Review: Nazis at the Center of the Earth (DVD)

By DeadVida

As a group, the Rigor Mortis staff can bicker and geek-slam like maniacal kittens fighting over a cricket in the house. Dread rolls his eyes until we fear seizure, Spinal Cord raises her razorblade-like eyebrow, and Colin clears his throat with enraged dignity. But a magical thing happened – we agreed on something, and that something is Nazis at the Center of the Earth. It spread among us like a virus and we all agreed this was an amazing moment in cinema.

Personally, I went into it thinking, “This sounds ridiculous and Jake Busey is in it, hit play!”

Jake Busey is Dr. Adrian Reistad and that right there tells you that suspension of disbelief isn’t all that important to the filmmakers. The film opens with nubile young scientists encountering foul play and going missing at a base in Antarctica. A search party is formed in accordance with Horror Movie Plot Convention #367.

I feel the need to point out that if you can’t pretend to be cold while you are in “Antarctica,” you should probably consider another career. A five dollar hooker can fake it better. Then again, maybe all that hot, young blood keeps them warm.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a horror movie in possession of a good gimmick, must be in want of a plot. However, this movie has a gimmick that really makes the need for a plot irrelevant. Another universal truth is that Nazis look awesome in snow. These aren’t Nazi zombies, but they would totally go out for a beer with the guys from Dead Snow.

And so, our heroes victims find themselves in a secret underground base, complete with an entirely different climate – all the better for the actors who can’t be bothered to pretend to be cold.

There is expected and unexpected gore and requisite evil Nazi scientist. The film’s genius becomes apparent once the decaying/regenerating Nazis arrive, lead by Dr. Josef Mengele, and the WTF moments build into a crescendo that takes suspension of disbelief by the throat and leaves it for dead. I forgot Jake Busey was even in the movie. That’s right, the what-the-fuckary was so great that a Busey was cast into shadow.

Beyond that are spoilers and I’m not going to ruin the fun for anyone - for a change the title actually under-promises and over-delivers.

Rent it today. If you live in Chicago rent it from Brainstorm Comics and tell them Colin Cthulhu sent you.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2130142/

Review: Aftertime, by Sophie Littlefield (by DeadVida)

Aftertime
By Sophie Littlefield
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Luna
Pub Date: February 15, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0373803361
 

I’ve got a thing for well-written damaged characters, as well as unreliable narrators. They make you work a little harder, and for that they usually tend to force you into their worlds. In AFTERTIME the damaged physical and psychological worlds Sophie Littlefield has created are adroitly crafted.
 

Cass Dollar is a Grade A damaged character surviving in a broken world. She is a survivor in every sense of the word. She survived a childhood of abuse, an adulthood where she self-abused (with alcohol and sex), and now the Aftertime, filled with violence, death, and famine. She has been sober for a while, so she is aware of her addiction, but at the same time the reasons she felt the need to numb herself are still there, still demanding succor.
 

Creating a realistic world after cataclysmic events is harder than it looks, and Littlefield’s earth walks that fine line of familiarity and unknown. Bio-warfare has caused massive world-wide famine and ecological destruction with plant species of all kinds wiped out. This leads  the government to try and help by creating genetically altered plants with complete nutritive values. That goes awry and one of the plants, the blueleaf, leads to fever, madness, and cannibalism. Those who live past the fever are called Beaters and they are just one threat to the existence of the survivors.
 

The behavior of the Beaters is genuinely disturbing. Within the first few pages I realized that the content was going to offer some real horror when Cass watched a deranged woman appear to start to kiss someone. “The woman shook her head and only then did Cass realize she’s sunk her teeth into the man’s flesh and was tugging at it. Tearing at it. Trying to rip off a shred.” The Beaters like to eat flesh and usually start by eating pieces of their own. Nibbling at their own arms.
 

Cass awakens and struggles to remember what has happened to her. Miles from home, she begins a dangerous and solitary walk back to her small town and eventually meets survivors. Again, as a complicated character she vacillates between wanting to reject everyone who comes near her and wanting acceptance, between strength and self-doubt. Her primary goal is to find her daughter, whom she had already lost once in the Before. The four miles between the school the survivors have made home and the library where Cass last saw her daughter are dangerous, and the enigmatic Smoke offers to escort her. As is often the case, the society of the “living” is as dangerous as that of the zombies (not actually dead in this case, but still zombies in my book).
 

Smoke is a little too good to be true at times and slightly two-dimensional. I hope that in the subsequent books he is given as much complexity as Cass. Overall, this was a worthwhile, compelling read and a world I look forward to exploring further. Recommended.

Review: Feed, by Mira Grant

Feed

By Mira Grant

Review by DeadVida

Website: www.thefeedbook.com

I’ve been pondering this review for several days. Feed isn’t your typical zombie novel. In fact, the name is a clever nod to the content, which has less to do with flesh eating than one might think. No, this is a zombie novel of very little zombie action, not much gore, and a world that manages to cope with zombies.

Unlike most zombie novels, Feed takes place 25 years after the start of the infection. For the majority of the novel the zombies are largely secondary to the plot. It is the changes that the zombies have had on society, politics, and the media that are the focus. The universe and characters that author Mira Grant creates are so detailed and well-conceived that suspension of disbelief was a breeze. The meticulous research on virology, media, and technology pays off and is well used. Furthermore, the narrator is a woman whose power comes from simply being strong, smart and doing her job. No superhero antics, no silly lingerie scenes, no rape threats because the author didn’t know how to otherwise infuse drama, no random comments about her boobs, and no denying her gender. There aren’t pointless action sequences to keep the pubescent mind interested – yes, Jonathan Mayberry, I’m looking at you. There aren’t any goofy gimmicks that distract and detract from the slipshod writing – yeah, that’s a shot at you, Brian Keene. No, here you have actual character development and a writer that carefully crafts a solid back story alongside the current narrative.

Her post-infection Earth of 2039 was oddly realistic. In 2014, scientists developed cures for cancer and the common cold. Unfortunately when the two cures meet, the Kellis-Amberlee virus is created, which in turns causes people to get sick, die, and reanimate in order to spread the virus. The virus infects everyone; it is just a matter of if and when it goes active. Death is an automatic cause for viral amplification. Being bit, scratched, or bled on by an infected person will also cause someone to turn. Standard zombie stuff that remains effective in the right hands.

Set in 2039, the new world has changed beyond the obvious. There are zones of varying degrees of safety, Alaska has been abandoned to the dead, and mammals above 40 pounds are also carriers. As the outbreak in 2014 occurred, traditional news media “protected” people by denying what was happening. This caused the expected deaths, outrage, and backlash. Bloggers on the other hand got online and told the truth as they saw it and, in some cases, saved lives. By 2039, old media has been shoved aside and bloggers are the dominant media. Grant creates a comprehensive and well-realized description of this new structure.

The main protagonists are George (Georgia), a “newsie” blogger, Shaun, George’s brother and “Irwin” blogger, and Buffy, a “fictional” who writes poetry and provides their IT support. And yes, there are some well-utilized pop culture references in the book. The trip is selected to report on the campaign of a presidential hopeful. It seems like the opportunity of a lifetime for the young reporters.

There are elements of political thriller, but the world in which Feed is set makes this a zombie novel. The unfolding of the storyline and pacing offered a slow burn of tension that ultimately paid off. As I said, there is little in the way of zombie action, but when it does happen it is swift and merciless.

As I completed the last of the 600 pages I wanted more. I wasn’t ready to give the characters up yet. The good news is that this is the first book in a trilogy and book 2, Deadline, is set to release in June 2011. Highly recommended.

Review: The Vegan Revolution... with Zombies

The Vegan Revolution... with Zombies

By David Agranoff

Review by DeadVida

Curiosity got the better of me and I ordered this novel. I mean, other than interviews with Linnea Quigley and Attack of the Vegan Zombies (which really had nothing to do with veganism), I seldom see the chocolate and peanut butter union of vegans and zombies. That said, my expectations were dubious-to-low, given that this was a new release from Deadrite Press – the same people who brought you The Haunted Vagina and Ass Goblins of Aushwitz (no, really, go look it up http://eraserheadpress.com/).

That said, this was the best satire involving vegans I have ever read and the zombie outbreak here was fresh and original. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a long-time abolitionist vegan (who loves horror and has a sense of humor) and while reading the book I had to wonder who else the audience was other than me and two friends. I quickly went out and bought both friends copies.

Author David Agranoff doesn’t let anyone off the hook and for that I love him. He blasts the welfare “reforms” that have lead to the idea of “happy meat”, as well as PETA, freegans, and the “dreaded ex-vegan.” He also takes on Portland’s hipster culture (and their fucked up obsession with bacon) and Juggalos. While it is obvious he is an abolitionist, he also has some fun mocking Gary Francione’s ardent followers. That was the point at which this went from rollicking fun zombie novel to one of my favorite reads this year. Hell, he even derides the zombie-obsessed.

The overall premise is that the creation of “Stress-Free Meat,” as pushed for by welfarists and people who think exploitation can be “humane,” has unexpected consequences and meat-eaters begin turning into zombies. Set in Portland, arguably the vegan mecca of the US, the only people unaffected are those who abstain from all animal products. The protagonist, Dani, is recently vegan so she suddenly sees animal exploitation with unmuted horror. She works at a publishing house that is cranking out classic mash-ups with zombies. She begins to notice changes in her co-workers and suddenly she, her boyfriend, and the rest of the vegans in Portland are fighting for their cruelty-free lives.

The end of the book was more serious and didactic than I would have expected, but still appreciated. At 160 pages this is a quick read and one I whole-heartedly recommend.

Paperback: 160 pages

Publisher: Deadite Press

Pub date: August 30, 2010

ISBN:  9781936383139

Review: The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse!

The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse!

Review by DeadVida

I assumed this would be an anthology, and it is, but not in a traditional sense. I was expecting something straight-forward, offering apocalyptic tales by disparate voices, and while that is the case the framework actually holds together in a tight universe and offers a Rashomon effect of the end of the world.

The narrative starts with an email, which describes England’s current political state and the writer’s protest of the destruction of a church in South London. The church had been built by (a fictional) disciple of (the real) architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. Hawksmoor was responsible for designing and building churches all over London in the late 1600s-early 1700s. Modern theorists speculate about the possible Satanic or supernatural pattern these churches make when viewed on a map. When the ground near the church is excavated, something that had had a long standing prohibition, The Death is unleashed upon the world. It is suggested that this has happened before and that the Great Plague in the 1600s wasn’t actually bubonic plague, but zombies! I LOVED the mixing of fact and fiction here and also appreciated that exact answers are never provided because of the narrator’s view is all that we are ever given.

From there the story takes off and while this book will seem dated in ten years, I loved that the authors and editors used modern technology as a means for capturing the variety of individual experiences. Early on in the outbreak, we learn what is going on from emails, BMC (a fictional BBC-type company) internal memos, letters, interviews, medical reports, newspaper articles, voicemails, PDAs, and police reports. As the virus spreads and infrastructures collapse, documentations of experience shift to individuals instead of “official” sources. These include the diary of a 13-year-old girl (which seemed a tad too influenced by Anne Frank), Twitter chatter, texts, blog posts, pilot transcripts, uploaded video files, letters and more. There are some unreliable narrators, some nice twist endings, and even humor.  Some of the stories are downright creepy and gruesome.

With about 20 contributors, this could have felt uneven, but it doesn’t and it held my rapt attention straight through. In the end you are left with questions, which is how it should be. The apocalypse shouldn’t be a tidy thing. Recommended!

Stephen Jones (Editor)

Paperback: 512 pages

Publisher: Running Press

Pub date: December 7, 2010

ISBN-13: 978-0762440016