Movie Kill of the Week: Episode 1 ''Day of the Woman (1978)''

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Dawn of the Dead (1978)

After I saw Dawn of the Dead for the first time I was quite surprised that this film has such a huge status. But after watching it for the second time now I must say that I liked Dawn of the Dead a lot better. I can even say that I thought is was very good.

In this first sequel of "Night of the Living Dead," four people take up residence in a deserted mall while trying to stay alive amid the armies of the dead and a vicious gang of militant bikers.

The setting in the shopping mall is one of the great things about this movie. Which of you hasn't ever dreamed of wandering alone in a huge shopping mall and take al the expensive stuff for free...? It also provides some other good scene's. For example the scene where the zombies walk on the icehockey field or the scene where the troopers race through the mall in a car supported by the music of Goblin.

Unfortunately the zombies aren't very impressing. The green/grey make-up doesn't look good at all and the fact that they are slower than a god damn snale doesn't help neither. (Normally i'm not against slow zombies but this was insane.)

The whole idea of starting a new life in the shopping mall is well conceived and executed but after about an hour and a half it starts to get a bit borring. Luckily the bikers show up who provide more threath, action and humor. It also features a nice part of Tom Savini who does a pretty good job as one of the crazy bikers.

Appart from Savini and Peter, great part from cult-actor Ken Foree, the characters are all pretty annoying. Especially Roger with his continually heeehaahhhh yell. 
As for the gore, Dawn of the Dead has some nice scene's. The blood is a bit to red, hey it's the 70's, but there are enough good parts where the walking dead put their teeth into some flesh and tear a nice chunk out of it. But the gore starts to get really good in especially the last 20 minutes. I guess Tom Savini, who appart from actor also did the make-up effects, found out that there was some budget left as some nice gory scene's pass by. The coolest being probably the scene's where the zombies tear the intestines (which were real cow intestines btw) out of the bodies. 

Dawn of the Dead is a great film with a good atmosphere, cool setting, enough blood and nice music from Goblin. To bad that the zombies weren't very convincing.

The Walking Dead: The Game (Season 1)

The Walking Dead: The Game. I started playing it because of the title (as i also love The Walking Dead tv-show) but kept playing it because it's an amazing, intriguing, emotional and well told game.

The Walking Dead: The Game is a game based on the same titled comic books of Robert Kirkman. Your character is Lee Everett, a convicted killer being transported to a prison in Georgia. Because of a strange zombie apocalypse Lee manages to escape. Soon he finds a little girl called Clementine who lost her parents in the apocalypse. Together they travel through a world invaded by the walking dead.

The Walking Dead truly is one of the best games i have played in years. It's divided in 5 different episode's. Call of Duty number 74, Fifa 2050 and Medal of Honor number 98. I enjoy those games but when you played one of 'em you basically played them all. The Walking Dead is a brilliant new kind of gaming experience. There isn't a lot of game play. You can walk around and click on things and there are a lot of dialogs where you can choose your lines. At first I thought that that was going to be pretty boring after a while but because of the magnificent story telling it never gets borring. In fact, you want more and more and more.

The game focuses on the story. You have to take a lot of emotional choices that wil follow you throughout the game. Are you gonna be the ruthless and hard guy or are you gonna be the forgiving nice guy. It's all up to you. After playing this game for a while you really feel like you are Lee himself. You are not just controlling a character.. You are there, it is you that is making all these hard decisions. They really get to you.

The character development is brilliant. They all feel human and real. You create a bond with them and you'll feel desperate when one of 'em doesn't survive. I can't really pick a favorite episode because they are all incredibly amazing. The story is so great that I even noticed that when I was playing the game people that were in the living room all sat down and watched as I was playing. And when something dramatic was happening they all reacted like they were watching a brilliant movie.

I can literally talk hours about how amazing this game is. The story telling is brilliant, the character development is amazing. To be honest, everything about this game is phenomenal. Just play it, make your decisions and experience your story. This game will go in the books as one of the most original and groundbreaking games in the history. I can't wait 'till Telltale games finishes and releases Season 2!

Undead (2003)

Mainly because of the brute poster I was pretty excited about this film. Though you don't have to watch a long time before you realise that ''Undead'' is a pretty moderate film.

Peaceful, rustic Berkeley is a charming fishing community where life is sweet and the people friendly. All that is about to change. After losing her childhood farm to the bank, local beauty Rene decides to leave town and head for the big city. Suddenly, an avalanche of meteorites races through the sky, bombarding the town and bringing an otherworldly infection. Departing is going to be much more difficult than she had planned. The living dead are awakened and Rene is now caught in a nightmare of zombies hungry for human flesh. She manages to find salvation in a small isolated farm house owned by the town loony, Marion. There she is met with four other desperate survivors. Together they battle their way through a plague of walking dead and discover that there is more transpiring than just an infection.

The poster may look awesome. The film is a ridiculous attempt to comedy and horror. The humor is of an extremely low level and instead of funny characters the film has annoying as hell characters that I just wanted to punch in the face (This mainly goes for the incredibly annoying police officer). 

The usual group of survivors has another remarkable person: The Hero. You know the hero in those post-apocalyptic films. They save you when you're about to die, have a lot of gun experience and don't say much. Though in Undead the hero is a big hillbilly who kinda looks like an Amish version of the terminator.

The zombies are not a threat for a second and don't even provide entertaining scene's. The CGI is terrible and soundtrack sounds like it came out of a slapstick comedy rather than from a zombiefilm.

You have to do a lot of things the wrong way if you, as a horror/comedy, don't even give me a shred of sympathy for your movie but Undead manages to do it. Felicty Mason was one of the few reasons that I didn't turn this film of right away. 

Saw (2004)

Now that I finally have every Saw film (so far) on dvd it was time for me to watch all those 7 films full of gore, puppets and creepyness again. Starting of course with the wideley praised original.

Two men wake up at opposite sides of a dirty, disused bathroom, chained by their ankles to pipes. Between them lies a dead man loosely clutching a hand-held tape player and a handgun. Each finds a tape the perfect fit for the player in their back pocket. They play the tapes. One is threatened, the other isn't. But they have a task: One must kill the other by 6:00, or his wife and daughter will die. They find hacksaws in a toilet, and try to cut the chains, but it doesn't work. They are the two newest victims of the Jigsaw Killer. In a flashback, we learn of Amanda, a girl who falls victim to the Jigsaw Killer. On her head is a mask, which is hooked into her lower jaw. There is a timer on it. Only one key will unlock it, and that key is in the digestive tract of her cell mate who lies paralyzed on the opposite side of the room. If she doesn't unlock the mask in time, her lower jaw will be ripped wide open...

The film starts right away. Two guys wake up in an old bathroom with chains around the ankles tied to an old, rusty, with shit covered pipe. What's going on and Who did this to them are the questions that immediately rise your mind. 

The acting from the two chained guys starts off a bit stiff but while the film moves on and situation gets worse and worse the acting gets better and better. They really manage to take you with them in the madness that they are facing. The cop duo Ken Leung and Danny Glover is a very nice addition to the cast and especially Glover is pretty awesome as detective Taps.

2 Dudes tied up in a bathroom. How long does that stay interesting? The answer is very long. Because although the film does spend a lot of time in the bathroom director James Wan manages to create a perfect combination between drama, terrifying horror and grusome horror. You also keep wondering who's doing this to them and who is in the set-up.

In the mean while there are some other nice things that will definitely keep a horror-fan interested. For example Wan puts some very Giallo like things, like creepy phone calls and some first person shots of a person wearing black leather gloves, like giallo master Dario Argento did in his films.

At the peak of the film you'll be definitely biting your nails. The extreme crazyness that hits doctor Gordon when he hears through the phone that his family is being attacked and the reaction of Adam in the same scene a piece of very, very, very good acting. The twist in the end supported by the amazing soundtrack is also great.

Saw doesn't have the gore that his sequels do but it doens't need it. Without the gore it's still gruesome and horrifying.

Stake Land (2010)

A post-apocalyptic world, a young boy and a guy drive through the deserted landscapes, they pick up a hitchhiker, a somewhat dramatic voice-over by the young boy. That's right, in many perspectives Stake Land kinda looks like Zombieland only with a more serious look on things and with vampires instead of zombies.

Martin was a normal teenage boy before the country collapsed in an empty pit of economic and political disaster. A vampire epidemic has swept across what is left of the nation's abandoned towns and cities, and it's up to Mister, a death dealing, rogue vampire hunter, to get Martin safely north to Canada, the continent's New Eden.

De cast is verry decent. Connor Paolo does a decent job and Nick Damici is pretty cool as bad-ass ''Mister''. Danielle Harris also has a part. This time she isn't a kick-ass horror chick but she has the tame role of a pregnant woman in a world taken over by vampires.

The film takes it easy although you never really get the feeling that there isn't happening enough. Still it feels a bit calm. The reason for that are probably the many shots of deserted houses etc. supported by dramatic music. It does give a nice post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Though i don think the film lacks a bit of tension. The vampires aren't ruthless enough and i don't think they felt like a real threat.

I also didn't like the whole Brotherhood, a cult who protect the vampires, thing. The leader, a bald guy with an ugly tattoo on his head and a huge fur coat flowing in the wind, didn't ad to the tension and to be honest i don't think it settled in the wole film/story.

Though Stake Land isn't a bad horror film. It looks, although it didn't have a huge budget, professional and visually it all looks pretty good. The atmosphere and the great acting keeps you interested but to get a higher score the film had to have more tension.

Day of the Woman (1978)

After i saw the ''decent'' remake it was time for me to go and watch the original Day of the Woman also known as I Spit on Your Grave. I looked up a thing or two about the film before I watched it and noticed it was on the Video Nasties list. So I got more and more excited. 

The film follows Jennifer, a writer who is working on a new novel and needs to get out of the city to finish it. She rents a riverside cabin in upstate New York to work on her novel, attracting the attention of a number of rowdy male locals. They catch Jennifer one day and strip her naked for the village idiot (Matthew) and rape her. Jennifer is later attacked and raped a further two times by the four degenerates, and her novel is also destroyed. But Jennifer recovers, and in her now-twisted, psychotic state, she begins to seek revenge on the men.

The first part of the film is filled with the rape of Jennifer but these rape scene's aren't half as shocking as the ones in the remake. The reason for that is that the group of rapists aren't very convincing to say the least. One of 'em yells like he's some kind of indian, one of 'em is a retard and one of 'em is a lookalike of Landon Donovan. Richard Pace especially does a pretty damn bad job portraying the retard. The only good acting from the group comes from Eron Tabor who does a pretty good job. But overal the hilariously bad acting doesn't do much good to the ''shocking'' rape scene's. As a matter of fact, it only makes it look more amateuristic.

Finally after the raping is over Jennifer starts to get a little bit more lively again. And what do you do when you just got brutally raped?... Thats right!.. You get yourself a warm cup of coffee and finish writing your book. That onlogical part annoyed me a bit but luckily after a while she realises that these punks need to be taught a lesson. And thats when the good stuff starts. The rapists get killed of great although there isn't a lot of gore (except for the gross dick-scene of course)

Day of the Woman probably was a crude shocker in the 70's but i don't think it is anymore. It could have been more shocking but the acting of the rapists had to be better as the rape-scene's are way to amateuristic. Though the revenge part is pretty awesome