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G.O.R.E. Score: Zombiewood Weekly

Posted by Tony Schaab on September 2, 2010 in G.O.R.E. Score Reviews
Zombiewood Weekly (2010)

Zombiewood Weekly (2010)

Original Release Date: August 17, 2010
Publisher: Ulysses Press

It’s hard to find new, truly original content in the world of zombie media these days.

Now, that’s certainly not to say that it’s impossible; far from it. There are many creators out there hard at work on putting out new and exciting “zombie stuff” all of the time; it’s just that sometimes this stuff can be so underground or “off the beaten path” that it’s a challenge to track down, or to even find out about it to begin with.

Rob Sacchetto is one of those hard-working guys. Sacchetto’s specialty seems to be primarily as an artist, although he does have some writing credits to his name as well. Having drawn hundreds of zombie portraits on his websites, Sacchetto has concentrated his artistic energy into his latest book, “Zombiewood Weekly,” a fun-filled (and good-natured) parody of celebrity-watcher magazines – except in the world of “ZW,” people return from the dead to continue on with their lives, and the celebrities contained within this book are no exception!

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G.O.R.E. Score: Pontypool

Posted by Tony Schaab on August 25, 2010 in G.O.R.E. Score Reviews
Pontypool (2009)

Pontypool (2009)

Original Release Date: March 6, 2009
Run Time: 95 minutes

When spending a few moments recently aimlessly surfing the online zombie boards and forums, as I tend to do in the vast majority of my ever-dwindling free time, I kept stumbling across the same word, a word that didn’t make any sense to me: Pontypool. It’s a funny-sounding word, and it’s also the title of a zombie movie that had generated a good amount of buzz from the people that had seen it.

Well, you know me: if there’s a new zombie movie/book/game/comic out there that has a chance to entertain me, I’m gonna do my darndest to go out and find it. After a quick little search, I was able to snag a copy from a media-swapping site I am a member of, and when the disc arrived I popped it in, eager to see what I had in store for me during my first viewing.

“Pontypool” is a very different kind of zombie film, and I have to give its creators credit for giving the world a movie that feels so familiar yet so unique. Based on Tony Burgess’ novel Pontypool Changes Everything, Burgess himself helped adapt this tale of a small Canadian town, the titular Pontypool, that over the course of one day endures a maddening and frightening outbreak that turns its residents into violent killers.

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G.O.R.E. Score: Comes the Dark

Posted by Tony Schaab on August 17, 2010 in G.O.R.E. Score Reviews
Comes the Dark (2010)

Comes the Dark (2010)

Original Release Date: July 16, 2010
Publisher: Library of the Living Dead Press

Being a horror critic that focuses specifically on zombie stories, I hear a lot of discussion from zombie fans about what they like and what they don’t like, and they generally tend to fall into two distinct categories. Many fans seem keen on seeing new types of zombies – fast-moving ones, thinking ones, even non-human ones. On the flip side, you have those die-hard undead enthusiasts who prefer their zombies as “The Godfather” George Romero made them: slow, shambling, unthinking and eerily menacing.

Generally, fans in the first category are able to find enjoyment in “classic” zombie stories as well as the “modern” ones, but many times it seems that fans in the second category tend to gravitate towards the “classic” version only and shun (or at least frown upon) the variety of “modern” stories. Fortunately for fans in both camps, there are authors out there like Patrick D’Orazio, who can reaffirm our belief that solid, entertaining stories in the “classic” style can still have a very fresh feel to them, as evidenced by D’Orazio’s excellent debut novel, “Comes the Dark.”

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G.O.R.E. Score: Kolchak The Night Stalker: The Zombie

Posted by Tony Schaab on August 11, 2010 in G.O.R.E. Score Reviews
Kolchak The Night Stalker (1974)

Kolchak The Night Stalker (1974)

Original Air Date: September 20, 1974
Run Time: 50 minutes

Have you ever stumbled across, as an adult, a TV series or movie you used to watch as a kid? Sometimes it fills you with a sense of nostalgia to re-connect with the scenes you remember seeing while you were growing up, but sometimes the experience can also be a rude awakening: can you believe that this sort of thing actually used to entertain you? What were you thinking? There’s always a chance your experience will end negatively instead of positively when re-discovering something from your past that you used to know and love.

Recently, I was able to catch up, via the magic of DVD collections, with a TV show I watched on the SciFi (now SyFy) Channel during my impressionable years as a young teenager, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” To be clear: when I watched the show in my youth, I was watching it in syndication; the show enjoyed its original short-lived run from 1974-1975, building of the success of two made-for-TV movies about the titular character, Carl Kolchak, a reporter with a penchant for investigating stories of the strange and paranormal. Fortunately for me, my current experience “catching up” with the show was every bit as rewarding as I remember my original viewing experience was.

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G.O.R.E. Score: The Plague

Posted by Tony Schaab on August 2, 2010 in G.O.R.E. Score Reviews
The Plague (2006)

The Plague (2006)

Original Release Date: September 5, 2006
Run Time: 88 minutes

This past weekend I was on a trip back to my hometown, Ft. Wayne, IN, a town situated about two hours northeast of Indianapolis. On a late Friday night after my wife, daughter, and our gracious mother-in-law host already went to bed, I hunkered down on the couch to check out the offerings on the relatively-new FiOS cable system running through Ft. Wayne. I stumbled across a movie, “The Plague,” as a free on-demand film from FEARNet. I didn’t know anything about the movie, and there was (frustratingly) no description available…and my laptop was soooo far away on the other side of the room (what am I, made of energy?), so I knew nothing about the movie other than the title. At midnight, alone in a dark, (relatively) strange house, I really had no choice BUT to watch a scary movie, so I hit “Play” and I was on my way.

Imagine my surprise when “The Plague” turned out to be a zombie film – well, a film that falls under the loose umbrella definition of “zombie” that I subscribe to, anyways. (Don’t know my “official” definition of a zombie, dear reader? It’s included as an essay at the beginning of my first collection of reviews, “The G.O.R.E. Score, Vol. 1,” now available at Amazon and orderable through your local retailers! Okay, my self-promoting quota for the week has now been fulfilled.)

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G.O.R.E. Score: Homecoming

Posted by Tony Schaab on July 27, 2010 in G.O.R.E. Score Reviews
Homecoming (2005)

Homecoming (2005)

Original Air Date: December 2, 2005
Run time: 58 minutes

“Homecoming” was an episode of the two-season television series “Masters of Horror” that aired on Showtime from 2005-2007. Each episode was directed by a (self-proclaimed) Master of Horror; “Homecoming” was written and directed by Joe Dante, who has directed a number of movies, most notably “The Howling,” “Innerspace,” “The ‘Burbs,” and “Gremlins.” Since each “Master of Horror” was given the absolute creative control to make their 60-minute “movie” whatever and however they pleased, I would like to write this review as an open letter directly to the writer/director himself. Let’s begin.

Dear Mr. Dante,

Hello, my name is Tony Schaab, and I am a zombie fan. I recently had the opportunity to watch “Homecoming,” and I must say, sir, that as a fan of the undead, I am beyond disappointed with this piece of work.

It was painfully obvious to me that you wanted less a chance to tell a truly harrowing and original tale about reanimated corpses and more an opportunity to bash your viewers over their heads with your thinly-veiled political views. How do I know this? Two ways: one, I watched the episode and I have a functioning brain; two, I watched the interview with you in the Special Features of the “Homecoming” DVD where you said, point-blank, that you took the opportunity of directing an episode of this show to present your feelings on the political landscape of the time and that the zombies were simply the backdrop to showing the audience your sixty-minute opinion.

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G.O.R.E. Score: Het Madden: A Zombie Perspective

Posted by Tony Schaab on July 21, 2010 in G.O.R.E. Score Reviews
Het Madden: A Zombie Perspective (2009)

Het Madden: A Zombie Perspective (2009)

Original Release Date: November 29, 2009
Publisher: Zilyon Publishing

“Het Madden: A Zombie Perspective, Book One: Wrath 2012” not only wins the award for Longest Book Title I’ve Seen in Quite Some Time, it’s also a very entertaining read.

Written and self-published by first-time author Cal Miller (co-founder of the fledgling Zilyon Publishing, under the banner of which this book was released), “Het Madden” is a dense and very action-filled ride. As the lengthy title of the book implies, this tale is written from the perspective of one of the infected creatures (and a particularly animate one at that – more on this below) named Hetfield Madden. Het actually starts the story as a “normal” human, but once he becomes infected the reader begins to see things from “the other side.” The narrative takes Het to many locations, gives him many encounters with various types of people (both of the infected and “Healthies” variety), puts him through quite a few grand adventures, and ultimately involves him in an ending that is equal parts entertaining, grandiose, and confusing.

As I mentioned, the book is very dense. Listed at 202 pages, “Het Madden” is packed very tightly with many different locations, actions, and plotlines running throughout the entire book. I believe the reason for this can be attributed to Miller’s style of writing: the narrative is very matter-of-fact, and certain scenes like big zombie-versus-human fights or tales of back-story exposition are often written in such a bare-bones, straight-to-the-point style that these parts of the story take up only a fraction of space they normally would if written in a more generally-descriptive style.

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