Tag: body horror

Really Awful Movies: Ep 319 – Zombie aka Zombi 2

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:15 — 28.2MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, aka Zombi 2 (and a whole whack of other things) is a 1979 Italian zombie film adapted from an original screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti to serve as some kind of sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), though it strays pretty far from that source material.

Zombie stars Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, and Richard Johnson, and features a score by frequent Fulci collaborator and dynamite horror scorer Fabio Frizzi.

The film features a boat mysteriously abandoned and drifting around lower Manhattan. When NYPD tries to board, they’re met with a disgusting, desiccated undead thing.

How that thing got there, is how McCulloch gets involved, portraying journalist Peter West.

The vessel is registered to a guy traced back to the island of Matul, somewhere in the Caribbean.

What was he doing there? What nefarious goings on were taking place? How did that gross creature end up in New York? These and a whole host of other questions are answered this week, as the Really Awful Movies Podcast takes you to Italian horror territory and this classic gut-muncher, Zombi 2.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 310 – Starry Eyes

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:34 — 28.6MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

Directed by the team behind the reboot of Pet Sematary, Starry Eyes (Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer) is an ambitious fantasy horror offering about a young starlet and part time waitress at a tacky restaurant, who gets a big break in a role of a lifetime – provided she does something unseemly first.

Set in LA, and featuring a bunch of Hollywood wannabes in competition with one another, there’s one among them whose drive and determination stands out: Sarah Walker (Alexandra Essoe).

After Walker disappoints in a lead role for The Silver Scream, the young woman has a complete meltdown in the bathroom shortly thereafter, only to be spotted by one of the casting agents, who is so impressed by her psychological breakdown, she asks Walker to recreate it in a second audition (before meeting the film’s degenerate producer, a Harvey Weinstein-esque figure, at his mansion for the third).

Starry Eyes has atmosphere and ambition to spare (appropriately). And Essoe in the lead is the driving force behind the interest in this one.

Check it out, as it’s a solid effort and subscribe to the Really Awful Movies Podcast!

 

 

Really Awful Movies: Ep 308 – Antiviral

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:02 — 30.3MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

This week on the podcast, Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral.

Unlike most virus / outbreak / contagion films, where there’s a security breach at a lab and the virus gets loose, turning the populace into rampaging drooling creatures, the horror in Antiviral comes from a rogue employee who is smuggling out pathogens to sell on the black market.

And the viruses in question are ones derived from celebrities, so that people can experience “biological communion” with them.

As you might gather from the surname and subject matter, this one is an icky body horror effort, directed by David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon.

It’s quiet, discomfiting, and claustrophobic with an austere bichromatic colour palette.

The performances, especially by the very gaunt and captivating Caleb Landry Jones, are top-drawer.

On this episode of the podcast, putting both Cronenberg’s work in context, and exploring interior/body horror in Crash, The Brood, Shivers, and Dead Ringers.