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Max Brooks Lecture
Max Brooks, author of The
Zombie Survival Guide:
Complete Protection from the Living Dead and World War Z: An Oral
History of the Zombie War will kick off the Zombie Film Festival with a lecture on the zombie and
its place in contemporary media and pop culture.
Venue: Macmillan 117 (Thayer and George Street)
Friday October 26th at 6 PM
No ticket is required for entry.
**Books by Max Brooks will be on sale after the event, and the author will be available for book signing **
Choking HazardDirected by Marek Dobes
(Czech Republic, 2004)
It
starts out like an old joke: a half dozen philosophy students gather at
a remote motel with their eccentric professor and a Jehovah's Witness
porn star! But soon, the motel will be invaded by a swarm of zombie
woodsmen, and reason will be pitted against instinct in a fight for
survival. The students must confront their fear, their consuming lust,
and their queasy stomachs, before realizing that only a nihilistic
self-interest will save them! Be forewarned: this film contains buckets
full of human brains, mass zombie electrocutions, and relentless
musings on the meaning of life!
Evil (To Kako)
Directed by Yorgos Nousias
(Greece, 2006)
After three construction workers uncover a forbidden and long-buried secret,
a swarm of zombies overtakes 21st-century Athens! The zombies set their sights
on the rest of Greece, while the few remaining humans fight to save themselves and each other.
Stylish, hilarious, and really, truly gory, Evil is an honest-to-goodness splatter
film with a bargain-basement budget! The zombies and humans commit unspeakable,
deplorable violence — in vacant lots, ancient monuments, a disco, an all-out soccer riot —
and they look great doing it!
** Contains extreme violence.
FIDO**Providence premiere!!**
Directed by Andrew Currie
(USA, 2006)
Set in 1950s suburbia, Fido
boasts a hilarious premise: What if humans were the victors in a zombie
war, and now the living dead – fit with dog collars to zap their
cannibal instincts – were turned into domestic slaves? When his family
acquires their own rotting servant, lonely Timmy Robinson finds his new
best friend in Fido. Fido is a good doggie…until he gets his collar
off and starts eating the neighbors. Mom and Dad hit the roof, and
Timmy has to go to the ends of the earth to keep Fido a part of the
family. A boy-and-his-dog movie for grown ups, Fido will rip your
heart out.
FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN
Directed by Paul Morrissey
(USA, Italy and France, 1973)
The Frankenstein legend is rendered more
horrific than ever in Paul Morrissey’s fantastic, highly stylized and
colorful re-telling. A depraved Frankenstein (perversely married to his
own sister) sews together corpses in hopes of reanimating a “perfect”
pair of zombies who will sire a race of his making. Morrissey’s
aesthetic choices complement the themes of the film, maintaining a
tenuous balance of delicate restraint and fabulous excess which seem
perpetually on the verge of pandemonium. The sick beauty of this film
is perhaps best expressed in actor Udo Kier’s words: “To know death,
you have to fuck life in the gall bladder.”
* Presented in a gorgeous new 16mm print.
** Contains scenes of nudity and extreme violence.
Graveyard Alive: a Zombie Nurse in Love
Directed by Elza Kephart
(USA, 2004)
Patsy Powers is a very serious nurse. But she falls for a patient with a mysterious problem:
an axe lodged in his forehead! When this spooky stranger gives her one last love bite, she garners a
barely controllable sexual charisma. Now she has the confidence to chase down the major-league hottie,
Dr. Dox. The good doctor’s fiancée, Goodie Tueshuez, isn’t having any of it (and neither is the mysterious janitor,
Kapotski), but so what! Patsy has become a zombie, and she doesn’t particularly care what they think. She’d rather
shop for her groceries in the hospital morgue! Filmed in crisp black and white, this film knows the difference
between gut-busting laughs and plain old busted guts!
I Walked with a Zombie
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
(USA, 1943)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by the great Val Lewton, this film is a
study of evil in black and white. But with its striking attention to the vagaries of
colonialism and sexual politics, I Walked with a Zombie also knows the strategic value of
gray. This austere gothic drama is an adaptation of Jane Eyre, but set in the West Indies!
And with zombies! An apparently comatose wealthy woman is tended by her sinister husband, his jealous brother,
and an inquisitive nurse, who digs perhaps too deeply into the islanders’ voodoo rites and practices.
This chiaroscuro classic will be screened in a 16mm studio print!
Homecoming
Directed by Joe Dante
(USA, 2005)
Can a dead soldier legally vote? Especially an, ahem,
zombie soldier back from the dead to reclaim his vote? A conservative
speech-writer insincerely wishes on national television for dead troops
to return to testify to the value of their sacrifice for America.
Little does he know that his innocent slip is about to set off a chain
of ground-breaking events. Dead, young Iraq veterans begin erupting out
of their graves, and they won’t rest until the president responsible
for their deaths is voted out of office! This hour long made-for-TV
zombie film raises a host of compelling questions about government, the
legal system and freedom.
*Some sexual content and a few scenes of gore
Last Rites of the Dead
Directed by Marc Fratto
(USA, 2006)
A day in the life of the undead?
In a fresh take on the zombie genre, Last Rights of the Dead
takes on living death as a social problem, considering the trials and
tribulations of the animated dead along with their living counterparts
in ways ranging from support groups for the “mortally challenged” to
living-only policies and bands of anti-zombie vigilantes. This
film contains a biting sense of politics with lots of flesh-eating and
non-stop, Tarantino-esque violence, taken to extremes in every case! In a unique portrayal of the undead menace,
>Last Rights
brings together walking corpses, terrorism, and bloody social
commentary in a stylish remix of the classic zombie war played out in
the “Living Dead” series.
Re-cycle
Directed by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang
(Thailand & Hong Kong, 2006)
From the makers of Bangkok Dangerous and The Eye, comes a baffling tale
about the limits of literary inspiration. A best-selling novelist
experiments with paranormal fiction, imagining a world of zombie
terrors only to find herself trapped among them. Nothing is safe, in
this land where toys and books, as well as children and ancestors, all
return as fierce, resentful zombies. Threatened by everything she has
ever abandoned or forgotten, how will our heroine her save her career,
her sanity, and her life? Re-cycle is beautifully filmed in the style
of recent Hong Kong epic dramas, but it is also a starkly terrifying
meditation on human memory and the living dead. On an elegant 35mm
print!
Silver Heads
Directed by Vladimir Maslov & Yevgeny Yufit
(Russia, 1998)
Extra!
Extra! Russian experimental film unites man and nature! Scientists
struggle to fortify humanity through a rigorous melding of flesh and
wood, but this is not their first attempt! Outside their secret
laboratory, groups of Z-individuals roam the countryside, as anarchic
side effects of previous failed experiments. When the scientists go mad
from their efforts and the zombies continue to play trouserless
leapfrog in the sun, who can tell zombie from human? With bizarre
acuity and gritty black-and-white photography, Silver Heads asks how
much pain we might endure in our attempts to improve our condition.
More than that, this "Eco-Necro-Blockbuster" asks whether the pain
might be the whole point!
White Zombie
Directed by Victor Halperin
(USA, 1932)
A bizarre and unlikely story quivers beneath the diaphanous gauze of fog that coats the
surface of this first great zombie film. White Zombie has a little bit of everything good: a
beautiful dead woman, her zealous suitor, her noble rescuer, and Bela Lugosi as the necromancer himself!
As the New York Times wrote 75 years ago: “There are individuals who dig up bodies…and set them to work.
They make good servants. They can carry off blondes without getting ideas in their heads, which helps in these mad days.
When they have served their fell purposes, moreover, they can walk off high cliffs and out of the picture.
But not the necromancers; they must be shoved over, off and out.”
Z: A Zombie Musical
Directed by John McLean
(USA, 2007)
Poor nuns! Swimming naked on a summer's day, but bitten by a zombie pug!
Soon the nuns find good fellowship, beautiful music, and hot zombie
love in a burg called Zomburbia. But when one nun finds that she just
isn't satisfied with the daily grind of chorus lines and brain eating,
this musical hits the road! With a song in her heart and a lump (of
something! or someone!) in her throat, Sister Faith goes searching for
something better. But of all the zombie roller skaters, zombie devil
worshippers, zombie mad philosophers, and zombie Zomburban-ites she
encounters, which ones will betray her? And which might free her from
her terrible curse?
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