SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: WEEK 115: Cockneys vs. Zombies

It's sort of amazing all the monsters that you can just dig up in London.

Dragons (Reign of Fire)

Reign of Fire would have been a better watch. At least when the dragon barbecue's your friend nobody cracks a joke. I don't mind Horror/Comedy occasionally but there is always something about it that just irritates me a little bit.
 
Also, why the fuck did Charles II not put a warning on that tomb? Kind of inconsiderate, don't you think? Typical monarchs not carrying about the common people.

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Well, at least Hooliganism triggered their cognitive memory. :D

Oh yeah, I liked that joke.

To be 100% honest, I didn't like any of Edgar Wright's movies until Baby Driver -- which hurts badly since I feel like I should like them and Edgar has a really cool taste in cinema from all the interviews I've seen about him.

I just don't find them funny.

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New York ripper and....?

The other ones I've seen are:

-Zombi 2
-Zombie 3 (Yeah, I know, there was another director on this one too, and Fulci disowns it)
-The Beyond
-House by the Cemetery

I almost started City of the Living Dead one day, but decided against it because like Yotsuya has mentioned, why keep ordering the same creamy pasta when you know you're not going to like it? Of all these movies, I probably liked Zombi 2 the most, but I was still underwhelmed by it.

Personally, my favorite films of his are:
Massacre Time (Spaghetti Western that is almost like a proto-John Woo film at points, complete with white doves and all)
Conquest (not sure I should admit this though)
The Beyond (Conventional choice)

People also tend to like Lizard in a Woman's Skin (great title, don't watch if you're a dog person) and Don't Torture a Duckling (horrible title, but probably his most "conventionally" good in terms of having a theme and message and all).

With the suggestions that you and Yotsuya have put forth, I'm willing to still give Fulci a chance. I want to like his stuff, I really do. But I'm just having a hard time doing so.
 
I still liked Baby Driver, but yeah, it's not as good as his older stuff.

To me it all just fell flat. None of the characters really captured me. Hell, the best quip in the movie was lifted from a Manfred Mann song. lol
 
Conquest (not sure I should admit this though)
Absolutely fabulous b-movie! Some Italian barbarian movies flirt with fantastic elements more interestingly than the US Conan rip-offs, but Conquest delivers in that department 100%.

People also tend to like Lizard in a Woman's Skin
Great title, boring movie.

Don't Torture a Duckling (horrible title, but probably his most "conventionally" good in terms of having a theme and message and all).
Come on! You make it sound lame. Corman's The Intruder was not a thrilling movie because it had a theme and a message. It was a thrilling because it had William Shatner as womanizing neo-nazi on an egotrip. I've seen Duckling twice and I have forgotten the theme long time ago, but I have not forgotten, that it's a well written, nasty and unique piece of italo horror.

Yeah he's the auteur of doing horrible things to eyeballs.:D
After Helsinki cinemateque screening of early 70's sex comedy Senator Likes Women there was a wide consensus among audience, that we had just seen a bonafide Lucio Fulci movie even thought there was no violence in it at all.

Didn't he have a quote saying something like "When the eyes have seen to much... they have to go".
Well, I admit, that sounds like something Fulci could say. :D

Who else would you add to that list? Argento? Bava? Lamerto? Soavi? Surely not that overrated trollop Sergio Martino!?
Argento and Martino both have enough mannerisms to qualify, but I'm not too fond of either of them. Renato Polselli is along Fulci the other Italian who has managed to present his obsessions on the screen in appropriately outrageously but yet in non-obvious way.
 
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I was looking all over this one for the several days, I couldn't find it and didn't feel like buying it for 10 bucks. But, I'm good now. Looking forward to a ridiculous Shaun of the Dead ripoff. It's kind of unfair to call it that right out of the gate, because not all British Zom Com movies are Shaun-like, right? But maybe there are similarities, I'm not sure yet. I just know that we have Pussy Galore and Brick Top to look forward to cursing like mad, so I'm game.

Watching this, I get a real Guy Ritchie vibe from it (more than just because Alan Ford is in it), and that's probably intentional, with a few insane character introductions via flashbacks, and a lot of quick cutting. I've watched plenty of British cinema in my day so I know that's not how it always is, but I know an clear influence when I see it. It's a love letter.

This might sound overly critical, but what can I say, it's a comedy-based zombie movie where the characters are aware of zombies but still generally make the same mistakes that everyone else does. The characters are fairly simply drawn - you have the loose cannon, the bumbling "Doing it for the right reasons" guy, the comic relief buddy, the badass female character, the sniveling guy with glasses that ends up getting one of the protagonists killed, the foul mouthed old person, and so on. It's a cardboard cutout character grab bag. I don't generally expect character development or plot in a zombie movie, it's a genre film and it is what it is.

Some jokes are good because they're silly, others are way too on the nose, like punting the zombie baby into the "stop cruelty against children" sign. The punt was great, but hitting that specific sign with the bullseye on it...c'mon man. Then we have the extended slow motion zombie chase scene with the hyper dramatic music and then a quick zoom out to see how slow everything actually is. Paint by numbers zombie comedy, to me at least. It's not *bad*, it's just formulaic and one of those things where you can sit down and almost plot out how things are going to go as we meet the characters for the first time. About halfway through, the main characters accept what's going on and go from wimps to cold blooded, well, not killers, but zombie hunters.

More than anything, this is a zombie movie, so we come in expecting some interesting and funny zombie kills. The best dismemberments, head explosions, and most innovative ways to kill one probably using improvised weapons. Bludgeoning a zombie with a fake leg after the zombie bit the leg is probably one of the highlights. I wish that badass girl had used the katana sooner than 10 minutes left in the film, because she had it for at least a half hour and could have easily smote plenty more zombies along the way with it.

I always have wanted to see a zombie movie that takes place after the heroes have gotten to safety, usually on a boat or helicopter or otherwise to distant safety. What would their world be after they escape? The entire threat can't be totally contained with a little exposition and a convenient "well the military arrived so it's over" junk. We know how these things work, the government/military inevitably keeps some to test on and figure out why it happened, and that test subject kills some people in the lab sneakily and escapes, causing this all outbreak all over again. It's not just happily ever after, just from a realistic standpoint, someone went on the Chunnel to escape and turned into a zombie, and then the threat reaches France, and then the rest of Europe, and then the rest of the world. Extinction-level event, easily.

6.5/10. Serviceable zombie comedy, did what it needed to do, and got it over with. 85 minutes or so was a good length for a picture like this.
 
Prefered Shaun... really have nothing to add to the discussion...posting so I don’t get a check mark against my name since there’s a darn good chance I’m skopping this next one...

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