Sunday, April 16, 2006

Dead Men Walking – 2005

     Now this is what I’m talking about. A low budget, independent zombie movie that delivers the goods. Its got blood, gore, laughs, and boobage. And it was written by B-Movie hero Mike Watts. Directed by first timer Peter Mervis, this movie is about a zombie outbreak at a maximum security prison. You’d think that they would be able to contain any threat, even the flesh-eating living dead. You’d think wrong.

Amazingly, this movie was shot in 9 days, for $500K, in HD, simultaneously with another movie (Shapeshifter). You watch this flick, then compare it to movies that cost 4x, took 4x to make, and suck. Take last night’s treat, The Gardener, as an example. Every major studio ought to have to watch this movie, listen to the commentary, watch the making of, and then rethink their entire structure and methodology. We might even see ticket prices go down. Certainly we wouldn’t have movie stars who make more for one movie than I will in my entire lifetime.

My only complaint about this movie is that once the zombie violence starts, so do the damn jump cuts and “shaky cam”. I know, I know, it’s to deliver that wild, out of control feeling. The only feeling I get is not being able to tell exactly what is happening, and a headache.

There’s a Making of featurette, and a commentary that has several crewmembers, but not the director. He was off “having a baby”. Seems like you could have postponed the recording of the commentary for a couple of days. Sheesh!

Four beers out of five. An official “You Gotta Like That!” award winner.