261 days of Horror, Day 4: Undead
Jan. 4th, 2007 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiUndead. 2003. Written and directed by Michael and Peter Spierig. Distributed by Lion's Gate in the US.
I’ve got an ongoing love/hate relationship with zombie movies. I adore the concept, and many of my favorite horror movies – whether straight horror or horror/comedies – are from the subgenre. But there have been some fantastically bad and misguided zombie movies, especially during the last few years. Having been burned by more than a few of these, I approached Undead, a much-hyped Australian zombie flick, with more than a little trepidation.
Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Undead is up there with Slither as one of the great horror-comedies of this century.
Much of that is because of one great character, psychotic backwoods fisherman Marion. He’s like an unholy mix of Trinity (from the classic westerns) and, well, Trinity (from The Matrix). Oh, and he punches zombie fish.
But let’s start at the beginning.
In the very, very small Australian town of Berkeley, former beauty queen Rene has just discovered that she owes a lot of money thanks to debts she’s inherited from her parents. All she wants to do is get out of the small town (and she’s even willing to hitch a ride with a local sleaze to do so). We also meet local pilot Wayne, his pregnant girlfriend Sallyann (a pageant runner-up to Rene who is horrified that Rene’s rope-twirling tricks won the contest), timid constable Molly, and her asshole partner Harrison.
We’re also treated to a few shots of locals, and in two cases, we see meteorites streak to earth, burning holes through two of the town’s older residents. Needless to say, they quickly become the first of the film’s titular characters. The zombie invasion has begun!
We get a few minutes of herd-thinning – Wayne’s mum, notably, has her brain removed by a zombie punch – and then we get our first glimpse of Marion in action. When Rene is attacked by her now-zombified driver, Marion steps in and shoots the guy with a three-barreled shotgun (see the box image at Amazon for a good look at the gun itself). He’s like the shotgun-toting version of Rick Nielson! Although with a lot more hair.
Rene eventually makes her way to an old house, just as it starts to rain. Instead of being typical horror movie rain*, this stuff starts to burn, and Rene manages to doff her outer layers of clothing as they start to smolder. As she wanders through the house, she discovers that it belongs to Marion, who turns out to be the town loon, a man who claims to have been abducted by aliens years ago. He calmly explains to her that these are the end times, and goes back to opening up some canned food.
(Quick aside: While this is happening, we also get a glimpse of some small bugs and animals being raised to the skies by some sort of tractor beam. More on that later).
The rest of the survivors soon make it to the house (with the best line going to Harrison: “When I was a kid, we fucking respected our parents; we didn't fucking eat them!”). The zombie follow on their heels and we get our first taste of Marion’s gun fu, with acrobatic flips, gun tosses in the air, and spare guns seemingly pulled out of the same space in which the Highlander immortals keep their swords**. Eventually, though, our heroes are forced to retreat to the basement.
And then, the zombies force them to retreat even further, to the bomb shelter below the basement. Remember, kids – lunatics are always better prepared for things like zombie invasions.
Our heroes take a breather in the bomb shelter (and we get a few character-defining moments, including the first flashback to the day that fisherman Marion encountered zombie fish!). But anytime you’ve got a pregnant woman in a zombie film, you know something’s going to happen. In this case, Sallyann goes into labor, so the heroes need to fight their way out. Since it soon becomes clear that the zombies have overwhelmed the main floor of the house (no matter how many cool gun tricks Marion pulls), they make their way to the second floor, where Marion shoots through the floor and they drop down into the garage and escape in his van.
Now things get weird.
When our heroes make it to the edge of town, they discover a huge wall, hundreds of feet tall, surrounding the entire town. Harrison, psycho that he is, decides to climb the wall, while the smarter heroes decide to wait at the bottom.
Just as Harrison gets near the cloud layer, the burning rain starts again, and Rene attempts to convince Molly to run to the van, only to realize that the constable is now a zombie! Rene (along with Wayne and Sallyann (whose contractions have stopped; yes, we’ve seen the first known Braxton-Hicks contractions in a zombie flick)) heads for the van. Harrison hits the cloud layer near the top of the wall and gets a jolt of lightning for his trouble, falling to his death next to his former partner.
Marion, being the gentleman that he is, doesn’t realize that Molly has turned, and attempts to rescue her from the burning rain. Instead of the zombie we’re all expecting, he sees her kneeling peacefully next to Harrison, and all of a sudden, a bright light shines down, and Molly is called up to the heavens, just like those smaller animals earlier. As the heroes drive away, they see an alien standing in front of the wall, staring at them.
Yeah, it’s not a typical zombie flick.
The four survivors plan to hit Wayne’s airplane hangar to get over the wall, but first head to a convenience store for supplies. Some quiet conversation occurs between Marion and Rene (our last chance at character development), and shortly thereafter, we get another zombie attack. This battle features some of the best moves I’ve seen from Marion (my favorite being the use of a shaken can of soda to kill a zombie).
The convenience store battle snowballs into the climactic conclusion, which involves the aliens, zombies, rope-twirling (which turns out to be a damned useful skill, after all), and unexpected nudity. I won’t spoil the details; this is one worth seeing all the way through, and the resolution and final endings are both delightful.
No amount of words can describe how much fun the character of Marion (played by an actor with the wonderfully improbable name of Mungo McKay) is. Like a more subdued, less cocky Ash, he leaps into battle with relish, improvising weapons, performing gratuitous tricks (throwing two guns in the air, pulling and firing two more, then catching those original guns to shoot at even more zombies), and imparting his zany expertise on how to defeat the zombies.
The rest of the cast turn in admirable enough performances (given the B-movie nature of Undead, the expectations aren’t overly high, of course; only Rene, played by Felicity Mason, is a particularly meaty role), but it’s twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, who wrote and directed the movie, who really make this work. Clearly influenced by Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson’s early work, they bring the same low-budget work ethic found in Evil Dead and Dead Alive, but take things in a completely different direction that firmly establishes their own vision.
Definitely track this movie down (it’s playing on Showtime again this weekend); it’s worth it.
*Horror movie rain occurs whenever a lead character has to run from something evil, but isn’t usually dangerous in and of itself.
** Up their bungholes.
I’ve got an ongoing love/hate relationship with zombie movies. I adore the concept, and many of my favorite horror movies – whether straight horror or horror/comedies – are from the subgenre. But there have been some fantastically bad and misguided zombie movies, especially during the last few years. Having been burned by more than a few of these, I approached Undead, a much-hyped Australian zombie flick, with more than a little trepidation.
Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Undead is up there with Slither as one of the great horror-comedies of this century.
Much of that is because of one great character, psychotic backwoods fisherman Marion. He’s like an unholy mix of Trinity (from the classic westerns) and, well, Trinity (from The Matrix). Oh, and he punches zombie fish.
But let’s start at the beginning.
In the very, very small Australian town of Berkeley, former beauty queen Rene has just discovered that she owes a lot of money thanks to debts she’s inherited from her parents. All she wants to do is get out of the small town (and she’s even willing to hitch a ride with a local sleaze to do so). We also meet local pilot Wayne, his pregnant girlfriend Sallyann (a pageant runner-up to Rene who is horrified that Rene’s rope-twirling tricks won the contest), timid constable Molly, and her asshole partner Harrison.
We’re also treated to a few shots of locals, and in two cases, we see meteorites streak to earth, burning holes through two of the town’s older residents. Needless to say, they quickly become the first of the film’s titular characters. The zombie invasion has begun!
We get a few minutes of herd-thinning – Wayne’s mum, notably, has her brain removed by a zombie punch – and then we get our first glimpse of Marion in action. When Rene is attacked by her now-zombified driver, Marion steps in and shoots the guy with a three-barreled shotgun (see the box image at Amazon for a good look at the gun itself). He’s like the shotgun-toting version of Rick Nielson! Although with a lot more hair.
Rene eventually makes her way to an old house, just as it starts to rain. Instead of being typical horror movie rain*, this stuff starts to burn, and Rene manages to doff her outer layers of clothing as they start to smolder. As she wanders through the house, she discovers that it belongs to Marion, who turns out to be the town loon, a man who claims to have been abducted by aliens years ago. He calmly explains to her that these are the end times, and goes back to opening up some canned food.
(Quick aside: While this is happening, we also get a glimpse of some small bugs and animals being raised to the skies by some sort of tractor beam. More on that later).
The rest of the survivors soon make it to the house (with the best line going to Harrison: “When I was a kid, we fucking respected our parents; we didn't fucking eat them!”). The zombie follow on their heels and we get our first taste of Marion’s gun fu, with acrobatic flips, gun tosses in the air, and spare guns seemingly pulled out of the same space in which the Highlander immortals keep their swords**. Eventually, though, our heroes are forced to retreat to the basement.
And then, the zombies force them to retreat even further, to the bomb shelter below the basement. Remember, kids – lunatics are always better prepared for things like zombie invasions.
Our heroes take a breather in the bomb shelter (and we get a few character-defining moments, including the first flashback to the day that fisherman Marion encountered zombie fish!). But anytime you’ve got a pregnant woman in a zombie film, you know something’s going to happen. In this case, Sallyann goes into labor, so the heroes need to fight their way out. Since it soon becomes clear that the zombies have overwhelmed the main floor of the house (no matter how many cool gun tricks Marion pulls), they make their way to the second floor, where Marion shoots through the floor and they drop down into the garage and escape in his van.
Now things get weird.
When our heroes make it to the edge of town, they discover a huge wall, hundreds of feet tall, surrounding the entire town. Harrison, psycho that he is, decides to climb the wall, while the smarter heroes decide to wait at the bottom.
Just as Harrison gets near the cloud layer, the burning rain starts again, and Rene attempts to convince Molly to run to the van, only to realize that the constable is now a zombie! Rene (along with Wayne and Sallyann (whose contractions have stopped; yes, we’ve seen the first known Braxton-Hicks contractions in a zombie flick)) heads for the van. Harrison hits the cloud layer near the top of the wall and gets a jolt of lightning for his trouble, falling to his death next to his former partner.
Marion, being the gentleman that he is, doesn’t realize that Molly has turned, and attempts to rescue her from the burning rain. Instead of the zombie we’re all expecting, he sees her kneeling peacefully next to Harrison, and all of a sudden, a bright light shines down, and Molly is called up to the heavens, just like those smaller animals earlier. As the heroes drive away, they see an alien standing in front of the wall, staring at them.
Yeah, it’s not a typical zombie flick.
The four survivors plan to hit Wayne’s airplane hangar to get over the wall, but first head to a convenience store for supplies. Some quiet conversation occurs between Marion and Rene (our last chance at character development), and shortly thereafter, we get another zombie attack. This battle features some of the best moves I’ve seen from Marion (my favorite being the use of a shaken can of soda to kill a zombie).
The convenience store battle snowballs into the climactic conclusion, which involves the aliens, zombies, rope-twirling (which turns out to be a damned useful skill, after all), and unexpected nudity. I won’t spoil the details; this is one worth seeing all the way through, and the resolution and final endings are both delightful.
No amount of words can describe how much fun the character of Marion (played by an actor with the wonderfully improbable name of Mungo McKay) is. Like a more subdued, less cocky Ash, he leaps into battle with relish, improvising weapons, performing gratuitous tricks (throwing two guns in the air, pulling and firing two more, then catching those original guns to shoot at even more zombies), and imparting his zany expertise on how to defeat the zombies.
The rest of the cast turn in admirable enough performances (given the B-movie nature of Undead, the expectations aren’t overly high, of course; only Rene, played by Felicity Mason, is a particularly meaty role), but it’s twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, who wrote and directed the movie, who really make this work. Clearly influenced by Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson’s early work, they bring the same low-budget work ethic found in Evil Dead and Dead Alive, but take things in a completely different direction that firmly establishes their own vision.
Definitely track this movie down (it’s playing on Showtime again this weekend); it’s worth it.
*Horror movie rain occurs whenever a lead character has to run from something evil, but isn’t usually dangerous in and of itself.
** Up their bungholes.