I’m excited to say that last week I was reunited not only with my back-from-the-dead computer, but more importantly, with my Netflix online account.  I must confess, in the weeks in which I was separated from my dear friend, FearNet left me profoundly disappointed in its lackluster post-Halloween programming lineup.  There’s only so much Sleepaway Camp I can take.

Perusing the selection of deliciously-sketchy B-movies and cheese-laden zombie flicks, I decided to settle in for a Sketch Cinema masterpiece which is lovingly brought to us by none other than Lt. Donald Thompson himself, John Saxon.  From nightmares to zombies, I present to you Saxon’s 1987 unintentional zom-com, Zombie Death House.

Derek Keillor’s having a rough time.  He’s trying to break free from his boss, mob kingpin Vic Moretti, after being Moretti’s driver for some time.  This is tough to do, particularly as he’s conveniently servicing his boss’s girlfriend in his off-time.  Moretti solves one problem for Keillor by killing said girlfriend, though he manages to frame Keillor for the murder, sending him off to prison.

We soon learn that at said prison, Colonel Burgess (Saxon), a bio-weapons engineer, is testing out the latest in chemical warfare and is using death row inmates as his test subjects.  Everything goes swimmingly to plan until the attempted execution of a recently infected inmate – an opportunity which presents the convict with the opportunity to demonstrate his super-human, zombie-like prowess – and all hell proceeds to break loose.

A lesser director would have simply settled for a prison-based zombie apocalypse, but not our pal John Saxon – and this is why we love him.  Keillor has managed to spring most of the inmates from their cells, while the government has quarantined the entire prison, leaving guards, staff, the warden (and his wife and children), and a local hot-blonde-scientist-turned-TV-reporter all trapped within the prison grounds.

Keillor clearly sees the opportunity laid out for him, and he and his fellow inmates begin to take hostages and make demands – particularly in order to get Moretti to the prison, where his homosexual brother has been taken hostage as well.  Moretti happily obliges, eagerly awaiting the chance to point and laugh at Keillor, unaware of the quarantine on the building.  How will Moretti react once he realizes he’s trapped?

Zombie Death House is a gore-filled, laugh-a-minute mash up of cheesy-action-drama and take-it-for-what-it’s-worth violence, reminiscent of an undead version of Miami Vice. Obviously Saxon is taking his cues from his Napoli violenta days as the movie desperately tries so hard to be much bigger than it is.  Lucio Fulci you are not, Mr. Saxon, but I, for one, appreciate the effort.

And now, my little sketchy friends, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week:

“Got no bananas here monkey ass. Keep walking.” (Death Row Inmate)

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Angela Let’s write a status-update-zombie-story today. Cryogenically frozen man wakes up to find the entire state of Tennessee is now zombies. Begin.

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It’s one thing to make an unofficial remake of a horror film.  A tribute, if you will.  The unofficial 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead clearly demonstrated the innocent fun to be found in such remake spirit – free to include nuances and slight differences without criticism due to its ‘unofficial’ nature.

It’s when folks start to toe the line between campy tribute and flat-out cinematic disaster that my Sketch Cinema spidey-senses start a’ tingling.  Never one to resist pure horror catastrophe, I treated myself to a late-night, mid-week screening of one of the most puzzling and saddening straight-to-video films of all time.  In honor of Halloween, my sketch-loving friends, I bring you Tor A. Ramsey’s Children of the Living Dead.

Don’t let the title confuse you, however.  At no point, whatsoever, during the duration of this film were any children spawned from zombies.

That’s right. None.  Not even any zombie coitus, making-out, or heavy petting.

But there were, after all, zombies.  So we shall continue.

COTLD attempts to pick up where the bastardized version of Night of ends…cavalcades of red-necked, pickup-truck-driving, saw-off-shotgun-totin locals roaming bland-looking fields, knocking off massive amounts of the undead, one by one.  The zom-tastrophe appears to be well in control thanks to our film’s hero, ex-cop-turned-survivalist Hughes (theatrically portrayed by Tom Savini), who clearly needed an outlet for his anti-undead-acrobatic skills.

Unfortunately for Hughes (and even more unfortunate for his partner, Sheriff Randolph, who is pretty much a useless, pompous donkey), his ninja-like prowess is nothing for our leader of the undead pack, one Abbott Hayes.  Hayes was a local feller with a penchant for raping and torturing women who, after being murdered in prison, disappeared from the morgue (we suppose so, anyway – my neck still hurts from the whiplash-y time-jumping way in which the movie refuses to tell us an actual story) only to return as a dapper, well-dressed zombie (sporting clean-as-whistle wing tips).  Hughes’ acrobatics are ineffective on Hayes, who merely reaches in, Mola Ram-style, and rips Hughes’ beating heart out of his chest.  After his body is thrown down the barn door, Hughes has enough time to explain to Sheriff Rudolph what has transpired, even asking him to shoot him.

Fourteen years later, after a mysterious car wreck that claimed the lives of four local teens, it seems our pal Abbott Hayes is still roaming the area of his former home, and this time, he’s lonely.  He happens upon the caskets of our young victims, and loving nibbles each to bring them into his zombified world.

Oh, and throughout this whole debacle, some rich dude decides he’s going to send his son out there to build a car dealership, directly on top of Hayes’ family graveyard.  Well, not actually on top – they dug up the caskets and dumped them all into a huge pit rather than relocating them to another cemetery.  Because that’s a good idea.

Hilary ensues, as one could naturally imagine, as our half-hearted cast of characters run around between the cemetery, the motel, and the diner, muttering to themselves and forgetting to clue the rest of us in on key elements of plotline.  The movie strays from conventional zombie wisdom, however, in key ways:

• Sneaky Little Bastards. Although we, the viewers, can clearly hear Abbott and his zombie friends wheezing and moaning and generally not being so stealth, it appears not only quite possible, but also quite commonplace, for a zombie to successfully sneak up on a living human, completely unsuspected, and eat them.
• The Failure of Inference. We don’t know why Abbott Hayes became a zombie.  We don’t know why or how he disappeared from the morgue.  Hell, we don’t even really know who the hell he even is save for the tiny bits of info we’re spoon fed throughout the duration of the film.  So who cares?
• Pediophobia. Apparently, according to Children of the Living Dead, zombies aren’t attracted to children.  Who’da thunk?
• Zombies are Smooth . Unlike their stiff and uptight ancestors, our zombies move fluidly, albeit slowly, and much like John Cleese in his trademark Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.

Why, Tom Savini...Why??

One might simply conclude that, despite the obvious failures of the film, a zombie movie, no matter how horrible, is still an enjoyable experience.  I implore you to toss that silly notion aside, as COTLD refuses to even show on camera any actual zombie killings, instead cutting away to attempted ‘artistic’ camera angles and leaving the viewer to deduce what occurred.

Art-nouveau, zombie-style? I think not.

And now, on this day before Halloween, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week:

Matthew Micheals: “Of all the places in all the world my dad could have picked to build his dealership, he picked the one right down the street from Walking Dead Central.”

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Last week’s post-event wind-down provided a massive amount of material to work with for this week’s SMSC, what with a physically exhausted body and a mind merely capable of functioning at half its normal IQ.  Inadvertently choosing an incredibly fitting theme, Chez Angele was teeming with zombie films galore as I gently coaxed myself back to real life, post-Comics Against Cancer. 

This week, my sketch-loving friends, I bring you the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of zombie films; a film that dares to combine the creepy awesomeness of the undead with the skin-crawling wretchedness of WWII Nazis, Steve Barker’s Outpost. 

Set in an unidentified, seedy war-torn area of Eastern Europe, Outpost tells the story of Hunt, a mysterious businessman who appears in a local bar, seeking to hire out a team of mercenaries to protect him as he ventures off to explore a recently acquired old military bunker.  With the promise of lots of cash and little risk, the cantankerous group of ex-soldiers can’t help but bite, and the group begins their journey into the unknown. 

Now, this sets us, the viewers, up for a nice, tense little tag-along ride as Hunt and his group of misfit toys begin their adventure.  We know there is much to fear where they are headed.  Why? Because we simply wouldn’t be watching it otherwise.  

For the members of the makeshift unit, however, it’s difficult to believe that, after having been assured that there is little threat in the job,  these men would slink around in a rather stealth fashion, guns drawn and ready to kill the first thing that moves.  Call me crazy, but it just seems a bit overkill for such a ‘safe’ mission.  We get it. We know there is something vastly freaky awaiting you lot – but you don’t. 

As the group arrives at their destination – a deserted WWII-era bunker – it suddenly becomes quite clear that this is not the safe little trip the soldiers were promised.  Unseen enemy fire rains upon them from the perimeter of the bunker, with one bullet resting in the left shoulder of one unlucky solder-for-hire.  As the film unfolds, we witness the mysterious advances of an unseen enemy force as the clearing around the bunker is brightly lit up at night, and the terrifying sound of ammunition is deafening. 

Hunt and his soldiers explore the secret bunker, which has seemingly laid undisturbed since the Nazis occupied it in WWII, and find, much to their horror, evidence of shocking human experimentation and other mysterious devices.  Having stumbled upon a chamber of naked, non-decomposed corpses, the soldiers are horrified to discover a survivor laying in the pile.   

A survivor!  Huzzah!  Surely this is something to be celebrated as the soldiers have seen nothing but death around them since their arrival.  Alas, our brave group of mercenaries instead seem to gang up on the unresponsive survivor, beating him and intimidating him into talking (which he does not).  So much for playing the victim. 

As the night unfolds, we begin to learn more about the secret work that took place in the bunker, including shape-shifting experimentation and reanimation, all in an effort by the SS to create the undefeatable super-soldier.  Deliciously haunted by a hint of actual history, the movie plays on the theories of Die Glocke (“the bell”), a purported top secret Nazi scientific technological device which has become something of a legend among believers in zero-point energy, perpetual motion machines, anti-gravity devices, reality shifting, reanimation, and time-space manipulation. 

This film, as far as zombie movies go (although I question the accuracy of dubbing this film’s villains as such), delivered more than one could ever hope for in a relatively unknown, almost-B horror movie.  Disregarding the strained, Saving Private Ryan-esque acting on the part of the mercenaries, this movie successfully creeped me out in unimaginable ways, leaving me tingling with anticipation over the rumored 2010 sequel, Outpost 2 (clever, eh?). 

And now, my dear readers and lovers of everything sketchy, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week: 

Prior: See, the bright light… it ain’t heaven, son. It’s just a muzzle flare.

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