Doghouse

Title - Doghouse
Language - English
Genre - Horror, comedy, Zombie

Vince is about to get divorced so his friends decide to to take him out for a lads weekend away.  They arrange to go to the  to the small village of Moodley where the women are supposed to outnumber the  men 4 to 1.  When they reach Moodley it’s surprisingly quiet, all the shops are closed except for the pub so the group split up, Mikey goes to get the key to his nan's house, where they are planning on staying and Matt is sent to get the mini bus driver, who is the only female of the group.

As Mikey walks through the village we see how empty it is, there are hand prints on some of the windows and a couple of bloody hand prints on some walls.  On his way back from getting the key Mikey passes a garden where he hears a strange noise and, when he looks he sees a woman in a wedding dress eating a dog.  

As the only sign of life in the pub is someone in the toilet who is being sick the rest of the guys go to see if they can find out what is taking Matt so long.  They find him looking in the window of a magic shop when a homeless looking woman walks around the corner. As the group are checking the pockets for any change to give her a man dressed in army combats runs around the corner and attacks her.  The group try to get the man off her but her hood falls down revealing a dead looking face, she attacks Neil putting a knife through his hand but she is stopped by Mikey, who arrives on the scene after running away from the bride, he hits the homeless woman over the head with a garden gnome, knocking her to the ground.  As they back away and try to assess the situation the bride comes round the corner and is quickly joined by by other female zombies from the local shops.  The group of friends make it back to Mikey’s Nan's house but now they have to make out of Moodley alive.

Doghouse is a good horror comedy and is surprisingly different.  Vince and his friends are a regular group of ‘blokes’ with a slightly misogynistic outlook on life (Neil is always saying that women find him irresistible) and a lot of the time they come off looking stupid.  The all female zombie cast aren't your normal brain eating zombies, in fact there is a conversation at the beginning of the film before the cast get to Moodley which could be used to argue that they are not zombies but some other type of  ghoul drawing parallels to the deadites from the Evil Dead films.  Although the Zombies do eat their victims it is not all they are interested in, one captures Neil and, although she is slowly trying to eat him she also wants his company.  They are also more intelligent than alot of other movie Zombies and many use weapons with one even using an axe chop down a post that supports the hiding place of one of the group.

Dog house is a film which, at points looks like it is going to make it’s male protagonists realise that they are wrong in their views of women, even making some of them get in touch with the female side by having to dress (drag) up to get past the zombies, but instead of them changing their views it just becomes another reason to joke around.

The Costumes and style of doghouse are quite striking partly thanks to Dan Schaffer’s  influence (writer of the comic Dogwitch).

Dog house is an entertaining film with a good amount of laughs gore. 

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

Title - Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
Language - English
Genre - Horror, Zombie, magic

A man in top hat and another that looks like a ghoul dig up a grave, they attack the caretaker when he finds then.  The duo then removes a corps from the coffin and the man in the top hat gets in.  Later Alan leads a group of his friends off a boat and through a graveyard towards the empty caretaker’s house.  Alan is the leader of an acting troupe and his friends are all actors in the same group.  As they walk they talk about the history of the graveyard with Alan telling grizzly tales about the former caretakers and the occupants of the graves.  When they reach the caretakers they break in, planning to spend the weekend.  After some time Alan opens a large chest that he had brought with it, he claims it is a magician's box.  He puts on a cape and takes a book he claims is a grimoire out and claims that they are going to raise the dead.  Treating it all as a joke the party go back out to the graveyard and dig up the grave of Orville Dunnworth, they hand Orvel over the cross behind his grave and, whilst Alan lays out some candle other party members dig up other graves.  Alan the reads incantations out of the book and, when nothing happens he curses the devil.  Other members of the group get in on the act by seeing who can give the best performance and curse.  Most of the party return to the house, bring the corps of Orville with them whilst two others remain in the graveyard to cover up the rest of the graves.   Alan's behaviour with the corps gets more and more bizarre leading to the rest of the actors walking out on him but, as they leave the house they are greeted by the return one of the their colleagues who was filling in the graves and hot on his trail are the residents for the graveyard who have been summoned forth as zombies.  The party retreat back into the house and try to  find a way past the attacking horde and back to  the boat.

The Acting in 'Children shouldn't play with dead things' is deliberately camp and over the top as the main cast are an acting troupe looking to get their next part.  Alan refers to them as his 'children' (making them the titular children) and he is often putting them down.  There is obvious tension in the group which seems to get a lot of outlet in the 'devil cursing' scene and after that Alan seems to have won back some of the group who were slowly turning against him but, as his behaviour with the corps gets worst those that are against him gain more support in the group to the point where his threats of kicking them out of the play is a risk they are willing to take.

Once the zombies appear in the film it takes on a classic ‘night of the living dead’ or ‘Evil dead’ feel with the group of protagonists trapped in a cabin with an increasing number of the dead surrounding them, in fact, as with Evil Dead they also have one of them inside the cabin.  The zombies themselves are quite good and do look like the undead corpse type and they seem slightly more intelligent than the zombies in other classic movies, although they do swarm in the same manner they are able to climb to higher windows and set up an ambush.  The final scene of the film leads us to believe that they either have more intelligence than previously shown or it is increasing.

The Films Score is good at setting the mood but i did find that, when the zombies were first rising the incidental music was distracting.

Over all I found ‘Children shouldn't Play with dead things’ a good low budget zombie flick.

Chanbara Beauty Vortex

Title -

Chanbara Beauty Vortex

Language - Japanese

genre - Zombie, chanbara













 

This is the second film based on the Oneechanbara/bikini zombie hunter games (I’ve reviewed the first film here) but it’s not a sequel in as much as it doesn’t carry on from the first film.  I’m sure if it could be classed as a reboot either as it is based on one of the later games and so the story comes from that and not the early game the first film follows.

Chanbara Beauty Vortex is (loosely) based on the Oneechanbara: Bikini samurai Squad game released for the Xbox 360, which happens to be the only one I’ve played.  The film is set 20 years after the accidental release of the zombies by the organization who are trying to find a way of making themselves immortal.  This time around Aya and Saki are allies and are trying to stop the zombies.  Both of the sisters have Imchi blood, which means that if they get too much blood on them they will go into a berserk like rage.  A woman called Misery meets them and tells them that Himiko, the leader of the Organization wants to use Saki’s blood to finish off the immortality formula; she also manages to convince Saki that she would be able to resurrect her parents but they will also need the blood for another girl. Saki goes along with Misery’s plan and the trick Aya into helping them capture Kei who lives in a camp with other children and is protected by Reiko & Ryo.  Saki and Misery get away with Kei and Aya and Ryo go after them, Reiko is injured and stays behind to look after the rest of the children in the camp.  The rest of the film is taken up by Aya and Ryo’s journey to find Saki and Saki discovering that Misery is not all that she seems.  The film ends with Aya and Ryo catching up with Misery and fighting her for Kei.

As I’ve said Chanbara Beauty Vortex is loosely based up on the Oneechanbara: Bikini samurai squad game for the Xbox 360 and even starts with a shower scene in the same way the game does.  It has the main characters form the game but Reiko’s part in the film is much shorter than in the game and the character of Himiko is different.  The final battle with Misery see’s her using her long spiked sword and the stronger zombies look like men in black rejects.  I was a bit disappointed by the absence of the killer whale zombie; it could have been an amusing addition to the film.

I think that Vortex is the better of the two films.  The Film seems to flow better, there is more time spent on the journey whereas the first film jumps from scene to scene.  Vortex does not seem to use special effects in quite the same way either; there seems to be less use of any magic or any kind of energy blast that the first film had, concentrating more on the rage that the Imchi blood causes.  There are still the blood splats on the camera but as these are part of the game they do fit.

The zombies and the fight scenes also seem a bit better although there are odd bits of continuity that don’t seem to make sense, for example in one of the first fights Aya cuts a zombie in half and the legs and the head remain in motion until she puts he sword through its head but in all other scenes once a zombie has been ‘killed’ it disintegrates even if it’s not killed with a ‘head shot’.  There is also a scene where Aya is fighting with some of the more advanced zombies we see her lose both swords and she gets one for Ryo but after the fight all the swords are back with their rightful owners..

Over all Chanbara Beauty vortex is an entertaining film that doesn’t need much brain power to follow.

Chanbara Beauty (aka Oneechanbara: Movie)

Title

Chanbara Beauty (aka Oneechanbara: Movie)

Language - Japenese

Genre -  fighting, Zombie, Chanbara, Video game

 

Chanbara Beauty is the first of 2 films based on the Oneechanbara & Zombie hunter video games and follows Aya as she hunts for her sister Saki who killed there farther.

Chanbara Beauty is set in the near future; about 10 years after the D3 company has released Zombies upon the world, It’s not fully explained why D3 released the zombies but Dr Sugita, the man who is creating them (and the only person we ever see working for D3) hints that they are looking for Aya.  At the opening of the film we see Zombies attacking a small settlement of humans, just as the Zombies seem to be winning Aya and her sidekick Katsuji enter the fray and Aya kills most of the Zombies, shedding the coat she was wearing to revel her trademark look from the games, a bikini, cowboy boots and hat and a feather bower. A mysterious woman on a motorbike who shoots a zombie that Aya is about to interrogate also joins the fight, I’m not sure what Aya hopes to gain from interrogating the zombie as there is no other point in the film where any of them speak.  Aya and the woman start to fight but Katsuji, who has come out of hiding now all the zombies are dead, breaks this up, the woman introduces herself as Reiko and tells Aya that her sister is with Dr Sugita and she will take her the Doctor if she will help kill him.  The party of three then set off to find Dr Sugita and Saki, apparently leaving the motorbike behind.

The imagery in Chanbara Beauty stays close to the game, you have Aya in her bikini and cowboy boots, Saki in her schoolgirl uniform and Reiko in her cleavage revealing biker leathers and shotgun that never needs to be reloaded.  The journey that the characters take is also like the games, they are in on place and then the next without actual travelling and most of the action takes place in abandoned buildings that soon fill up with hordes of zombies.  The film also uses other imagery form the games, during big fight scenes the camera becomes covered in blood and we get aerial views of Zombies limbs flying through the air.  There is also a ‘boss’ zombie in the form of another girl in a schoolgirl uniform wheedling a ball and chain, possibly a symbolic weapon due to her relationship to one of the other characters is what is chaining them down.  (I could just be seeing too much into this though, I’m not sure that the movie is quite that intelligent)

  The one problem with the film is that it seems to rely on some knowledge of the games, when fighting the zombies Aya pulls off some pretty good moves which could be put down to theatrical license but, as the film progresses she (and Saki) start to blast the area around them with energy from their swords and, at the end of the film they become surrounded with energy and gain super speed and flight.  In the games this is because the two sisters have cursed blood, which enables them to activate their powers, the more they fight and the more they get covered in blood.  The cursed blood is mentioned in the film, indeed it is why Dr Sugita needs Aya as he believes that it is needed to bring the dead back to life without them being total zombies although it’s not explained why Saki’s blood isn’t good enough, but there is never anything mentioned about the blood giving either sister any powers.

Over all I found Chanbara Beauty an enjoyable movie, it’s not high on scares but if you like zombies, action and scantily clad women then it is a good way to kill an hour and a half.

Attack girls swim team vs. the undead

Title -

Attack girls swim team vs. the undead

Language - Japanese

Genre - Zombie, horror

Contains spoilers

I had high hopes for a film with a title like 'Attack girl swim team vs. the undead' but I have to admit I was left a bit disappointed, the problem is I'm not really sure why.  The film starts three days before a cross school swimming competition.  Everything seems to be going ok for one of the competing schools, they've been training hard, the school has been vaccinating students against the new virus that’s going around and there is a new student who they are going to recruit to replace their sick team mate.  Then things take a turn for the worst, the team's coach is found dead and then shows up alive again and the rest of the school start turning into flesh eating zombies until only the girls swim team and the new girl, Aki are that is left.

I think that, if the films plot stopped there it would have been better, they could even have kept the 'mad scientist' cause of the zombie the same but, the inclusion of Aki's back story seemed to add more complication than was necessary, especially as the main point of the back story was just to get more sex on the screen.

Parts of the flashback scenes didn't seem to make to much sense, how could he talk and play the flute at the same time, I think it was supposed to be Aki remembering things slightly wrong and it was the twin who was speaking if so then this seems to be another example of the film trying to be more intelligent than it was.

Girls swim team also seemed to be lacking a bit in the zombie department, putting most of the focus on the two zombie teachers who were quite entertaining but they failed to get across the same sense of threat that could been produce by giving the horde of other zombies that were lurking a bit more screen time.

With the exception of the first scene with the zombies in the in the classroom the other 'normal' zombies seemed a bit pathetic.  I can live with cure for the virus as it fits in with the good part of the plot but for the most part, when we see any normal zombies they are just pushed out of the way and they don’t even swarm, after the first zombie scene we only see about 4 zombies on screen at one time.  With that said I will admit that the little gore that is in the film is quite good.

The swim team is also a bit to pathetic, whilst it is good to  see a film where the survivor's can't automatable pick up any weapon and know how to use it to its full zombie killing capability some zombie killing would have been good.  Part of the problem in this area may have been the lack of zombies I mentioned earlier.  You can't have your side cast killing off your main monsters but, the action could have been improved with more normal zombies.

Now we come to the main villain, there is not too much I can say about this except when he is revealed it’s like something out of a bad Scooby Doo episode and the ‘twist’ with him at the end is just a bit odd.

In saying all of that I would probable give ‘Attack girls swim team vs. the undead’, maybe knowing what to expect may up the enjoyment a bit more.