Episode 66: Zombie Brigade and Hell of the Living Dead aka Zombie Creeping Flesh
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Before Michael formerly joins the Podcast, living in the relative idyllic calm of the mainstream zombie hits (28 Days and Weeks Later, Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead), I am back scraping the bottom of the barrel, and wading chest deep through the stagnant filth that is the low end of the Z List.
This week, as punishment for enjoying 28 Days and Weeks Later, I struggled (and I really struggled) through the Australian Zombie Brigade, aka Zombie Commando, and the Italian/Spanish Hell of the Living Dead/Zombie Creeping Flesh.
How as it? Painful.
Zombie Brigade was poorly written poorly filmed and very poorly acted. Very few highlights for that one, as the local councillors and Mayor want to tear down a Vietnam war memorial so they can build a Japanese Robot themed theme park, only to discover the memorial was a grave for the Vietnam war dead. But are they dead? No. They were affected my the Vietnamese biochemical weapon that turned them into vampires. As you do.
So with the Vietnam war war dead vampires killing the people of the town, they have nowhere to go. They are cut off by the military with mine fields and blockades. Not that we see any of the military doing this. The powers that be will just contain it, keep it out of the press, and then destroy the town in a "bush fire".
Who can save them? Well the local aboriginal Uncle Charlie can call on the spirits of the Great War dead, the honourable Australian soldiers who died in WW1 and WW2 to come back and fight for the white people in the town. And so we have Vietnam War Vampires against WW1 zombies? Is it good? No. Especially not when they join forces.
A lot of racism, more than anything else, is what I remember about this one.
And if that is racist, then the Hell of the Living Dead is a lazy, confusing misogynistic nightmare from 1980. It is classed by many as one of the post-Dawn European classics, that really took the genre to the next level. Those people are wrong. Whilst Zombie Flesheaters and City of the Living Dead had something about this had nothing of merit.
Famed for the overuse of stock footage from National Geographic that runs to about a quarter of the movie, and the sort of gaping plot holes you could drive a horse and cart though, this was not good at all. I had hoped the poor quality of Zombie Brigade would make me look favourably on this, but no. It was truly awful.
I now need to have a shower I feel so dirty.
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