Zombies Have Fallen (2017)

"Go careful boys, she's not your average kind of girl"

It's the zombie apocalypse...in Greenock?!

Whilst watching North West Tonight earlier this evening I was intrigued by a report about the Bolton based filmmaker and recently graduated student from the University of Cumbria Sam Fountayne (also seemingly known as Sam Hampson going off the IMDB credits) who has just released and secured a prized distribution deal for a zombie action horror film he made for just £500!

Zombies Have Fallen was clearly a labour of love for the student turned writer/producer/director Fountayne, as well as for his cast and crew. Pooling resources they uploaded various scenes to YouTube where Green Apple, an American distribution company, saw it and made him an offer. They subsequently sold it to Amazon Prime which - thanks to the free monthly trial I take up every year - is where I headed to see just what all the fuss was about. 

Kyra (Tansy Parkinson) is a young woman in need of help. Escaping from some top secret clinical institution with the help of a mysterious benefactor, she takes his advice and heads to Scotland's Gretna Green to track down a potential ally in the shape of semi-alcoholic loner John Northwood (Heath Hampson). It appears Northwood is a former protege of Kyra's elusive benefactor who reveals to him, via a prerecorded video message, that Kyra is in fact is no ordinary girl; she possesses special telekinetic powers which resulted in her parents being killed and her being held against her will in the clinic since childhood by its proprietor, the evil businessman Raven (Ken Richardson). Hot on Kyra and Northwood's heels is Max (Tony Gardner) a bitter and ruthless mercenary determined to bring the girl back to his paymaster, Raven. And then the zombies show up...

In all honesty, the major flaw in this film is the zombies. I can't help but wonder if they were a late addition to the plot at the behest of the US distribution company. It would certainly explain why the title was changed from Bad Blood to the particularly feeble Zombies Have Fallen (presumably a rather dumb and inexplicable cash-in to London Has Fallen, given the similarities in the poster design) and it would also explain why the whole plot seems to do a completely disorientating 360 around the 45 minute mark to become an extremely tongue-in-cheek romp with gun toting priests and mini-mart workers taking down this sudden arrival of zombies. After the taciturn thriller elements of the first half, this change in tone came as a big disappointment and the plot that had been slowly developing simply goes out the window for the cheap thrills and laughs of the campy zombie genre instead. They literally lose the plot! If this all really did come from Green Apple then it's a real shame that Fountayne (or Hampson) has allowed his artistic integrity to be bought right out of the starting gate. If the film kept to where it seemed to be going, I'd have rated this at least an extra half star more than I have.

The effects on display here are the kind you'd see in mid '80s Doctor Who, the acting is on a par with a porn film (and Raven looks like a cross between cockney bog-brush haired rocker Joe Brown and former EastEnder Paul Moriarty...after a strict pie diet), the score just lies there like a damp carpet, the sound is terrible - with ADR being louder than anything else in the mix, and most striking of all - to me at least - they misspell Bounty Hunter as 'Bount Hunter' in the dossier up on Raven's plasma TV screen, but what do you want for 500 nicker? 

That a film could be made for just £500 (or $622 if you're across the pond) is an achievement worth discussing, and it's nice to see that the central character of Kyra is actually played by an ordinary looking young woman (with actual thighs!) rather than some highly sexualised object.

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

Inspired by Harvard ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis' factual book of his experiences in Haiti studying voodoo and the poison tetrodotoxin,  Wes Craven's 1988 horror thriller The Serpent and the Rainbow is an intelligent albeit bitty cinematic experience. 

Davis had spent several years in the '70s and '80s going back and forth to Haiti investigating the claim that local man Clairvius Narcisse was in fact a zombie, one of the living dead. It is claimed that, as part of a voodoo ceremony, Narcisse received a dose of a chemical mixture containing tetrodotoxin (a pufferfish toxin) and bufotoxin (a toad toxin) to induce a coma that would lower the metabolic rate and thus mimic the appearance of death. Upon collapse, he was certified dead and was subsequently buried, but was later exhumed by a boker (the Haitian for 'sorcerer'; a practitioner of voodoo) and given further 'treatment' in the form of Datura stramonium, an hallucinogenic plant extract belonging to the nightshade family. This treatment is said to have made Narcisse a compliant zombie, and he was sent to work on a plantation. When the plantation owner died a couple of years later, Narcisse returned to freedom and his family and his legend begun.

Having published his account in 1985, Davis agreed to sell the rights for cinema on the condition that Peter Weir would direct and Mel Gibson would star. Ultimately and for whatever reason, neither man were involved in what eventually appeared on the screen three years later, but it remains a tantalising what might have been project.

Instead, we have Wes Craven's rendition of the story which depicts Davis as one Dennis Alan, a sort of Indiana Jones style scientist and explorer who arrives in Haiti on behalf of a Boston pharmaceutical company who have got wind of the story of Christophe, a man who has allegedly returned from the dead thanks to the drugs used in an ancient voodoo ceremony and believe that, with research and licencing, this specific drug mixture could be used as a kind of 'super anaesthetic' for patients across the globe. In his research, Alan is aided by local doctor, Marielle (Cathy Tyson, in her first big screen role after Mona Lisa and, I think, her only Hollywood credit) Lucien Celine, a sort of white witch played by Paul Winfield, and Bret Jennings' local bar owner Mozart, who may be a witch doctor or may be a confidence trickster. His work is hampered by Captain Dargent Peytraud (Zakes Mokae) of the Tonton Macoute, the Haitian paramilitary force loyal to the dictator 'Baby Doc' Jean-Claude Duvalier, and who has haunted Alan's increasingly surreal and gruesome dreams since he drank an hallucinogenic potion in the Amazon basin. It should go without saying that the dreams are spectacularly handled by the man who gave us Nightmare on Elm Street.

Where The Serpent and the Rainbow succeeds is in its commitment to depict voodoo with the same reverence its believers and practitioners bestow upon it, and that it is a way of life rather than a cheap Hollywood gimmick to invest the material with an ill-thought creepiness. It is clear that the film makers have researched the occult ceremonies and religious beliefs well enough, and have committed to the source material. Principally, Craven has a commitment to depict his story with a hefty dose of realism as well as authenticity and this is perhaps best witnessed in his decision to explore not just the myths of Haiti but also the very real terror of Baby Doc's dictatorship. There's an especially gruesome moment that sees Alan strapped naked to a chair and at the mercy of Peytraud's brutality. In a scene sure to see the legs of every man watching become hastily crossed, the paramilitary chief nails Alan's scrotum to the chair. It's a harrowing scene that isn't just there to shock, it's also there to remind us of the disgusting power in the hands of a dictatorship.

Shot on location in Haiti itself, the visual look of The Serpent and the Rainbow is nothing short of stunning, capturing the strange and simmering city of Port Au Prince in an almost travelogue like manner that helps invest the film with its overall sense of plausibility. We may be dealing with wild themes that people discredit, but Craven plants his story in a very real place that the viewer cannot deny, even if we're still dealing in Hollywood cliches like the good looking, smart blonde hero adventurer and the exotic and sensitive local beauty who runs the local clinic.

Where it fails perhaps is in the seeming pandering towards the tropes some audience expect from a 'horror' movie; not for everyone the intelligent chills, so instead we get a series of jump scares to remind us just what genre of film it is we are watching. It's a shame really as they don't amount to anything approaching scary and detract from the overall aim of the piece. Also, I'm not altogether convinced by the voice over narration. Call me cynical, but whenever I hear v/o I wonder if it was the film makers first choice or whether it has been enforced upon them to explain and make sense of what is happening on the screen. I read somewhere that Craven's original cut for The Serpent and the Rainbow came in at a ridiculous three hours, before he edited it down to just half of that, and I do wonder if the v/o was seen as a necessary inclusion by that point. 

I'm also not that convinced by Bill Pullman either, an actor who always seemed a bit bland and the kind of go-to-guy when your first and second choices to headline your picture proved unavailable. It's not that he doesn't give a relatively good account of himself, it's just that I struggle to buy just who he is and that he unsteadily pitches his performance between the scientist and the Indy-type adventurer.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

I once read a review on Letterboxd that bemoaned the recent developments for the 'fast' zombies of modern horror, a relatively new development that saw the undead possessed with lightning reflexes. The reviewer - who I'll not name to spare any blushes - complained that, with the continuation and popularity of this trope, we were in danger of losing sight of what Romero intended when he created the zombie genre.

Now, I could give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he didn't intend to suggest he believed Romero was the originator of the zombie myth, but if our nameless friend truly believes that that was the case, he really needs to look into the voodoo cults of Haiti which first came to western prominence in the 1920s but had been around a long time before that. And he could broaden his cinema knowledge of the genre a little by watching I Walked With a Zombie, an understated classic from director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton, the team behind Cat People.

Frances Dee stars as Betsy Connell, a young Canadian nurse who is hired by the wealthy West Indian based sugar plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway) to care for his sick wife Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon). Arriving in St Sebestian, Betsy is surprised to find Paul does not share her view that this is truly paradise on earth. Her employer's half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison) sees things more her way however, much to Paul's chagrin - there's bad blood between them and it seems Jessica is at the root of their dispute. Disturbed one night, Betsy meets Jessica walking alone in the garden, seemingly in a trance. 

The local medic, Dr Maxwell (James Bell) advises her that Jessica suffers from a severe tropical fever that has laid claim to portions of her spine, leaving her in a stiff, zombie-like state. The pair undertake insulin shock treatment, but to no avail. As Betsy delves deeper into the culture of her new surroundings, she hears from the maid Alma (Theresa Harris) of another sick woman seemingly cured by the islanders during an ancient voodoo ceremony. However, when Betsy suggests this as a likely cure for Jessica, the islanders and Mrs Rand, Paul and Wesley's mother (Edith Barrett) are reticent, believing her to be one of the walking dead.

"A dull, disgusting exaggeration of an unhealthy, abnormal concept of life" was how the New York Times received I Walked with a Zombie upon its release, but in subsequent years the film underwent a major critical reevaluation and is now considered not only to be an intelligent and sophisticated chapter in 20th century horror cinema, but was placed as the fifth best zombie movie in a 2007 poll by Stylus magazine, and quite rightly so. Lewton, who was loathe to use the title that studio RKO forced upon him, instructed his writers to thoroughly research Haitian folklore and use Charlotte Bronte's classic novel Jane Eyre as a template for their tale, which is a suggestion that really pays off, and as with all Lewton's horrors, the central mystery of I Walked with a Zombie remains deeply and satisfyingly ambiguous.

Keep an eye out too for the 'all persons fictitious' disclaimer in the opening titles which reads; "Any similarities to actual persons living, dead, or possessed, is purely coincidental" Mwahahaha! 

I Walked With a Zombie was just one of the film's handpicked by Keith Richards for his Lost Weekend shown last weekend on BBC4; the film was broadcast - of course - in the wee small hours.

Outpost: Black Sun (2012)

I remember being pleasantly surprised by director Steve Barker's 2008 film Outpost. Low budget, straight to DVD and highly derivative chiller it may have been, but it actually clicked and became a surprising cult success thanks to its eerie and almost unbearably tense and downbeat atmosphere, a strong committed cast and by coming in ahead of the curve for the niche but popular market of supernatural Nazi horror movies.

Distributed by Sony who saw its potential and had faith in it, Barker was  then encouraged to make a sequel alongside original co-writer Rae Brunton and, four years later, Outpost: Black Sun was released. 

Unfortunately, despite being written and directed by the same people, this sequel is not a patch on the original Outpost movie. It certainly continues in the same vein and is very much authentic in serving as a continuation of the story and the fictional universe they have created, but it's ultimately a disappointing venture. 

Go bigger seemed to be the key for this sequel and, despite looking like it had a bit more money spent on it, the film fails in delivering. There's perhaps just too much trying to be done here and overall it lacks many of the key things that made the original such a modest hit, namely the simple use of its singular, claustrophobic setting meaning a loss of much of the necessary suspense and horror that a film like this needs to captivate us and capture our attention. 

The cast is also a problem. In Outpost, we had the likes of Ray Stevenson and Michael Smiley but here we have  Downton Abbey's Catherine Steadman adopting a whiny American accent to play Lena, a female Nazi hunter who frankly irritated me from the get go.  Richard Coyle - who will always and forever be Jeff from Coupling to me - plays our hero Wallace, some journalist type. Like Steadman he too adopts an American accent, albeit far less successfully. I say he's our hero but his character is not especially heroic nor is he charismatic - it's a radical departure from the first film which traded in bluff macho mercenaries. Similar characters return here, played by the likes of Gary McDonald and Nick Nevern, and on occasion Coyle stand in their midst like a rather poor Doctor Who, questioning their brawn over brain mentality. It doesn't help that these characters are there solely to serve as fodder for the killer undead Nazis, with zero character development beyond them hailing from different parts of the UK or, in McDonald's case, being black. 

The narrative feels overstretched throughout, it's like they want to do a big budget blockbuster on a shoestring rather than actually knowing their limitations and recalling how well they had served them first time around. By the time we reach the computer game like conclusion (Castle Wolfenstein anyone?) it's almost impossible to care and indeed, I wonder just how I lasted the distance.