The Midnight Hour - Get Dead!

The Midnight Hour
1985
D: Jack Bender
W: William Bleich

S: Lee Montgomery, Shari Belafonte & LeVar Burton
TV Movie - Approx 94 Min.
ABC

Taglines:
None

Alternate Titles: 
 -La noche del baile de medianoche (Prom Night Midnight) - Spain
 -Halloweenin hetki (Halloween Time) - Finland
 -La Notte di Halloween (The Halloween Night) - Italy
 -Creeps - Eine unheimliche Geisternacht (A Chilling Ghost Night)- West Germany

 -Halloween - Besuch aus dem Jenseits (Visit From Beyond the Grave) - West Germany




"I'm Dead.  You're Dying.  Everyone should try it.  Get Dead!"
                                                                                                                                             -Melissa

There are some films that just perfectly encapsulate certain holidays.  A Christmas Story will forever be branded (in my mind) as the quintessential Christmas film.  It simply is not Christmas if I don't watch Ralphie on his quest for an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle at least 10 times.  It's not Thanksgiving to me unless I've watched Home For The Holidays at least twice.  Halloween is a tricky time for me because I have many favorites that must be watched throughout October.  While Garfield's Halloween Adventure is still at the tip top of the list, The Midnight Hour is a very close second.

Skull Kid riding a bike, delivering newspapers.  I think that's about as Your Town USA as you can get!

The gang heads to the local cemetery to try on the clothing of dead people.  Super idea.

The Midnight Hour is a fairly obscure ABC produced TV-Movie about a group of teens living in the fictional New England town of Pitchford Cove (or PitchFORK Cove as their ancestors called it in the late 1600's called it).  Some of the students are the direct descendants of witches and witchhunters from the town's beginnings.  Some of their ancestor's clothing is on display at the local witchcraft museum.  The kids think it would be a swell idea to break in and "borrow" the costumes for their big Halloween party.

After a successful clothing heist (that includes stealing an old trunk), the head off to the local cemetery to try on the costumes.  Cause, why not, right?  Inside the trunk they find an ancient scroll which appears to be written in blood.  One of the girls decides to read it out loud as a joke....since her great-great-great-great-great grandmother was an evil witch and all.  What's the worst that could happen?  Well, as fate would have it, she unleashes a curse that awakens the dead.  It seems that some of the dead are evil, some are confused and then there's Sandy.  A 50's era cheerleader who just wants to fall in love before she has to go back to the grave.

I loved this guy in Thriller.....

I have no idea what the hell he's supposed to be, but I dig it!

As the zombies roam around town causing havoc, it would appear that there is also a werewolf on the loose.  It would also appear that the evil witch is back as well.....and she's a freaking vampire to boot!  Damn!  If you're into Thriller-style zombies then you're going to feel right at home with this.  Especially when everyone at the party breaks into a song and dance number titled "Get Dead"!  It is pure 80's cheddar that tastes oh-so-good!

The ladies are about to get it on in the wine cellar.....but not in a good way.

Zombies love to party.

For an ABC TV-Movie, this has some surprisingly effective scenes in it, including the evil vampire witch attacking her great-great-great-great-great granddaughter in the wine cellar of the house where the party is being held.  Everything kicks into slow motion during the attack as corks pop off of wine bottles and red wine jettisons forth like streams of blood, all while The Smiths' "How Soon is Now?" plays with some spooky overlays in the background.

There's a lot of great actors to keep an eye out for while you're watching this one:  Kurtwood Smith, Kevin McCarthy, Dick Van Patten are just some of the familiar faces that you'll see here.  Not to mention a very young,  LeVar Burton & Shari Belafonte (Harry Belafonte's daughter!)!

Sandy...the hot, cheerleader ghost.

Shit!  Clarence Boddicker is a goddamn zombie!

GORE
There's a little bit of the red stuff on tap, but not much.  This is less about gore and more about the nostalgic Halloween feel.

T&A
No skin, kiddies.  This is a made for TV-Movie.

Creatures Featured
You get zombies, ghouls, vampires, ghosts, werewolves and witches all under one roof!  What's not to love about that?!

Final Thoughts
It's a crime that this film doesn't have it's on Blu Ray release with an isolated soundtrack and a ton of Halloweentastic extras.  This should be on everyone's must-watch list for Halloween.  I cannot recommend this film highly enough!  Seek it out and enjoy!


Final Rating
Five out of Five Pizza Rolls

C.H.U.D. II: Bud The Chud - Chuds Just Wanna Have Fun

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud
1989
Directed by David Irving
Writren by Ed Naha

Starring Brian Robbins, Bill Calvert &Tricia Leigh Fisher
Rated R - Approx 84 Minutes
Vestron Pictures
MCEG

Taglines:
- Their first mistake was stealing a corpse... Their second was waking him up.

- This C.H.U.D.'s for you!

Alternate Titles
A Cidade das Sombras (City of Shadows) - Brazil
Reacción viva (Strong Reaction) - Spain
Kuunpuremat (Bite of the Viper) - Finland
Turbózombi, véruszkár (Turbo Zombie) - Hungary

Das Monster lebt (The Monster Lives) - Germany


"Meat."
         - Bud the Chud

C.H.U.D. of course stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.  Alternatively, in the first film it also stood for Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal...but there's no mention of that this time around and it's just as well because C.H.U.D. II is nothing like it's predecessor.  The first film was a fairly straight forward horror film, where as this film is a straight up horror comedy.

The plot centers around two high school friends who unwittingly unleash a CHUD after stealing it from the CDC.  See they accidentally lost a cadaver that was meant for their high school biology class and rather than fess up, they thought it would be a better idea to steal a corpse and replace it.

I can never see Robert Vaughn and NOT think of Superman III......

Bud gets some new duds!

Steve and Kevin are you're typical 80's best buds.  Steve (Brian Robbins, who you fellow children of the 80's may remember best as Eric on the sitcom Head of the Class) is the smart ass, fast talking one who takes nothing seriously and has an answer for everything.  Kevin (Bill Cavert) is the quiet, reserved and far more intelligent one that is constantly fixing Steve's messes.  There's also Katie (Tricia Leigh Fisher) who is Steve's pseudo-girlfriend (and naturally Kevin really likes her).

After our two heroes steal Bud the Chud, they naturally bring him back to Steve's parent's house to hide until they can bring him to school the next day.  Things go wrong when Bud falls into a bubble bath and a hairdryer falls in too, re-animating him.  The boys lock Bud in the basement and then leave to get a burger.  Bud breaks out and chases the family poodle outside, chomping on it and turning it into a CHUD Doggie.  Thus the CHUD contamination begins.

Runaway corpse...never going back.  Runaway on a wrong way track....

I'll be honest....I've been in weirder situations....

They boys come back to discover their undead guest has escaped and go out looking for him.  Meanwhile the military gets Katie's license plate off of security footage from when they hijacked the corpse and Colonel Masters (the one and only Robert Vaughn!) who was heading up the CHUD project is onto the boys.  The rest of the film plays out much like three way cat and mouse game between Bud and his every growing army of converted CHUDS, our heroic (sorta) trio and the military.

Gone are the long necked, glowing eyed, slimy CHUDs of the first film.  Bud and Co are now grey skinned zombies with messed up teeth.  Amusingly, for a film about cannibalistic monsters rampaging in a town, there is not much in the way of the red stuff.  When a person is attacked by a CHUD, they pretty much get nibbled on and they turn into a CHUD themselves.

CHUDism is on the rise....and they've choreographed their walk!

HELLOOOOOOO KATE!!!!!

CHUDs have a weakness to extreme cold, so the military uses giant freeze guns to try and contain them, but unfortunately the effects don't last long.  How will our heroes overcome the ever growing number of CHUDS?  Will the military destroy the whole town?  Will the CHUDs take over?  Will Keven tell Katie how feels????  Watch C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud to find out!

GORE
As I mentioned earlier, there is not much in the way of the red stuff.  Even a scene in which Bud (who has developed a crush on Katie) reaches into his own chest and pulls out his heart to give to her, is completely bloodless.

T&A
No naughty bits on display in this one, either.  Though we do get to see Katie in a nice bathing suit, so that's cool  To be honest, I'm unsure why this got an R rating.  There's some language, but honestly I would have no problem showing this to a bunch of tweens on Halloween.

MONSTERS:
CHUDs!  Lots and lots of CHUDs!  There's even a CHUDified poodle!

CHUD DANCE PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FINAL THOUGHTS
When I turned 17, I went on a video store binge.  I got my own membership to my beloved Video Paradise, but I also went out and got memberships to every other video store that I could find in my area.  My wallet was a virtual who's who of video rental stores circa 1996.  Video Paradise, Blockbuster, Country Video, Video Corner, Applause Video, Record Town, and a few more that I can't even remember.  Their membership cards bulked out my wallet to the Nth degree.

I was completely obsessed with finding new flicks to watch and in the fall of 1996 I could be found making rounds to multiple video stores on a Saturday afternoon, scouring the horror sections for stuff I haven't watched.  I remember renting this one from Country Video (a small little video shop on the edge of town) one October weekend.  I remember it quite clearly because it was the same weekend that I rented Phantasm II for the first time and because a lifelong Sphere Head.  Thus, CHUD II will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the first part of a mid-October double feature that introduced me to The Tall Man.

I still get the warm fuzzies just thinking about it and because of that, I'm sure nostalgia is probably bumping this rating up a a a little bit.

FINAL RATING
THREE OUT OF FIVE PIZZA ROLLS

World War Z - Out-Gored By Twilight!!!!!!!!!!!

World War Z
2013
Directed by Marc Forster
Written by Drew Goddard, Damon Lindelof, 
Matthew Michael Carnahan & J. Michael Straczynski  Starring Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz




Tag Lines:
There Will Be No Warning
Remember Philly!







Alternate Titles:  (All translate to World War Z)
Argentina Guerra mundial Z
Bosnia and Herzegovina Svjetski rat Z
Bulgaria Z-та Световна война
Brazil Guerra Mundial Z
Chile Guerra mundial Z
Colombia   Guerra mundial Z
Estonia Z maailmasõda
Spain Guerra mundial Z
Greece Pagosmios Polemos Z
Croatia Svjetski rat Z
Hungary Z világháború
Lithuania  Pasaulinis karas Z
Mexico Guerra mundial Z
Panama Guerra mundial Z
Peru  Guerra mundial Z
Portugal WWZ: Guerra Mundial
Romania Ziua Z: Apocalipsa
Serbia Svetski rat Z
Turkey Dünya Savasi Z

Venezuela Guerra mundial Z


Okay, first things first, let's get something out of the way:  This is NOT a film adaptation of World War Z.  I don't care WHAT anyone says.  This has absolutely NOTHING to do with the book.  Once you accept that you can look at the film objectively and judge it on it's own merits.  Okay, so how does WWZ fair as a zombie flick?  Oh boy.....okay, here we go.

Things go bad almost immediately for the Lane family.

Now, I'm not a picky guy.  You know that.  Hell, I dedicated an entire blog to watching, reviewing and spreading the word about movies that seemingly few others like.  I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed House of the Dead, for crying out loud!  World War Z really let me down though.

The film follows a guy named Gerry Lane who used to work for the UN.  He's pulled back into duty when the zombie apocalypse arrives without warning.  His mission is to search the world for Patient Zero and try and find an antidote for the zombie virus.  Here's the problem:  The zombies act like a swarm of rabid insects.  They don't act dead in any way shape or form.  Think more like the infected in 28 Days/Weeks later.

This can't be good.....

Personally, I'm more of a shambling zombie kinda guy, but if the movie is good, I can forgive fast moving zombies.  Dawn of the Dead 2004 used fast zombies to effective use.  World War Z......not so much.  Now not only are the zombies a bunch of juiced up  super freaks, but they all are remarkably intact for a bunch of people who have been attacked and reanimated by the living dead.  No ripped off limbs, no fucked up faces....just a bunch of people with black veins, paled out eyes that look like they've stayed out in the sun way too long.

This makes the L.A Riots look like a picnic!

This brings me to my next point and my biggest problem with this flick:  There's no damn gore!!!!!!   How in the hell are you supposed to have a zombie movie without any freaking blood and grue?  Now this started out as an R rated movie and then got dropped to PG-13 and you can see it in the final product.  It almost feels like a TV edit where the good stuff was cropped out of the picture, but you know it used to be there.  I found myself almost instinctively straining as if, if I tried hard enough, I'd be able to see past the picture on screen and get the goods.  No such luck.  The friggin Twilight movies had more of the red stuff than this!!!!!  Holy hell!!!  Twilight is gorier that World War Z!  Let that sink in for a moment. Not only is this a let down to us horror fans, but it's just plain old disrespectful to the source material.  I can't imagine that Max Brooks was very pleased with the treatment of his epic zombie saga.  I know that I wasn't.

As an action flick, I suppose it's alright.  There are some intense sequences, a few jump scares and a couple of those "sweaty palm" moments, but they are rendered ineffective because you don't really care about any of the characters.  Trying to put a story of this scope into 116 minutes is a tall order and unfortunately, it was spread too thin and yet still managed to not feel very expansive at all.  You didn't really feel like there was a global pandemic on hand.

Zombies act suspiciously like ants in World War Z.....

Midnight Cinephile Tally

Body Count:  On screen, there are a ton of deaths, though the whiz by so fast and bloodlessly that you don't even notice, really.  Plus if you take into the account what is happening in the rest of the world, the death toll is up in the millions to billions to be sure.

Boob Count:  Dream on, Kojack.

Beast Count:  See Body count.  You die, you turn, you swarm.

Final Thoughts
This could have been something truly special.  For the love of God, The Hobbit is being split into three epic movies.  Why the hell couldn't they have split World War Z into three movies to cover the expansive nature? Better yet, as Mrs. Midnight pointed out, had FX, TNT, or any other cable station wanted to compete with The Walking Dead, THIS would have been the way to do it.

I didn't HATE this movie, but I didn't like it either.

Final Rating
One out of Five Pizza Rolls

Return of the Living Dead - Splatterpunk Zombies Rise From the Grave!

The Return of the Living Dead
1985
Directed by Dan O'Bannon
Written by Dan O"Bannon, Rudy Ricci, John Russo, Russell Streiner
Starring - Clu Gulager, James Karen, Thom Mathews, Linnea Quigley & Don Calfa



Tagline:
They're Back From The Grave and Ready To Party!







Alternative Titles:
El regreso de los muertos vivientes (Return of the Living Dead) - Mexico
Batallion - Japan
Τα Ζόμπι Δεν Είναι Χορτοφάγα (The Army is Not Vegan) (!)  - Greece
A Volta dos Mortos Vivos (Return of the Living Dead ) - Brazil
Az élőhalottak visszatérnek (Return of the Living Dead) - Hungary
A halál visszatér (Death Returns) - Hungary Alternate Title
El Regreso de los Muertos Vivos (Return of the Livind Dead) - Argentina
Elävien kuolleiden paluu (Return of the Living Dead) - Finland
Il ritorno dei morti viventi (Return of the Living Dead) - Italy
Le retour des morts vivants (Return of the Living Dead) - France
Ligene er ligeglade (The Bodies are Indifferent) - Denmark
O Regresso dos Mortos Vivos (Return of the Living Dead) - Portugal
Povratak živih mrtvaca (Return of the Living Dead) - Serbia
Verdammt, die Zombies kommen (Damn, Come the Zombies) - West Germany
Ze zijn terug en hebben honger (They Are Back and Hungry) - Netherlands

Whoa!  It's all true?!?!??

Hey.....wait a minute.....

Do ya wanna party?  It's PARTY TIME!!!!

Way back in 1968, George A. Romero made a little film called Night of the Living Dead.  It was a revolutionary film which in turn unleashed the zombie genre on the world.  After the film was completed, Russo retained the rights to any titles that contained Living Dead, while Romero was able to create sequels of his own.  If you are reading this then you are more than likely familiar with Romero's quintessential series of Dead films.

What you may not know is that Return of the Living Dead and it's four sequels are parallel sequels to Romero's films.  The script for RotLD is based off of a novel written by Russo and was originally to be shot in 3D and directed by Tobe Hooper.  Hooper however decided to back out and make Lifeforce instead.  The job was then offered to Dan O'Bannon....the man who brought us Alien.  Part of the deal that O'Bannon struck with Russo was that he would be able to rewrite the script to further differentiate the film from Romero's Dead films.  The final film has almost nothing to do with the source novel....the there was a novelization of the film written afterwards.  Still with me?  Good.  I should also mention that Russo also made another sequel that he considers "cannon" to the original NotLD called Children of the Dead.

We're the kids of America....whoa-oh.....

Frank tells Freddie about 2.4.5 Trioxin....

Okay, now that we got all that history out of the way, we can get on with the rest of this post!  Time to hit up the Midnight Cinephile Time Machine™ and go back to the early 90's.  I was in 8th Grade.  My older sister was in high school and was in the marching band.  On Friday nights, the band played at the football game.  So Friday nights worked a little like this:  My mother would get home from work and make up the grocery list.  My sister would get her band uniform ready and we'd pile into the car.....drop her off at the high school and then Mom, my younger sister and I would go grocery shopping. Sometimes we'd stop at the video store.....sometimes not.

Once we got home, we'd unload and put away the groceries.  By this point it was about 7:00 or so. We'd have dinner and then my younger sister was put to bed around 8:00.  After she was in bed, my mother would go down to the high school to wait for my older sister to get back from the football field and such.  I would stay home with the kiddo.  Sometimes they weren't gone long....other times it was quite a while...depending on how the game went, traffic, etc.

Tarman!!!!!

Awww...she's wagging her spine....she must be happy.

We used to get WPIX out of New York and in October, they would run a horror film for their 8 O'Clock movie.....and being that it was a month long theme, they called it Shocktober.  Clever, eh?  Well, one rainy and miserable Friday night, I tuned in to find that the film being shown was the subject of this here post.  I had seen Night of the Living Dead many times and I had heard of Return....but I hadn't seen it.  That night turned out to be one of the nights that Mom had to wait quite a while for my sister to get to the car.  I was more than an hour into the film before they got home, and I was completely mesmerized by the black comedy.  I didn't get to finish the film that night......I don't remember why exactly, but all I know is I missed the last half of the film.  This was quickly rectified on my next visit to the video store.

Return of the Living Dead is a black comedy at heart, striking a delicate balance between gore, horror and comedy gags.  The film absolutely drips with atmosphere, which is set up almost immediately with my favorite scene between Frank (Karen) and Freddie (Mathews).  See Freddie is a new employee at the Uneeda (Get it?  Get it?!?) Medical Supply Warehouse.  While sitting at a head to head double desk, Frank is filling out some forms and Freddie is flipping through a medical supply catalog.  Freddie asks Frank what the weirdest thing he's ever seen.  This is where Frank relates the story of Night of the Living Dead, telling Freddie that it's really based on a true story, but the facts got changed so the filmmakers could avoid getting sued.  Apparently, the army developed a chemical called 2.4.5. Trioxin as a pesticide and it had an unfortunate side effect on dead bodies.  The bodies that were affected by the chemical were collected in drums by the army and instead of being sent to be destroyed were delivered to Uneeda accidentally.  They'd been sitting in the basement ever since.  The story is interrupted by the phone ringing, causing a nice jump scare moment.  I don't know exactly what it is about this scene that I love so much....sure it's pretty much just exposition, but it has such a great campfire tale quality to it.  A large part of it has to do with James Karen's fantastic acting.

Other highlights include Linnea Quigley's character, Trash.  A morbid, death obsessed punk chic who pretty rapidly discovers that her fantasy death is not what she was hoping for.  See, in her fantasy, a bunch of old dirty men surround her and biting and pulling her apart.  When she's surrounded by zombies, she doesn't seem like she's enjoying it as much as she thought she might earlier.  Linnea spends most of the film naked, after a strip tease on top of an outdoor crypt ends in screaming and running.

Om Nom Nom Nom Nom!!!!!

RotLD portrays the zombies as intelligent and capable of speech, which was quite a departure from other zombie films.  Return was also the first time that the zombies were depicted as eating brains, instead of just flesh.  This is most effectively shown when the zombies eat a pair of paramedic's brains and then use their radio to call dispatch and "Send more paramedics!"  Oddly enough, the brain thing really stuck in the public's consciousness.....more times than not if you see someone doing a zombie impression, they're moaning for brains.

Come on guys, we're gonna do the Thriller Dance!

Return of the Living Dead sports one the best punk rock soundtracks to come out of any 80's horror movie, including music from 45 Grave, The Cramps and SSQ.  It doesn't get much better than this......at least it didn't until The Lost Boys came out...but that's a whole other story!


Midnight Cinephile Totals:

Body Count:  There are about 12 major on screen deaths...but if you want to get really technical about it, the the zombies are dead bodies that are reanimated, so technically......or if you want to get really technical......the death toll is probably up in the thousands.  You'll see what I mean at the end of the film.

Boob Count:  As mentioned before, Linnea Quigley gives us a strip tease and then spends the rest of the film wearing only leg warmers....even as a blue tinged zombie!  We also get the upper half of a rotted female zombie.  Not exactly what you were hoping for, I know...but she's still got boobs, so I guess that counts.

Beast Count:  Zombies.  Lots and lots of zombies.


Final Thoughts:
This truly is quintessential 80's splatterpunk.  It's four sequels got steadily worse and I suppose I will cover them at some point....but if you dig zombies and you thought that Shaun of the Dead was the only ZomCom out there, then you need to check out this film.  Required viewing for any self respecting Cinephile.

Final Rating:
Five out of Five Pizza Rolls!

Nudist Colony of the Dead

Do you like zombies?  Do you like musicals?  How bout nudist colonies?  Well, if you answered to yes or all three of these, I've got just the flick for you.  May I present to you, the 1991 cult classic, Nudist Colony of the Dead!  A zany little indie flick about a group of nudists who commit suicide rather than let the stuck up bible thumpers take thier Sunny Buttocks Nudist Camp away from them by religeous zealots. 

Now I originally heard about this movie from a rather odd source:  Dr. Demento!  Back in the day he used to broadcast his show Sunday nights on WZLX in Boston from 11pm - 1am.  Every October he would air a special Halloween show full of nothing but Halloween and Spooky songs....which actually I think I'll dedicate a whole article to at some point in the future.  But anyway, I heard the theme song for Nudist Colony of the Dead on his 1992 Halloween Special and immediately fell in love with the song.  Luckily for me, I used to tape all his shows and listened to it non-stop...even after Halloween was over.  I still have that tape somewhere.....and now I'm going to have to dig it out and listen to it! 

See?  I told you that was catchy!  It was so catchy that I tried to convince my band at the time to cover it.  Sadly we never got to cover it because the band kinda fell apart not long after.....but that is a story for a differnt time.  Now remember this is 1992...before I had the wonderful World Wide Web to search for everything that my heart desired.  So I spent my time pouring through magazines like Fangoria and Gorzone trying to see if I could find it for sale anywhere.  Eventually I forgot about the film until about 5 years ago when I was going through some random boxes at my parent's house and found my old Dr. Demento Halloween Tape.  A flood of nostalgia washed through me and off I rushed to see if I could track it down online.  As it just so happens, it's quite easy to find these days!  You can order yourself a copy here....and if you're reading this blog, then you are obviously a lover of this kind of stuff and owe it to yourself to check it out!

So, as I was saying before going off on a tangent about how awesome the theme song is, Sunny Buttocks Nudist Camp is shut down by Judge Rhinehole (who is played by Forrest J Ackerman!!!  UNCLE FORRY!!!!) at the request of a bunch of religeous zealots.  The Nudists, rather than just give up thier camp enter into a suicide pact (drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, natch) and vow to rise from thier graves should anyone try to claim thier land.

Well, wouldn't ya know....those same religeous zealots re-open the camp as a religeous retreat for kids.  Of course they did, why wouldn't they....even though the last group of kids was brutally murdered!  Que the highly entertaining musical numbers featuring songs such as "Inky Dinky Doo-Dah Morning" and "Kill, Kill, Kill All The Zealots!"  The musical style varies from song to song, but as a whole, I found them to be fairly amusing.

The gore effects are pretty low budget, DIY style, but it all just adds to the charm of the movie....my favorite being a kid who has been cut in half and his legs go running off without the torso, part of his spinal column exposed and blood spurting with wild abandon.  Really must be seen to be believed!  Severed limbs and a talking severed head round out some of the gore (non) special effects. 

If you're looking for a good flick to watch for movie night, or just looking to laugh, do yourself a favor and check out Nudist Colony of the Dead.  Best enjoyed with some drinks and like minded friends!

The End is Nigh....So Kick Some 8-Bit Zombie Ass!!!

The Dead Rising series is cool....especially the sequel and it's DLC off-shoots where you get to make weapons out of just about anything and everything.  Bucket-Drill Helmet of Doom?  Check.  Double-Oar-Chainsaws?  Check.  Moltav-Cocktail-Dispensing-Gumball-Machine?  Um....not sure on that one, but I think it's probably do-able.  I Left for Dead 1 & 2, you actually feel as though you are living through a zombie apocalypse and play through some great and intense 30 - 45 minute campaigns.  Again, it's really satisfying to destroy some Gut-Muncher's grey matter with an electric guitar. 

"Gee, that's fantastic, Wiz...but those aren't 8-Bit!"  you say?

Well, as great as these two games are, I have been spending far more time with a game called Mutant Warzone.  You play the part of the last survivor in a city overrun with mutants/zombies.  I know....bummer.  They're all hungry and you are looking mighty tasty.  So armed with your trusty machine gun and some bombs, you set out to find more supplies, rack up a gnarly high score and (if you truly master your zombie/mutant slaying skills) clear the city of the thousands of infected !

Mutant Warzone was designed and created by my buddy Robot over at 8-Bit City.  If you've  never been to his blog, I highly recommend heading directly over.  If you are a gamer, then you need to check it out!  You can find the link to 8-Bit City over in my Links section.  The current versioin available is Beta 4.0....but I'm sure there will be more on the way.  Not only that, but there is a great 8-Bit soundtrack being composed by mrjordak.  You can also check out his blog mrjodak Video Game Composer in the links section.

"Okay, so what's so great about this game?"  you ask

Well, I'll tell ya.  There are those of us out there who still have cherished memories of booting up our 286's and feel a nostalgic wave when we hear the bloopy blips of PC speaker sound.  Yep, that's right kids, back in the day, your PC didn't COME with full sound.  You actually had to buy a soundcard to hear full multi-track music.  Otherwise it was that glorious blippy bloop that so many of us love.  Not only that, but this game was created using Megazeus, which means it was rendered in 8-bit and glorious ASCII.  Now THIS is what gaming is all about.  No cell shaded, particle overlayed backgrounds here.  It's just you, your trigger finger and thousands of hungry little pixilated mutant zombies comin' for your brains.  Think that a game can't raise your heart rate without a full orchestral score and the latest in shadow effects?  Put Mutant Warzone on fast mode and see if your not shitting your pants within 30 seconds as you become surrounded by the mutated living dead.  I have yet to clear the city of this plague, but I'll be damned if I'm not having the time of my life trying.

You are armed with a machine gun and limited ammo.   You must also collect bombs (of a lesser and more powerful variety) plus hearts (for life points, natch), gems....which I dunno what those do yet....and keys to access buildings and even some dungeons....including one entitled HELL.  Oh yeah.  You know what they say about Hell, don't ya?  When there is no more room*......but I digress.  Gameplay is fast and furious as you are almost instantaneously assaulted by zombies upon starting the game.  Staying alive is easier said than done as well.  You will need to use quite a bit of strategy as well as have an itchy trigger finger when dealing with the living dead.  Bombs are a great way to keep the zombies at bay, using them to make an effective fire barracade on streets surrounding you.....but alas I don't want to give away too many tips.  Half the fun is trying to figure out how to survive and developing your own strategies.  Just like we did back in the day....there was no GameFaqs or IGN to give us walkthroughs.  If you were lucky enough to have a friend that beat a game, then they might help ya out....but for the most part you were on your own!

*Some of you got the Dawn of the Dead reference, and I am proud, but actually the premise of this game reminds me more of Nightmare City....perhaps because they are mutant/zombies......not just your regular run of the mill living dead.  This, to me, has given the game a decidedly Italian Zombie flair to it.  OR maybe like The Astro Zombies......hhhhmmm.....ya know what....go ahead and enjoy clips from Mark of the Astro Zombies and City of the Living Dead!  No need to thank me!

You need this game.  You need it now.  I'll make it ULTRA easy on you.  Click HERE.  There, see?  That wasn't that hard!  Now go and wipe out them no good dirty zombie bastards!