Tag: zombies

Really Awful Movies: Ep 319 – Zombie aka Zombi 2

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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 307 – Containment

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On this week’s episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, the underrated, quiet contagion/outbreak film, Containment.

Though lost in what was a banner year for horror (The Witch, Bone Tomahawk, Tag, We Are Still Here) there’s enough to commend Containment to give it a watch five years later.

The film is set in a dismal, concrete high rise housing complex in the Southern UK city of Southampton. Mark, wakes up to find he has been trapped in his apartment, and cannot get out. There is no electricity or water, and piped in through the intercom, a voice from the authorities to “please remain calm, the situation is under control,” this as figures in Hazmat suits roam around the grounds.

And they have set up those MASH-type tents to deal with victims of an mysterious outbreak. Soon, the complex residents have to bandy together in order to survive, and find that kidnapping a member of the government forces doesn’t lead to the desired effect of finding out what the hell is going on.

Director Neil Mcenery-West keeps everything…well…contained, and Containment is largely dialogue and character-driven, and he makes use of the setting quite well.

How does it compare with others of its ilk? It’s hard to say, as the likes of Contagion and George A. Romero’s The Crazies are bigger, more sprawling products, while Mcenery-West keeps things focused on the small moments. In that respect, Containment is closer to the likes of Pontypool than Outbreak.

As we emerge from the pandemic, pathogen movies seem to be all the rage on Amazon Prime (hell, The Rage itself is a fun virus movie too).

Tune into the Really Awful Movies Podcast, with new episodes uploaded every Friday. And be sure to support the show by picking up a copy of our acclaimed book (foreword, Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman), Death by Umbrella! The 100 Weirdest Horror Movie Weapons.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 270 – Pet Sematary original and remake

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In this installment of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, the hosts do a side-by-side comparison of these two indelible horror genre films, the 1989 vs the 2019 Pet Sematary. So, what’s the fuss all about?

The original, while not a runaway hit, has its backers as well as detractors. While the remake has a whole slew of detractors. Perhaps it’ll take a while for people to warm to it, but that’s unlikely.

The story is familiar to most: a cat is run over on a New England highway. And the father, along with a neighbor accomplice, buries the thing only to have it return.

The characters are terrific, as well they should be. After all, Stephen King wrote the source novel (and King even wrote the screenplay to the 1989 original).

While many of us are sick to death of cat scares, we will make an exception here with Pet Sematary (both films). Church the cat (derived from Sir Winston Churchill) is a bona fide animal star. Even if the movie built around him, is more of an asteroid than a sun.

Still, as is the ethos of our podcast, we celebrate as much as we criticize. We hope we were being fair to Pet Sematary, both versions.

If you haven’t seen either, do so. And definitely rock out to the stand-out Ramones song of the same name. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll be glad to listen (we hope) to the Really Awful Movies Podcast.