Undead Backbrain

The full-length trailer for Elias and BiFF JUGGERNAUT’s poignant new vampire comedy, Dead Sucks, has been released via Fangoria.

Check it out here.

During the beginning of November George A. Romero has been engaged in the filming of his new zombie film, the second in the re-jigged series that re-imagined his vision of the zombie apocalypse with Diary of the Dead. This one has not got an official name yet (though some sites are referring to it as “Island of the Dead”), but the following poster has made an appearance at the American Film Market (AFM).

A second page, reproduced below thanks to Dread Central, features the following plot synopsis:

On a small island off the coast of North America, the dead rise to menace the living. The islanders can’t bring themselves to exterminate their loved ones, despite the growing danger from those they once held dear. A rebel among them hunts down all the zombies he can find, only to be banished from the island for assassinating his neighbors and friends.

On the mainland, bent on revenge, he encounters a small band of survivors in search of an oasis on which to build a new life. Barely surviving an attack from a mass of ravenous flesh-eaters they commandeer a zombie-infested ferry and sail to the island. There, to their horror, they discover that the locals have chained the dead inside their homes pretending to live ‘normal lives’ — with bloody consequences.

What ensues is a desperate struggle for survival and the answer to a question never posed in Romero’s Dead films: Can the living ever live in peace with the dead?

• Source: Dread Central and Quiet Earth via Avery

What if the Justice League of America got turned into zombies?

These model kits (available here) do for DC characters what Marvel did for their own characters in the wonderfully splendid Marvel Zombies series of comics.

Good stuff!

• Source: via Craig Neufeld

Give me a B, give me an R, give me an A, I, N! What d’we want? BRAINS! When do we want ‘em? NOW!

BrokenSea.com and Grindhouse Audio has obliged for Halloween and you can download a series of free audioplays from the website, one of which is full of gory zombie mayhem!

An over-caffeinated cop arrests a blood- and gore-covered High School bus driver wielding an ax… and parts of bodies line the rain-soaked highways, cemeteries, and surrounding areas. He has all the evidence he needs… open-and-shut case — or so the cop thinks. But he didn’t count on a military semi truck transporting highly toxic secret bioweapons. Nor did he give much credence to the bus driver’s claim that ZOMBIE CHEERLEADERS were out to get him…

Join the carnage… But beware of the ZOMBIE Cheerleaders…

It goes for about 30 minutes, comes with abundant warnings of adult content, and as it’s marked “ep1″ there will be more gore to come, I assume….

Oh yeah, and it’s free (apart from the cost to your sanity).

• Download here.

The site includes lots of other audioplays of a less-than-New Age nature.

• BrokenSea Halloween Specials

• Source: Andrew Macrae

A crew on a remote construction site are plagued by a series of bizarre mishaps. As the incidents turn more and more savage, it becomes clear that the sole link to the deadly events …is a 50 ton bulldozer.

Crawler (US-2008; dir. Sv Bell)

Despite some earlier skepticism — in terms of Crawler’s originality (in comparison to Sturgeon’s “Killdozer” and the movie that came from it) and its validity as a candidate for the giant monster list — I think the film is going to get a big tick from me on both counts.

The director, Sv Bell, has commented to Kaiju Search-Robot Avery that, yes, the bulldozer does have those tentacles as seen in the poster above. And when you touch the thing or are touched by it you receive weird burns like the ones the guy in the picture directly below is suffering from.

This subsequently becomes an infection that turns you into something like a zombie.

So it seems that the bulldozer is a large, shape-shifting entity that creates zombies! Cool!

The film will be out in November. I look forward to seeing it.

• Source: Sv Bell via Avery
• Official website
• Trailer on the Critical Mass Entertainment website

Ted Is Dead…  But That’s The Least Of His Problems

Here’s a very funny Aussie film that aims, with all due poignancy, to document what life is really like for a socially awkward zombie.

Undead Ted (Australia-2007; short [7 min.]; dir. Daniel Knight)

Summary:

Edward Grey’s life has been on the downward spiral ever since the day of his death. Not only must he deal with rising damp, bone decay and rot - but also the fact that he is now jobless, penniless and without girlfriend. A documentary crew follows Ted around for a day providing intimate insight into the heart-wrenching world of the walking dead. Life can bring many challenges… but death can be a bastard. (Official website)

Thanks, Avery.

So your friend is a zombie. How would you handle the problem? With group therapy?

George’s Intervention (US-[in production]; dir. J.T. Seaton)

George’s friends have gathered for an intervention… George’s intervention. You see, George is a zombie. And his friends are hoping to convince him to stop eating people and to enter ‘zombie rehab’. It’s morally wrong to eat people. Plus, it’s unhealthy. The meat is raw. And who knows where these people have been.

With the help of a professional interventionist, George’s friends confront George regarding his ‘addiction’. But, over the course of the night, George’s friends begin to disappear. Have they given up hope that the intervention will be successful? Or have they become dinner?

• Trailer:

• Source: Fangoria
• official website
• myspace site

The upcoming horror comedy Bollywood Zombie (Canada-[?]; dir. Maninder Chana) has been getting a fair amount of scorn from those websites that have report on it.

But I reckon it’s about time we had singing zombies in saries! Bollywood is the biggest movie industry in the world, and though this flick isn’t genuine Bollywood, I’m sure those responsible (Toronto-based movie house Cinesavvy) will be intent on giving it the colourful and lively appearance of the archetypal Bollywood film that we in the West have flickering away in our backbrains — and that seems pretty cool to me.

Synopsis:

What seems a match made in heaven goes terribly awry when a wicked Aunt tries to sabotage her niece’s wedding day. Adding a secret potion to the buffet, she inadvertently turns the bride and her guests into zombies. Now the bride’s sister, the groom, his best man and the shady Chef have to figure out a way to save the bride before she becomes a permanent member of the living dead.

So I say, bring on the singing, dancing undead! It’s bound to be more energetic than 50% of the zombie comedies out there.

• Source: The Quiet Earth via Avery; 24FPS

A zombie grabbed at him from behind the breakfast cereals. He actually smelt it before he saw it – a nasty mix of rotting meat, rancid blood and something else, something deep and sorrowful. He ducked away, thinking that maybe it was time to get back to the ute. He’d left it running for a speedy getaway, but having lured the dead into the shop and away from the ute, he now had to circle back while he could get to it safely.

At that moment a door opened just in front of him and a scared face peered out. It had spiky hair and bloodshot eyes. “Mr Smith?” it said. “Is that you?”

“Who else? You the dork I talked to on the phone?”

“Sure.” Relief flooded over the kid’s face. “You came to rescue me!”

“I came for Freddo Frogs. Where d’they keep ‘em?”

Not that there was time now. A bunch of shuffling undead meatbags was approaching down aisle 3, moaning and slavering. Ellis grabbed the kid, dragged him out of the supply room and shoved him toward the front of the shop. “Get in the ute!” he yelled. “And make it quick!”

The kid tried, Ellis had to give him that. But his fear overruled any dexterity he might have been able to muster. He crashed against a shelf loaded with cans of baked beans, slipped – and a zombie tumbled onto him from a side aisle. The kid screamed, thrashing out at the dead woman chomping on his neck. Ellis started forward to drag her off, but the trolley got in the way and before he could get there half a dozen other zombies appeared. They all got stuck into ripping the kid apart. It was a feeding frenzy.

This is an extract from my latest zombie story, “Zombie au Gratin” — written for a charity book with the title Scary Food, which Cat Sparks is producing for the Paul Haines fund.

For those who don’t know, Paul Haines is an excellent and much loved Australian horror writer, who is currently fighting cancer and needs a significant amount of money for special treatments to save his life. The SF community in Australia has gotten behind the attempt to raise the money he needs, driven by Cat Sparks, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely and Tansy Raynor Roberts. For more information go here.

The idea behind Scary Food was to produce a slim volume of stories and disgusting recipes featuring food that can only be described as horrific. Imagine a recipe called Zombie au Gratin and you’ll get the idea — though some of the recipes get worse than that and they’re not fiction! Paul Haines’ own stories veer toward the disgusting and so such a book seemed like a fitting project.

Here is the excellent cover designed by Cat Sparks:

With stories from some of Australia’s top horror writers and a kitchen-load of yucky recipes and other culinary delights from renowned experts in the field, this is a book that is so much more than a charity giveaway. You know you want a copy.

It is to be launched and will be available for purchase at Conflux in October. The book will sell for $20 and the entirety of sales will go straight to the Paul Haines’ Fund. If you won’t be at Conflux, you can buy the book online here.