Rick doing what he does best: Killin' Zombies

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the forthcoming tv adaptation of one of my favourite graphic novels, the zombie apocalypse serial The Walking Dead, ever since I heard in August last year that AMC were going to produce a tv series based on the comics and Frank Darabont (The Mist and Shawshank Redemption) would direct.

The past couple of weeks have seen a flurry of encouraging announcements, with AMC confirming that at least six episodes will be made. Shooting begins in June and will be broadcast from October this year. In addition, Robert Kirkman, the creator and writer of the comic books, will be one of the executive producers, which should in theory ensure that the adaptation should be faithful to the original text.

AMC also announced that Andrew Lincoln would play Rick Grimes. I’m not so sure about this:  for one thing, he’s English not from Kentucky and unless he does a mean Southern accent he won’t be a faithful Rick.

I’m hoping this a masterstroke along the lines of Hugh Laurie in House but I just can’t see Egg from This Life as the cop-turned-leader from the comics. Kirkwood says that Lincoln is Rick in the AMC press release, but then again he would say that wouldn’t he?

Night of the Comet trailer

Why don’t people realise that the sky is evil? The Day of the Triffids has a meteor shower that blinds anyone who sees it, thereby allowing man-eating plants to herald in the end of civilisation; Where have all the people gone? has solar flares that reduces nearly all humanity to white powder, while The Night of the Comet similarly has the world wiped out by a passing comet (only this time the dust is red not white).

Remember kids, the cosmos is not your friend. Run from eclipses, hide from the night and bury yourself in deep underground complexes whenever an asteroid passes by. If you don’t, you’ll end up a minor footnote in the post-apocalypse, as someone else does all the fun stuff of killing zombies or running around empty cities with fast cars and big guns. Best case scenario you’re one of the flesh-eating zombies. Worse case: you’re just a pile of powder on the floor.

Night of the Comet is an enjoyable, relatively low-budget movie aimed at a teenage market drawing on a number of stable themes of the post-apocalyptic genre, including a shopping spree in a mall (reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead), and the empty, deserted and intact cities of such films as The Omega Man, The Quiet Earth and Where have all the People Gone?

The premise is straightforward: a passing comet turns anyone exposed into little more than red dust. Consequently, nearly the entire planet is wiped out by the morning. After spending the night protected from the comet’s rays, a couple of teenage valley girl sisters (Regina and Amanda) are among the few survivors left in a deserted downtown LA. They have to contend with partially-exposed survivors who have turned into zombie-like cannibals and a group of scientists who buried themselves deep in an underground bunker.

Although the source of the apocalypse is a comet (a comet that was last seen around the time of the dinosaurs), the movie is framed within a nuclear narrative. Indeed, the effects of the comet is akin to radiation – while those directly exposed were reduced to red dust, those with a partial exposure slowly decay before eventually dying. Moreover, the scientists are wary of introducing survivors from outside in their bunker for fear that they will be exposed – that a vent was left open and they were partially exposed to the comet themselves is ironic. Significantly, Amanda and Regina were protected by steel (a projector room for Regina and a garden shed for Amanda), which serve a similar function as fall-out shelters.

Notably, the film subverts common sex and gender narratives present in other horror films of the time Whereas popular contemporary ‘slasher’ films often present sex between teenagers as a prelude to their ultimate demise at the hands of Freddie/Jason et al, Regina’s sex with a boyfriend in the projector room of a cinema actually saves her from death. Moreover, both her and her sister defy the rules imposed by their stepmother – if they had obeyed her instructions and attended her Comet party they would have died.

The portrayal of gender is also interesting in the film. While Amanda and Regina are ostensibly ‘Valley girls’, they are shown in traditional female roles as shoppers (and later, in the case of Regina a mother figure to the two children), as well as adopting roles more traditionally associated with masculinity, not least when Amanda fires a machine-gun into a car and Regina opens fire on the men in the store with a gun. While other films of the era portray women as overtly masculine (such as the gunner in Hell Comes to Frogtown) or as victims, it is significant that the female leads of Night of the Comet do not lose their feminity.

Night of the Comet is  b-movie as feminist text:  this utopian post-apocalyptic fantasy enables Amanda and Regina to transform from teenager to adult. Free from the shackles of society, they discard their ‘valley girl’ personas and are liberated as independent women.

The film concludes on an optimistic note: the elder sister takes on a maternal role after effectively adopting two children rescued from the scientists, as well as having a partner in the shape of Hector (a truck driver they meet at a radio station). In addition to this ready-made family unit, Amanda conveniently finds a potential boyfriend driving down a deserted street.

Night of the Comet doesn’t take itself too seriously but it’s a highly effective movie and far more intelligent than the Mad Max clones that seem to dominate the 80s post-apocalyptic scene.

Smoke 'em if you've got 'em

The 80s obsession with World War III produced a number of excellent movies that illustrated the horrors of living in a post-nuclear world. From the UK came When the Wind Blows (1986) and the BBC’s Threads (1985), while two US television stations (PBS and ABC) respectively produced Testament (1983) and The Day After (1983). Common to all four of these productions was the grim telling of how ordinary people would fare after a nuclear attack. All are dominated by dark skies, scarcity and radioactive fallout.

Smoke ‘Em if You’ve Got ‘Em is Australia’s take on the post-apocalypse and aptly turns the aforementioned films upside down. Instead of survivors clinging desperately to life in squalid conditions and radiation sickness, it is a black comedy that offers an alternative way of dealing with nuclear holocaust.

The movie is set in the days after a nuclear attack on Melbourne and while the scene above ground is the traditionally post-apocalyptic setting of a bombed-out city, below ground a party is going on.

It is this concept of partying at the end of the world that underlines the futility of trying to survive in the immediate aftermath of nuclear attack. Death by radiation sickness (even in a bomb shelter) is inevitable so you might as well live life as though it is your last day (which it probably is). This fatalistic sentiment is rare in post-apocalyptic films.

Juxtaposed with the end of the world party are the two other types of post-apocalyptic survivors: the pockets of dirty survivors scouring the ruins for supplies above ground and the family next door who are trying to survive as long as possible on a can of baked beans a day. The party-goers allow both groups to join in the revelry (although the father next door is resistant): due to the high doses of radiation everywhere any attempt to survive is ultimately futile.

This fatalistic attitude is summed up by the title: Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em implies that there is nothing that can be done about the situation so you might as well enjoy yourself while you can. Indeed, this pessimistic philosophy can be seen as a hedonistic response to the Cold War as well as nuclear war: excessive, self-destructive partying is presented as a valid answer to the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Even though the characters are aware of their forthcoming demise, time and time again, they fall back on old habits, such as the teenager who asks a woman whether she is on the pill before they have sex; the man who decides not to take heroin as is too addictive, or the man who toys over whether to ask a woman to dance: he waits too long and she is dead by the time he has summoned up the courage to ask her.

Most poignantly, though, is the videographer who carefully records the night’s events on his camcorder and then puts the film into an envelope for development. He neatly fills in the address before realising that there is no point. He throws the useless film against a wall while screaming in anguish. Not only is there no-one to develop the film, there will be no one to see it in the future and no point recording the past

As the film ends, so the party draws to a close; a mixture of radiation sickness and violence killing the partygoers. The two friends whose idea it was to have the end of the world party decide to go upstairs to settle on deckchairs waiting to be destroyed by a mop-up bomb. Significantly, they express no regrets.

Smoke ‘Em if You’ve Got ‘Em, Dir: Ray Boseley, Australian Film Commission, 1988. It is quite rare and is difficult to get hold of. Running time is 50 mins.

Lazy Zombie will eat your brains

Yet another article has been published about the prominance of zombies in popular culture: ‘Zombies emerge when the economy ebbs‘. I was pretty excited when I saw this as I thought it would have something new to say about zombies and linking the undead to the economy.

It refers to a so-called ‘Zombie Index’, stating “when the going gets tough, analysts say, the tough turn to entertainment in which reanimated corpses embody our collective anxiety.” It backs this up with a reference to White Zombie’s release in 1932 during the Great Depression and 1968 (when Night of the Living Dead was released) as an year of economic downturn. Sounds impressive. Unfortunately, this argument is rubbish.

An article from Time from Dec 27 1968 entitled, The economy in 1968: an expansion that would not quit. Hardly a sign of zombies being linked to economic downturn. Also, if memory serves correctly, there weren’t many zombie movies  during the 70s recession or during the early 90s.

If anything, zombies have been a cornerstone of horror (mainstream and niche) for years now, with Shaun of the Dead, Dead of the Dead (remake), 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Land of the Dead & Diary of the Dead, not to mention a legion of bad b-movies all made during ‘good’ economic times.

Zombies emerge when the economy ebbs is not a bad article but in essence it says pretty much the same things as Time (Zombies are the new vampires), the Daily Telegraph (Zombies and vampires: why do we love the undead?) and Arizona Republic (Zombies are a rising trend) have each said in the past 10 days or so.

If there are any lazy journalists out there wanting to fill a column with an article about the undead, I suggest you follow this formula.

• Introduce the article by talking about how popular zombies are the moment (you HAVE to mention that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a bestseller and how there World War Z and Zombieland are coming out soon).
• Talk about the history of zombies. Remember there are only six classic films you can refer to so use them wisely: White Zombie, I Walked with a Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later. Don’t bother googling any other zombie films. They probably aren’t important anyway.
• Good idea to get some quotes. They can either be academics (Canada.com), authors (Arizona Republic and Time) or  just use that Woody Harrelson quote about thinking a photographer was a zombie (Daily Telegraph)
• Talk about what zombies mean. It is important to trot out the same crap that everyone else says: zombies have been used as a symbol of consumerism in Dawn of the Dead and the Vietnam War in Night of the Living Dead. Remember that they also symbolise the faceless crowd and play on fears of contagion.
• You don’t need to think about a new angle. However, if you’re feeling adventurous, make zombies seem even more current, link them to the economic recession. Don’t worry about little things like facts or doing proper research: it will take far too much effort.
• You might want to make a reference to vampires just for good measure.

Surely I should be happy that mainstream publications are printing articles about zombies. But I’m not: there is so much more they could be saying about zombies that is genuinely new and interesting. What about zombies as social media (Lost Zombies)? What about all the zombie flash mobs? Why’s it always the same consumerism/faceless crowd crap academics and writers have been saying for years now?

Of course, there is always my post about zombies (Help! Zombies are surrounding me!)…