WWYD?

So I'm cross posting this from Zombie Squad.

On the Zombie Squad Forum, there's a 'What would you do?' section. It's mostly comprised of questions like, 'If the Zombie Apocalypse started RIGHT NOW, what would you do?' or 'What would you use as money/barter items in a post-apocalyptic world?'

There's also a great deal of tactical/tacticool questions related to self defense, Castle Doctrine, or weapon choice.

A while back, someone posted the simple question, 'You are sound asleep in your bed when you hear from somewhere in your house the sound of breaking glass. What do yo do?'

I normally don't do much posting in the WWYD? section, but this one got me thinking about my unique tactical situation. With the increase in home invasions and things, I actually thought about this one quite a bit.

Although it's quite detailed, here's what I posted:

1. Sleep through the breaking glass.
2. Wake up when my wife punches me because I slept through the breaking glass
3. Stagger out of bed. Naked. Not pretty, but there it is.
4. Yell at my idiot dogs who are probably yipping and baying to wake the dead.
5. Get up to a) investigate, or b) kick whichever idiot dog broke something.
6. In my half awake state, walk around the bed and proceed to trip over a pair of my wife's shoes because she can't seem to ever put them in the closet that's FOUR FRACKIN' FEET AWAY.
7. Curse loudly as I fall painfully into the elliptical, striking the only exposed metal part on it that ISN'T covered with drying clothes.
8. Yell at the madly barking dogs again, adding a threat of taking them to the fucking pound to be put to sleep if they DON'T SHUT UP!
9. Stagger through the darkened wife's shoe/mine field of the bedroom to the top of the steps.
10. Turn around because I've woken up some and realized I might want to get some protection if someone is breaking in. Of course why they'd want to over ALL OF THAT FUCKING BARKING DOWNSTAIRS I have no idea.
11. Grab the Glock 23 and return naked to the top of the steps.
12. Yell I have my gun and will shoot anything downstairs that doesn't belong there... or IS STILL FUCKING BARKING!
13. Proceed downstairs and realize that one of the dogs has knocked a glass off of a table. But I'm up, so let's go ahead and wag our stupid tails and run to the back door with an idiotic, "You're up, Dad! Might as well let us out!" expression.
14. Stand naked at the back door, with my Glock, thinking about shooting the dogs who have to sniff every corner of the damned back yard before peeing for all of two seconds and running back in.
15. Clean broken glass while keeping the idiot dogs out of the glass because, "Hey! Dad's down on the floor! It must be time to play! wOOt".
16. Shoot the dogs a murderous look because they have started barking again.
17. Go back upstairs.
18. Put Glock away.
19. Trip over several pairs of the wife's shoes getting back into bed.
20. Spend the rest of the night staring at the ceiling because now I'm wide awake.

Fucking dogs.

The Doctor Z. SHTF Zombie Apocalypse AR15 Build - Part 1

This is the first in a series of articles on how to build your own AR15 rifle on a budget. Not my usual type of article, but a public service regardless. Apropos also, when one considers that one needs to prepare themself for the impending zombie apocalypse (will it EVER get here?!?!). And, when the mindless, ravenous, moaning hordes of the undead are pounding on your door in search of your flesh -- you're going to want something to shoot them in the head with. So, in that vein...

The Dr. Zombie AR-15 project was begun because I decided that I really, really needed a go-to, shtf, zombie apocalypse gun.

I have several shotguns, and I am most comfortable with a shotgun... but I got the rifle bug a couple years ago and decided I had to have a combat rifle. The big problem, however, is my lack of funds.

I'm not a rich dude, and I don't have much in the way of disposable income. When I decided to get a new gun, I also agonized over WHAT to get. I initially decided to follow my shotgunner instinct and pick up a Mossy or Remington to tacticool up. I actually came close to picking up a Maverick 88 for $175, but was waylaid by some unexpected car trouble that necessitated my spending my hard earned and saved gun money. Fucking responsibility...

Anyway, after that, I continued to agonize as to what I could get once I saved up some more money. I vacillated between a new shotgun, an SKS, a High Point carbine, or an AK47. The common denominator with all of these was their cheapness. Don't get me wrong, I've always loved AR's, and they are the ultimate in kickass zombie killing tactical tool... but I always figured they were too expensive.

And that's true.

An off the shelf, middle to upper grade AR15 at the local gun store will run you $1k or more bucks. Much too rich for my cheap blood.

But then I did some research and saw that if you were frugal, and harnessed the full and evil power of the internet, you could build your own AR for almost half that. $600 or so dollars - spread out over a year or so - seemed suddenly attainable. My buddy Aaron W. encouraged me further when he built his own 10.5 inch SBR(short barreled rifle) and assured me it took little to no mechanical aptitude. Basically, if you can use a screwdriver, you could build an AR.

I was sold.

I took the plunge and decided to build my own. And so began the madness.

What follows is my detailed build notes for anyone interested in building their own rifle.

I had a few criteria to keep in mind as I did my build. They were:
- Cost - I wanted to build a rifle over a longer period, but in the cheapest possible way. In the age of the internet, this is easier to do than ever. If I could grab a piece here or there, when I could, and if it didn't impact the household budget, life was good. This is also known as the Theory of Keeping Mrs. Zombie Happy. If the CFO is happy, we're all happy.
- Quality - The other side of the equation was quality. I knew I wasn't going to build a top end Colt or Bushmaster, but I also didn't want to build a bottom of the barrel Olympic or DPMS-type rifle. So, the cost was balanced with the search for a mid-range (and hopefully more reliable) zombie gun. I think I did pretty well in this respect... but you be the judge.


The Build
I made the decision and had a $100 check for an article I wrote for a local paper, as well as another $50 or so in birthday money. So I pulled the trigger (pun intended), and went for it. I knew that, once I plunked down the money for the first part, I was in. It actually was harder than I thought...

My first purchase was a Spike's Tactical Stripped Lower Receiver. Spike's makes an awesome product and, around the holidays, they were running a great deal and offering their stripped lowers for $89. This was $50 - $70 cheaper than anything locally (there was still a little post-election panic pricing at the time) and, even considering shipping on an internet purchase, it was a deal almost too good to pass up. The lower receiver was the only part that qualifies as a true gun... so, once I purchased that, I had control over every other piece that I bought. An $11 shipping fee and a $25 FFL dealer transfer fee later, and I was officially in the AR game.

Spikes Tactical Receiver - this is the only part that is a 'gun', must be purchased through a licensed firearms dealer, and is subject to registration. Everything else is parts and can be shipped to your door.

A few months later, in January, I managed to get a little extra money and scoured the internet for a lower parts kit to begin the build. My local gun shops had DPMS parts kits for $66 and $75 dollars respectively. Calculating in local sales tax, I realized very quickly that the internet was the way to go. Thank the dark pagan gods I showed some self control and came home to do a Google search. I found probably one of the best deals an AR fan could hope for. The DPMS kits I found on the internet were all in the $60 range on the internet, but then I saw that AIM Surplus (an Ohio supplier!! wOOt for quick ship times! Booo for Ohio sales tax!)had CMMG lower parts kits for $65 with free shipping! Awesome!

DPMS is the bottom end for parts kits and their quality control, finish quality, fit, and even their ability to put all the parts in the bag is suspect and unreliable. For the price of a bottom end DPMS parts kit I got a significantly better quality and consistent parts kit. Yeah!

CLICK HERE TO READ PART II! - With a lower and a lower parts kit in his blue, undead hand -- Doctor Z. begins the build!  

For All the Wrong Reasons

So I saw this article this morning from Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

The corporate watchdog group, Corporate Accountability International (CAI) is pushing McDonald's to scrap Ronald McDonald.

Their reasoning is that Ronald McDonald is the deep fried doppelganger of Joe Camel and they argue that he is a cartoon character who was designed and created for the insidious and nefarious purposes of inducing children into lifelong struggles with obesity, heart disease, and other assorted ailments.



I buy that to some extent -- I mean Morgan Spurlock did a sobering job of showing what a steady diet of the grease-saturated filth McD's calls food does to normal people. Childhhod obesity and adult-we-should-know-better obesity is a problem. McDonald's has tried to make their food healthier. But a comic funnier than me once said it better when he said, "If McDonald's really cared about our health -- they'd fucking close."

The thing is - I think that CAI has it all wrong on several counts -- the main one being not that we should get rid of Ronald McDonald because he's a gateway drug to clogged arteries... we need to get rid of Ronald McDonald because he's a FUCKING CLOWN.

It's almost become a joke that clowns are creepy. It's a given that they're creepy. But where does this creepiness come from?

I blame several things.

First - we had old John Wayne Gacy. While John was running a side business of playing Pogo the Clown at weekend birthday parties, he was also gleefully killing and raping young men and boys, burying them in the crawl space beneath his suburban Chicago home, and doing all kinds of other certifiably crazy shit.



I can only imagine the conversations at the neighborhood barbecue...

Neighbor 1: Hey Gacy! What's that smell
Gacy (in creepy clown makeup): That's just the decomposing body of some 12 year old runaway I picked up at the bus station. I raped him, cut his head off to use as an ashtray, and buried him under that clump of pachysandra you're standing by.
Neighbor 2: Oh, John! You're such the kidder!
John then honks his clown horn and toodles off to entertain the neighbor kids with his dick out
Gacy: Hey kid, help me get the lid off of this bottle. Twist it! That's it! Oh yeah!

To make things even creepier, after Gacy went to death row - he spent 14 years painting picture after picture of CREEPY CLOWNS! The nutty bastard was obsessed with them.



So - that's the main turning point of when clowns became creepy. That was the 70's. It wasn't until the 80's, however, that clowns came into the truly terrifying role they play today.

One word - Poltergeist.



Poltergeist was an interesting horror movie in that it - despite being a modest budget, relatively tame, studio horror flick - still managed to achieve an almost iconic status in the horror genre.

It had Craig T. Nelson - who was like 25 in it and STILL going bald. It had that creepy lady with the squeaky voice and crazy stupid southern accent (I was going to write 'that creepy midget lady' but I think she was outside the range of a midget, and maybe a little too tall to be a dwarf, as well. And how weird is it that there's actually a height scale for your little people labels?!? As they're growing, do little people actually keep track of this? "Woot - I'm 4 feet tall! I'm a dwarf and not a midget anymore! Eat it midget, bastards!". But I digress...)

Granted - much has been made about the allegedly 'cursed' nature of the set. All kinds of people died during and after the filming - including the kid who played the daughter ("Go into the light, Carol Anne!")

Truthfully - Poltergeist wasn't all that scary... save two pivotal and important scenes. The first was when old Craig T. gets up for a midnight snack, takes a chomp out of a piece of chicken, and realizes it's squirming with maggots. Awesome scene, and I still think of it EVERY TIME I have a piece of cold chicken out of the fridge.

But that scene pales when compared to the scene in Craig T's son's room. You know which one I'm talking about, right?

It's the scene with the creepy fucking attack clown.



I honestly believe that that single scene scarred an entire generation. From that moment forward, clowns became something darker and more horrifying than they'd previously been. Before that, clowns were fucking celebrities. You had Emmett Kelly, Bozo the Clown, Clarabell from Howdy Doody (what a terrifying mindfuck THAT little wooden monstrosity of puppetry was!) and Soupy Sales.

Before Poltergeist, clowns are happy and cheery reminders of a circus or carnival that filled us with childlike wonder. After Poltergeist? Living incarnations of all that is wrong and evil.

Now - when asked in polls what scares people most - many will respond unconditionally with clowns.

This evil was further expanded on in film and literature by the likes of Stephen King (Pennywise the Clown from It)and movies like Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Don't even get me started on The Insane Clown Posse. Clowns are pervasive and they're out there everywhere with their ghoulish white faces and evil red noses.

And Ronald McDonald hasn't got the message that he's fucking horrifying. He's happily bopping along, selling his preprocessed burgers that taste eerily reminiscent of soilent green - unaware that he's traumatizing future generations. And that's the angle the CAI needs to take.



Screw this "he's not good for our cholesterol levels" crap. How about some "he'll eat our flesh and then, when done with that, OUR VERY SOULS!"?

There are honestly some things scarier than old Doctor Zombie. Believe me.

Things like clowns.

Seriously.

Clowns are harbingers of death and madness, and they hungrily wait for you under your bed.

I'm just saying...

Please Don't Let This Suck

I've been wooed before by a pretty trailer. I've been sucked in by the promise of better things time and time again. And I've been burned by the utter crap fests the two AvP flicks were...

But how can Morpheus versus Predators be wrong?!?

The trailer for the new Predator flick just hit the internet and it looks pretty cool. Granted, it's just a teaser and is short on substance -- but I'm holding out in the hopes that Robert Rodriguez doesn't totally bone it up.

Please please please don't let this suck.

Learning to Fly

It's been a long time since I've done a post that was political in nature. the thing is, I feel compelled to articulate my anger about the TSA's new insistence that they use full body scanners at airports.

My issue with them is not a modesty issue. I am very open about my body and have no problem with nudity. In fact, I think more people should see my penis -- if nothing but for the general good. I grew up in a family where nudity was commonplace and we all still pee and shit with the door open. I was raised to never be ashamed of my body and I'm not... even though I should be because it has gotten horribly doughy and scarred as of late.

But the issue here is - only tangentially - about nudity.

I understand people who are less open like myself having a problem with this. And I don't begrudge them that. In a free society, we should not have to submit ourselves to strip searches.



My largest issue though, has to do with my general distrust and cynicism when it comes to what the government is telling me. Shit just doesn't add up.

The TSA and Homeland Security are making a point of stressing that the scans are not saved or printed and they are done away with as soon as they are done. There is also supposed to be software that obscures the face of the individuals. I'd like to address these two points individually.

First - the idea of saved images... The TSA has gone to great lengths to stress that there is no way that these images can be saved or printed for later exploitation or shenanigans. They allegedly scan you, review them, and delete them. If you believe this, you are collossally stupid. Simple logic would dictate that, the TSA - as a de facto law enforcement organization (they claim they're not, but they well and truly have arrest powers and legal authority far exceeding most federal law enforcement officers)- needs to maintain a chain of evidence. If, for instance, the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazrad walks into Hopkins airport with a bomb strapped to one leg and a copy of The Necronomicon strapped to his gootch, I can guaran-fucking-tee you that - after they dogpile him and drag him off to jail - they're going to need to prove in a court of law why they beat him like a shithouse rat in a burlap bag.

The data and picture has to go somewhere. It's not anti-government paranoia to believe that they're not storing this info somewhere. It's data, and the government loves data.*



Remember that the next time your girlfriend, wife, grandmother, or 8 year old kid get forced through one of these. The assertion that the data is gone, never to be seen again, is a bald-faced fucking lie.

The second point regarding the software that obscures facial features? That's cool... but a simple Google search has found that non-US airports have not implemented these fancy-schmancy new scanners for three reasons: 1) They're butt-ass expensive, and 2)they are not willing to submit their citizens to invasive virtual strip searches, and 3)There isn't software available yet to obscure the identity of those passing through it..

Waitaminute! Heathrow can't obscure the faces, but the TSA can? Who's lying here? Oh wait! We're America! We have Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I'm sure we just had them write up a proprietary code for just OUR scanners. That's it, I'm sure the government would never lie to us to serve its own purposes.



The simple fact is that the TSA is lying to us and we should not tolerate it. There are those who will argue that a simple scan like this is the price we pay to ensure we don't die a horrible fiery death because some moron with a religious deathwish decided to get his little corner of paradise. They'll argue that we should stop being so uptight. They'll even argue that it's perfectly acceptable to have some unseen person in a room somewhere look at pictures of your naked kid.

And they'd all be fucking wrong.

The simple truth is, to say that TSA's history as far as civil liberty is poor is a gross understatement. They have too much power and are guilty of gross violations of civil rights. The no-fly list is a political blacklist that Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover would have salivated over.

I say that to justify this gross invasion of privacy and to believe the lies the government is telling you would be irresponsible at best, and willfully negligent at worst.

One final point, what sort of testing has been done to determine the levels of radiation these machines are blasting you with? As a cancer survivor, I find it horrifying that - outside of a necessary medical need - the government wants you to submit to a test that has the potential to cause damage to you at a cellular level. X-Rays cause pyrimidine dimers and replication errors to your DNA. This can lead to, among other things, cancer.

I frequently travel for work and have to endure the invasiveness of TSA policy every time. That said, I will NOT be submitting myself to these tests. It's a matter of principal. The argument that we are safer when we sacrifice our civil liberties and dignity is contrary to what makes us a free society, and, truthfully, the rhetoric I've heard from TSA and Homeland security is more in line with what I'd expect to hear from King George Bush the II's reign of idiocy; not that of our current administration.

But those disappointments are the topic of another post...

One final point: The worst part of all of this is the fact that Homeland Security and the TSA are using one underwear bomb as an excuse to implement the machines and further erode our civil liberties.... something they've wanted to do since last year and, now, they're capitalizing on this incident to push it past us. They are arguing that anyone who believes that full body scans are a violation of privacy (and - very validly - a violation of child pornography laws!)merely represents the screamings of a very vocal, but minor, lunatic fringe who doesn't understand the monumental help these scanners represent in the WAR ON TERROR!

Bullshit.


* - (Edited to Add: I began writing this on Friday 1/8. This morning, this piece was published by CNN. My only comment is that I am vindicated on some of the points I've made. That is all.)

Movie Review - The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009)

Rob Zombie’s movie efforts have truly been hit or miss. After the mental rape that was his remake of John Carpenter’s Halloween brilliance, I’ve begun to think that maybe House of 1000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects was an aberration.

I just finished watching his cartoon, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and I’m conflicted how I feel about it. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first I’ll give you an idea of what it’s about.

El Superbeasto takes place in Monsterland, a fantasy place created by Rob Zombie during his foray into comics. The move from comics to a cartoon seemed the next logical step, and far be it from Rob to pass up a chance to expand his empire (and provide yet another opportunity to let his wife think she’s got some talent.) El Superbeasto follows the adventures of the titular character, a washed up superhero/luchador whose ego is as big as his schlong. He’s a porno producer and, after a night of debauchery devolves into a monster attack, he does what any guy would do – he totters off to the strip club to pick up more easy women.

While there, El Superbeasto (voiced by Tom Papa) meets and falls in love with Velvet Von Black (who is voiced with deliciously profane gusto by one of Dr. Z’s favorite and lust-inducing actresses – Rosario Dawson). Before he can put the moves on her, though, she is kidnapped by Otto – the gorilla sidekick of Dr. Satan (Paul Giamatti). Dr. Satan needs Velvet Von Black (and the 666 birthmark on her ample, curvy ass) to fulfill his destiny and destroy the world. El Superbeasto decides to save her because he really has to have sex with her, so he enlists the help of his superhero step-sister, Suzi-X and her perpetually horny robot sidekick, Murray the Robot.



The plot devolves into absurdity and is the weakest part of this whole sordid affair. Does it really matter what happens?

What’s important here is that this cartoon is not Bugs Bunny and most definitely something to watch when the kids are around. It is profane, raunchy, and filled with more animated tits and nipples than anything this side of the average Japanese, hentai, tentacle rape anime.

And this is where the conflict occurs for me. I love the concept. Monsterland is filled with all of the Halloween trappings and characters that Doctor Zombie so loves. It’s like an Eric Pigors love fest. Ever major horror franchise and icon is referenced and it is good. (Ironically, there is a scene where El Superbeasto hits Michael Meyers with his car, killing him. I’m sure it was meant to be a cool nod to Rob’s involvement in his aborted attempts at Halloween, but all I could think was that maybe Rob was acknowledging the hit and run job he did on those movies. I could only hope that he has that level of self-awareness. But I doubt it. ) The animation is beautiful. It has the feel of the old Ren and Stimpy cartoons, but with a significantly higher quality that is beautiful to look at.


It had ghouls, demons, vampires, Nazi zombies, werewolves, hot rods and all the things that are guaranteed to make Doctor Z. shiver with ecstasy.



But the story and writing were terrible.

This, I think, is Rob’s fatal weakness when it’s come to his forays onto the silver screen. The humor and dialogue were meant to be edgy and crass and completely over the top. You almost feel that Rob was shooting for an anarchist’s response to the pressure to tame his other movies by going completely the other way. Instead, one is left with the feeling that a couple of immature twelve year olds who just cracked the profanity technology got a hold of a camera and discovered that they could say “Shit”, “Fuck”, and “Pussy” on YouTube. A lot. Like every other word. Like, when you’re at a loss for something to say, say a profanity, because that’s funny.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not offended by the profanity. Doctor Z. is an adult and I LOVE to fucking swear. But when it doesn’t help the story or is done simply because… it becomes uninteresting.

That said, there is some funny dialogue here and there. Everything that Rosario Dawson says is hilarious. And that’s what saves Rob’s poor script… the voice casting.

Rob has made a cottage industry out of employing his friends in every movie he does. There’s entire groups of actors out there who are making money solely because of Rob Zombie. And they’re all here --Brian Posehn , Sid Haig, Danny Trejo, Clint Howard, Dee Wallace, Bill Moseley, and even the epitome of nepotism – Rob’s wife, Sherri Moon Zombie.

Add into this some of the greatest voice actors out there today (including SpongeBob Squarepants hisself – Tom Kenny) and you have a cast that raises the inadequacies of the poor story to a level that makes it worth watching. I’ve already mentioned how brilliant Rosario Dawson was. The rest of the cast are incredible. Not being a fan of Tom Papa’s comedy – I was surprised at how well his voice matched the swagger and bravado that El Superbeasto embodied. Paul Giamatti is at his best when he’s being a bad guy, and he made Dr. Satan believable and awesome in his evilness.



In fact, and it really, really pains me to say this, even Sherri Moon Zombie did a great job. Her squeaky annoying voice was not so squeaky or annoying and - I think – this medium may be better suited to her negligible talents. What I’m saying is, she has a cartoon voice – and it works in cartoons. So there’s that.

Finally, we come to the score. Rob’s go-to music guy is Tyler Bates, and he wrote a variety of songs that were as expletive-laced as the rest of this outing. Every major character has a theme song, and the songs themselves are not anything brilliant (songs like this have been done before, and better, by the likes of Trey Parker and Danny Elfman) but there is some good here. When the soundtrack’s not singing about genitalia and variations on the word ‘fuck’, there are some high points. One of those high points is in the Nazi zombie theme. A surf punk sound, the song has an earworm effect that’s not wholly unpleasant. Also, during a cat fight scene between Velvet Von Black and Suzi-X where the end up all nekkid – the lyrics of the accompanying song assure us that “It’s okay to beat off to cartoons, the Japanese do it all the time. So beat off for America.”

That’s fucking funny.




Although, a quick perusal of the internet shows that there’s no actual soundtrack out there, I don’t think I’d buy it anyway. It’s not good enough for frequent listening and – truthfully – I’d have to hide the cd in my Jeep with my Tenacious D cd’s – where they too would never get listened to because my kids are always in the car.



So, overall, how did I rate Rob Zombie’s Haunted World of El Superbeasto? I actually rate it pretty high. It’s not high art, and it’s definitely not horror… but the horror references were gratifying and the voice actors made it a good time. The animation was top notch and – on subsequent viewings – I’m sure that I’ll see other things that will please me. In fact, when considering the totality of Rob Zombie’s oeuvre, and to be honest with myself and you, dear reader; I would place this film on equal footing with House of a 1000 corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. Which is light years past the Halloween attempts. Is it worth it to buy it? Absolutely.

So that’s good right?

DOCTOR ZOMBIE’S RATING: 3 OUT OF 5 CHOMPED BRAINS

A Momentous Occasion...

...or not.

You be the judge.

It's December 3rd - and that means that my newest novel, A Darkness Within, is now available at your favorite online book retailer. So get out there and start spending some of that hard earned money you've specially earmarked for the Yuletide holiday!

If you purchase a copy, and live in the Cleveland area, let me know. I'll sign it for you. I won't even ask for anything in return... or at least not anything too important. (What I'm saying is that I don't want anybody's firstborn - I can barely handle my own. But I can be bought with Guinness, Count Chocula cereal, or gift certificates to Big Fun on Coventry. Oddly, that's the same stuff that's on the good Doctor's X-mas list. Hmmmm....)

So - anyway. Buy a copy now. I like the Amazon, myself...

Movie Review: Trick 'r Treat (2008)

I've written about this movie before. I first saw the trailer for it on the DVD release of Frank Miller's 300 and was immediately blown away. Unfortunately, this film languished on a shelf at Warner Brothers for years.

I had high expectations for this film simply because of the awesome, creepy trailer I saw... so you can understand my frustration with the time it took to get an eventual release on this film.

In addition to my excitement, there was quite a bit of buzz on the internet and the various horror film websites I haunt on a regular basis. It seems everyone was chomping at the bit to see this movie... and the hype was that it was all good.

When considering this, you can understand my anticipation and my dread that this movie would - once released - actually suck. That's the problem with being a jaded horror fan. I can't count the number of times I've been taken in by a slick trailer or poster, been seduced by the hype of a movie that's promised so much... and delivered so little. I was anxious, but excited, when it was announced a few months ago that Trick 'r Treat was finally being released on DVD this month.

So I received my copy yesterday in the mail and, after Mrs. Zombie crawled into her warm bed, I cracked open a Great Lakes Brewey Nosferatu Ale, turned off all of the lights save the plastic jack o'lantern in the front window, and loaded up the DVD player.

I can say, unequivocally, that this movie EXCEEDED my expectations!



This film was worth the wait. It is one of the most stunningly visual films I've ever seen. The standard against which I set movies that try to capture the true 'feel' of Halloween is relatively high and rare to find. I can think of only a few films that capture the incredible visuals and feelings of Halloween that we all long for (or at least us freaks who LIVE for Halloween long for). Of course, there's John Carpenter's classic Halloween; and perhaps Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. But beyond that, there's not much.

And that's what makes this movie so spellbinding and so deliciously Halloween-y. Writer and Director Michael Dougherty is our kind of people, dear reader. He loves Halloween and understands what the holiday is about. And that love and understanding have created an homage to the holiday that is unlike any I've ever seen.

The film revolves around Halloween night in the town of Warren Valley, Ohio. The town is devoted to Halloween and, every year, turns it into a festival and huge party. It reminds me of the chaos of Halloween at Ohio University, which I experienced in my wayward college days. The plot revolves around four stories that occur on that spooky night and a terror that stalks the quiet, leaf-littered streets.

It's hard for me to go too deeply into the plots of each vignette simply because it would spoil much of the surprise. There's the high school principal with a dark secret (played by the always incredible character actor, Dylan Baker), 4 women on the hunt for fun and excitement with their virginal younger sister (played by the hot and lust-inducing Anna Paquin), five kids who look for a haunting good time in their search for a tragic past-Halloween accident/urban myth, and the terror a crotchety old shut-in (played by the incomparable Brian Cox) faces as the horrors of Halloween and his past clash together and find him in his cold, empty house.

All of the stories, as they take place in a town I wished I lived in, are interwoven and the tales cross paths again and again as the timeline moves back and forth through the night's events.

Tying all of the stories together is one of the creepiest characters ever, Sam. Child-sized, the character is chilling and appealing at the same time. Wearing grubby red pajamas and an oddly disturbing flour sack, Sam wanders in and out of the stories like a strange, ghostly vision. The mask is horror perfection, reminiscent of the vintage Halloween art of an earlier age crossed with the viscerally jarring creepiness of David Cronenberg's 'face' from the film adaptation of Clive Barker's Nightbreed... he's quite possibly one of the most iconic horror monsters since Freddy Krueger wandered down Elm Street with super-sized arms.


This movie was so right and so perfect. It was really the little things that made it so great. From the scenes that were perfect representation of the Halloween of our dreams, to the perfect use of jack o'lanterns in critical scenes. This film had something for everyone. From an allegorical little Red Riding Hood tale with a sexy twist, to the dark nature of Halloween pranks. Hell, there was even a different sort of striptease at one point that any horror movie lover could get turned on by... and believe me when I tell you that Dr. Zombie found it sexy as hell!



The scenes were incredible. The stories were deliciously horrifying. The pacing was dead on.

One could not ask for a better horror movie.

The test of a good horror movie, at least for Doctor Zombie, is whether or not he'd buy it and watch it again. In fact, there's a small group of movies that I feel it necessary to watch around Halloween every year. They get me in the mood for the season, and reaffirm everything I love about Samhain - everyone's favorite Pagan holiday. As the weather turns cooler, and the leaves change into bright, fireworks of color before falling like burned paper, and the smells of leaves, and ripe apples, and jack o'lanterns burned too close to their lids by candles fills the windy, dark October nights - I pull out the chosen few movies that epitomize the wicked awesomeness that is All Hallow's Eve. Those movies include, among others, the classic 1941 Wolfman, John Carpenter's Halloween, Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, George A. Romero's holy trinity of Night, Dawn, and Day of the Dead, and now... Trick 'r Treat.

Yes. It's that good.



Oh... and I'm not usually one for mentioning DVD Special Features, at least as far as my reviews go, and this film is really lacking in them. But the one that it does have is absolutely breathtaking in its presentation. Entitled Seasons Greetings, it's the short animated feature that Michael Dougherty did back in 1996. It would become the genesis of this film and shows the beginnings of the creature Sam. It is amazing in that it has ZERO computer animation and was hand-drawn and animated by Dougherty himself.

It is a labor of love and pain and shows that Dougherty has the Halloween and spookiness credentials to make such an incredible movie as Trick 'r Treat. Simply put, the dude is our kind of guy, he gets it, and truly understands what makes a good horror movie.



I cannot stress enough! Go get this movie! Turn off the lights, and watch it before Halloween. Or... watch it on Halloween night. I wouldn't be surprised if a creepy kid with a big head shows up at your door, though. Or, at least, the doorway to your nightmares!

DOCTOR ZOMBIE'S RATING: 6 out of 5 CHOMPED BRAINS (Hey! It's my fucking scale! I can do it however I want!)

Movie Review - Zombieland - 2009

Dear, sweet Pagan gods! You are great gods, and while not necessarily benevolent, have showered us in mana and goodness. Thank you. Thank you for bestowing upon us a mainstream zombie movie of such unequaled awesomeness!

This movie is the sort of zombie movie that I hope for everytime I rent a zombie movie, have one dropped off by Netflix, or catch a late night zombie-fest on SyFy or Chiller.

Namely, a zombie movie that has the right mix of horror, comedy, gore, and sheer badassedness.

Obviously, I LOVED this movie.

Woody Harrelson, who has been guilty of playing the same sort of character again and again, has found - in my opinion - the role he was made for. He has the perfect level of bravado, irreverence, humor, and pathos in this role. His character, Tallahasee, is the zombie killer we all want to be in our own secret zombie apocalypse fantasies (everybody else fantasizes about the Zombie Apocalypse, right? Everybody has their escape plan, right? I've always argued that the hardest part about the zombies rising up from the dead will be actually pretending that I'm not excited about it!) His irascibility knows no bounds, and he treats the zombie apocalypse like his own personal extended self-help session. He gleefully kills zombies with banjos, garden shears, car doors, and anything else he can get his hands on. And yet, offsetting this manic violence, there are moments where he makes you care for the character at an emotional level rarely seen in a horror film.



Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Columbus,is the perfect foil for Tallahasee... and is the perfect partner in what is one of the best zombie movie buddy team-ups since Shaun and Ed from Shaun of the Dead. His neurosis and OCD-based adherance to his "Zombieland Rules" is the perfect counterpoint to Harrelson. Eisenberg also inhabits the role of Columbus in a way that transcends the genre label of a horror movie. He's an incredible actor who manages to make us believe he is the shy, introverted, videogame playing dork his character is. He's a geek savant, and all geeks (myself included) can't help but root for him to get the girl and become the hero.



Emma Stone, who plays the conniving, scamming Wichita -watches over her sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) with a convincing mother-like devotion... and is hot to boot. Both girls did an incredible job and we fall in love with her just as Columbus does. Wichita is smart, sassy, sexy, and the exact girl you'd want to meet up with at the end of the world.

This movie was perfect on so many levels. It hit all the right notes. The gore was superb, the effects were kick ass, and the story was spot on. There's a cameo midway through that bumps this film from a simple, well executed zombie film to a film of almost unimagineable geeky/fan boy coolness. Especially cool are the intro shots showing zombie chasing down and devouring hapless victims.

This movie was great. I love this movie. Fuck The People vs. Larry Flint... Woody Harrelson deserves to get another Academy Award nomination, and subsequently win an Oscar because this is the best role he's ever done.

If you haven't seen this... GO! If you can't get someone to go with you, call Doctor Zombie. I'll fucking go again!

DOCTOR ZOMBIE'S RATING: 5 OUT OF 5 CHOMPED BRAINS!!!

Movie Review - Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 (2009)

Really, Rob. Really?

Look, I gave you the benefit of the doubt when you re-did the original Halloween. I expected that I found it so underwhelming because you tried too hard to please too many people. Whether it was the fans, or the producers, or the MPAA, or your own vision; the simple truth is that you couldn't please everyone.

And the fact is - you've shown some actual aptitude and some truly unique talent in your earlier movies. As I wrote a week or so ago, I had my concerns about your second visit to Haddonfield, and I hoped that my trepidation was unfounded.

I now see that I was deluding myself.

Halloween 2 is a terrible, terrible movie and you've squandered any goodwill I might have felt for the brilliance of House of a 1000 Corpses or The Devil's Rejects.

This movie was just awful. It was disjointed and had very little continuity. Which is laughable when one considers that most slasher flicks - the original Halloweens included - had plot holes you could drive trucks through.

All this movie was was a vehicle for Zombie to, once again, showcase the easy-on-the-eyes, but unable-to-act, Sherri Moon Zombie. It was exactly what I feared.

The story, of course, takes place one year after the events of the first film. It starts out promising enough... but quickly devolves into a blurred and indistinct mess punctuated by images of Sherri Zombie in a white dress, or talking in her stupid baby voice, or wandering around with a white horse and surrounded by an eerie and ethereal light.

Scout Taylor-Compton resumes her role as Laurie Strode and now lives with Sheriff Brackett and his daughter Annie (the only other survivor of Michael Meyers first attack). She's now living in a room decorated in a style that can only be described as nouveau crack house. She's changed from the preppy, cute, fashioable teen she was in the first movie to a stringy haired, white trash pastiche wearing clothes that one would see on a homeless bag lady. She is haunted by nightmares of Michael Meyers and, of course, is plagued by the feeling that he just might be alive.



And of course Michael is.

He has been apparently living as a hobo and has gone unnoticed in Illinois. Funny really, considering every law enforcement agent in the state has been looking for him. Right. That makes sense... because seven foot tall, massive, psychotic hobos blend in to the scenery in your average, local farm community.

Whatever.

It's not a spoiler to say that Michael returns, causes havoc, and kills a lot of people. What's missing is a good story line or an attempt to make it engaging.

Sherri Zombie returns as Michael's mother, but is now a ghostly apparition that encourages Michael to kill lots of people and find his younger sister. And this is the part that makes me the most angry about wasting my time on this movie. The story line with the ghostly Momma Meyers did not, in any way, add to the film. You could have just as easily left it out and, in fact, it may have helped to do so. But we can't do that because, you know, then Sherrie Zombie wouldn't have had a job and wouldn't have felt like she contributed to the family finances. It must be hard living off of all Rob's record, movie, and art money. Poor Sherri! Hell, this was like charity.

Too bad I hate charity.

And the Mamma Meyers story made less sense in the grand scheme of things because - in addition to Michael seeing her - so does Laurie. Which makes no sense. The only way I could see explaining it is that Rob is alluding to the supposed psychic link that existed between Michael Meyers and his niece Jamie in Halloween 4 and 5. Cool points if he did, and nice allusion to Danielle Harris' role in the earlier films -- but I truthfully don't think Rob intended to do that. I may just be giving him too much credit.

Additionally, there were some small cameos that did little to add to the film. Malcolm McDowell's Dr. Loomis is wandering around doing a book tour and only comes to Haddonfield in the last 5 minutes of the film. The only bright spots were Danielle Harris and the incomparable Brad Dourif... but neither of them could do much with the shit they were given.

Overlooking the glaringly awful story and nepotism that gave Sherri Zombie another shot at movie money -- the actual horror was minimal at best. Instead of giving a moody, dark, horror film (which Rob has shown he can do)... we're left with a movie that assaults the senses with violence that has little to no value in the overall story. And - in contrast to the puerile story and writing - this is the only area in which Zombie excels. I've said before that Rob has a way of filming death that makes it seem real and visceral, and that's still true. There is a brutality and veracity to the murders that Zombie captures, and it makes this a movie not for the squeamish. For gore-hounds like Doctor Z, though, it's like mana from heaven. Too bad it doesn't redeem the other inadequacies. When you look at the excellent carnage when compared to the myriad other deficencies,it's just not enough. You are left with brutal scenes that I would normally love, if I weren't so angry about the poor story and acting.

On another positive note, kudos to the Foley artists. They more than earned their pay. Every kills sounded awesome -- if only it wasn't the same thing over and over again. Namely, Michael standing over the victim and stabbing them repeatedly off screen.

What other travesties does this film deliver? Oh, where to begin...

How about the fact that Michael Meyers spends most of the movie without his mask on. Or that he makes sound everytime he kills someone. We here him grunting and growling as he viciously stabs the 15 or 20 people he randomly kills. So much for the mythology, Rob. Way to go.



I am so disappointed with this movie, and on so many levels.

The sad thing is that Rob's first pass at the Halloween franchise was a better film than this... and that movie was mediocre at best.

As I told a friend earlier - watching this movie was like spending two hours having my brain stem and the ancillary reasoning centers of my brain assaulted over and over with a shit covered stick. How can someone - who is such a fan of horror and all associated spookiness - get it so wrong? I don't know which is worse... that Rob felt it was necessary to expose us once again to the sing-songy awfulness that is his wife, or that he's so sullied the legacy of what is arguably the greatest horror movie series of all time.

If I were John Carpenter, I'd sue Rob Zombie for gross negligence, total lack of respect, and general jackassery.

DOCTOR ZOMBIE'S RATING: 1 out of 5 Chomped Brains

Movie Review - Feast (2005)

I received a copy of this film from my fellow horrorhound, Count Dante. He was surprised I hadn't seen it yet and, truthfully, I'm surprised I hadn't either. I remembered hearing good things about it when it first came out, but it somehow managed to slipped under my radar.

Boy! Was I negligent or what?!?

Feast, in a word, is fucking awesome. It is a horror movie that does what I wished so many low budget films did more often;, namely, throw the old conventions and cliches out the window...

The third and final installment in Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's Project Greenlight series, this film was directed by John Gulager. His father, famed horror and b-movie actor Clu Gulager (Burt, from Return of the Living Dead), plays one of the characters and is part of an ensemble cast that does a great job with the script and the overwhelmingly frantic pace of the film's action and terror.

The story revolves around a group of feckless losers all hanging around a desert bar on one lonely night. Their night and plans of drunken idiocy are interrupted when two characters called The Hero (Eric Dane),and the Heroine (Navi Rawat) arrive with several gruesome, filthy, ravenous monsters hot on their tails. The poor denizens of the bar spend the rest of the movie fighting to stay alive.



From the opening scene, this movie is relentless, offensive, gory, and overwhelming in its violence... and Doctor Zombie would have it no other way. This movie has everything a horror fan could dream of from gore to horror to humor to Henry Rollins. That's right... Henry Fucking Rollins. And Rollins plays one of his best roles yet... a nebbish traveling salesman who spouts self help and inspirational mantras like Al Franken's titular character, Stewart.



Also add Jason Mewes to the mix and you've got some cameo casting that can't be beat.

The writers, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, wrote a masterpiece here. They took the tired genre staple of a group of people trapped and fighting an unknown evil, and made it fresh. They also blatantly took the conventions to task. In fact, most of th characters don't even have names. They are known simply by their archetypes. Rollins plays Coach. We have the Hero and the Heroine. We have Beer Guy, Bozo, Tuffy, Bartender, and The Veteran. It's almost as though the writers did this in order to say, "Don't even bother to learn their names, because they most likely won't be around long enough for you to attach yourself to any of them anyway."

The blood is awesome (no poorly rendered CGI here!) and there's buckets of the stuff. Barrels of the old red. Christ, there's swimming pools of it! The monsters are great and add the perfect mix of terror and humor to the situation. As I said before, no depravity is left unturned. The monsters are hungry, dangerous, insane, and remarkably lusty. One particular scene stands out - a smaller, immature monster gets into the bar and tears the face off of a patron. Not satisfied with having killed the poor person, the little filthy beast then proceeds to hump the face hole in full view of the remaining survivors.



That's the kind of dark, evil, and decidedly hilarious stuff that you won't see at a PG-13 showing of Prom Night. Hell, if some shaggy, toothy beast shagged Paris Hilton in Wax Works, I might have actually seen it. But no, it (I'll just have to settle for the poorly filmed One Night In Paris for that, talk about TRUE HORROR! But I digress...)

This is the sort of movie that Hollywood needs to do when they're looking to add to the horror genre. Enough with the shitty remakes of classic horror films, enough PG-13 crap, and enough Japanese ghost stories that aren't scary to the average, jaded American horror fan. Of course, the nature of this film's production gave it something of an advantage, and the fact that Affleck and Damon chose it for Project Greenlight is a testament to how cool they, and the idea of Project Greenlight, truly were.

Simply put, this is the sort of movie that would send the morons who run the MPAA screaming into the night, clawing at their eyes in an attempt to punish the soft orbs for subjecting them to such depravity.

And that fucking rocks.

You must see this film! Words can't describe the awesome!

DOCTOR ZOMBIE'S RATING: 5 out of 5 Chomped Brains!!!

Quick Interlude

Hello, dear readers!

Just a quick note to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you (and you can hide from me under the bed all you want, I can STILL hear your frightened, harsh breathing).

I'll be out of communication for the next few days as myself, Mrs. Zombie, WolfGirl and Zombie Boy travel to the dark and eldritch woods of northern Michigan to... camp! That's right! I'll be spending several days convalescing on the shores of beautiful Lake Huron in a pop-up. Cleveland will be murder-free as a result of my absence, but I expect Michigan is unprepared for the carnage that inevitably and inexorably follows the good Doctor.

I'm excited because the summer is drawing to a close and - soon - autumn will be here. And that means one thing... Halloween! That wonderful, dark, perfect holiday that all good evil undead scientists look forward to.

And speaking of Halloween coming soon, remember that August 29th will be bringing Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 to the movie theaters. I'm up in the air about how this film's going to go... I absolutley lurve Rob Zombie as an artist and director, but I was a bit underwhelmed by his initial pass at John Carpenter's masterpiece, Halloween. and some of the previews haven't assuaged my misgivings. The biggest problem? The return of sherry Moon Zombie as an apparent ghost who eggs Michael Meyers on.



That's right, it looks like Rob has managed to kill his wife in one movie and then resurrect her in the second. Now far be it from me to begrudge the dude getting his girl some movie parts. The dark gods know she's not getting any other offers. And I'll be the first to admit she's hot as hell. If I was Rob, I'd be showing her off like it was my job... but the sad fact is that she doesn't need to be in every one of your movies, bro. Seriously.

I'll obviously be at the theater opening weekend to see it, but my cringe meter is beeping.

We'll just need to see.

In other Rob Zombie news, it looks like there's going to be a direct to DVD release of his The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto. This animated work is based on the comic character he created with Steve Niles and looks to be fucking awesome! It even has the SS Werewolves of the Third Reich that he first brought to life in the Grindhouse trailer of the same name. Finally, he'll soon be starting on his Tyrannosaurus Rex after his next studio album. It sounds like he's going for a super-violent grindhouse style pick of his own. It looks to be interesting.





Of course it's scheduled to be released in 2011 and IMDb lists only one actor.

Sherry Moon Zombie.

Of course.



Another film I'm completely and totally excited to see is District 9. Opening this upcoming weekend, it looks to be an awesome movie. Of course, I've been suckered in by a pretty trailer before -- but this has the feel of a great idea and a great film. We'll need to see. Unfortunately, as I'll be fending off enraged, human-flesh hungry sasquatches (sasquatchi?) in the wilds of Michigan, I'll need to wait until the following weekend to sneak out and see it. Maybe I'll make a night of it and catch Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds as well...

Finally, I wanted to throw some love towards Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether from Northwestern Ohio. I've been doing movie reviews for them for some time and they're some great, groovy, kooky cats who are doing some awesome and deliciously morbid work. I haven't given them a plug in forever, and realized it was long past due. Go to Tarr and Fether's Psycho Cinema - Doctor Zombie commands it!

Also - remember to visit and heap adulation on the awesomeness of The Daily Tourniquet. The mad genius who runs things over there - Jeff Connolly - continues to provide great fiction, poetry, and general social media madness; all at the tips of your gnawed, bloody fingers.

The power of Zombie compells you! The power of Zombie compells you!


That's all for now, dear readers. If you live in the Cleveland area, I'll see you in a week or so. If you live in Michigan, hope that I don't show up at your doorstep with my bag of pointy, sharp, rusty tools and a big smile.

Toodles!

Movie Review - Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

It has been said that - for the true horror film devotee - all paths eventually and inexorably lead downward to the depravity that is Cannibal Holocaust. For my part, I had been trying in vain to get a decent enough copy of it for the last couple years. Finally, I managed to snag an uncut Director's version of the film and it is every bit as disturbing and deliciously depraved as they said.

Italian Director Ruggerio Deodata's classic splatterfest is a must see. There's no arguing that. It is to this movie that the recent spate of cinema verite-style horror can trace its roots. Taking the idea of reality based film making to an extreme still unmatched, Deodata gave us a film so disturbing that it is still banned in a significant majority of countries, including Great Britain, and has the distinction of being the most banned movie of all time.

When it first came out - much like the uproar that The Blair Witch Project engendered - there was some confusion about whether or not it was a true film or an artistic film of questionable taste. In fact, many of the bans of this film were because it was believed to actually be a snuff film. The director and producers in fact had to answer to the law, faced arrested, and were made to produce the still alive - and not actually cannibalized - actors as proof that it was not a document of murder.

The film tells the story of the recovered footage of a group of documentary film makers who attempt to film previously undiscovered native people in the Amazon rain forest. They disappear into the vast jungle never to be seen or heard of again. The film is told from the perspective of an anthropologist who tries to track down the original filmmakers and fails, but recovers the footage from a tribe of aboriginal natives.

Approached by the same network that financed the original trip, the professor films his odyssey as well and - once he returns to New York - begins to piece the lost footage together. What he finds is horrifying and - ultimately - unusable for its sheer brutality.

Looking at this film from the perspective of a jaded horror fan, the actual gore and violence of this movie does look contrived. The makeup effects and alleged violation of the corpses throughout are obviously faked - but I watched this movie some thirty years after it was made. In 1980 - when it came out - it must have been grotesquely horrifying. I fully see how this could be seen as a snuff film and, while I don't agree with the banning of it, I understand the reaction by the more conservative members of society who first behold the film in all of its cannibalistic, murderous, rape-filled glory.

This film has everything. As I just mentioned, there's murder, rape, cannibalism, and gore galore. But, at its heart - and this is the part that those who would rather make it illegal miss - it shows that we and our so-called civilized morality are the true horrors in a primitive world. It's an indictment of the press and documentary film-makers who will do anything to tell a compelling story. And the missing filmmakers turn out to be far greater monsters than the cannibals they encounter in the bush.

When taken in its entirety, this film is a valuable part of horror film history in that it breaks boundaries never before crossed and does so unabashedly. Interestingly enough, the murders and mutilations shown are gruesome and undoubtedly disturbing to more sensitive viewers - but they are not the most disturbing aspects of this film. In fact, there's a genital mutilation scene that's actually really well done, as is the iconic scene of the woman impaled on the log. But, the scenes that cause the most discomfort and outcry from the non-horror fans who watch it are undoubtedly those were they actually show the killing and gutting of real animals.

The director himself has disavowed his use of animal slaughter in the movie. He said if he could do anything differently, it would have been to remove those scenes. In fact, many later versions have deleted these scenes. Thankfully, the version I saw retained these images. I understand the squeamishness casual viewers might feel when watching the death of the animals, but I myself had no problem with it. Most likely, it is because I grew up hunting and have done similar acts while gutting a deer or skinning and gutting a rabbit.

All in all, this is a great movie that, like I said in the beginning, should be viewed by all horror fans who consider themselves true horror denizens. It is a film that pushes all boundaries and is de rigeur viewing for all gorehounds like the good Doctor hisself! One could look upon it as apex where splatter and grindhouse meets the excess of 1980's slasher films. It mixes shocking images of gore and violence with biting social commentary of Romero-like proportion. See this movie if you can! Doctor Zombie commands it!

DOCTOR ZOMBIE'S RATING: 5 OUT OF 5 CHOMPED BRAINS.

Movie Review - I Am Omega (2007)

Sci-Fi Channel (or SyFy - whatever) is trying to kill me. Seriously - is SyFy, or Chiller for that matter, the mucky, fly covered, smelly bottom of the port-o-john as far as cable movie stations go? It is a source of constant amazement and never ending bewilderment to me as to where and why they get so many truly awful movies. AMC does a great job of showing great and classic horror on Friday nights and at Halloween time. USA and Spike get first rate horror and sci-fi movies that are sometimes mere months out of the movieplexes.

And SyFy gets crap like I Am Omega.

I do need to be honest in that I am a huge fan of the source material for this film. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is probably one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time and is quite probably THE singular piece of survival horror fiction that all modern apocalyptic fiction can trace its roots to. Indeed, until Cormac McCarthy's brilliant, poignant, and bleak The Road came out - I'd argue that no book has come so close to capturing the horror and loneliness of being the only survivor in a world that's moved on. Sadly, it is against this backdrop that the movie adaptations of this novel continue to disappoint.

The best version - so far - was the first attempt back in 1964. Vincent Price's The Last Man on Earth was a brillinat masterpiece. Charlton Heston did a decent job in The Omega Man, but the story was damaged by his ego, his overacting, and the poor script quality. I Am Legend, with Will Smith, was decent - but the poorly rendered CGI and lame ass ending ruined an otherwise cool film.

And then we have I Am Omega. A typical film from the low budget film distributer, The Asylum, it attempts to make money off of the release of a better known film (in this case, the aforementioned I Am Legend). The Asylum's business plan involves your going to the local video store and discovering that the new release of the coolest sci-fi or horror movie is all out. This will force you to maybe take a chance on the similarly named, similarly themed film that is alphabetically close to the movie you came for. Essentially, The Asylum is the equivalent of the generic version of your favorite vegetable at the grocery store. But, instead of a black and white label, they spend an assload of money on really cool DVD cover art that has nothing to do with the enclosed film, but is designed to lure you in.

And I'm cool with that, to an extent. I won't begrudge companies making low budget, indie horror or sci-fi films. In fact, if we didn't have low budget horror films, many great classic films would have never been made. Where I have an issue is when the films are just horrible and are put together purely for the money they can make. If you don't have a love for the genre, don't get into it. That's all I'm saying.

Enter I Am Omega. Mark Dacascos plays Renchard, the last man left alive after a plague hits the earth and turns the rest of the population into zombies. But he's not the last guy. There's some other military guys who show up to bully him into helping them rescue a woman trapped in the local city. The woman, by the way, may have the cure. Or something like that. I really reached the point of not caring about 20 minutes into it and watching it became less about enjoying a zombie movie as it was a stubborn refusal to turn it off - a test of wills, really. An endurance contest between myself and the mental anguish and pain this movie induced in me. I felt the need to see who who would blink first because I NEEDED some horror that night. Something, anything was better than reruns of Dog the Bounty Hunter. The thing is, I'm not really sure who won... but I suspect that I am now somehow dumber for having watched this movie.

I wanted to like this movie. Really. Like I said, I am a fan of the source material. And changing the monsters in it from vampires to zombies had the potential to be good. And I even kind of like Mark Dacascos (He practically channeled Brandon Lee in the TV series version of The Crow). But the effects, production, makeup, and dialogue were so bad as to be almost painful. This movie is a prime example of why non-fans shouldn't be allowed to make or produce horror films.

What else sucked? Oh let me count the suck...

The direction. Mark Dacascos did his noble best with what he had, and I'm sure he needed the money to make a condo payment, but the direction was just atrocious. I don't know if the director went to film school, and neither did I for that matter, but I'm pretty sure there MUST be a rule that says if you use repeated 360 degree camera whip pans, there needs to be some pay off to them. They are great at building tension, but it jangles the nerves in the back of my undead skull to see them repeatedly and then have NOTHING happen. The beginning had potential as it showed how the the character of Renchard was losing his mind, but any meaningful character develoment was thrown out the window as soon as the opportunity for karate kicks, explosions, car chases, and an endless slew of action movie cliches presented themselves.

And I am so goddamned sick of seeing zombies in movies who are little more than guys in jumpsuits, with some black makeup and karo syrup blood smeared on their face. Running around shrieking does not a zombie make. Especially when the main character can defeat them with a well placed over-exaggerated karate kick.

And don't even get me started on the racist, stereotypical military characters. They were, for all intents and purposes, walking bags of cliche with lines that nobody would ever say in real life. And if they did, they most likely would deserve a garrotting.

The saddest part is that the only truly redeeming thing about this film was the very small chuckle I emitted when I saw that the main character was driving around town in a ...wait for it... Olds Omega.

So - the final verdict? Bad story, stupid script, criminally negligent direction, painful acting, and a complete and utter waste of time. Yes it had zombies, but even that could not bring redemption. The very valuable life lesson learned here? Stay away from late night movies on SyFy. In the name of all that is holy, stay away!

DOCTOR Z'S RATING: 1 out of 5 Chomped Brains