The Stiff: Chapter 3: Page 86
As I’ve mentioned now and then, lately I’ve been watching so many zombie movies the mind boggles. Often I’m only half-watching these, keeping them on in the background while I draw or cut out cards, but I’ve absorbed quite a few new ones lately.
Firstly: nearly every free streaming zombie movie available on Netflix is awful. Dear lord, they are terrible. “State of Emergency” and “Extinction” — both the absolute pits, just as bad as Uwe Boll’s “Zombie Massacre,” but less funny. Their would-be serious tone, when coupled with their empty scripts and micro-budget (apparently every zombie disaster must be filmed from within a ruined warehouse, an abandoned factory or some other conveniently empty rundown building where no one on Earth would ever go — filming in the suburbs or apartment buildings where people actually live would be too expensive), is somehow even more aggravating than the SyFy-channel bad-CG bombast of something like “Rise of the Zombies.” And the half-assed plots, like they were stories written by someone who’d heard of the existence of “28 Days Later” but never watched it, and besides they only had $50 to make the entire movie… I just want to kick the filmmakers in the back of the knees.
“The Battery” and “The Dead Outside,” by contrast, were boring, but needless to say, way better than films like the ones I just mentioned. They’re unapologetic character studies that just happen to be set in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. They’re both just so incredibly slow-paced. I suppose I like “The Dead Outside” better partly because there’s a female character in the cast and everyone has Scottish accents. -_-;; OTOH, “The Battery” is probably the slightly deeper of the two. Also, it does have the scene where a man masturbates while watching a zombie writhe around trying to get to him, so that’s original.
Then there’s all the ’80s garbage buried around on youtube — “The Video Dead” (like a home movie I could’ve made back then), “Toxic Zombies” (completely inept)… I’m sure I’ve glanced at several others but I can’t remember them offhand. Obviously I’m being masochistic here and have no one to blame but myself. “Dawn of the Mummy” (one of the only Egyptian horror films!) is a real classic in comparison.
Whew! So much complaining! It’s like I’m on the Internet or something! I’ll try to write some good things about some zombie movies (or books) in my next post.
NEXT UPDATE: Monday!
hmm its about time someone made an egyptian horror film with mummified zombies shambling about. Under the pyramids captured the essence of this, but no-one has made a half-decent film. waiting.
I am in love with this comic. I found it years ago and it disappeared. I’m so glad you resurrected it.
Azathotep–if you like Egyptian mummy horror, check out Ramsey Campbell’s short story “Wrapped up” (in his collection “Strange Things and Stranger Places”).
you got a new fan today! i’m in high school and I totally relate, if not go to school with, your characters. eagerly waiting for the next update
Lovecraft’s “Under The Pyramids” would be ripe for making. Plenty of animated dead, many of them hybrids of crocodile, human, hippopotamus etc. But it would take some money though. Better one good film than a dozen awful knock offs.
Hey everyone! Thanks for all the comments, I’m really flattered by the io9 article and hope you like the comic.
About “Dawn of the Mummy” — I haven’t actually seen the whole movie yet, but I kinda want to! The fact that it exists at all is totally weird; there aren’t a lot of horror films made in Egypt. (There was apparently a 2007 slasher movie called “Camp” which bombed there.) Actually, there are hardly ANY international coproductions filmed in Egypt at all, especially ones that show the pyramids etc. — apparently they slap huge taxes on international filming so most films, like the Transformers ones, just use Tunisia or another country, or add the pyramids in CG. But it must have been easier to get permission in 1981, since “Dawn of the Mummy” exists, and has tons of actual Egyptian extras (including an entire wedding party!!) saying a few lines in Arabic and then getting eaten by cannibal mummies. IRRESISTIBLE.