Mac (Jim Sweeney) gets up-close and personal with a rotten zombie (Leif Phelps) in Zombie Resurrection

With its British accents and hints of thematic delving into some of the religious implications of zombieism, British splatterfest Zombie Resurrection (written and directed by Andy Phelps and Jake Hawkins) seems to be offering the kind of original take on old tropes that fans of the zombie sub-genre are keen to get their hands on (well, I am anyway!): staying within the tradition and retaining the best of it, while exploring some fascinating tributaries branching off from the clichés — and doing it intelligently. The filmmakers describe the film as “ambitious, gory and sometimes very funny” and as “one of those rarest of beasts – a completely new slant on the zombie story”.

From the look of the trailer, they might be telling the truth!

Synopsis:

Fifteen months after the zombie apocalypse, a small band of survivors are forced to take refuge in an abandoned school, where they discover a mysterious zombie with the power to raise the undead back to life.

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Undead Backbrain’s low-budget cinema sleuth, Avery Guerra, asked some probing questions in order to ferret out the truth about this film, which is now in post-production and looking for funding to help get it done.

Above: The Messianic zombie (Rupert Phelps) gets ready to deliver his “Sermon on the Mount”

How did Zombie Resurrection come about?

Andy Phelps: Originally, it was a conversation that I had with my son one dinnertime – what would happen if Jesus came back as a zombie? What would he be able to do? A couple of weeks later Jake and I hooked up for a drink, and by the end of the night we’d riffed the concept around to the point where we were too excited by the idea to not write the screenplay.

Jake Hawkins: At first we were planning on putting the screenplay up for sale on InkTip, but the further we got into the writing the more it looked like we could actually do this ourselves. Both of us have a background in short films, and tackling a feature project is a completely different animal, but at the beginning of 2011 we threw caution to the wind, unshackled ourselves from our respective day-jobs, and we’ve been working full-time on the movie ever since.

The crew prepare to film the end of a long battle between Sykes (Eric Colvin) and
Mac (Jim Sweeney) and the first supercharged zombie in the film (Leon King)

Where was Zombie Resurrection filmed and at what stage is the production right now?

AP: We shot the movie over 24 days (and nights) in August 2011, in three locations in Hampshire (in the South of England). We knew we had to work fast to get it all in the can on such a quick shoot. Not helping was the fact that we had a large ensemble cast (nine principal actors) and about seventy zombies to worry about, as well as all the in-camera blood gags and action sequences.

In the end, we used a fairly small crew of 23 people, but it got hairy on our big horde nights, having to process so many people through our costume and make-up teams.

JH: The film is currently going through post-production – final edits, sound, foley, grading and all our digital FX. We have an IndieGoGo funding campaign running at the moment to try and raise the money to get us through to distribution, so if you ever fancied watching two men squirm on the wrong side of the camera, the link is here.

Andy and Jake in an uncomfortably close encounter with their horde

Beyond the plot, what is the film about?

AP: Faith, and specifically the boundaries between science and faith. When is it reasonable for a logical man to take a leap of faith when presented with something that science can’t explain? This is the benefit of having such a large ensemble cast, in that you can give each character a different angle on the same theme. Collectively they have the big picture, but you get to seed in a lot of conflict and drama looking at where their beliefs and values clash.

JH: We felt it was massively important when we were writing Zombie Resurrection not just to turn out a generic movie where a bunch of attractive survivors get picked off one by one, and to try and get some social commentary in there. That’s the difference between the original Dawn of the Dead and Zack Snyder’s remake; the first is a really intelligent study of consumerism, while the remake is a just a pretty good zombie movie.

Asher (Georgia Winters) is bitten

What are the primary inspirations/influences behind the film?

AP: Well, I grew up through the UK’s “video nasty” era, so that’s where my filmic roots lie. Very generously, the government put together a list of all the horror video titles that were most likely to cause a breakdown in public order, so to every fourteen-year-old boy in the country this became a must-see movie template. I am very much in this early-80′s exploitation cinema mind-set, before too much CGI came along and made everybody’s life safer.

JH: But specifically, movies like Romero’s early zombie outings, as well as Evil Dead, Braindead, Re-animator. Films where the humans are often much more dangerous to each other’s wellbeing than the monsters are. Movies with a sense of humour, even when the cast play it completely straight.

Zombie Bride (Mary Stone)

What are your plans for the film?

AP: Through post-production, and then out to the Cannes film market in May. The film was never intended for a theatrical release, but that’s not going to stop us blitzing as many horror film festivals across the planet as we can before the DVD and Blu-ray come out. It’s the thought of being sat at the back of a screening watching a horror-literate audience reacting to your movie that keeps us going through the long days and the vast amount of work it takes to pull a feature together.

So there you go. They sound rather convincing to me and are certainly able to talk intelligently about their inspirations and their intentions in creating this particular film. This augurs well for Zombie Resurrection and it will bring new life to the genre. Maybe the title will be prophetic!

Above: Beaumont (Danny Brown) makes a catastrophic wrong turn

Above: Sykes (Eric Colvin) carries the recently mauled Becca (Rachel Nottingham) to safety

Above: Some zombies get a final liberal coating in blood before shooting

Below is a video of the pair, spruiking the film’s IndieGoGo appeal and it includes some fascinating behind the scenes snippets — all of which makes me want to see this film get completed sooner rather than later.

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• Sources: Andy Phelps and Jake Hawkins via Avery Guerra; Official website; Facebook page; Andy and Jake’s Shameless Promotional Blog; Snakebite Horror article (includes lengthy plot summary).
• Remember the guys are looking for financial support to complete. If you’re interested in helping, go here.

Thankfully, the unreasonably popular Twilight and its sequels haven’t killed off vampires as an iconic and powerful trope within the horror genre.  Undead Brainspasm recently featured a film that was seeking to use an esoteric African tradition concerning the Tokoloshe: Blood Tokoloshe: Dawn of the Beast (South Africa-2012; dir. Jordan Harland) to re-invigorate the subgenre. Now a band of Aussies have produced what looks destined to become a stylish classic in the field.

The film is called The Caretaker (Aust-2012; dir. Tom Conyers) and it features suspense, danger, fear, blood, metaphorical resonance and, most importantly of all, very dangerous vampires.

Synopsis:

A plague of vampirism has swept across the world. A small but discordant group of survivors hole up in a country mansion. They soon discover that a vampire also shares the house with them. He proposes a deal: they protect him during the day from other humans, and he’ll protect them at night from other vampires. So begins an uneasy alliance, which soon threatens to fall apart.

The Trailer:

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Undead Backbrain search robot, Avery Guerra, took a virtual trip downunder to interview the director about his film.

Interview with the Director, Tom Conyers

How did The Caretaker come about?

Tom Conyers: I’m an independent filmmaker living in Melbourne, Australia. I’ve made quite a number of short films but always wanted to move on to features. For many years I have applied for government film-funding, only to get form-letter rejections. I am a fan of the horror genre (although I lean toward the more esoteric examples of the form, like Carnival of Souls, Martin and The Hunger), but this isn’t a genre the Australian film-bodies tend to fund. It was looking like I’d never make a feature, so I took a leaf out of the books of filmmakers like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, who made their first features off their own bat. Armed with a great producer in Mark White (who also plays one of the main roles in The Caretaker) we raised private finance. The production was small in scale, with five main actors (although there are few scenes with a larger cast) and a small crew, which averaged about fifteen in total. Although low-budget, we wanted the film to look good and have high-production values. We shot on the Red-One, with mainly dolly or locked-off shots, only using hand-held in the intense moments.

Above: Producer Mark White, in his role as Dr Ford Grainger, bears his fangs

Where was it filmed and at what stage is the production right now?

TC: The story concerns, in part, a vineyard owner. We searched in and around Rutherglen for potential film locations, since the area is famous for wines. We found some spectacular spots. Rutherglen is about 3 hours drive from Melbourne and we had the cast and crew stay there while filming. The local Indigo Shire was very supportive. The shoot totalled seven weeks but there has been about a year’s worth of post-production. This has been because it has been done out of people’s homes on their home computers. We tried to get mentoring from seasoned professionals without much success, so there has been a long process of trial-and-error. We have recently completed the film with grading, effects and 5.1 Surround Sound. We will be a lot quicker making the next one having figured out all the steps for ourselves on this one!

Above: On location. Cinematographer Matt Wood (also doubling as Camera Operator)
shooting actors Colin MacPherson, Anna Kate Burgess and Lee Mason

Beyond the plot, what is the film about?

TC: One of the main thematic concerns of the film is the way Reality TV thrives on pitting people against each other in a sort of rampant consumerist microcosm, with an emphasis on winners and losers. The Caretaker asks whether surviving in this kind of world is actually ‘winning’.

Above: ‘Not knowing who to aim the gun at’ (From left to right) Lester (Colin MacPherson) and Ron (Lee Mason)

What are the primary inspirations/influences behind the film?

TC: Although inspired by many horror films, we also looked to suspense films when making The Caretaker, particularly those of Hitchcock. Without the budget for extended action sequences, we needed to create suspense in long build-ups. Partly a monetary concern, this was also something stylistically we were aiming for. We wanted to go against the recent trend in horror of ‘torture porn’, and instead emphasise atmosphere and suspense over gore.

What are your plans for the film?

TC: We are now at the stage of sending it to festivals and looking for distributors, something which we are also new at but will figure out.

Above: ‘Unwanted Guests’ (From left to right) Tania Lentini, Evonne Fletcher, Paul Goddard

More Images from The Caretaker:

Above: ‘Ford about to put forward his deal’ (from left to right) Guy (Clint Dowdell) and Dr Ford Grainger (Mark White)

Above: ‘Is the enemy in front or behind?’ (from left to right) Annie (Anna Kate Burgess) and Ron (Lee Mason)

Above: ‘Is that screaming coming from outside the pub?’ (From left to right) Jake Bowtell, Brett Swain, Lee Mason and Josh Cameron.

Above: The creepy mansion

Above: Dr Ford Grainger (Mark White) and Lester (Colin MacPherson) face-off over dinner

Above: ‘Ford examines Lester’s mother. (From left to right) Lester (Colin MacPherson) looks on while Dr Ford Grainger (Mark White) examines Lester’s Mother (Abbe Holmes), who has some very strange symptoms.

Above: (From left to right) Ron (Lee Mason), Lester (Colin MacPherson) and Annie (Anna Kate Burgess)
consider Ford’s deal.

Above: A fairly simple set we built inside a shed “which didn’t come up too badly on camera”

Sources: Tom Conyers as interviewed by Avery Guerra. Official website: US and Australia; Facebook page. IMDb entry.

In the cinema the best known versions of Wells’ novel have been:

1. the 1953 creature-feature directed by Byron Haskin and starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, in which the plot is moved to the States, the key POV character becomes a fairly typical 50s scientist rather than a low-level journalist, and the Martian tripods are re-imagined as flying saucers on legs of invisible energy; and
2. Steven Spielberg’s much-maligned 2005 blockbuster, still set in the US, with Tom Cruise as the POV character — this time a working-class heavy-equipment operator with poor family skills who finds some redemption through adversity — and beautifully rendered Martian machines with the appropriate three legs but a rather logically flawed if visually spectacular “origin”.

Among the film versions that have appeared over the past few years, one of the more interesting was made for Pendragon Pictures by Timothy Hines in 2005 and subsequently released to DVD. It remains faithful to Wells’ novel, by setting the story in England at the turn of the century and not playing around with the Martians and their machines, or with the main characters. The film grossed US$7 million — not bad for a low-budget independent that didn’t have a major cinema release — yet the director considered it a failure. “The 2005 film was both rushed and severely over-scaled with highly compressed post-production deadlines,” Hines told SFcrowsnest.com.

As a result the same crew has taken a new approach to the material, having made a re-make of/addendum to the first — War of the Worlds: The True Story:

The movie goes the route of Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air production, adopting a mock-documentary approach, using footage ostensibly taken during the invasion — which occurred as Wells described it but knowledge of which was subsequently suppressed by the world’s governments.

“It’s not a documentary. It’s a mock-documentary, like a CNN documentary on steroids with action and horror.” (Hines)

The Premise:

A 1965 film crew captured the memories of the last living survivor of the war between Earth and Mars that took place c1900. The filmed memoirs, discovered in a vault in 2006, were found  with hours of previously unknown footage of the alien/Earth apocalypse, the actual Martian invaders and their war machines. This is the motion picture presentation of that eyewitness account. (Source: Official website)

Trailer:

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Early Teaser:

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This looks like a potentially exciting film to me, with a rationale and an air of authenticity that takes it well beyond many of the “found footage” (camera-verité style) pseudo-dramas that have haunted cinemas and DVD stores since The Blair Witch Project was a huge, and hugely unexpected hit, in 1999.

Hines began a Special Engagement tour on 23 July this year, in Seattle, Washington. He is currently touring the film through the US and Canada — a tour that will last well into 2012. Check out the huge list of remaining engagements here. If the Martians are coming your way, think yourself lucky. The rest of us will have to wait for the DVD release.

Sources: Official website; Facebook; Pendragon Pictures. Via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood.

For the record, the full list of shortlisted horror stories are:

• “Take the Free Tour”, Bob Franklin, Under Stones, Affirm Press
• “Her Gallant Needs”, Paul Haines, Sprawl, Twelfth Planet Press
• “The Fear”, Richard Harland, Macabre: A Journey Through Australia’s Darkest Fears, Brimstone Press
• “Wasting Matilda”, Robert Hood, Zombie Apocalypse!, Constable & Robinson Ltd
• “Lollo”, Martin Livings, Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, Apex Publishing.

The shortlists for all the categories are available here.

For more information on the Aurealis Awards, sponsored this year by HarperVoyager — and to buy your tickets for the gala event, to be held in Sydney (the Independent Theatre, North Sydney) on 21 May — go to the AA website. Bookings are now open.

Writing “Wasting Matilda” was quite a challenge as editor Stephen Jones’ brief for the volume, while open, was rather demanding, in my case requiring a story told through HF radio transmissions — tricky when you want to ensure that it has believable dramatic immediacy. As well as fitting into a sketchy but well-thought-out over-arching back-story, the story had to fulfil certain other criteria, some easier to realise than others.  Yet it proved to be a lot of fun to write, once I found a way of dealing with the logistics, and once I settled upon some enjoyable characters (members of the Royal Flying Doctor Service), an exciting situation (zombie refugees?) and a suitable location — or, as it happened, two locations. Though the story begins in the air and at sea off the east coast of Australia it mostly takes place in a small Australian country town, Gulargambone — a real place and one I eventually felt very familiar with even though I’ve never been there. The internet — and in particular Google Maps — certainly helped in that regard. I walked the streets of Gulargambone on my desktop and then killed off the entire population, turning most of them into zombies. I hope they didn’t mind.

The final anthology — though “anthology” is an inadequate word to describe this particular novelistic collection of interrelated stories — turned out to be a great pleasure to read, cleverly molded into a relatively consistent narrative by Jones and his chosen authors. These were an exciting bunch to share the book with. I’m in there with the likes of Michael Marshall Smith, Pat Cadigan, Kim Newman, Tanith Lee, Paul McAuley, Christopher Fowler, Paul Finch and many others. Reviews have ranged from cautiously positive through to wildly enthusiastic. The developing story of the zombie apocalypse is told via assorted documents, from diary entries, blogs and official reports, through to transcriptions of radio programs and other transmissions, Tweets, letters, film scripts … you name it. These are all formatted appropriately, sometimes complete with blood stains. The result could have been fractured and alienating, but instead it works brilliantly — and is often both poignant and terrifying in its impact, with engaging characters that are right there on the firing line. I heartily recommend that you check it out.

Zombie Apocalypse! is available from Amazon UK, Amazon US and other online sellers if you can’t find it in your local book store.

Few filmmakers have been successful in translating New England horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s dense, adjective-driven tales of Elder Gods, Great Old Ones and the Horrors That Lurk Just the Other Side of Reality into effective cinema. Or so they say. For those poor souls who are unfamiliar with Lovecraft and his arcane writings, there is plenty of information on the web. Start with the Wikipedia entries for H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu Mythos and Great Old One and followed the links you’ll find on those pages. Even better, many of HPL’s stories are available for free download through Project Gutenberg. Collected Stories is a good place to start.

In brief, Lovecraft’s highly influential stories, taken together, posit a vast cosmic race of monstrous beings that once ruled the Earth but were driven off during the dark times of pre-history. Unfortunately, however, they’re still hanging around, lurking in hidden dimensions, waiting for foolish or ambitious humans to summon them back into the world. Most of our information on the Great Old Ones comes from a book called the Necronomicon, a sort of hideous grimoire written by the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. Those who spend too much study time with the Necronomicon end up in lunatic asylums or worse, finding themselves face-to-face with some huge ancient monster intent on re-opening a gateway back into the world. These “dark gods” take multitudinous forms, but in the popular imagination tentacles play a large part in their physiology. Descriptions within Lovecraft’s stories tend to be vague and portentous. His deific monsters live in the darkness and when they make their appearance tend to drive the observer out of his/her mind.

The evocative but indirect power of Lovecraft’s writing offers considerable challenge to those working in an essentially visual medium such as the cinema. As a result filmmakers are often accused of violating HPL’s work and failing to capture its spirit. I’m not convinced. Changes are necessitated by cinema’s demands, and often require plot threads to be added to stories that are characteristically static and internalised. Many of the Lovecraft-inspired films work well, even if their effect is different from that of the original stories.

Dean Stockwell engrossed in the Necronomicon in “The Dunwich Horror”

Despite interesting earlier forays such as The Dunwich Horror (US-1970; dir. Daniel Haller), Boris Karloff’s Die, Monster, Die! (US-1965; dir. Daniel Haller — a version of “The Color Out of Space”), Roger Corman’s Poe-styled translation of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, The Haunted Palace (US-1963; dir. Roger Corman), The Shuttered Room (UK-1967; dir. David Greene) and The Curse of the Crimson Altar (UK-1968; dir. Vernon Sewell), which was supposedly based on “The Dreams in the Witch House” though it bore little resemblance, it wasn’t until Stuart Gordon came on the scene that the movies began to feel even slightly Lovecraftian in their styling. His films, such as Re-Animator (1985, based on “Herbert West, Re-Animator”), From Beyond (1986), Castle Freak (1995, based on “The Outsider”), Dagon (2001) and most recently H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House (2005) from the Masters of Horror TV series, are somewhat more visceral and bloody than Lovecraft’s stories, at least on a surface level, but at their best they create an effective atmosphere of cosmic dread. The underrated Dagon in particular – despite cosmetic changes made to the setting and its conflation of several Lovecraft tales into a more dynamic plotline – reeks of Lovecraftian horror. The fact that a very in-your-face CGI Dagon appears at the end is fine with me.

An unfortunate discovery regarding parentage from Gordon’s “Dagon”

Other post-1985 Lovecraft-based films include The Unnamable (US-1988; dir. Jean-Paul Ouellette), The Resurrected (US-1992; dir. Dan O’Bannon, based on “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”), the anthology picture Necronomicon (France/US; 1993; dir. Christophe Gans, Shusuke Kaneko and Brian Yuzna, with three stories based on “The Rats in the Walls”, “Cool Air” and “The Whisperer in Darkness”), The Lurking Fear (US-1994; dir. C. Courtney Joyner) and many, many short films.

Given Lovecraft’s prominence in the horror field, the difficulties inherent in translating his tales to the screen have meant that mainstream films based on his work have not been as common as one might have expected — and that one of the most successfully Lovecraftian films ever was not even based on his work: namely John Carpenter’s vastly under-appreciated In the Mouth of Madness (1994).

Horror novels prove deadly in “In the Mouth of Madness”

It’s strange how some films seem doomed to be devalued right from the start. Third in what Carpenter refers to as his “Apocalypse Trilogy” (the first two being The Thing and Prince of Darkness), In the Mouth of Madness is an effective exploration of communal perception and its role in forming accepted reality – and remains for me one of Carpenter’s most disconcerting films. It is also one of the best of the films based on or inspired by the Cthulhan imaginings of H.P. Lovecraft, with their vision of vast inhuman “Old Ones” intent on re-gaining command over the human world. Here, inter-dimensional conquest takes place via a phenomenally popular pulp horror novelist, whose works increasingly upset humanity’s psychic (and physical) stability and offer up a fiction that is designed to consume reality itself. Sam Neill plays an insurance investigator who is rather smugly adept at defusing the attempts of fraudsters to impose their small, self-serving views of reality on insurers and other financiers. “He’s an amateur,” Neill’s John Trent says of one such fraudster, and longs for the challenge of a true professional. In the end he gets his wish, but to an apocalyptic extent that totally overwhelms him … and, given the ending, us as well. If Carpenter’s The Thing was a study in claustrophobic paranoia, In the Mouth of Madness is its agoraphobic twin.

In recent times, production of Lovecraft-based films has been ramping up. In 2005, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society made the well conceived and executed The Call of Cthulhu (US-2005; dir. Andrew Leman), which adopts film techniques current at the time the story was written to create a strong sense of period (it’s made in the manner of a silent-era film) and evoking an effective atmosphere of dread. It proved to be one of the most accurate renditions of the famous Lovecraft story ever. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has also created a terrific radio-play version of “At the Mountains of Madness” and have been working on a second feature film, based on “The Whisperer in Darkness”. It’s due for release this year. Below is the latest trailer:

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In 2007 Dan Gildark directed a modernised Lovecraft tale, Cthulhu, based loosely on Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Since 2005, the Masters of Horror TV series has featured the afore-mentioned Stuart Gordon effort Dreams in the Witch-House, as well as the pre-Lovecraftian Ambrose Bierce tale The Damned Thing (US-2006; dir. Tobe Hooper), which has a very Lovecraftian sensibility.

Other independent films, often shorts, crop up from time to time. Color From the Dark (US-2008; dir. Ivan Zuccon) is an independent feature film based on “The Color Out of Space”, which won best feature at 2009’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival — an annual festival that highlights hordes of shorts and independent features based on the Master’s work. Winning films from each year have been released on DVD; of the ones I’ve seen (which is in no way comprehensive), Zuccon’s effort is worth a look for the Lovecraft aficionado, as is Bryan Moore’s Cool Air (1999).

Meanwhile rumours of big budget Lovecraft tales have been around for some time, with features from the likes of Stuart Gordon (rumoured to be making “The Thing on the Doorstep”) and Guillermo Del Toro (with his big-budget take on “At the Mountains of Madness”) [but see Note below]— not to mention such Lovecraftesque monster films as Altitude (US-2010; dir. Kaare Andrews). In this one, a group of young folk flying high in a small plane find themselves looking a very Cthulhan multi-tentacled creature that inhabits the clouds directly in the eye.

Saying “Hi!” to monsters in the sky in “Altitude”

To finish, I direct you to an unusual set of Lovecraftian films. A while back I put together a Call of Cthulhu film festival that featured on Undead Backbrain. Check it out. You might be surprised by what you see. Well, amused at least, I hope.

• Written by Robert Hood. This essay first appeared — and was written for — Monster Awareness Month, February 2011.
• Source note: the image of Cthulhu Rising comes from regeneratormag.com, though the artist is unknown.
• My review of In the Mouth of Madness that appears in this article was first published on my website.
• Note: Since this article was written Universal has placed unwelcome conditions on Del Toro in regards to At the Mountains of Madness, and the filmmaker has abandoned the project — at least for the time being. Read about it here.

But before I give you the details, read the Backbrain’s review of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone (Japan-2007; dir. Masayuki Yamaguchi, Kazuya Tsurumaki and Hideaki Anno) here.

Have you read it?

Good.

The Details:

To win a copy of this Madman Blu-ray edition of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, simply send your name and postal address to: backbrain@gmail.com. Put the words EVANGELION BLU-RAY in the subject header. The only proviso is that you must live in Australia. Oh, and you can only enter once. One week from now all entries received will go into the draw and I will get my cat Pazuzu to randomly pick a winner from the box. He’s become quite good at it and hardly ever cheats. The prize comes courtesy of Madman Entertainment.

Go for it!

Blu-ray edition reviewed by Robert Hood

Giant robots (known as mecha) and giant monsters (known as daikaiju): two of the most iconic elements of Japanese fantasy cinema. Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone mingles the two to surprising and indeed complex effect.

When Neon Genesis Evangelion came on the scene back in 1995/1996, it proved to be a massive success, both as a 26-episode TV series written and directed by Hideaki Anno and as a “supporting” manga by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. A remarkable work that profoundly influenced anime as a genre, it became compulsive viewing for many — as well as a lifetime obsession for Hideaki Anno, its primary creator. It has since been built upon, extended, re-worked … and yet never completely finished. Anno (in conjunction with others) has taken several shots at the ending, which, in the original series, was so metaphysical and abstract as to be well-nigh impenetrable — fascinating and suggestive without a doubt, and giving rise to interesting speculation, but slightly unsatisfying as well, with animation that was reduced to a series of static and surreal images by budgetary restraints. The show’s subsequent popularity allowed its creator to re-edit the penultimate episodes into Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and then to re-do the ending in a less narratively opaque manner in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Re-Birth, and again, later, as The End of Evangelion – an alternate view of how the events played out. Yet still Anno’s ambition for the franchise remained incomplete.

In 2006 Gainax (the show’s production company) announced the coming of an animated film series referred to as Rebuild of Evangelion. It would be a four-film remake of the anime series, intended to finally fulfill Anno’s ambition for it — something he could not realise with the meagre budget and technology of the time. The animation would be upgraded according to modern technological advances and the story edited into a more cinematic narrative structure. The first two of these films have been completed: Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone (aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Jo; 2007) and Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Ha; 2009). Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone achieved the distinction of being 4th highest grossing anime film at the Japanese box office during 2007, and then went to DVD and further success, though the latter version was subsequently tweaked after complaints about overly dark scenes and various technical glitches. This led Anno to release Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, which has now arrived on Blu-ray, with colour-correction, contrast fixes and the insertion of new footage. It would be easy to describe the result as a masterpiece if the original show itself hadn’t already appropriated that status.

In essence the story of Shinji Ikari is that of a boy, his father and a “squad” of hybrid robots — classic Japanese mecha — though that description nowhere near does it justice. It’s what Anno has done to the standard tropes of the mecha subgenre that makes the franchise so distinctive. Metaphysical nuancing, psychoanalytic examination of human relationships, political intrigue and narrative complexities abound, as a group of teenagers — born in the aftermath of the near-apocalyptic “Second Impact” (part of a complex back-story that only gradually reveals itself) — are revealed to be the only ones capable of piloting huge humanoid mechanisms, Evangelions or Evas, ostensibly built by the mysterious para-military organization NERV to fight a string of monstrous creatures known as “Angels”. These “Angels” arrive one after the other — bizarre in appearance and apparently malicious in intent, threatening a devastating “Third Impact” and the destruction of humanity. The narrative uses this framework to weave a complex set of themes that range from personal issues of depression and alienation to the nature of existence itself.

The Blu-ray of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone is a wonder to behold. Rich in colour and detail, it has a powerful soundscape, flowing animation and stunning imagery – a mingling of traditional cel-animation and CGI that works beautifully. It comes with the original Japanese soundtrack (featuring excellent voice actors whose interpretation of the characters is definitive), clear and readable English subtitles, and an English-language dub option. Some decent extras (including the 1.0 version) and a 20-page booklet complete the package.

Despite being criticized as a “dumbing-down” of the first six episodes of the series, Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone remains a complex, metaphorically rich work that plays well in its own right. Dramatically it is more coherent than the original, though some depth may be lost through the tightening of events and the loss of story detail. Nevertheless this remake is a stunning upgrade of the earlier material. Visually it is rich and dynamic; narratively it remains exciting, intellectually challenging and emotionally involving. Though much is left unanswered by the end of this first film, it should be obvious even to the uninitiated that there are many aspects of the plot and the mysteries surrounding NERV, the Evas, the Angels, the teenage pilots and the connections between them left to be unraveled, and that subsequent films are likely to be doing just that. It isn’t a matter of there being no answers (as those who have seen the original Neon Genesis Evangelion would realize); simply that gaining those answers is the whole point of the series. In fact, the “re-build” should not be seen as replacing the original show, but as part of an ongoing dialogue between Anno and his vision – and a rebuild that can be easily appreciated by those unfamiliar with Neon Genesis Evangelion and its developmental history. One way or another, this is a must for anyone interested in anime or indeed in involving, intelligent SF/fantasy cinema.

Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone is available in Australia on Blu-ray (and on standard DVD) through Madman Entertainment.

Giantess fetishists out there can prepare to get excited. Coming in 2011 (probably the second quarter) is Apocalypse, CA (written and directed by Chad Peter) — a dark comedy with cult status pretensions (not a bad thing) that includes an asteroid apocalypse and — though the connection is unclear at this point — a 300-foot woman. Don’t let your imagination get too R-rated though, guys. Sure, there’s several beautiful women, but however the giantess got embiggened, it seems from the trailer to have affected her clothes, too. So you can forget Attack of the 60-Foot Centerfolds (US-1995; dir. Fred Olen Ray). This one looks much classier than that.

Synopsis:

The world is doomed. Wry, cynical and full of off-beat humor, Apocalypse, CA is the story of ill-fated friends as they prepare for certain death at the hands of a massive asteroid, sex-inducing drugs, a three-hundred foot giant, and a horde of other unfortunate problems. Apocalypse, CA is an indie cult film of catastrophic proportions. (Facebook)

But it gets stranger.

Mysterious radio personality and apparent part-time genie, ‘Sassy Boots’ (Elizabeth Sandy) takes it upon herself to grant John Parsons (Nick Mathis) a few wishes five days before the world is to be destroyed by an asteroid. Only problem is John’s wishes aren’t exactly calculated, or even planned — the end result of which is a situation far worse than before.

Accompanied by his brother Hank (Alexander Cardinale), Hank’s friend Renee (Anne McDaniels) and John’s childhood crush Jacklyn (Erin Bodine), John and friends take the high road to Palm Springs — otherwise known as the ‘epicenter’, where the asteroid will first strike Earth. With a ‘bite the bullet’ approach, John and friends learn a little more about life and each other, all leading up to a wild climax of booze, fantasy, and guns-a-blazin’ desert adventure. (Press Release)

I guess we’re dealing with surreal comedy-drama here. At any rate, the trailer reveals a good-looking film with effective photography, a classy indie ambiance and decent SFX:

Apocalypse, CA stars Nick Mathis, Erin Bodine, Anne McDaniels, Alexander Cardinale, Elizabeth Sandy and Sarah Smick (pictures of whom can be seen in the Gallery below). However, here’s Anne McDaniels, Erin Bodine, Alex Cardinale, Elizabeth Sandy and Nick Mathis making a valiant attempt to squash themselves into one giant entity:

Visual effects are by artists Ryan Wieber (Ryan vs. Dorkman) and Teague Chrystie (The Pacific), Apocalypse, CA is the feature film directorial debut by Chad Peter (behind popular Internet short films, Sex, Drugs & Natalie Portman and Roleplayed). When asked for more giant-related details, Peters replied: “With the exception of the trailer, I’m trying to hide as much of the rest of the movie’s VFX as possible.”

Sources: Chad Peter; Press Release; Official website; Apocalypse, CA Facebook page; IMDb. Via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood.

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Jay Reiter: First of all,  Arise started off as a small four-page mini-comic. This was a school project that I just kept developing and picking away at. It was a LOT of fun and quite a few people seemed rather interested in Arise, so I stuck with it.

But it then became a film? How?

JR: Well, I needed a short film to direct as my senior project, so I just used the four-page Arise mini-comic as a template for the short film. I was originally going to film the Arise short film in 3D, as I have been quite fascinated by the prospects of 3D film making. Unfortunately, SCAD [Savannah College of Art and Design] was not equipped to film in 3D. Very frustrating. After several long talks with both the Chair of film and the Dean of film, as well as the Chair of the SCAD visual fx department, I realised that there was just no way that I would be able to shoot the Arise short in 3D. Regardless of this setback, I was able to broker a deal between myself and Fuddruckers of Savannah to provide almost all of the meals for the Arise short as well as gaining the limited rights to use music by Cannibal Corpse and Behemoth (international death-metal bands).

Teaser Trailer for Arise:

And now you have plans for it to become a franchise, right?

JR: Once the Arise short was completed, I immediately focused my attention on turning Arise into a franchise with a full-length comic, feature length film, action figures, video games and more. So far there has been much success with these prospects. A six-issue comic is on the horizon with art done by Cannibal Corpse artist Vince Locke and I’m in negotiations to turn Arise into the film it was meant to be: a full-length feature film in 3D.

I have just opened up the official Arise Store, where fans can purchase T-shirts, hats, Christmas ornaments, posters, and more. Every purchase of $20 or more will get a free download link for the Arise short film.

What about you? Where did you come from and where are you going?

JR: As far as myself and my background, I’m 31 years old, a recent graduate (Cum Laude) of the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia (majored in film, minored in sequential art), and a HUGE fan of zombie films and horror as a whole. Since graduating I’ve founded my own art studio, Satyrn Studios, as well as co-founding a movie production and visual fx company called Multiverse Multimedia. I fancy myself a writer/director and once Arise is finished, I plan to move forward with an epic fantasy/sci-fi franchise called Skull Hunters.

Looks like Arise is a franchise it will be worth keeping an eye on.

The Original Comic (click to enlarge):

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Comic Concept Art:

Images from the Film:

More in the Gallery below.

Music and More Sequences from the film can be seen on YouTube.

Credit List:

Arise Comic:

Writer – Jay Reiter
Pencils/Inks – Tradd Moore
Colors – Lauren Affe

Arise Short Film:

Writer/Director/Executive Producer – Jay Reiter
Producer – Allison Caroll
Editor – Zach Cost
Director of Photography – David Davis
Thanatos – James Daniel Curran
Dinah – Isabella Selin
Janet – Julie Collins
The Foreman – Andrew McClelland
Hector – Elmer Ramos
Special FX Makeup – Christopher Jean Soucy and Misha Buczek
Photos – Michael Kyriakides

• Source: Jay Reiter; Arise website; Satyrn Studios website
• Arise Store
• Written by Robert Hood   |   Research/Interview by Avery Guerra

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Skyline (US-2010; dir. Colin and Greg Strause)

I must have been living under a rock. When I saw the second trailer for this film I’d never heard of, and saw the huge invading spaceships, the slick production values and the really, really big monsters, I was definitely interested — but couldn’t understand why there’s been so little talk about it, even from my kaijuphile comrades. Hopefully there will be, because this looks good. It may be another War of the Worlds spin — but that’s not surprising as H.G. Wells created the template for such things.

Click to enlarge the poster below — and yes, all those fly-specks are people…

Synopsis:

In the sci-fi thriller Skyline, strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, drawing people outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth.

Skyline was directed by Colin and Greg Strause (of Alien vs Predator: Requiem fame) and stars Donald Faison, Eric Balfour, David Zayas, Scottie Thompson and Brittany Daniel. It was written by Joshua Cordes and Liam O’Donnell. Cordes’ SFX (if not his scriptwriting) resumé is rather impressive, listing Iron Man 2, Avatar, 2012, The Incredible Hulk, 4: The Rise of the Silver Surfer and much else besides, mainly as animation/digital supervisor. SFX for Skyline are being handled by the Strause Brothers’ own company Hydraulx, who provided visual effects for Iron Man 2, Avatar, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and 300.

Check out this trailer, especially (if you’re kaiju-inclined) the large pounding feet!

And here’s the first released trailer, which is a bit less impressive but a tad more informative:

Sources: Official website; IMDb

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