Book Review: Zombie War: An Account of the Zombie Acopalypse that Swept across America

Sometime in the near future, a virus engineered by the former Soviet Union ends up in Iranian hands. The virus, designated F1-st, is deadly within minutes, but causes its victim to reanimate into a snarling, vicious terror only a short while later. When a handful of zealots sneak into Miami and deliberately inject themselves with the virus during a football game, the resulting epidemic entirely envelops Florida and quickly spreads to adjacent states.

Thus begins Zombie War by Nicholas Ryan, an Amazon bestselling horror writer who has found a niche in the popular field of zombie literature. While the prologue is written as a third person narrative, the remainder of the book is told in the first person by journalist John Culver. Culver spends the bulk of the novel visiting dozens of individuals and places to chronicle the 13 month long Zombie War that saw Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina overrun by the undead.

Zombie War vs. World War Z
The plot of Zombie War will inevitably remind many readers of World War Z. In fact, the author invites the comparison by pasting a reviewer's claim that the book is "As good as World War Z" directly on the cover. (It was through my review of Brook's novel that Ryan found this blog and asked if I would like to review Zombie War.)

While the format of the story may be similar to Max Brook's novel, Ryan's zombie apocalypse is different in several ways.

The Zombies
As I mention in my review of World War Z, much of the plot is driven by the characteristics of the classic Romero zombie; a shambling, mindless creature compelled to eat human flesh. While Romero's films aren't too particular on the nature of zombification, Brooks invents the solanum virus to explain his lurching horrors.

Like Brooks' ghouls, Ryan's zombies are reanimated by a virus. However, F1-st's victims are howling, aggressive, and fast; i.e., post-28 Days Later (2002) zombies. In World War Z, Brooks emphasizes the futility of using modern weapons, which are often designed to kill with blast overpressure, on a creature that is no longer dependent on internal organs or even a fully intact brain. In Ryan's book, the fact that the zombies come running at the first sound or sign of movement means that the US military is often as concerned with crippling or slowing the monsters as it is with killing them.

The Crisis
The nature of Zombie War's crisis leads to a very different war from that in World War Z. The pandemic that becomes World War Z originates in China and spreads through refugees. Solanum's victims often live long enough to travel long distances via truck or airplane, ensuring that the virus spreads far and wide (in at least one case, the virus makes it to Brazil through an infected organ from a Chinese "donor"). The widely spaced epidemics that result grow together into an undead pandemic. Although the undead are slow, the diffuse nature of the pandemic makes it difficult to counteract. The reaction time of the world's governments is further slowed by Chinese secrecy and a misunderstanding of the virus' effect on its victims.

By contrast, Zombie War's F1-st epidemic starts in one location, Miami's Sun Life Stadium, through a single act of terrorism. The F1-st virus kills and reanimates a victim in minutes, thus creating a full-blown zombie horde in record time, but one that is geographically limited and moves only at footspeed. The threat that the rapidly growing mob of flesh-eaters poses is obvious, meaning that America knows what it's dealing with pretty quickly.

The Living Fight Back
In World War Z, most of the world's governments find themselves gathering as many of their citizens as they can into isolated and defensible locations (e.g., parts of the Rocky Mountains). The collapse of civilization means that fuel, vehicles, and armaments are scarce. On top of that, the living are forced to devise innovative ways to fight an enemy that's already dead. Brooks' post-apocalyptic army has no use for tanks or artillery, having found them to be ineffective during the infamous Battle of Yonkers in the early days of the war. Instead, the US military dresses its soldiers in bite-proof fatigues, arms them with bolt-action rifles, and lures the zombies to well-stocked garrisons where Civil War-era formation firing is employed to whittle down their numbers.

Although a substantial portion of the South has to be conceded to the horde, Zombie War's US military is able to construct the Danvers Defense Line (a network of trenches, razor wire, and fences built along major highways) to stop the spread of the zombies. The line forms the centerpiece of the appropriately named "Operation Containment" (code names don't need to be secret when your enemy has no intelligence to speak of).

Ryan's zombies are fast, which neutralizes tactics like formation firing. Additionally, the military in Zombie War is left mostly intact. Fuel and equipment aren't an issue, so massed tank formations can be mustered. After the advance of the zombies is stopped at the Danvers Defence Line, tanks, infantry carriers, and self-propelled artillery are used to push the creatures towards Florida as part of "Operation Conquest". In the final phase of the Zombie War, "Operation Compression", the zombies are pushed into the Florida peninsula and contained behind a second defense line. (Ryan's zombies may be fast, but apparently they can be contained by water. World War Z's zombies often wandered into the ocean and could pop up weeks to months later on a distant beach.)

My Impressions
There are a lot of good ideas in Zombie War. One of the best of these is the use of waves of artillery fire to slow down and immobilize the zombie hordes. Yes, artillery may simply immobilize a zombie rather than kill it, and yes, an immobilized zombie is still dangerous, but at least it allows troops to deal with them on their own terms. Given that World War Z's military completely abandons artillery as useless, I have to wonder if Ryan's story is intended to be a direct rebuttal to Brooks' novel.

The tactics employed during Operation Conquest are interesting and would look very impressive on film. Imagine dozens of Abrams battle tanks driving side-by-side, mowing down zombies with machine gun fire and running over the rest. Two miles behind the Abrams are armored personnel carriers filled with soldiers to clean up what the tanks leave behind.

While I like a lot of the novel's ideas, there are a couple aspects of Zombie War that fell flat with me. For starters, I just don't find John Culver to be that interesting. He's supposed to be a journalist and the bulk of Zombie War is supposed to be an account of America's response to the zombie virus, but much of the story consists of Culver describing his impressions, feelings, or responses to the interviewees. I don't care for real journalists who think we need to know how they feel about the story they're covering; I feel the same way about fictional journalists, too.

Second, the interviews with multiple high ranking military personnel are very repetitive. With few exceptions, they follow a single pattern: Culver arrives at an interview that has been arranged ahead of time; despite the fact that the interview was prearranged, the officer is gruff and abrupt; Culver asks some softball questions and the officer responds with impatience or even outright hostility; eventually, after recounting the horrors of the Zombie War, the officer lets his guard down and shows that the hardened exterior hides a weary and exhausted man. One or two episodes like this wouldn't stick out, but it seems like the majority of the interviews turns out this way.

I should point out that the author never seems to be denigrating or disrespecting the US military. In fact, the book comes across as unashamedly patriotic (which is odd considering that the author is Australian). Instead, I get the impression that Ryan is trying to portray the kind of no-nonsense and notoriously prickly military officials that were so famous during the '40s, '50s, and '60s; e.g., General Patton, General MacArthur, or Admiral Rickover. But in the face of a much more hostile and ubiquitous media, and without the urgency of a conflict on the scale of World War II or the Cold War encouraging politicians and other senior military officials to overlook difficult personalities, modern high-profile military personnel can't afford to be anything but diplomatic.

By contrast, the interviews with sergeants and various grunts are a lot better: some are good humored, some are gruff, some are matter-of-fact, and some are shell shocked. It would have been nice if their superiors had been handled with the same degree of subtlety.
B-

(Full disclosure: I was provided with a digital copy of this novel in order to review it.)

Movie Pseudo-Review: Jurassic World (2015)

I was 14 when I saw Jurassic Park (1993) in the theater. I loved it, of course, and couldn't wait for the inevitable sequels. When The Lost World: Jurassic Park came out in 1997, I saw it with a girl I liked (and married four years later). Although I generally enjoyed the film, it didn't have nearly the impact as the original, and I felt that the San Diego sequence significantly detracted from it.

I'm not entirely sure that I even saw Jurassic Park III in the theater in 2001 or if I first saw it on DVD. By that point, my expectations weren't particularly high. It was entertaining enough, and didn't have anything as stupid as its predecessor's San Diego scenes, but it was disappointing compared to the first film.

Thus, I was somewhat wary when I finally saw the Jurassic World teaser trailer. Sure, it looked pretty cool, but what were the odds that the fourth film in a franchise that had a sharp dip in quality with the first sequel would be any good?

Actually, the odds turned out to be pretty good.

Fortunately, Jurassic World turned out to much better than Lost World or Jurassic Park III. Surprisingly, I even enjoyed it more than Avengers: Age of Ultron. Sure, it's not quite as good as the original Jurassic Park, but how many films could claim that?

Rather than do one of my usual reviews, I think I'll list a few things that really stood out to me. Expect some spoilers ahead:

The Setting
Jurassic Park is set on Isla Nublar while The Lost World and Jurassic Park III are set on Isla Sorna (aka, "Site B"). The first island was meant to be the "showroom" while Site B was where the significant research was done. Although the first movie's pristine, soon-to-be-open park is a lot cleaner than the abandoned and decaying facilities seen in the second and third movies, all three movies have essentially the same setting; an isolated location where a small group of people find themselves at the mercy of uncontrolled dinosaurs. This worked well once, but it was feeling pretty stale by the third movie.

Jurassic World took a different approach. InGen, the company founded by John Hammond sometime before the first film, faced financial ruin and was eventually bought out by Simon Masrani. In fulfillment of Hammond's dying wish, Masrani established Jurassic World on Isla Nublar. The public portions of the amusement park take up the southern half of the island while the northern part contains research facilities. The abandoned Jurassic Park site, which remained effectively untouched since the 1993 incident, also happens to be located in the northern half of the island. By the time of the movie, the park has successfully operated for ten years.

It's refreshing to see the franchise change its setting from an untested and empty park with barely contained animals, or an abandoned facility where the dinosaurs are entirely free to roam, to a well-established and heavily populated park (one where the presence of children isn't an anomaly). It's also apparent that the new owners have learned from their predecessor's mistakes. Instead of electrified fences, animal paddocks use solid concrete walls. On top of that, the facility is proactive in managing risks, including running drills and maintaining a special team for containing escaped animals.

Although we know that there will be dinosaur-related mayhem, part of the fun is watching the well-oiled machine of Jurassic World break down through mistakes, misjudgments, and years of complacency.

Simon Masrani

A movie billionaire CEO that
doesn't deserve to be eaten.

Masrani (Irrfan Khan) easily could have been cast as a villain, or at least as a cynical money-grubbing CEO like Hammond's nephew, Peter Ludlow in The Lost World. Instead, he's a very likeable character who explicitly wants both his park's visitors and the animals to be happy. Although he makes some misjudgments, he's generally cautious; an oddity in disaster films like this one. This is most apparent when he first sees the park's future attraction, the Indominus Rex (a hybrid of multiple dinosaur species and several modern animals).

Instead of gleefully rubbing his hands together and monologuing about how much money the new attraction will bring into the park, he immediately becomes concerned about the animal's apparent aggressiveness. He asks his operations manager, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) to bring in Jurassic World's behavioral researcher, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), to evaluate the animal and the security of its pen.

When the Indominus inevitably escapes and starts eating park personnel, Masrani personally flies a helicopter loaded with an armed team to kill the animal. Sadly, pursuit of the Indominus leads to the escape of dozens of pterosaurs, which attack the helicopter and destroy it. Masrani's popularity with his employees becomes obvious when we see that several control center employees are left stunned or in tears when video feeds show their boss go down.

InGen's Dinosaurs versus Current Paleontology
At the time of Jurassic Park's release, the depiction of the dinosaurs was considered to be reasonably accurate (with notable exceptions such as the size of the velociraptors). By the release of Jurassic Park III, it was widely accepted that dinosaurs such as velociraptor would have been covered in feathers. The 2007 discovery of quill knobs on well-preserved velociraptor forearm bones is considered to be definitive proof of this.

It's possible that the 2001 film was attempting to explain away the growing discrepancy between everyone's favorite kitchen-stalking terrors and current paleontological reconstructions with a brief line from Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill). When asked why he was still digging up dinosaur bones when there were living examples on Isla Sorna, Dr. Grant responded that "What John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park is create genetically engineered theme park monsters. Nothing more and nothing less."

Genetically engineered theme park monsters
(also one of the greatest scenes of 20th century cinema)

More accurate, but not what gave an entire generation kitchen-based nightmares

When Jurassic World's trailer came out, the franchise was attacked by paleontologists for continuing to portray the dinosaurs inaccurately. Rather than introduce a huge inconsistency into the film series by updating the dinosaurs, the writers of the new film took advantage of statements made in Jurassic Park that the DNA of the resurrected animals wasn't entirely ancient. When Masrani confronts InGen's chief geneticist, Dr. Henry Wu, and accuses him of creating a monster in the Indominus Rex, Wu retorts:

You are acting like we are engaged in some kind of mad science but we are doing what we have done from the beginning. Nothing in Jurassic World is natural! We have always filled gaps in the genomes with the DNA of other animals. And if their genetic code was pure many of them would look quite different. But you didn't ask for reality, you asked for more teeth [my emphasis].

With that single line, Jurassic World explains why the films' animals haven't kept up with modern paleontology; at the genetic level they're Frankensteinian creations rather than true dinosaurs. In addition to a hodgepodge of dinosaur genetic material, Dr. Wu admits that the Indominus Rex's genome includes cuttlefish DNA to accelerate its growth rate and tree frog DNA to allow it to adapt to a tropical climate.

Owen Grady
Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Jurassic Park III have two types of people: victims and survivors. The victims are generally random people or those who think they have everything under control. The survivors typically include at least one expert (e.g., Alan Grant or Ian Malcolm) whose skill or experience allow himself and a chosen few to avoid getting eaten.

Jurassic World's Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) introduces one more type into the franchise: the action hero. Grady is a Navy veteran and an expert on deadly animals, has earned the respect of a velociraptor pack (although they're far from tame), and is perpetually cool under pressure. The character is a cliche, but one that the Jurassic Park franchise could really use. Heck, Claire Dearing's nephew simply comes out and says what we're all thinking when Owen Grady is leading the raptor pack from his motorcycle: "Your boyfriend's a bad@$$."

I loved Dr. Alan Grant's character in the first and third Jurassic Park movies, but he definitely couldn't call himself a raptor pack's alpha.

Bad@$$, indeed

I'm looking forward to Jurassic World II.
A-

Movie Review: Godzilla (2014)

I rarely see movies in the theaters anymore. I don't like crowds, I don't like having to follow someone else's schedule, and I don't like the prices. In the rare cases when I do go to the theater, it's usually weeks after a film's release when there are less people.

However, I've been a Godzilla fan for about 25 years. And I've been waiting to see this movie since it was officially announced in 2010. When I realized that Godzilla (2014) was going to be released a) on my Friday off and b) when most people are in school or at work, I decided to see a movie on its opening day for the first time in years.

The opening credits consists of footage taken of a highly classified event from 1954. For years the world was convinced that the US Government's activities in the Pacific during that time consisted of extensive nuclear testing intended to prove new bomb designs and to intimidate the Soviet Union. However, brief images of an enormous aquatic creature and an atomic bomb with a hastily painted crossed-out monster on the casing show that a lot more was going on than nuclear brinksmanship.

Fast forward to 1999 where Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) of Project Monarch, the secretive organization that was involved in the 1954 event, is taken deep into a collapsed mine in the Philippines. The elevated radiation levels are suspicious enough, but the enormous fossilized bones and the two cocoons confirm his fears. Although one cocoon is intact and appears to be entirely dormant, the second was obviously breached shortly before its discovery. The freshly dug tunnel leading away from the cocoon puts Project Monarch on high alert.

Whatever was in the cocoon makes a beeline for Janjira, Japan, producing seismic waves that has chief engineer Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) worried about the safety of the nuclear plant where he and his wife (Juliette Binoche) are employed. Soon the reactor has been breached and the plant goes into lockdown, trapping Brody's wife behind a shielded door in a lethally radioactive hallway. As Brody mourns, the ground begins to shake even more violently and the plant collapses into a crater with a roaring sound that's unlike any caused by an earthquake or structural failure. The Brodys' son, Ford (played as an adult by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), has the misfortune of seeing the collapse from his schoolroom. Janjira is immediately evacuated and is permanently abandoned.

Fifteen years later, Ford is a US Navy ordnance disposal technician living in San Francisco with his wife and child. Not long after coming off active duty, the US consulate in Japan informs him that his estranged father has been arrested trying to enter the quarantine zone around Janjira. After retrieving his father and returning him to his apartment near the abandoned city, Ford finds articles on the disaster posted all over the walls, as well as an eclectic collection of books; the oddest being a text on the use of echo-location in animals.

The very next day, Ford finds himself entering the quarantine zone with his father under protest. Although the area is supposed to be extremely radioactive, Joe's Geiger counter finds no trace of radiation. The two return to their former home and find Joe's computer disks on which he has recordings of the seismic wave that was detected prior to the disaster. Joe and Ford are captured almost immediately thereafter, but instead of being outright arrested, they're taken to the former site of the nuclear plant where a enormous project is underway. As Joe is being questioned, Dr. Serizawa realizes that they've found one of the only survivors of the Janjira disaster who knows anything about the events that led up to the collapse of the plant. 

Unfortunately for Joe, Ford, and the Monarch team, activity within the huge cocoon growing in the location of the plant's destroyed reactor is reaching its apex. The radiation emitted by the ruined reactor has been completely absorbed by the creature inside, which has been feeding on it for the past 15 years. When it emerges, the insect-like, electromagnetic pulse-emitting Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism (MUTO) immediately destroys the surrounding research facility, unfurls a set of wings, and flies off in search of the MUTO that had been hibernating inside the intact cocoon found in 1999.

With the cat out of the bag, Dr. Serizawa reveals the truth; the newly hatched MUTO is but one example of an ancient creature that lived long before humanity. These creatures fed off of radiation, which was more plentiful on ancient Earth, and became dormant when the background radiation levels dropped off. With the advent of the atomic age, some of these creatures were awakened, one of the first being an enormous reptilian "alpha predator" that Serizawa calls Gojira. Although believed to be destroyed in 1954, Serizawa suspects that it may only be hidden deep in the ocean and that it may be humanity's only hope for eliminating the MUTOs.

Godzilla (which is how everyone but Serizawa pronounces the word) may have been inactive for 60 years, but it doesn't take him long to detect the presence of the MUTO and to track it down to its first stopping place in Hawaii. Unfortunately for Ford, the airport where he's supposed to catch his plane back to San Francisco is where Godzilla and the MUTO will have their first encounter. As is standard for a Godzilla film, the rest of the movie focuses on the ever-increasing futility of humanity's efforts to control the unfolding events.

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. The special effects are amazing, the cast is good (especially Ken Watanabe and Bryan Cranston), and the subject is treated with a seriousness that I hadn't seen outside of a Japanese Godzilla film.

It's the latter item that really sets Godzilla (2014) apart from Godzilla (1998). It was very obvious in the latter film that Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich had no respect for Godzilla as a character. The movie features ridiculous characters like "Mayor Ebert" (a painfully obvious parody of Roger Ebert), a buffoonish military represented primarily by a belligerent commander and his stuttering subordinate, protagonists that can't decide if they're in a comedy or a disaster film, and a giant iguana that looks and acts nothing like Toho's creation. The big iguana was such a disappointment for Toho that the 2001 Japanese film Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (I love how literally they translated the title) incorporated the American monster into Godzilla canon by stating that New York had been attacked in 1998 by some creature that the Americans had mistaken for the real Godzilla. By 2004, Godzilla: Final Wars had renamed the American monster "Zilla". When Zilla attacks Sydney, Australia, the real Godzilla promptly knocks him into the Sydney Opera House and apparently kills him with his atomic breath (the 1998 Godzilla's lack of atomic breath was widely panned by Godzilla fans).

By contrast, it's obvious that faithfulness to the source material was foremost on the minds of the makers of the most recent film. Not only does the creature physically resemble Toho's famous monster suits, but the latest Godzilla behaves in an identical manner to his Japanese counterpart. He is more like a force of nature than merely an animal. Although more or less indifferent to humanity, Godzilla is the hero of the film by virtue of opposing another, more destructive monster.

The filmmakers also understand a key principle that Devlin and Emmerich do not; if you want an audience to take something as absurd as a giant radioactive reptile seriously, you need to surround it with realistic people and events. Although the characters aren't continuously dour, there are no comic relief characters in Godzilla. Even better, the director and writers have completely omitted that most annoying of disaster movie elements that I'm certain is taught in Film 101: the completely unnecessary human villain. There is no popularity-seeking mayor endangering the populace, there's no sinister organization trying to maintain its secrets long after the monster is loose, and there's no mad general willing to nuke a populated city to destroy the menace.

Yes, Godzilla does have Project Monarch, but the organization's motives are in nowise sinister, despite Joe Brody's obsession. Once the MUTO hatches, the military steps in and 60 years of secrecy are quickly ended in the interests of warning nearby populations. And yes, there's a strong difference of opinion between Admiral Stenz (David Strathairn) and Dr. Serizawa on how the monsters should be dealt with (as usual, nukes are involved). Serizawa believes that Godzilla is 'a force for balance' and that interference is futile. However, the Admiral makes it clear that his interest is in preserving the lives of millions of people. With so much at stake, he simply cannot share Serizawa's faith in an unpredictable force like Godzilla and trust that he won't turn on humanity immediately after dispatching the MUTOs.

Contrary to expectations, Godzilla doesn't use cheap tricks to make the audience side with Serizawa. Admiral Stenz is shown to be sincere in his motives, logical in his conclusions, and conservative in his strategies. The disagreement isn't portrayed as a matter of right versus wrong or scientists versus the military, but as a serious dilemma in which neither side is obviously right or wrong. In other words, Godzilla gives us a more realistic portrayal of human behavior and motivation than so many other movies that aren't about giant radioactive monsters.

If I had one complaint about Godzilla it's that Godzilla himself doesn't get quite enough screentime (the MUTOs get a lot more attention). Like Jaws (1975), the director keeps the monster in the background for much of the film and saves the real monster versus monster action for the very end. But the few appearances we do get are glorious. I love Pacific Rim (2013), but not a single scene in Guillermo del Toro's love letter to kaiju eiga compares to the first time we see Godzilla let loose his iconic roar.

That scene, and at least two more that I won't give away, put such enormous grins on my face that my cheeks hurt for hours afterward.
A-

Book Review: The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks

Late last year I reviewed Max Brooks' 2006 novel World War Z, the follow-up to The Zombie Survival Guide, published in 2003. While the bulk of the Guide consists of tips for surviving a zombie apocalypse, my favorite part is the "Recorded Attacks" chapter, which illustrates that the zombie virus, solanum, has been infecting humans for thousands of years. Thanks to limited human interaction between continents and secret zombie-fighting groups like the Japanese Shield Society, the world had avoided a global pandemic (until World War Z, that is).

The Zombie Survival Guide contains just over 60 recorded events, ranging from an African outbreak in 60,000 B.C. (as recorded in cave paintings), to a case in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2002. Theses events are presented clinically, like Brooks' other publications, which actually makes them more effective.

In keeping with the current trend of releasing graphic novels as tie-ins to popular books, in 2009 Brooks published The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, which contains illustrated adaptations of 12 of the Guide's historical events. I'm not certain how they chose which stories to include, but it seems that most of the stories in Recorded Attacks are those that the Guide presents with the most detail or that are the most "historically" relevant. However, I suspect that at least a couple were included because they were particularly gruesome in illustrated form.

The comic books I grew up on were a lot different

Recorded Attacks primarily lets the pictures do the talking. The illustrator, Ibraim Roberson, using a limited palette of black, white, and gray, ably depicts the horror and the tremendous amount of gore that we only imaged in the previous books.

What text we do get is used to set the seen or to clarify what we're seeing. It consists mostly of blurbs lifted from the Guide's Recorded Attacks chapter and thus carries the same cold, factual tone as the previous book. The contrast between the matter-of-fact text and the visceral images is extraordinarily effective.

A Word on Content
Obviously The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks is filled with images of violence; it's a graphic novel about zombie attacks, after all. The illustrations may be in black and white, but the lack of color does little to reduce their impact. Additionally, Recorded Attacks contains a few scenes of non-sexual nudity. One involves the "corpse" of a young woman that is removed from a shallow grave (she quickly attacks those who disinterred her) while another shows a partially dressed woman chained up in the hold of a slave ship along with dozens of other slaves.

I would strongly recommend this book to zombie fans, particularly those who enjoy the horrifying ghoul-plagued universe that Max Brooks has created. And it should go without saying that I can only recommend it to mature adults who are not easily offended.
A-

Book Review: World War Z

The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z

World War Z is Max Brooks' 2006 follow-up to his Zombie Survival Guide, published in 2003. While the serious nature of World War Z is apparent from the beginning, the Survival Guide has inexplicably been marketed as a humor book. Anyone approaching the Survival Guide expecting a laugh might be disappointed, though. Its tone is entirely serious and fits a lot better in the sci-fi genre than comedy. While the survival aspects of the book could possibly be seen as satirical, the sections about zombie behavior, the nature of solanum (the zombie virus), and historical cases of zombie attacks clearly aren't meant to be funny. In fact, they represent solid sci-fi world building that forms the basis for Brooks' World War Z. Two or three references to "the civilian survival manual" in the latter book reveals the Survival Guide to be an in-universe text.

An Oral History of the Zombie War
While The Zombie Survival Guide acts as a primer for surviving a zombie apocalypse of the kind shown in George Romero's Living Dead films, World War Z purports to a be "an oral history of the Zombie War" compiled ten years after the war's official end. The author, a U.N.-supported historian, traveled around the world and interviewed a number of individuals involved in key events of the war to create the account. The author contributes little in the way of narration or a historical framework since the audience is assumed to already know about the key events of the war. This means that real-world readers have to piece together a broader historical outline based on indirect statements by interviewees. For example, the book never directly tells the reader what the "Great Panic" was, the first interviewee that mentions the Special Forces "Alpha Teams" simply assumes that the audience knows what they were, and the vital "South Africa Plan" is referenced several times before the interview describing its inception finally reveals what the plan was. Brooks leaves behind enough hints and clues to figure out what happened during the Zombie War, but readers will have to correlate each piece of information for themselves.

The first interview documents one of the earliest known outbreaks of the solanum virus in China (although the actions of the Chinese government suggests that previous outbreaks had been contained and kept secret). The virus spreads as infected refugees attempt to flee the country while outbreaks occur in far-flung locations such as Brazil when infected organs from Chinese "donors" (most likely executed political dissidents) are implanted into recipients. At the time, the nature of the virus and the fact that its apparently insane, cannibalistic victims are actually mindless reanimated corpses is unknown to the vast majority of people. Government coverups only make things worse and before long there are hordes of the living dead roaming through almost every country.

Although it isn't necessary to read The Zombie Survival Guide before reading World War Z, it's in this first portion that the information on zombie physiology and behavior found in the Survival Guide is helpful. For example, the doctor who investigates the earliest known Chinese outbreak first examines the bite wounds of several individuals who tried to subdue a teenage victim of the virus. The doctor is amazed to find that the villagers' wounds are entirely free of bacterial infection. This is meant to be an ominous sign, but only if you had read the Survival Guide. In the guide we learn that the solanum virus is lethal to nearly all forms of life (but will only reanimate human bodies) and actually repels any number of species. This is why a zombie can remain a threat for years; insects, bacteria, scavengers, etc. that would normally consume the average corpse are either killed by infected flesh or will avoid it at all costs. The villagers' wounds show no signs of infection because the solanum virus has eliminated any bacteria that might have infected the wound.

Anyway, the first part of World War Z builds up to the "Great Panic" that sees the fall of civilization as we know it and the death (and undeath, in many cases) of more than half the world's population. This is where most of the novel's horror is found and is the point where the average zombie story ends. Where Brooks really shines is in his vision of what happens next.

While the walking dead continue to make appearances, the second section focuses on the living and their efforts to gather survivors, form safe zones, conserve resources, and prepare to go on the offensive. The third part covers the reversal of the course of the war, the changes in military doctrine needed to defeat the living dead, and the eventual victory over the zombie hordes. The author also spends a lot of time showing the geopolitical consequences of a worldwide brush with annihilation. Events such as China's conversion to democracy, Russia's return to a czarist system, and Cuba's wartime renaissance are revealed during the course of the interviews. Without going into too much detail, the novel explains how the interaction between politics, geography, history, culture, religion, and military response to the zombie menace leads to the post-war world.

World War Z as Serious Sci-Fi
Bizarrely, the copyright page of World War Z classifies the novel as "War-Humor". First, World War Z isn't remotely funny. Brooks has attempted to realistically depict the collapse of modern society in the face of an unimaginable horror. Second, the author clearly put a lot of thought into the hard choices and sacrifices that would have to be made as well as the tactics and equipment that would be needed to reverse a zombie apocalypse.

While the zombies are defeated, there's no Hollywood ending to Brooks' story. Characters are traumatized, for every person who rises to the challenge there are many more who give up or give in to their baser instincts, many who are rescued from years of being under siege are resentful, and the victory is so hard won that no one can even find the energy or the heart to celebrate.

Finally, the depth of the author's sci-fi world building and the extent to which he explains why his post-war world takes the form that it does are far beyond what I had expected out of a zombie novel, let alone one designated as "humor". Rather, it reminds me of the post-Formic War Earth that Orson Scott Card developed for his Ender's Game series. Contrary to my original expectations, World War Z turns out to be a serious and well thought out science fiction story.

About World War Z's Zombies
In the acknowledgements, Brooks thanks "the genius and terror of George A. Romero". It's apparent in both The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z that Brooks is a huge fan of the Living Dead films and of the now-classic "Romero Zombie"; i.e., a slow moving, mindless flesh eater that can only be killed by destroying its brain. Brooks' living dead are so similar to Romero's that one could easily think of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and its sequels as describing incidents that occurred during World War Z's Great Panic.

As far as I'm aware, Romero never explained in detail the exact nature of the zombie disease. This is where Brooks steps in. As described in the Survival Guide, the solanum virus affects every cell in the body, turning each into a more or less independent entity. Shooting a zombie in the chest does no good, since its body doesn't require the use of any of the organs that could be affected. The only organ that still has any function is the brain itself, which continues to coordinate the zombie's movement and drives it to consume living flesh.

Any attempts to kill a zombie that doesn't involve destroying the brain are bound to fail. This frequently comes into play in World War Z, particularly at the disastrous Battle of Yonkers. The modern weaponry used by the U.S. Army in that early battle was designed to kill living soldiers by shredding them or causing severe blast injuries. Weapons that were expected to be 100% lethal within a certain radius ended up being only partially successful against the living dead. Without enough antipersonnel weaponry to defeat the horde, and with soldiers trained to shoot at an enemy's center of mass rather than the head, the Army is routed and forced to retreat with heavy losses. The living are only able to reverse the tide of the war by adopting radically new tactics.

The Novel versus the Film
Since I haven't seen the movie yet, I can't compare the two with any level of detail, nor can I judge the quality of the film. However, the ads alone show that World War Z (2013) is fundamentally different from the novel it's supposedly based on. The whole point of the novel is to provide a history of the entirety of the war through the experiences of various individuals. The film, on the other hand, appears to focus on the real-time experience of a single character. How can you depict a "world war" when you spend most of your time with a single person?

Another huge change is in the nature of the zombies. Max Brooks' slow-moving zombies are threatening due to their weight of numbers and relentlessness. While it's common for people to laugh at a monster that you can escape by walking away at a brisk pace, imagine that there are millions of flesh-eaters that never sleep, never rest, and never stop hunting. A would-be survivor can easily escape one swarm just to run into another one. The novel's plot is directly shaped by the creatures' behavior.

Instead of the shambling horror, the film's menace consists of the newer "fast zombies". While I'm sure that fast zombies can be pretty darned scary too, it's not really an adaptation of Brooks' best-selling World War Z if the creatures that Brooks has painstakingly developed are fundamentally altered.

In the 1990s, a screenplay entitled Hardwired, which told the story of a robot uprising, was shopped around to various companies. It was eventually picked up by 20th Century Fox and, at the studio's insistence, it was altered to include Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robots. The final product became I, Robot (2004) which, although fairly good, has little to do with Asimov's novel.

The cynic in me suspects that, like I, Robot, the makers of World War Z never had any intention to follow the novel's plot and bought the rights to the name for marketing purposes. The fact that Max Brooks never even read the script seems to confirm this.

A Word on the Language
Just like Dan Simmons' Hyperion, which I also enjoyed, World War Z contains a lot of strong language. Like Simmons, Brooks uses it as a distinguishing trait of several of his interviewees. American combat personnel tend to use it the most, whereas swearing is almost entirely absent in the interviews of foreign civilians. Although I recognize that many people speak this way in reality (and I often work with people who swear just as frequently), it still seemed unnecessary. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to readers of science fiction and fans of zombie stories in particular, although I can only recommend it to mature adults who are not easily offended.
A-

May Day Movie Marathon, Part IV

The Manster (1959)
If The Ghoul (1933) doesn't deliver on the horror or (off-screen) carnage, then The Manster more than makes up for it. The movie was made for an American company, United Artists, but it was filmed in Japan with a mix of both Japanese and American cast and crew members. The movie's tone is a mix, too: it feels like an American sci-fi/horror movie from that era (I'm reminded of The Brain that Wouldn't Die (1959)), but the creature's look and origin are as bizarre as any I've ever seen in a Japanese monster movie.

Before we even get to the opening credits, some sort of hairy creature sneaks into a home and brutally kills at least three women. Coincidentally, I watched this movie right after the nearly bloodless The Ghoul. The Manster seems to go out of its way to underscore the difference between a British film of the early '30s and an American/Japanese film of the late '50s by actually splashing blood across a window as the opening titles appear.

We soon find ourselves in the mountain laboratory of Doctor Robert Suzuki, amoral scientist extraordinaire. Immediately upon entering the office, Suzuki asks his secretary, Tara, if "he" has come back. Tara says that she locked him into the laboratory and hands Suzuki a gun. "He" turns out to be Kenji, the most recent product of the good Doctor's work. In his lab, we see that the Doctor keeps a hideously deformed woman named Emiko locked in a cage. When Kenji appears, Dr. Suzuki takes the opportunity to inform the audience that Kenji is his brother and an experiment gone wrong... I mean, he "reminds" the mutated Kenji that he's his brother and an experiment gone wrong. Suzuki finishes off the creature with the pistol and dumps the body into his convenient monster-disposal system; i.e., a shaft that leads into the volcanic heart of the mountain.

Dr. Suzuki goes back up to the front office to find American reporter Larry Stanford. After working for several years as a foreign correspondent in Japan, Larry has been assigned to interview the enigmatic scientist before heading home to his wife in New York. The audience gets another healthy dose of exposition as Dr. Suzuki describes his work on evolution and claims that he has found a way to chemically replicate the effects of the mutagenic cosmic rays that bathed prehistoric Earth.

During this interview, Dr. Suzuki does some "harmless" questioning of his own, claiming that the scientist in him is simply curious. The oddest question is whether or not the reporter has had 'any other companionship' while he's been away from his wife. Larry is mildly offended by the question, but says that he's been "a good boy". This seems to satisfy Suzuki who has pulled down a bottle from the back of his liquor cabinet. After the liquor puts Larry out, Dr. Suzuki injects the reporter with a mysterious fluid.

That's right, Suzuki has decided to continue his experiments literally minutes after having to put down his brother. The hallmark of a good mad scientist is persistence.

When Larry comes to, he accepts the Doctor's offer to see the local sights before returning to the States. It's immediately apparent that Suzuki's mystery chemical has affected a change on Larry. Despite having remained faithful for several years away from home, Larry now seems eager to participate in drunken debauchery on the eve of his return trip while being surrounded by plenty of geishas. When Suzuki includes the attractive Tara in an "innocent" trip to the local mineral baths, Larry abandons all thoughts of returning home. This sudden change in plans and personality have both Larry's wife and Ian, Larry's boss and friend, extremely worried.

Larry's wife is flown out in an attempt to convince him to come back with her, but things don't go well when she catches him and Tara returning to his apartment after a night on the town. Given the choice between his wife and his mistress, Larry dramatically chooses the latter. Despite her threat, his wife decides to stay in Japan for a while longer in hopes of winning him back.

Larry's personality isn't the only thing that's changing. He's had a sore shoulder since the surreptitious injection, but the confrontation with his wife seems to have exacerbated whatever changes are occurring to him. The most minor of these is the scaly patch that's formed around the sore spot. Of greater concern is the fact that his right hand has sprouted hair and claws. That night, the distraught man wanders through the village before entering a monastery. After ranting for a while, Larry kills the Shinto priest.

The next day finds Larry anxious and unable to remember what he's done. He becomes extremely solitary, drinks heavily, and has little patience for Ian's attempts to talk with him. It's during his nighttime wanderings that the creature spawned by Dr. Suzuki's injection completely takes over his personality and he begins stalking and murdering young women. Meanwhile, Suzuki is excited by the obvious changes in Larry, who he says is becoming a new species thanks to his formula. It's not apparent whether or not the Doctor knows that his latest experiment has become as violent as his last.

In a final effort to help his friend, Ian introduces Larry to a psychiatrist. Almost immediately after he drives the two men out of his apartment, Larry experiences a sudden sharp pain in his shoulder...

Up to this point, The Manster has given us a pseudo-werewolf that kills at night and has no memory of his deeds. The only difference between Larry Stanford and Larry Talbot (it's interesting that both are named "Larry") is that Larry Stanford's transformation thus far is only partial and doesn't go away with the rising of the sun. It's after the psychiatrist leaves that The Manster gets seriously weird.

Larry pulls off his robe to find that the scaly patch on his shoulder has turned into an eye!

And I immediately loved this movie

Larry immediately makes a beeline for the psychiatrist's office, kicks in the doors, and frightens the shrink into calling the police. As the horrified doctor watches, Larry's extra eye grows into a hideous second head! Not wanting to be left out, his original face also becomes monstrous. The psychiatrist is dispatched and the two-headed fiend escapes before the police arrive. However, the fact that Larry had been screaming at the doctor only a few hours before makes Ian suspicious.

Did I mention that I love this movie?

Ian admits his fears to the police chief and the local law enforcement are soon on the lookout for the mutant reporter. A long series of chases ensue, with Larry leaving several dead cops in his wake. When the monster returns to his apartment, he comes face to face with his wife, who promptly faints. The chase then continues to the nearby shipyard, where the police again fail to catch the creature. (The police in this movie are about as effective as the Godzilla films' JDF.)

Back at the laboratory, we see that Dr. Suzuki (who has had only one short scene in the past 40 minutes) is finally feeling pangs of conscience. He's developed another serum that he believes will separate Larry from the monster if he's exposed to heat. To further atone for his actions, he's decided to commit ritual suicide. But first he dispatches Emiko, his wife(!), whose deformity had been the result of voluntarily taking an early form of the serum.

Before Suzuki can off himself, though, Larry arrives at the mountain laboratory, which is experiencing significant volcanic activity. The fiend leaves Tara unconscious in the office before stalking into the lab itself. The Doctor quickly injects him with the second serum before being killed. With the police in hot pursuit, Larry escapes the lab and grabs Tara. While running across the mountain, he passes by several volcanic vents. The heat from the vents activates the serum, which causes the two-headed man to split into two beings; Larry himself and the murderous creature that's been growing on his right side. (The waistband of Larry's pants is strangely intact considering that the right side of his body just tore free and became a big furry creature.)

There's a brief struggle between the two and Larry is knocked to the ground. The monster, being a jerk, throws Tara into a volcanic vent. In return, Larry pushes his ugly twin into the same vent. It's only after eliminating his own alibi that his wife and the police show up. As Larry is carried away on a stretcher, Ian and the world's most patient wife contemplate the good and evil present in each man.

The Manster has all the marks of high quality cinema: mad science, serial killing monsters, and a creature that spends the last half hour of the movie with two heads. The best part is that we have no idea what Dr. Suzuki is trying to accomplish. He babbles on about evolution and is apparently trying to create a new race of being, but he doesn't seem to have any real goal. What kind of being is he trying to make? Does he want to evolve the human race or devolve it? What is his purpose? He seems to think that Larry's post-injection hedonism is a good sign, but is that really indicative of what he wants? He's disappointed when he produces bloodthirsty monsters, but isn't that kind of the logical result when you create an evolved/devolved creature with no self-control? In the end it doesn't really matter because Dr. Suzuki gives us a murderous two-headed monster, which is all I was really asking for.
B+

May Day Movie Marathon, Part III

The Ghoul (1933)
The early 1930s saw the release of a number of American horror films from Universal Pictures that are familiar to American and European audiences 80 years later (although precious few have actually taken the time to sit down and watch them). Dracula (1931) is usually credited with starting the trend, followed by Frankenstein in that same year. Subsequent films included The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) (although more of a sci-fi film than a horror movie), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Lesser known movies filled the latter half of the decade, including a second Frankenstein sequel: Son of Frankenstein (1939). A number of pseudo-sequels to The Mummy were released in the early '40s, although the most famous monster movie of that decade is probably The Wolf Man (1941).

While the Universal monster movies were seeing diminishing returns by the '40s, and were eventually reduced to self parody with films like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), the earlier movies were very popular. (Those who think sequel-mania is a recent phenomenon might be surprised by how many monster movies of the late '30s and '40s were sequels of these original films.) It wasn't long before filmmakers on the other side of the Atlantic wanted a piece of the monster movie action, particularly in Britain, but the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) had other ideas.

The BBFC was relatively lenient with imported American horror films (Island of Lost Souls (1932) being a notable exception), apparently believing that Brits wouldn't be overly influenced by the product of a foreign culture. However, they were a lot more strict on domestic movies, making it clear to homegrown filmmakers that American-style horror films would not be tolerated. This proved to be unfortunate for Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. Gaumont had been able to convince Boris Karloff, who had decided to vacation in his home country after the release of The Mummy, to star in a movie technically based on a crime novel but that included elements strongly influenced by Karloff's recent film. While The Ghoul clearly aspires to be a Universal-style horror film, it's undermined by the limits imposed by the British censors.

Our film starts with the confrontation between an antiques dealer and an adherent to an ancient Egyptian cult. (It's funny how many of these older movies, and even the 1999 version of The Mummy, suggest that significant numbers of modern-day Egyptians worship the ancient pantheon.) The cultist demands the return of a jewel called "the Eternal Light" to the tomb from which it was stolen. The dealer no longer has it, having sold it to a Professor Morlant for a sizable portion of his fortune.

When we finally meet Morlant (Boris Karloff!) we find that he's a true believer in the ways of the ancient Egyptians and believes that the Eternal Light is his key to immortality. As he lays dying, the Professor demands that his servant, Laing (Ernest Thesiger! a.k.a., Dr. Pretorius from The Bride of Frankenstein), wrap the jewel in his hand. Morlant believes that, after his death and burial, he will revive the night of the first full moon so that he can make his offering to Anubis. At "the first hour" (which turns out to be 1 AM rather than midnight as one might expect) he will place the Eternal Light in the open palm of a statue of Anubis. If Morlant is found worthy of eternal life, the statue will close its hand over the jewel, signifying that the offering has been accepted.

The deeply Christian Laing strongly disapproves of his boss's beliefs. Failing to pursade Morlant to give up on his pagan ways, he argues that burying the jewel in Morlant's ersatz-Egyptian tomb will deprive the Professor's heirs of their rightful inheritance. With Karloff's characteristic intensity, Morlant warns that any attempt to deprive him of paradise will cause him to rise from the grave with the full moon to wreak a murderous vengeance. Despite this warning, Laing removes the jewel from his master's hand not long after he expires.

Shortly thereafter, the doctor declares Morlant's death by heart failure. Several people notice that the dead man's hand has been recently wrapped, which raises the suspicions of Morlant's shifty-eyed lawyer, Broughton. While going through Morlant's papers, Broughton couldn't help but to notice that his client recently spent a huge sum of money, but that the item or items it purchased are nowhere to be found. That night Morlant is buried in his tomb where the statue of Anubis that had been watching over his death bed has been relocated. As the pallbearers leave, Broughton sneaks back into the tomb to take a look at the wrapped hand, but finds nothing.

Contrary to my expectations, Laing isn't the stereotypical unscrupulous servant who robs his deceased employer for his own gain. While he does take the jewel from the corpse, he does so because he truly believes that the dead shouldn't rob the living. After hiding the Eternal Light, Laing finds the address of Betty Harlon, one of Morlant's heirs. The servant surreptitiously hands Betty a message, but the paper is immediately stolen by Broughton, who had been shadowing Laing. Not long afterward, Betty is visited by the other surviving heir, Ralph Morlant. Although there is some bad blood between Betty's and Ralph's families, Ralph's meeting with the deceased's attorney earlier in the day has convinced him that Brougton is trying to rob both him and Betty of their inheritance. The two set off to Morlant's mansion with Betty's friend, Kaney. Kaney will be our odious comic relief for the rest of the picture. I still cannot understand filmmakers' insistence on including such characters. Even newer films fall into this trap; Transformers (2007) had at least two such characters, neither of whom accomplished anything except to earn the audience's loathing.

Betty, Ralph, and Kaney arrive at the Morlant house to find Broughton there. Of course, the three put little stock in the attorney's claims that he's simply putting his client's papers in order. These are joined by Parson Hartley, the clergyman who had been rebuffed earlier when he tried to give Morlant his last rights. It's not long before the Egyptian antiquities dealer is knocking at the door, claiming to be an associated of Morlant (which isn't entirely untrue). Meanwhile, the dealer's cultist companion skulks around the house looking for any sign of the Eternal Light.

As the mansion becomes the gathering place for various characters, all of them secretly looking for the same valuable object, I see my Mummy-inspired horror film turning into one of the dreaded "spooky-house mysteries". Past the halfway point, just as I'm starting to despair that Karloff's part at the beginning was just a cameo, we see the full moon rise. Despite his earlier disregard for his master's beliefs, Laing starts to show some trepidation. This turns to outright terror when he sees the door to Morlant's tomb open and its angry occupant stride out.

Oh how I wish we actually got what Karloff's character so chillingly promised.

Morlant stalks around and through the house for much of the rest of the film. Although the cultist is dispatched pretty quickly, Laing is spared when he reveals where he hid the jewel. The rest of the titular ghoul's rampage consists of almost killing several people, much to the disappointment of any viewer who is expecting the kind of body count that contemporary American pictures had. (Despite my desperate pleas, he doesn't kill Kaney.) With only minutes to go before 1 AM, Morlant finally obtains the Eternal Light and returns to his tomb. With a knife taken from the cultist's body, he carves a bloody ankh on his chest and places the jewel in the statue's hand. Betty and Ralph arrive in time to see Morlant's offering and watch in amazement as the statue's hand closes over the jewel. With a shout of joy, Morlant falls to the ground dead.

I wish I could say that this was the end of the movie. I wish I could say that Boris Karloff's Professor Morlant had really been an undead ghoul and that the hand of a "heathen image" really did accept the Eternal Light. The offering scene is actually very well done and had the blessed words "The End" appeared immediately after Morlant's death I would have a much higher esteem for the movie. But no, like I Bury the Living (1958), The Ghoul has to give us a "logical explanation" that's nearly as far-fetched as any supernatural one.

So, how does the statue of Anubis accept the jewel? Well, after Morlant's final death, the hand withdraws into the hole where the statue's stone hand had been originally. It turns out that Parson Hartely is a fraud and that he has spent much of the night chiseling off the hand so that he could hide inside the statue and "accept" the offering (since when did the Egyptians make hollow statues?). As the heirs try to stop the faux-parson, the antiquities dealer shows up and takes the Eternal Light. During the scuffle, a bullet damages the tomb's lamp, which is fed by an outside source (plot point!). The dealer makes his exit, locking Hartley and the heirs in the tomb.

In the meantime, a doctor and the police rush to the Morlant house in response to a phone call Ralph placed before entering the tomb. As expected, the doctor declares his belief that the Professor may have actually suffered from a fit of catalepsy so severe as to be almost indistinguishable from death. (I can't help but to mention that a believer in the ancient Egyptian religion would certainly have insisted on being mummified; a process that would definitely prevent a premature burial.)

While making his escape, the dealer drops the Eternal Light where Kaney can find it. Broughton confronts the fleeing Egyptian, who realizes that the odious comic relief has ended up with the MacGuffin. The villains demand the jewel from Kaney at gunpoint but are held at bay when she threatens to drop it in a well.

Back in the tomb, Hartley, Ralph, and Betty are trying to find a way out. Suddenly, the damaged lamp drops and starts an enormous blaze. Hartley reveals that he had previously installed explosives outside of the doors (obviously he hadn't expected the tomb's owner to simply open the doors for him). The advancing flames set the explosives off and Betty and Ralph escape the tomb while Kaney is saved by the timely arrival of the police (drat!).

As usual, watching Boris Karloff is a pleasure, although he should have gotten a lot more screen time. Thesiger is always fun to watch. And with the exception of the obnoxious Kaney, the other characters are completely forgettable and manage not to damage the film too much. But it's the ending that really brings this movie down. I hate a Scooby-Doo ending, especially when it's in a movie from an era known for its supernatural films.

American films from this period had been unashamedly invoking the supernatural with good results, both at home and abroad. The Ghoul obviously wanted to share in that success, securing an actor who gained his fame in American monster movies and filming a story involving Egyptian mysticism and revenge from beyond the grave. However, in The Mummy, this film's obvious inspiration, Karloff's Imhotep isn't a cataleptic or a thief in disguise. Imhotep actually is undead and he uses genuine mystical powers in an attempt to carry out his fiendish plot. It's possible that The Ghoul's filmmakers thought that a spooky-house mystery with a horrific angle would play better than an outright supernatural movie, although it's suspected that the BBFC's strong disapproval of domestic horror movies might have influenced them to take the path of least resistance; i.e., "logical explanations" and mortal villains who are inevitably brought to justice. It's also very likely that the few deaths we see at Morlant's hands reflect Gaumont's fears that the BBFC might not certify the film.

The worst part is that the supposedly logical explanation is completely ridiculous (I Bury the Living is also guilty of this). The Ghoul would have us believe that immediately after providing a very specific warning regarding what would happen if the Eternal Light wasn't buried with him, Morlant could go into a cataleptic fit that is mistaken for death by the attending doctor, just to conveniently come out of the fit and go on a murderous rampage on the night of the full moon; thus seeming to fulfill his threat in exact detail. Then, the movie wants us to believe that Hartley expects Morlant to place the Eternal Light in Anubis' hand and accordingly modifies the statue, even though Laing is the only one who is privy to the Professor's intentions. A supernatural explanation would have held up a lot better than these outrageous coincidences.

One final nitpick: it's obvious that the filmmakers only read enough about Egyptology to pick up a few names, since the movie's version of Egyptian theology is almost entirely unrecognizable. Although Anubis was the god of mummification and the afterlife, I don't believe that adherents of Egypt's ancient religion called upon him to grant eternal life. That was typically the domain of Osiris and Ra. This kind of historical license can be expected in even the best classic horror movies, though.
C+

May Day Movie Marathon, Part II

Vincent Price in his least
melodramatic role ever!

The Last Man on Earth (1964)
I first read Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend shortly after seeing the 2007 film adaptation of the same name. As entertaining as it was, I Am Legend (2007) deviates significantly from Matheson's original story, particularly with regards to the climax and the meaning of the title. Despite having a totally different name, The Last Man on Earth is significantly more faithful to its source, to the extent that there are no real surprises for anyone who has read the book.

[Note that this review will contain spoilers for both the film as well as its source.]

Every day of Dr. Robert Morgan's life seems exactly like the one before it. Each morning he wakes up, checks his food supplies, makes sure his generator has enough fuel, does a little woodworking, and drives around the deserted city in his station wagon running errands. Those errands include picking up some fresh garlic, getting new mirrors to replace the smashed ones, throwing corpses into the endlessly burning pit on the outskirts of town, and breaking into homes to stake their undead inhabitants.

As far as he can tell, Dr. Morgan is the "Last Man on Earth", or at least the last living man on Earth. Everyone else succumbed to an invariably fatal disease three years ago... and then awoke looking for human blood. Every night these monsters congregate outside of his home trying to get in. Every night the vampire who was once his friend, Ben Cortman, shouts "Come out, Morgan!" The only thing between Morgan and the vampires are makeshift fortifications, strands of garlic, and mirrors. It also helps that the vampires are relatively weak and lack the intelligence they had in life.

A lengthy flashback reveals that our hero once had a wife and daughter. As the plague swept across the world, Dr. Morgan and others had worked feverishly but futilely to find a cure. Soon some of his fellow laboratory workers had contracted the disease while others like Ben Cortman whispered about the government's sinister reasons for burning the victims' corpses in the massive pit on the edge of town. When the plague hit his household, Morgan told his wife not to let the authorities know that their daughter was ill. While he understood intellectually that the government was burning the victims' bodies in an attempt to contain the disease, he couldn't bear the thought of his daughter being thrown into the smoldering pit. However, a desperate Mrs. Morgan broke down while her husband was at work and called the doctor. Morgan arrived from work later that evening to find an Army truck taking his daughter's body away.

When his wife came down with the disease, Morgan vowed not to let her end up in the pit too. The night after her death, he took her to a nearby field and buried her. In his exhaustion and grief he found himself unable to bury his wife more than a foot or two in the ground. Later that night, while preparing to go to bed, Morgan heard a hoarse voice calling his name. When he opened the door, Morgan found that the bizarre rumors that the plague victims were rising from the dead to prey on the living were most definitely true.

Three years after being forced to kill his undead wife, the last man on Earth has become utterly despondent, his singular immunity to the plague being a curse rather than a blessing. Day after day he searches houses for undead inhabitants and stakes them, but night after night the vampires gather outside his home and torment him. His first glimmer of hope in three years comes one day in the form of a stray dog; the first truly living creature he's seen since the plague completely enveloped the globe. When he finally brings the dog home, its odd behavior concerns him. A blood test shows that the animal isn't immune to the disease after all, and Morgan buries the staked corpse shortly thereafter.

Not long after burying the dog, Morgan finds an even more unexpected surprise during one of his daylight travels: a woman walking through an empty field. The woman, Ruth, startles and runs when he starts yelling, forcing Morgan to chase after her. She's understandably nervous when he takes her to his home near sunset and starts barricading the place. While ecstatic to be speaking to another human being for the first time in years, Morgan starts to suspect that the situation is too good to be true.

When Morgan finally pushes a string of garlic in her face, Ruth nearly vomits. Since one of the characteristics of the infected is an allergic reaction to garlic, the doctor insists that Ruth's blood be tested. She claims that a weak stomach caused the reaction, but other plague symptoms and the vial of vaccine and the syringe that she fails to conceal proves that she's lying. She eventually admits the horrible truth: her people sent her to spy on Morgan. Like herself, Ruth's people are infected but can keep the disease at bay with a vaccine, although many of them remain sensitive to daylight and are therefore nocturnal.

Now, imagine that you believe that you're the last human being on Earth and are convinced that everyone you come across during your daytime hunts is a vampire that must be destroyed. That's right; along with the undead, Morgan has also staked many diseased, but still living, human beings over the past three years. In the eyes of Ruth's people, Morgan is a monster that hunts down and murders innocent people while they sleep.

Soon a well armed mob shows up outside of Morgan's house, destroys all the undead surrounding it, and goes after Morgan himself. The doctor makes a run for it but is eventually caught inside of a church. Having seen that the fiend her people fear is simply a lonely man who didn't know what he was doing, Ruth asks for him to be spared. This goes about as well as can be expected in a movie like this and Morgan takes a few spears to the body. With his last breath, our hero calls his killers freaks and claims that he is the last man on Earth.

I knew beforehand that I would like The Last Man On Earth; it's a Vincent Price movie about a vampire apocalypse! Like Will Smith's I Am Legend, this movie has a strong first half featuring an engaging actor who is able to carry significant portions of the film by himself. While the older movie takes the easy way out and incorporates a lot of voice-over narration to let us in on the protagonist's thoughts, the fact that the narrator is Vincent Price more than makes up for it.

At the same time, I found it lacking in a few places, particularly near the end. By conveying the loneliness and horror of the hero's life as well as it does, it sets the bar for what follows a bit too high. For starters, this horror film isn't all that scary. Only once, when he loses track of time and arrives home late, do the vampires really threaten Morgan. But the creatures' clumsiness and weakness mean that he's able to get back to the safety of his home after only a brief and unsatisfying struggle. Scenes featuring hordes of the undead surrounding your house and calling you out by name should be frightening by their very nature, but the filmmakers present them in a static and unexciting way. The only truly creepy scene is during the flashback when Morgan's wife comes back from the dead. A few more moments like that one would have made The Last Man On Earth a much more effective horror film.

Another shortcoming is in the film's failure to discuss the nature of its sci-fi vampires. All we get from The Last Man On Earth is that the vampires are the result of a disease, that the victims (undead or not) are allergic to garlic and sensitive to light, and that Morgan's stakes are designed to hold open the wound so that "their body seal can't function". We don't get any elaboration on the vampires' self-sealing ability nor why other things like crosses or mirrors also ward them off. Matheson's novel, on the other hand, spends a lot of time explaining why his bacteria-spawned vampires behave according to the legends. The novel's Robert Neville (who isn't a doctor and does his research as a way to distract himself) finds that the vampire bacteria dies when exposed to air. To protect itself, the bacteria introduces a type of glue into the bodies of its victims. Narrow cuts or holes made by bullets seal too quickly for the bacteria to die, but stakes keep the wound open and allow enough air in to kill it. Mirrors and crosses (and Stars of David for those who had been Jewish) work on some vampires since the remnants of their personalities feel remorse or horror when reminded of what they have become. Unfortunately, The Last Man On Earth doesn't go into enough detail and the reason why Morgan feels compelled to replace the mirrors that the creatures smash each night remains unexplained.

Finally, we come to a significant philosophical difference between The Last Man On Earth and I Am Legend. When Neville finds out that he's been killing the living along with the undead, he's devastated. He makes no attempt to escape or hide despite having several weeks or even months between Ruth's warning and her people's attack. It's only when he sees the brutality with which the infected dispatch the undead that he attempts to defend himself, which results in him getting shot before he's captured. Since the infected are certain to execute him (possibly in a very unpleasant manner), Ruth gives Neville some pills to finish off what the gunshot wound started. As the pills do their work, he looks out his cell window at the mobs of the infected and realizes that, to them, he is as frightening and terrible an entity as any vampire had been to him. A being that could walk in broad daylight and killed their friends and family, Neville had become a legend among them.

Like Neville, Dr. Morgan also finds out that he has been killing the living, but if he feels remorse for it he doesn't really show it. Instead of empathizing with the fear and hatred of the infected as Neville does, Morgan calls them freaks and implies that they're no longer human. He had been a likeable character up to this point, but he loses the viewers' sympathy with his refusal to accept that he made a mistake that killed countless innocents.

(I won't go into detail, but even The Last Man On Earth's slightly disappointing ending is better than that of the theatrical cut of 2007's I Am Legend, which tacked an unimaginative Hollywood ending onto an otherwise good movie. The film's alternate ending, which preserves the general idea of Matheson's story, is a lot better.)

On a historical note, horror fans may notice that George Romero's zombie movies (e.g., Night of the Living Dead (1968)) have a lot in common with this film. It's not a coincidence; Romero admitted that he borrowed liberally from Matheson's novel.
B

May Day Movie Marathon, Part I

With the birth of Son of Atomic Spud II a couple weeks ago, I took a two week vacation from work. As I did with the original Son of Atomic Spud, I liked to spend a few hours holding the baby and watching old movies while Bride of Atomic Spud took a nap. After watching a few movies from my Netflix queue, I found that a number of movies were only going to be available for streaming until May 1st. Since I didn't want to miss them, I decided to work through all the soon to be expired movies on my list.

The dozen movies I watched over my vacation varied wildly in quality, release date, and plot. They ranged from an Orson Welles film noir (excellent) to a Larry Buchanan made for TV movie (wretched). The oldest was released in 1935 and the newest was released in 1967. Oddly enough, four of them were released in the '60s, which is unusual for me since I rarely watch anything made during the period from 1960 to 1976. While there was the usual smattering of American sci-fi pictures, there was also a British horror movie at least partially inspired by The Mummy (1932), an Italian film starring Vincent Price, a Korean kaiju film, and a joint Japanese/American production.

I'll be presenting the movies in the order I watched them (as best as I can remember, anyway). Since the newest of these films is about 46 years old, many of these reviews can be expected to contain spoilers.

The Giant neither comes from another
world nor is it from the unknown. Who
knew that '50s movie posters could
be so deceptive?

Giant from the Unknown (1958)
For whatever reason, an unusual number of my favorite movies were released in either 1954 (e.g., Gojira, Them!, Creature from the Black Lagoon) or 1958 (e.g., It! The Terror from Beyond Space, Fiend Without a Face, The Crawling Eye). Unfortunately, Giant from the Unknown will not be joining this list.

When animal mutilations in a small California mountain town are followed by the brutal murder of a local citizen, Sheriff Parker begins to unfairly suspect amateur geologist Wayne Brooks. Brooks pays little attention to the Sheriff's insistence that he not wander far from town and takes archeology professor Frederick Cleveland and his daughter, Janet, up to Devil's Crag in search of evidence for the existence of "the Diablo Giant". Legend has it that the Diablo Giant was a famous conquistador's lieutenant who went AWOL with several other soldiers. The Giant was purportedly an enormous and brutal man who may have passed through the area in search of fortune and glory. Although Brooks has yet to find any Spanish artifacts at the site, a recent thunderstorm removed a lot of the topsoil and may have uncovered something new.

After an apparently futile search, the three accidentally run across the bones and rusted armor of a number of conquistadors. As the sun begins to set, they find an enormous helmet and breastplate in better condition than the other pieces of armor. Brooks also finds an ax buried deeply in the trunk of a fallen tree that he's unable to remove. Since it's dark when they find the armor, they don't realize that the Diablo Giant himself is nearby and laying under only a few inches of dirt. Earlier Brooks had discovered that the rocks and soil of Devil's Crag have the unusual property of preserving living creatures such as the lizard he found in the middle of a rock. It's only a matter of time before he finds out that it also preserved a very large and angry Spaniard.

The Giant extracts himself from his shallow grave and goes on a small-scale rampage, which includes killing a young woman and kidnapping Janet. As expected, the Sheriff blames this new murder and Janet's disappearance on Brooks and takes him into custody. With the help of Professor Cleveland, Brooks makes his escape and goes in search of the kidnapped girl. When the pursuing Sheriff sees the Diablo Giant for himself, he and Brooks become fast allies and the Sheriff's posse is reassigned to monster-hunting duties.

This movie could have been a lot better. The Diablo Giant looks great as his makeup was done by Jack Pierce himself (Pierce did Karloff's makeup for Frankenstein and The Mummy). The acting is passable and the characters are likable enough. I don't much care for plots in which the local law enforcement persecutes the hero with little evidence, though, especially when it takes time away from the monster. As for the Diablo Giant himself, it's unfortunate that he turns out to be one of those slow and clumsy monsters who likes to commit mayhem off-screen and racks up a disappointingly low body count.

Worst of all, the Diablo Giant isn't really a monster in the traditional sense. Although the movie begins by suggesting that the animal mutilation and the first murder are the result of some sort of curse associated with the Indian burial ground at Devil's Crag, the fact that this is an American film from the '50s means that there's a "rational explanation" for the whole thing. (Well, it's as rational as the idea that an unusually large conquistador can be revived after being buried for 500 years can be.) Since the Diablo Giant doesn't represent any sort of supernatural threat, or even an unnatural mutation, he can be dispatched through relatively conventional means and is, in the end, simply a large man with an ax. That's not nearly as cool as the idea of an undead conquistador who has risen from his grave as the instrument of an Indian curse intended to wreak vengeance on the white man.
C+

It would have been more entertaining
if it actually delivered the Ultimate in
Diabolism or Pure terror

Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space is one of my all time favorite sci-fi/horror stories. Die, Monster, Die! claims to be adapted from that story and shows evidence that the filmmakers were at least somewhat familiar with Lovecraft's writing in general and The Colour Out of Space in particular. However, the film completely abandons the central premise of Lovecraft's story and replaces it with something that had already been done better by other movies.

Immediately after arriving in the small English town of Arkham (the original story's backwoods American setting has been inexplicably transplanted to Britain), scientist Stephen Reinhardt realizes that he's going to have a hard time getting to his final destination. He's been invited to the Witley mansion, the home of his college girlfriend, but no taxis will take him there, the local bike shop won't rent him a bicycle to get there, and none of the locals will even tell him which way to go. After figuring out the general direction, Reinhardt sets out on foot.

While walking to the mansion, Reinhardt passes the "blasted heath" which is dominated by an enormous crater (enjoy it, Lovecraft fans, this is the most obvious reference to The Colour Out of Space you're going to get). The crater is surrounded by scorched and dead trees that disintegrate at a touch. The American eventually arrives at the Witley house just to find that no one will answer his knocking. When the door drifts open itself, Reinhardt invites himself in and quickly comes face to face with Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff!). The wheelchair-bound master of the house doesn't approve of the visitor at all and insists that he leave. He only relents when his daughter Susan greets Reinhardt and it's revealed that Susan's mother, Letitia Witley, invited the foreigner to the house.

Reinhardt is asked to speak to Letitia, who has come down with an odd disease that makes her sensitive to the light. From the shadows of her curtained bed, Susan's mother begs Reinhardt to take her daughter away from the house. Mrs. Witley doesn't really elaborate on her reasons, although she briefly mentions the disappearance of the Witley's maid, Helga. Reinhardt agrees to leave with Susan, but his girlfriend insists on staying until her mother gets better. Shortly after Reinhardt leaves the room, Nahum starts questioning his wife. Letitia laments the blasphemy of Corbin Witley (Nahum's father) and the fact that he was calling upon the powers of the "Outer Ones" when he died (a reference to many of Lovecraft's stories, although I don't believe the Outer Gods or the Great Old Ones are explicitly mentioned in The Colour Out of Space). Nahum declares that the Outer Ones' gift is a blessing, although recent events suggest that the master of the house is seriously deluded.

The butler's mysterious death and burial by Nahum, the locked greenhouse with its pulsing green glow, and the attack by an apparently insane Helga suggests to Reinhardt that something odd is going on at the Witley house. Susan shows Reinhardt a secret entrance to the greenhouse, which proves to contain enormous plants and vegetables. When they follow odd screeches and howls into an adjacent shed, they find a bizarre menagerie of misshapen creatures in cages. The chunks of glowing crystal in the plants' pots leads Reinhardt to conclude that the plants and creatures are radiation-spawned mutations. Susan reveals that Helga, Letitia, and the butler had all worked in the greenhouse before Nahum saw the need to padlock it.

Lo and behold, the "gift" that Nahum Witley believes was sent by the Outer Ones is in fact a radioactive meteor, the bulk of which is being kept in a pit in the mansion's basement. Shortly after Reinhardt and Susan return to the house, Letitia is found to be missing from her bed. The mutated and violent woman is finally found after a drawn out search involving various false scares. After briefly attacking her family, the matriarch takes a fall from a balcony and her horribly deformed body melts away in the rain.

Concluding that the meteor is a punishment for Corbin's sins rather than a gift to restore the fortunes of the Witley house, Nahum goes into the basement to destroy it. The patriarch is attacked by Helga who ends up falling into the meteor's pit. The radioactive crystal shatters, annihilating the mutant maid and transforming Witley into a glowing tinfoil fiend (I assume the monster is played by someone other than Karloff since the venerable actor could hardly walk by this point in his life). In a rare demonstration of heroic competence, Reinhardt defends himself from the monster with the axes decorating the walls of the mansion rather than miscellaneous items like breakaway chairs or tables. An ill-advised rush at Reinhardt sends Mutant Nahum through a guardrail and down to the floor below (there sure is a lot of falling in this movie). The creature's body shatters like stone and the resultant sparking starts a fire. Reinhardt and Susan emerge from the burning house, presumably to start a new life.

Die, Monster, Die! isn't necessarily a bad film, but it's a bit too slow. Worse, it eagerly deviates from its source material and heads off in a decidedly less interesting direction that had already been taken by dozens of movies before it.

Throughout his stories, Lovecraft eschewed the overtly supernatural in favor of science fictional horror. A "Lovecraftian Demon" is typically an ancient transdimensional being rather than a fiend from the Infernal Pit of Judeo-Christian belief. While many of his stories involve cultists who worship or attempt to summon beings such as Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth, the subjects of the cultists' belief are invariably intelligences from distant galaxies or realms outside of our space-time continuum. If you removed the element of horror, these beings are not unlike something you might see on an episode of Star Trek.

While a basic knowledge of who the Old Ones are is often necessary to understand Lovecraft's stories, The Colour Out of Space never explicitly references them. Instead, this particular sci-fi/horror story involves an encounter between a family on a small, out of the way farm and an utterly alien intelligence or intelligences. The beings arrive on Earth by way of a strange meteor that lands near the farmhouse's well and gradually disintegrates. Shortly thereafter, the plant and animal life on the farm begin to transform; the crops grow early in the season and reach an enormous size, although their taste is horrendous. The family even swears that the trees near the meteor's impact site sway by themselves. After a season of riotous growth, the crops and trees turn to ash and the region is changed into what the locals refer to as "the blasted heath".

The plant life isn't merely dying; it's being consumed by the aliens. As lifeforms around the farm are reduced to dust, the intelligences increasingly manifest themselves as an indescribable "colour" that seems to live in or around the well. As they feed on the humans, the affected family members go insane and, like the plants and livestock, are slowly reduced to a gray powder.

Rather than taking advantage of Lovecraft's extremely original alien invasion story, the filmmakers decide to give us the standard radiation-spawned monster story that was ubiquitous in the '50s. Sure, they throw in a reference to the Outer Ones to justify their claim that this is a Lovecraft adaptation, but the film seems to be saying that Corbin's blasphemy and Nahum's belief that the meteor is a gift from the Outer Ones is merely a superstition. The true cause of the tragedy is the disastrous effects of radiation, which the Witleys don't understand but Reinhardt, the scientist, does.

Personally, I'd rather see a more faithful version of Lovecraft's story.
B