project is still in the early stages of the development process, there's no denying that the clip looks amazing. To paraphrase one YouTube commenter, "it's like Pixar grew balls."

The guys over at Machinima's web show ETC got a chance to sit down and interview three of the film's producers along with director Hibon and screenwriter Haylar Garcia. The eight minute clip turned up on YouTube recently (thanks to Bloody-Disgusting for catching it and sharing) and you can check it out for yourself beyond the jump.

Hearing Hibon and Garcia talk about their vision for the film is inspiring stuff. A.D. looks like a videogame--albeit one that doesn't require you to pick up a controller and complete hours of arbitrary tasks to see the next story interlude. The animation is impressive and the fact that the film doesn't use physical actors or sets would seem to make it easier for the filmmakers to pull out all the stops in creating their horrifying vision of the zombie apocalypse.

No word on when we might see a finished version of the film. As one producer points out, they're still in the "seeking financial backing" stage of the development cycle. Let's hope some adventurous investors get on board soon, because this is one film I really wanna see.