BRAIN BITES

Our second celebration of all things zombie during Zombie Awareness month this May is happening right here in UK. Not unlike our first featured event last week of the zombie fashion show taking place in Oswego, NY.  Zombiefest could be Liverpools answer to an undead London fashion week as we break out the cameras once more for a SFX make up artists dream of a zombie horde showdown. It's time to shake off the rigor mortis and give a rotten round of applause to our next event organiser, Richard Fletcher!   Welcome Richard, please start off by telling us everything about Zombiefest... where, when and what is it all about? Zombiefest is a new event that is set for 14th October and is really all about the fun side of zombies. The day is meant to be a fun one with sfx makeovers and photography, sfx tutorials, stalls selling cool stuff and the cosplay competition. All that and the day will be topped off by a live band and DJ. It's being held at The Swinging Arm pub in Birkenhead...

  To celebrate all things zombie especially during Zombie Awareness month, we here at Brain Bites thought it would be an awesome idea to spread the word of the efforts being made by people all over the world organising zombie related events. We are all familiar with zombie assault runs and the gatherings of hordes for zombie walks through cities but there seems to be another trend occuring that puts the spotlight and emphasis on walking corpses. Think glitz, think glamour... think zombie???!!! With this in mind please give a huge grumbling moan of welcome to  event organiser, John Grouber!  A little worm told me that John is  organising a gathering of elite undead fashionistas for an evening of gore and glamour this October in the form of a zombie fashion show!  Hi John, would you mind telling us everything about your event and what your vision of a zombie fashion show entails? Well, Mash, the Zombie Fashion Show is a culmination of different ideas that have bee...

  RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD: NECROPOLIS (2005) USA/Romania 1hr 28mins Director: Ellory Elkayem "Whenever there is an outbreak of zombie reanimation we lead the charge in containment" - Hybra Tech advertisement. "Lead, follow... or get out of the way." - Julian "Send more security guards" - Zombie. The first three RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD movies are true classics, yes... even part two, but unfortunately they fall outside of my review catchment being made before the year 2000 so luckily for them, they escape my pitiful scribblings of which I am sure they are grateful for. However, twelve years later writers William Butler and Adam Strongoni decided to resurrect the franchise. They enlisted the help of EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS (2002) director Ellory Elkayem and created two more RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD movies but the question here is did they do them justice and did we really need them in the first place? RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD: NECROPOLIS (2005) is set 10 ye...

  DETENTION OF THE DEAD (2012) USA 1hr 27mins Director: Alex Craig Mann "It looks like Rob Zombie raped the entire cast of Gossip Girl and this is their angry love child" - Willow It's a normal day at Lincoln High and the school is business as usual with the exception of the odd severly ill, groaning and shuffling student hanging around. Despite this the students go about their day oblivious to the virus spreading around them. A group of oddball students ranging from the schools head cheerleader Janet (Christa B. Allen), her jock boyfriend Brad (Jayson Blair) and his meathead friend Jimmy (Max Adler) to the lowest of the low with nerd Eddie (Jacob Zacher), goth chick Willow (Alexa Nikolas) and school weed dealer Ash (Justin Chon) all ending up in detention with teacher Mrs. Rumblethorp (Michele Messmer) just as the mystery illness sweeping the school turns into a full blown zombie apocalypse. Will Eddie, who before all of this was too shy to admit his true feelings for Ja...

  WARM BODIES (2013) USA/Canada 1hr 38mins Director: Jonathan Levine. "What's wrong with me? I just want to connect. Why can't I connect with people?" - R "They are not becoming vegans!" - Grigio "Don't be creepy, don't be creepy, don't be creepy." - R Sweet zombie Jesus! If the world wasn't saturated enough with an endless supply of dodgy horror movies we also have to deal with the fact that Hollywood insists on sexualising every genre there is. No genre is safe and here we have a movie that would go on to spur on a spate of cringe worthy Rom Zom movies. Aimed at teens desperate for an undead heart throb to swoon over in the aftermath of the TWLIGHT movies I guess. WARM BODIES was originally a novel by Isaac Marion published in 2010 and is a romantic comedy based on Shakespeares' Romeo & Juliet but with a modern zombie twist. Adapted for film in 2013 and directed by Jonathan Levine, it features some young, up and coming ac...

  A NIGHT OF THE UNDEAD (2022) USA 1hr 20mins Directors: Kenny Scott Guffey and Jake C. Young "The deceased are not returning as they once were but are seeking out and consuming human flesh." President of the USA "They're coming to get you Piper!!!" - Adam In a world where the events documented by George A. Romero in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) were real and remembered by a handful of residents in rural Pennsylvania, culminates in a combination of vague memories and rumours that have come together over the years causing a divide in the community today of people that believe the zombie infection was real and those that think it was all a hoax. In a bid to prove to their viewers that there is some truth to the events, three podcasters head to Evans City to find the fated farmhouse where Barbara, Ben, Tom, Judy and the Cooper family took refuge from the ghouls and (spoiler alert) where they all perished. They hope to find real evidence of the phenomena that ha...

 BRAIN FREEZE (2021) Canada 1hr 31mins Director: Julien Knafo "Winter is here... but not for the rich who want golf all year round!" - Patrick Nault "We're the victims here... not the bad guys" - Dan The rich, gated community peninsula of Peacock Island, is home to wealthy business men who love to play golf, their families and normal working class people who work for the golf clubs. In order to provide year round golfing a chemical is engineered to melt the snow in the winter season making sure that the grass will grow all year round. This chemical gets into the islands water system turning all the residents who drink the water into frenzied, green eyed zombies with a craving for human flesh. Andrè (Iani Bèdard), a young teenager who seems to only drink coke saves his baby sister from their mum when she turns and ends up teaming up with a security guard called Dan (Roy Dupuis) who is a closet survivalist and super protective of his twenty-something daughter Patr...