The Rottenest of the Undead.

We here at the Emerald City Zen Center love us some zombies and in The Martian Invasion of Oz we introduced the Ozombies, led by Gabraham Stinkin.  That said, we don't love all the zombies that have been put out there. Here are three zombie films that we highly recommend you avoid.

1. Against The Dark (2005)

That coat button is about to shoot off and go right through a zombie's brain. Well played, Seagal.

 

Imagine a world in which a plague has transformed the majority of the population of the planet into vampire-like zombies. You flee for your life and barricade yourself in a hospital to avoid the horde of ghouls from ripping you to shreds. Things look bleak indeed but take hope! Help is on the way - in the form of bloated, right-wing, ego-maniacal, mumble-mouthed, zero-charisma having has-been Steven Seagal and some nameless sidekicks dressed like geeks everywhere did right after The Matrix came out in 1999. The problems with this straight-to-video, Romanian produced brain haemorrhage of a film are legion but if you're making a zombie picture in which your unstoppable horde of flesh-eating fiends is easily defeated by the sluggish sword play of a well past his prime Steven Seagal, you have some pretty lame zombies on your hand. I mean, the guy can hardly bend!

2. Dead At The Box Office (2005)


One of those where you wish the film makers would have spent the money it cost to make this movie on cyanide instead.

A mysterious film canister containing a Nazi experimental film somehow ends up in a Chicago area cinema. When it is played, the audience is transformed into zombies. Not the worst premise ever but the execution makes you beg to be executed. This Gary, Indiana filmed no-budget, eye-gouge inducing piece of blech is an example of why the democratization of the media via digital technology is not exactly going to lead to a utopian future. With its poor lighting, horrible acting, sloppy cinematography and Kevin Smith-wannabe dialog, this could be one of the worst things to ever happen to the horror film genre. We attended the premiere of this hot-mess nearly a decade ago and there are parts of our brains that have still not returned to their normal state after being atrophied by this miserable excuse for a movie.

3. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972)

If only the movie was half as interesting as this poster.





A group of actors are led to an island somewhere near Miami but their director, who is the most annoying person on the planet. This young, vaguely hippy-ish film troupe end up having to deal with the not-at-all funny practical jokes of their director, played by actor/director/make-up artist/doll-maker Alan Ormby, who in the midst of the lame-hijinks accidentally raises the dead when he stages a kind of black magic ceremony. Director Bob Clark went on to make the classic slasher-film Black Christmas (1974); the inexplicably popular, unfunny, teen sex-comedy Porky's (1982) and the holiday classic A Christmas Story (1983) but this tedious piece of low-rent junk has none of the tension of Black Christmas or the humour of A Christmas Story, but it does have all of the unfunny of Porky's. When the zombies finally do show up, about half-way through this soul killer, you just hope the cheap looking things quickly do away with the cast so you can work on self-inflicting head injuries in the hope that you will lose the memory of having seen it.