A small town in England in 1800s is beset by a plague that devastating the residents of the town.
Local doctor Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) writes to his mentor Sir James Forbes (André Morell) for help. Forbes arrives with his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare). Tompson and Forbes go to exhume some of the recently deceased to find out more about the disease only to find the coffins empty.
Soon zombies are discovered around an old mine near the estate of Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson). The squire it turns out has spent time in Haiti.
This Hammer Horror from director John Gilling is a really good chiller.
A television crew are following an emergency fire department for their show. The department gets a call to an apartment complex.
Reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her film crew follow the fire fighters to the apartment where an old woman has been reported to be in distress. When they arrive the woman attacks the fire fighters.
They try to take the injured man outside only to find that the building has been sealed and everyone inside has been quarantined.
Soon a man from the health department comes in to look at the apartment residents. He says that a strain of rabies has infected the residents. Soon more people are infected and attacking everyone.
This Spanish horror film is very scary and intense. It spawned three sequels and an American remake but this is the best one.
Shock rock dj Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) runs into a strange woman who keeps chanting the word blood on his way into work.
Once at work news breaks that a riot has broken out and several people are dead. While covering it they lose contact with the reporter on the scene.
They receive a transmission in French informing them to remain indoors, not to use terms of endearment, rhetorical discourse, or the English language and not to translate the message.
They find out that the town is under quarantine. It seems that there is a virus in the English language that infects people and makes them spread it through language. They also get violent and start biting/eating each other.
Soon a group of infected people are attacking the radio station.
Based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess this excellent intense horror film does a different spin on the zombie/virus infection genre.
A virus has broken out across the Earth. People infected with it die and a turned into undead vampire like creatures.
Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the last human alive. He lives alone in a fortifed house and spends his days killing vampires and burning their bodies.
Morgan is immune against the virus but he is incredibly lonely. One day a dog appears but runs away from him. Later it appears wounded, infected by the virus. Morgan kills the dog with a stake and buries it.
Morgan sees a woman and convinces her to return to his place with him. She informs him that she belongs to a group of people who use a vaccine to control the virus. Morgan doesn’t trust her.
Based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend this first adaptation is the most faithful and Matheson himself wrote the screenplay but he removed his name from the film when he became dissatisfied with the movie.
A virus has ravished the world. Paul (Joel Edgerton) his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and their son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) all live in their house in the woods. They have rules to protect themselves from the virus and other people.
They capture a man trying to break into the house. After tying him up outside overnight to make sure he doesn’t have the virus they find out that the man, Will (Christopher Abbott) has a wife and son and he was looking for water for them.
Sarah suggests letting Will and his family live with them. Paul goes over the rules. The front door always stays locked and only Paul and Sarah have a key. And no one goes out at night.
One day Travis’ dog runs off into the woods. Travis thinks he hears something out in the woods. One night Travis gets up and finds the front door unlocked and open. Travis’ dog returns sick the virus. They kill and burn it. Then Travis reveals that the door was open.
This is a pretty cool low key thriller. Director Trey Edward Shults crafts a quietly intense film where there are no monsters, just people and the unknown.
It’s pretty clear that zombies have a viral disease that spreads through bites. Yesterday’s Dawn of the Dead demonstrated that. Depending on what vampire movie you are watching either vampire bites are infectious or just drinking vampire blood. Either way again a viral infection. But what about werewolves?
It’s clear that being bitten by a werewolf can create new werewolves but there is some films like An American Werewolf in London were the attack is more of a transferring a curse than an infection. The 1981 Joe Dante directed The Howling, it’s clear that werewolfism is a viral infection caused by bites.
Reporter Karen White (Dee Wallace) has been receiving phone calls from serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo) and has agreed to meet him. The police have Karen wired and have officers trying to track her. They lose her and the transmitter signal keeps cutting out. Karen meets Eddie in a porno shop where he attacks her. The police save her killing Eddie.
Karen has amnesia from the event and suffers from severe trauma. Her doctor, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee) suggests that Karen and her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) spend a couple of weeks at his country retreat that he calls the Colony. There they meet and odd sort of characters.
Meanwhile Karen’s co-worker Terri (Belinda Balaski) continues investigating Eddie. She finds that he was obsessed with werewolves which leads her to investigate into the legends of werewolves.
Back at the Colony Karen keeps hearing wolves at night and things seem off. Bill is attacked by a wolf and bitten. Without revealing the ending Karen and Terri soon find out the terrifying secret of the Colony and the source of Karen’s trauma.
I love this movie. It’s fun and the effects still hold up well. There was a lot of potential for the many sequels that followed but sadly they are all pretty bad.
Remakes are seldom as good as the original. But that said there are several films that are better or at least as good.
Zack Snyder’s remake isn’t as good as the George Romero’s original. But it’s a good film, probably Snyder’s best. I think a hit of has to do with the fact that it’s not a comic book movie and the fact that James Gunn wrote the screenplay.
Sarah Polley is a nurse who goes home after a long shift. Her and her husband are awoken but a neighbour’s daughter. The girl isn’t acting normally and attacks Polley’s husband biting his neck. The husband dies and comes back as a zombie. Polley flees. The city erupts in chaos.
She eventually runs into a police officer (Ving Rhames) and they run into another group of survivors. They take refuge in a shopping mall.
Soon more survivors show up looking for refuge. Outside the hoard of zombies grows bigger and bigger.
The last of the Hammer Horror Dracula films features a very interesting plot. Picking up where the last movie, Dracula A.D. 1972, which brought Dracula into the modern times.
British secret service have been monitoring a house out in the country. A Satanic Cult has set shop there and even more disturbing several prominent members of society appear to be members. A member of parliament, a secret service officer, a general and a famous scientist.
A secret agent escapes from the house but dies of his wounds. The agent manges to tell his superiors about the members.
To avoid trouble with the suspected members, the secret service enlist Scotland Yard’s Inspector Murray (Michael Coles).
Murray brings Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and his granddaughter Jessica Van Helsing (Joanna Lumley) onto the case. Meanwhile the cult kidnap a secret service secretary revealing that the cult is run by Dracula (Christopher Lee). Dracula bites the secretary turning her into a vampire.
The Van Helsings and Murray break into the house and find the vampire secretary who they kill. Vam Helsing meets with the scientist and discover that he has been working on a new bubonic plague. This leads him to a businessman named D.D. Denham who is really Dracula.
Dracula plans to release the plague and wipe out humanity.
Hammer films had been huge for a decade but the series was getting pretty weak. Lee hated the deviations from the original source material and this was his last Dracula Hammer film.
A prequel to the 2016 Korean horror movie Train to Busan, this animated movie takes place a couple of days befoee Train to Busan.
Director Yeon Sang-ho was an animation director and Train to Busan (2016) was his first live action movie. He also directed Seoul Station which was also released in 2016.
Hye-sun is a former prostitute whose current boyfriend is trying to get to go back to hooking. Hye-sun has fight and runs away.
Meanwhile a homeless person has been bitten and slowly dies on the street as everyone ignores him. The homeless person becomes a zombie and starts infecting the other homeless that live in Seoul Station.
A man claiming to be Hye-sun’s arrives and forced her boyfriend to help look for her. Hye-sun finds herself running from the growing zombie outbreak.
This is a really good prequel to Train to Busan and animation is excellent.
George A. Romero’s 1973 horror film is set in small town Evans City, Pennsylvania. A local farmer suddenly goes crazy, murdering his wife and burns down his house. Firefighter David (Will McMillan) arrives on scene with firefighter buddy Clank (Harold Wayne Jones) and sees the farmer raving hysterically as he’s arrested and taken away.
Soon the army shows up in town and commandeer’s the local doctor’s office. David’s nurse girlfriend Judy (Lane Carroll) lets David that something is up. It seems that an army plane has crashed on the outskirts of the town and it was carrying an experimental virus which has now gotten into the town’s water supply. Soon more people are acting more violent and start killing each other. The army quarantines the town and blocks of all the roads going in and out.
David, Judy and Clank along with a teenager and her father try to break the quarantine and leave the town. Chaos is breaking loose and things keep getting worse.
Romero keeps the tension up and the movie is really good. There was a remake a few years ago but it doesn’t come close to the original.
