Eurozombie Week: La Horde

Hello all and welcome the last day of the Eurozombie Week and thankfully I managed to find a gem in all this muck.  Yes after a bit of research into the subject matter I can honestly say I have found a Eurohorror zombie film that is easily better than Zombie Lake and Oasis of the Zombies. I knew it was out there and all I had to do was wade hip deep in the depths of mediocrity and the movie appeared like a beacon of hope to the genre.  So strap on…your pistols.  Grab some food and booze of course and welcome to the night that knows little to no end.  This is La Horde.

Filthy Jacque won't stand for this.

Kim: This is spoiler Jimmy, we don’t have to do this…

Our movie opens with a bit of CGI drama laid ruins and a bald headed man roaming about, following up with the flashback sequence of the rest of the movie.  Yes it is a bit of a cliché film starter but it does pick up.  A crew of crooked cops plans to hit these ruthless gang bangers for blowing away one of their own.  Their badges mean nothing on this aggressive vigilante act and they full well know it.    They are not looking for the law but good old fashion street justice.  Our boys pimp slap their boys, fights of gun and fist break out in this building the bangers are holding up in.  

Man, Black Fridays are brutal!

Meanwhile outside of this building; explosions are seen and heard, sirens are screeching and insane garbled rabble is running about the streets.  You know, Black Friday in the states.  Our cops and robbers stop their reindeer games long enough to find out what is going on outside and are terrified to see the very building they are in is under siege (starring Steven Segal) a giant mob of the flesh rendering zombies.  Our collective groups have to team up to fend the zombies off long enough to find an exit from the building.    Just a reminder to those curious that this film is insanely graphic, a large grab bag of gore gags, some fast paced camera and editing so photophobics may want to bow out now.   Also these are not your Romero disarrayed zombies ambling along and stumble on a fleeing human zombie.  These suckers are adrenaline fueled, fast clip moving uber zombies that claw, tear and rend anything and everything until they get their bellies full of that sweet delicious flesh.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I had a quick few highlights about the film and crew.  Our director/writer/actor Yannick Dahan pulled off his very first full-length film with impressive hand held work, dolly tracked hallways and even a few crane shots for scope.   His best friend writer/ documenter Arnaud Bordas (Maniac: Carnage culte, Our New Wave and CinemApocalypse) forged a series of vapid expressions and stale sayings with overdone concepts and still manage to produce a horrific vision of desperation, human frailty and uneasy alliances for self-preservation.    While the fullness of the impeding apocalypse was not rendered as well as I would have liked it to be, the movie does establish mass hysteria, rioting and utter chaos brought to us by this wave of undead.  

Soo...cocktails gonna happen or what?

Doctor Who: Patrick Troughton

Hiya kids we are back with Day 2 of Doctor Who Week and in spite of some requests for me to skip on ahead to Tom Baker I am sticking with the chronological order.  To recap, the Doctor had a lengthy battle with the Cybermen and seemed run down.  His stalwart companions Ben and Polly are worried and follow him into the TARDIS where the Doctor appears to be rapidly aging only to transform into a shorter and younger man.  Have they flipped?  Were they on a planet that makes you drop acid?  Have the writers pulled the wool over your eyes?  Let’s find out kids.  This is Doctor Who: The Power of The Daleks.

TV Viewers? Bah!  Go read a book.

Spoilers advance and attack! Attack and destroy!

The Doctor has gotten up from the floor of the TARDIS where it would appear he had simply dropped dead but instead of that matriarch scholar stands a man shorter and younger than he. The Doctor (Patrick Troughton of Hamlet, Macbeth, Treasure Island, The Phantom of the Opera, Jason and the Argonauts and The Omen) seems a bit perplexed, baffled as starts referring to himself, his past self in the third person.  Suffice to say things can go a bit wonky (that’s a technical term) with the regenerations.  Ben (Michael Craze of The Exorcism of Hugh, Terror, Evil Heritage and The Healer) and Polly (Anneke Wills of Some People, The Avengers, The Pleasure Girls and Strange Report) are bit of amiss to what is happened to the Doctor but  clearly it is still him as they head out of the TARDIS from its landing.  Ben and Polly protest as that they are not even certain they have landed, wither or not there is radiation or oxygen rich atmosphere.  The Doctor cracks up the 500 year old diary and without even looking up from it announces the temperature, oxygen content, negative on radiation and a curiously high concentration of mercury then proceed to stroll on out.

Why yes the pants are a breathable cotton/wool blend.

The misbegotten three find themselves on Earth colony Vulcan where the local scientist has made a 200 year old discovery and in spite of the Doctor warning this government and scientists and being slightly odd they unearth a vessel containing three Daleks.   The Daleks immediately recognize the Doctor based on his intelligence and Timelord DNA. Ben and Polly are somewhat at ease then.   Now it is up to the Doctor to thwart his old enemies, save the day and keep his young companions from harm.

I have just a few comments about this particular episode.  All six episodes were wiped by the BBC and there is no visual record of it, however through still and production shows and a wire recording the production company managed to piece together an almost radio drama of those original episodes and this is literally the only way to view it.  

Mammy!!

This story points out political and social upheaval between the working class, activists and a police state.  The Daleks take advantage of this chaos by behaving almost benevolently then the double cross ensues, followed by the triple cross for pudding.  A powerful and well thought out piece of science fiction but alas we do not have it in the medium we are accustomed to.