One A Week Reviews #51: Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane

What other Christmas present would Big Lug Land have for you other than the review of a truly campy, trashy, and fun movie? It's a lump of fun for your stocking!

I love awful movies set on airplanes. Be it any of the four Airport flicks, Turbulence one, two or three, Snakes on a Plane, Murder on Flight 502 or even Skyjacked, dumb airline thrillers are a particular thrill for me. If anything it's a wonder I waited so long to see this. Maybe it's just because I never fly on any of these giant two-story wide-bodied jets... I fly Southwest (I'm not famous, no worries about getting thrown off).

Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane is actually a smart conceit. It confines a ravaging, throat-ripping attack like this in one of the ultimate isolated environments. There's literally nowhere to go, and nowhere to land. Most zombie films turn into sieges, anyhow. You couple that with the fact that a) most people hate flying and b) planes are claustrophobic, and you have the makings of a good, high-concept, Saturday night potboiler of a flick... and "Zombie Hijacking" pretty much qualifies as "high concept."

This one opens up mid-flight with an Apartment 3-G trio of stewardesses excited to go to Paris, a criminal cuffed to a cop, and a group of scientists transporting one of their own who's stored in an icebox in the cargo hold... because she's infected with a ZOMBIE VIRUS. When the pilot, who's of course on his last flight before retirement, powers through some rough weather, the turbulence winds up opening up the techno Coleman cooler, she pops out looking and acting normal, but quickly goes the Full Brain-Munching-Monty. You can't blame her after her guard shoots an Uzi at her in the plane's cargo hold (which resembles my basement more than any airplane I've ever been on).

(Yeah, it gets ugly from here on out...)

31 Days of Horror #17: Friday the 13th: Part 6: Jason Lives

 Another night out with my main-machete-man, Jason Voorhees, and he's back to the boring, driven killer zombie and mama's boy that I first fell for, lo those many moons ago. Another helping of Friday the 13th action for you during the 31 Flavors of Horror month of October.

My little bonus anecdote is towards the bottom of the review and it regards Jennifer Cooke. Our leading lady wound up relaxing after her time in the trenches with a cup of Sleepytime, my most favorite of teas. Check it out!

31 Flavors of Horror #17:
Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives

Ok, now these dates are just getting predictable. This is our sixth "Friday night" together, and you brought your mother for the first 3...

Is the passion waning? After the "Dead Fuck" of part four and dead fish that was part five, you gotta bring your A-game if you wanna spend this Friday night with me, Jason. Are you up to it?

Well, at least this one looks better. Films three and five were pretty damn bland and ugly and four wasn't much of a winner. A newer, blonder Tommy -this time the dishy Thom Matthews of The Return of the Living Dead and Albert Pyun's muse -and Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter ditch the asylum and go dig up Jason's coffin - an act the movies always make look much easier than it'd really be. I think the editing helps. So they crowbar up the lid and reveal one gruesomely cobwebby, rotted, worm-riddled bag of bones. Well, Tommy wisely chooses to grab a big iron bar and stab the crap outta that corpse (Horshack wisely observes "oh, shit") and chucks the mask in. Then shit gets hokey. Two big lightning bolts hit that iron bar, and our decayed corpse proves to have beautifully un-decayed brown eyes.

(Lots of Spoilers follow, and if you had psychic powers like Tina, you'd know that...)

31 Flavors of Horror #6: Resident Evil: Afterlife

 I know what you're thinking:

"Another one?" "Four in a row?" "Tedious, Jay. Tedious..." 

Well, for whatever it's worth, if you're going to watch them - and why not, they're fun - you may as well see 'em all, and see 'em in sequence.


This one adds a couple of pretty boys to the line up of pretty, slender gals who kick zombie butts, and was released in 3D... so there's that... anyhow, I promise I'll split up full-series reviews in the future, mmmkay?

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #6:
RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE

Paul W.S. Anderson returns to bring the style over substance for the 4th Resident Evil. Right from the get go he brings green-glass candy lit city buildings and fashion victims standing in the Tokyo rain.

I'm not sure about the "Four Years Later" title we get as, at one point in movie three it's stated it's been five, but no matter. Not important. No need for logic here considering our story is set in the largest, most impossibly impractical underground Hive yet. It'd be easier to just build it and slip in in sideways under Tokyo than drill this puppy out

Let's get to the important stuff? How's are Alice. This go round she's sleek and sexy, clad in black leather and all Ninja-style. Her balletic, slo-mo slash-fest of an introduction is worth watching twice. This time Alice is also an army of clones. She's her own comic-book style sexy Suicide Squad and it's a pleasure to behold. The CGI is impeccable this go round and bullet-time has thankfully been given enough of a rest that it seems fresh again.

The special effects fest really is gorgeous - an opening that sets up the rules, then breaks them, returning Alice-Prime to her humanity, eliminating much of the Umbrella Corporation, and then taking us to the survivors of Arcadia. White the third film's desert parched look pleased the eye, this installment adds color and the softness of nature in places. It also let's Jovovich play something a little closer to a human being again, though she's still primarily an ass-kicker.

(Lots of spoilers ahead) 

31 Flavors of Horror #5: Resident Evil: Extinction

 Another bloody video game zombie movie with waify chicks who kick ass in combat. It's a thing. I kinda love it. This one, like the rest, won't make you want to adopt a Rottweiler, nor will it make you want to visit Las Vegas. 

It will, however, make you hope you're a gorgeous, genetically-engineered model-slash-actress-super-ninja in the event that there ever IS a zombie apocalypse. Because, let's face it... I wrote this and you're reading this, meaning, my darlings, the chances that we are BOTH first-line cannon fodder in the event up an uprising of the undead are probably pretty stinkin' high...

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #5:
RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION

The first thing you notice is that, like all of us, Milla Jovovich's face has changed over the years since the first Resident Evil (2002). It seems leaner, longer. It suits her well.  The second thing you notice is they re-framed a shot from the first film to excise her nipple from the proceedings...

We roll through a quick rehash of some footage from the first film so we can get to the third point. The third? Eww, there's a whole bunch of dead Alices and a slew of parched, dessicated zombies in the middle of the desert. Is that what happens when you eat the silica gel packs in shoe boxes? They even take a piece of footage from the last film, the CG satellite shot, and re-dress it for a parched Earth. I appreciate the frugality.

At this point in the storyline - and I've no idea if it echoes the video games - the very Earth is dying, and Alice roams the vast, parched wastelands looking for survivors. The sleek steel of the first film and jittery city grime of the second are replaced here with sun-bleached, parched lands of the American west. The red dress swapped out for a long duster. The sweaty browns remind one of the look of another grim third film, Alien 3. The first gang she encounters are a family of survivors in the Sawney Bean tradition of scavengers. Sadly, at this point, Alice's humanity has morphed into something along the lines of a "super-soldier" (her acrobatic ninja skills now supplemented with telekinetic skills) and she makes short work of them and their devil-dogs. Seriously, they devil-dogs are MORE than a little overplayed at this point - though the devil-ravens are beautifully cinematic touch.

(Lots of spoilers ahead) 

31 Flavors of Horror #4: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

This big month of horror flick reviews carries on with another in the Resident Evil series. While I didn't have that much I wanted to say about the first flick, I get a little more in-depth here... along with some sidetracking about outfits and the evils of smoking... but sidetracks are about par for me, so I just go with it.

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #4
RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE 

Number two in a possibly endless series of Milla Jovovich movies where she kicks zombie butts, Apocalypse picks up right where the first one leaves off. This time, instead of letting us in with no knowledge like the amnesiac Alice, we pick up multiple plot threads with Dr. Ashford and Jill Valentine: a cop in a tube top who shoots four people, albeit zombies, in the head prior to our seeing her face. We also expand the setting from the underground "Hive" to a walled-off Raccoon City.

The story is so opened up, in fact, it feels less like a continuation of the first film than a character from it shoe-horned into a new, different zombie movie. They also sacrificed the crisp, clean aesthetic of the first film for a muddier, less focused look here. However, before long, and faithful to the video game roots, we've established a game board of locations, a set of loosely-drawn characters, and some goals - though nothing headier than "find the girl" and "get out." There's a reporter, a pimp, a child, some evil scientists and a bunch of cops. No one gets much in the way of personality, but it's not important.

(Lots of spoilers ahead) 

One A Week Reviews #12: Fido

Even if you're as sick of the never-ending,, shuffling hordes of zombie movies as I am, it's easy to be charmed by the opening minutes of Fido. As a promotional newsreel for Zoncon, it sets up the world Fido is set in: one where zombies have been domesticated as "help" by a corporation. Timmy Robinson lives in a world of big steel fences and photo IDs so the Zoncon corporation knows who everyone is, but he still rides his bike home and has a crush on Cindy, the new girl at school. If you don't fit in there's always the threat of getting thrown out into the Wild, beyond the fence. Your Sunday drive is to the latest funeral, since having one is the height of social chic. This is the sunshine, nostalgic Fifties politely with zombies standing in for the fear of the other and the Atomic Bomb. Mind you, a middle school with a rifle range is nothing to sneeze at.

There's probably some easy, too obvious subtext going on here. The glossy, worry-free Fifties of sparkling Formica where the help is collared zombies doing the easy labor instead of just Beulah. What would undead milkmen and crossing guards do to the economy, though? The aesthetic of the movie is rather stunning, actually. Gorgeous cars, houses, and suits capture that artificial gloss of the Fifties and fill it with glossy, candy colors.

Dylan Baker and Carrie-Anne Moss are a darling "Ward and June" as Bill and Helen Robinson, even if their "problem with the Beaver" is his Funeral Savings Plan. Moss especially seems to be having a good time. Comedy is a big leap from most of her Trinity-dry ass-kickers and government agent types. She gets to rebel against conformity and get a tad smitten with her undead domestic help. Mom wants to keep up with the Jonses while Dad has a healthy, sensible aversion to the undead. Under the Fido makeup is an unrecognizable Billy Connolly, who looks to be enjoying the slapstick comedy involved in playing a silent, shuffling character. It's a surprisingly dialed-down character for the wild comedian.

It's nice to have a man around the house who's handy, but Fido does tend to eat those hands on occasion. He and Timmy become fast-friends when Fido comes to his defense against some bullies. They have a "boy and his dog" dynamic that's quickly put to the test when Fido eats the rancid bitch of an old lady neighbor, Mrs. Henderson. There's never a doubt where the audience's sympathies lie in this black comedy: with the ten year old boy covering up his pet zombie's murder. Timmy somehow stays as sweet and innocent as his namesake from Lassie while the body-count rises. (One wonders how Fido would have solved the tongue-on-the-flagpole issues from A Christmas Story if he'd been there.) In a way, this is a perverse episode of Lassie, just replacing both "dog" and "well" with zombies, or Leave it to Beaver where the gentle humor is death and June burns corpses when not vacuuming in pearls.

I do wish a little more time was spent with the next-door-neighbor subplot. Mr. Theopolis seems to have an undead "Gidget Geisha" in pony-tailed Tammy. For a gal with a grey face and clawed hands, her gams are still smashing. It's subtle, but gives another great layer of "ick" to the proceedings. Same as when you find out Fido can be soothed by something as simple as a Chesterfield. Fido is fleshed out, high concept, and really too good to be flying under the radar. A sick sitcom that's also sly zombie fun for the whole family.