Hey kiddies! Here is my new zombie photograph LAST STAND.
It remains true to the simple sketch from my KickStarter video, but now brought to life with actors and detail.
My star A. Michael Baldwin gave a wonderful performance! The gunshot to the head was achieved using flash paper and black powder fired through a prop head sculpted by Ryan Pintar.
From the brilliant dark mind of Joshua Hoffine.
The elaborate photograph (yes, it's a photo!!), "LAST STAND."
What gets me most is that the central figure, the father, is fighting valiantly to protect his family, unaware that his girls are already doomed.
One of Hoffine's best works to date!!
Check out his other horror images at his blog site, Joshua Hoffine.
Each entry is no more than 140 characters… the maximum allowed per tweet.
I post daily journal entries from the second year in aftermath of the Zombie Apocalypse.
Only a relative handful of people have survived the first year. Food, vehicles, gasoline, medicine and supplies were relatively abundant during the first year. By the second year, gasoline (a highly refined product) has ‘gone bad’ and vehicles no longer run on it. Most of the ‘easy picking’ supplies have been exhausted. Specialized ‘city folk’ are now forced to exist in a hostile environment. Our world, at best, has been plunged back into the Dark Ages. For some survivors, they have been thrown back to the Stone Age.
Please check it out on Twitter and Follow it, if you like it.
I remember watching the old 1990 version with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was cool. I also remember hearing that they originally planned on casting Matthew Broderick in the lead role because they wanted the lead to be the most unlikely spy ever. Instead they went with a big box-office name whom no one was surprised to discover was actually some top spy.
One of the things I liked best about the 2012 remake (with Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel) was that Colin Farrell did seem like some grubby, scruffy factory worker.
A lot of critics complained that there was too much action/effects and not enough plot. I disagree. The plot was simple. Bored guy wants something exciting in his life. Decides to go to Rekall (‘Tell us your fantasy, We’ll make it real’), a company that will implant the memory of what you want your adventure/fantasy/vacation to be. Turns out, he’s already had a memory implanted. It’s his own life. Turns out ordinary scruffy factory worker is actually a real-live spy turned insurgent and what he thinks is his life is the implanted memory. In actual fact, he’s like the world’s greatest secret agent ever.
The action scenes were fantastic. The special effects eye-popping. Check it out. I liked it a lot.
Both the 1990 and 2012 film adaptations of Total Recall are based on “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” - a short story by Philip K. Dick first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. The book too is also worth a look!
Resident Evil: Retribution
I hate writing this. I pains me. Why? Because I am in love with Milla Jovovich. Always have been. Always will be.
Resident Evil: Retribution is everything that everyone said about Total Recall (2012). It doesn’t live up to its predecessor. It’s all action and no plot. It’s just an excuse to slap together a lot of special effects and fight scenes. It even has the old ‘imprinted fake memory’ shtick.
Yes. Yes. It’s true. It’s all true!
But it has, for me, one redeeming quality. Milla Jovovich in a tight black PVC outfit. I can watch the entire movie with the sound off and still get all breathless and weak at the knees every time she’s on the screen (or in my case, the computer monitor).
I don’t care that the plot sucks. I don’t care that the special effects are the main excuse for the movie. I don’t care that the film is basically a real-life version of a computer game. I just… don’t… care.
(Could be zombies. Could be fans from Comic-Con. Hard to tell sometimes)
Milla Jovovich as Alice. That is the only ingredient I need.
So say what you will about the movie. I’ll probably agree with almost all of it. But it doesn’t matter to me. Just like it doesn’t matter that Underworld: Awakening was bad. It has Kate Beckinsale in tight leather and PVC!!
It’s like I can’t think or process any information after that point. I’m helpless.
(“My name is Alice. I worked for the Umbrella Corporation”)
My mind shuts off. My eyes widen… and my heart belongs to her. There is nothing else.
Just a typical love story between a girl and a zombie.
A funny new twist on a classic love story, WARM BODIES is a poignant tale about the power of human connection. After a zombie epidemic, R (a highly unusual zombie) encounters Julie (a human survivor), and rescues her from a zombie attack. Julie sees that R is different from the other zombies, and as the two form a special relationship in their struggle for survival, R becomes increasingly more human – setting off an exciting, romantic, and often comical chain of events that begins to transform the other zombies and maybe even the whole lifeless world.
Darlings, in honor of last night's premier of The Walking Dead, I thought you might enjoy a few tutorials to create your own zombie look this Halloween.
There are a tremendous number of tricks and techniques out there to create zombie effects. While some require serious expertise and equipment, there are many easy techniques for crafting truly spectacular zombie effects at home, with limited investment in special makeup or paraphernalia.
(I have this thing for sensationalistic headlines)
Yes, my little geeks and nerdlings, zombies have roamed the Earth for at least 48 million years.
Zombie ants, that is.
(Credit: [left, fossil] Torsten Wappler; [right, ant] David Hughes)
Today, there is a certain type of fungus [3] well known for taking over the minds of ants such as the Camponotus leonardi worker pictured above.
Once infected, an ant wanders away from its colony, bites down on a leaf vein near the forest floor, and dies – creating ideal conditions for the fungal fruiting body that sprouts from its corpse. Only parasitized ants perform this routine [4], and the bite marks they leave are so distinctive that they’re recognizable even in fossil foliage.
The ancient leaf pictured bears 29 scars that represent the last acts of up to seven ants, probably close relatives of the modern Camponotus zombies.
That makes the leaf the first known fossil evidence of zombie-like behavior in any animal.
[1] My initial reaction is to say, “What are you, retarded?”
[2](Walmart shoppers notwithstanding) It’s just a matter of time. It’s not a case of ‘if’… merely a case of ‘when.’
[3]Ophiocordyceps fungi.
[4] I’m not an entomologist (although I play one on the internet) but from what I can tell, such zombie-like behaviour only occurs in cases where an insect is parasitized. That is, another creature (or fungus, in this case) implants its seed/young in the host insect. Once ‘infected’, it completely changes its behaviour pattern in order to benefit the unborn young within it. See articles here (and in our sister blog Kosher Samurai) for modern examples of such zombie-like phenomena in crickets/grasshoppers, honey-bees and ladybugs.
When you’re a ‘Noted Zombie Expert’ as I am, you gotta take the good with the irredeemably bad.
Such was the case when I watched the Zombie Planet Trilogy (Zombie Planet, Zombie Planet II: Adam’s Revenge and Zombie Planet III: Kane Chronicles)over the last week or two.
Yes, it took me about two weeks to watch it all. Why? Because these movies are so awful, so horrible, so appallingly lousy… I could not stomach watching for more than about 15 – 20 minutes at a time.
The movies that comprise the Zombie Trilogy are quite possibly the worst movies I’ve ever seen… and that’s saying something!
(Zombie Trilogy DVD cover)
They are so rotten, even RottenTomatoes.com doesn’t have reviews for them.
These atrocious direct-to-video zombie disasters are from low-budget filmmaker George Bonilla.
Here’s some Zombie Planet trivia:
Zombie Planet and Zombie Planet II: Adam’s Revenge were originally shot as one film. [1] Due to the ridiculous length of the original completed project, the decision was made to split it into two films.
Stacey T. Gillespie, credited with the role of Fred, actually place seventeen different character roles throughout Zombie Planet and Zombie Planet II: Adam’s Revenge.
OK, here’s the deal. A new low-carb diet product has unintended side-effects, resulting in people craving – and crazed for – raw meat. Specifically, human flesh.
Mayhem ensues when the people turn into the living dead, bringing on The Zombie Apocalypse.
My two cents… In no way do any of these movies even reach the mediocre mark. Cheesy scripts, dreadful filming, abysmally bad performances, clumsy direction, horrible sound. Zombie Planet is abominably bad. Zombie Planet II: Adam’s Revenge is all that, plus it is boring.
Seeing is believing…
(Zombie Planet trailer)
The Zombie Trilogy looks like it was made by drunken children. Calling it ‘bargain basement’ is an insult to bargain basements.
It got to the point where I was trying to come up with positive things to say about these movies. “Unpretentious!” “Doesn’t get bogged down with CGIs and special effects (or good acting)!”
Bottom line… I felt I had to watch these movies.
Please don’t have any such misplaced sense of duty.
[1]The Kane Chronicles is not a separate new movie. It is merely the original ridiculously long version of the original film which was later divided into Zombie Planet I and Zombie Planet II.
One of the greatest determiners in how long the coming zombie plague will last is the lifespan of zombies themselves. In theory, the length of any outbreak will depend on how long individual zombies are capable of moving about and spreading their infection to new hosts.
Because zombies occupy a limited, rotting corpse, the real question then becomes: How long will it take for the zombie to decompose?
Decomposition is a process whereby plant and animal bodies are broken down into their base materials. The length of this process is affected by several factors, including:
Presence of insects
Microbial activity
Moisture levels
I’ll focus on microbes and moisture in upcoming posts, but today I want to talk about insects.
Insects, specifically carrion feeders, play a vital role in decomposition, as they consume much of the flesh and soft tissue of a corpse. In fact, it has been documented that in some parts of the world dense insect populations are capable of reducing a body to bones in a matter of hours.
Assuming a zombified corpse is essentially the same as a standard corpse, insects would feed on the zombie’s flesh and organs, speeding up decomposition and reducing its lifespan. However, a few variables might play a part in mitigating this process:
MOVEMENT: The zombies own movement might serve to keep some insects at bay. One need only observe the common housefly to see that they will retreat from the slightest wave of a hand.
INEDIBILITY: Whatever causes the reanimation of the zombie corpse might render it inedible to insects. Without the assistance from insects, decomposition time could be extended significantly.
PSEUDO-LIFE: Larval parasites, such as maggots, do not eat living flesh. Maggots have historically been used to clean wounds because they only eat dead tissue, leaving the living flesh intact. If zombies have some residual life functions, such as circulation or respiration, it might be sufficient to prevent the maggots and other similar parasites from consuming their flesh.
Look for more observations about zombie decay, including a detailed breakdown of how microbes and moisture could save the human race, in parts 2 and 3 of this series.
[1] 1st Lieutenant Post is a squadron safety officer with the United States Air Force Auxiliary. In addition to training in emergency response and disaster preparedness, he has studied the theory and science behind the zombie of popular culture for several years.
Note: I am a lifetime member of the Zombie Research Society.
What gets me most is that the central figure, the father, is fighting valiantly to protect his family, unaware that his girls are already doomed.
One of Hoffine's best works to date!!
Check out his other horror images at his blog site, Joshua Hoffine.
(Zombie Trilogy DVD cover)
Written by 1LT Chris Post [1]
