The Dead Next Door
Introduction
Introduction
I have a starting note here from earlier today. “Gene Simmons is an apex predator.” Although I still believe this to be true, and am even a little bit looking forward to sharing my logic, overall, I feel very little inclination to be productive tonight. I keep hoping that another swig of coffee will perk me up, but I’m almost out of coffee and still uninspired.
In order to have something else to do, I watched a VICE documentary on YouTube about hallucinogenic amazon frogs. The poor journalist spent 2 weeks getting ravaged by mosquitoes while trying to find and catch one of these frogs, and then when he does, the ritual of ingesting the drug requires that you get burned. So basically, it’s a skinny dude getting burned with smoldering sticks and then feeling mildly nauseas and partially high from the frog venom that has been rubbed into the burns.
I think it’s a good thing that I never was able to actualize into a person capable of travelling the world on my own. I think of my inclinations and the potential end results could have been quite scary, had I not been so ravingly incompetent. I was thinking about my downfall earlier today while I was at the gym.
My wife and I recently had a discussion about when in our respective lives we’d gotten into the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. She grew up as captive child labor in a Thailand Video Outlet, so along with the rest of her English, she learned about the Bosstones from the movie Clueless. I grew up an hour and a half out of Boston, and was part of a social group consisting primarily of the younger siblings of the town’s punk and outcast social group of a few years earlier.
The point is that there was always someone’s older brother driving to concerts and we could go if we could find ticket money. There also existed a magical place named Pearl Street, whose basement hosted some of the best shows I’ve ever been to. With this older, punk element in my life, I quickly fell in love with live music and began seeing everything that anyone was going to.
I remember seeing Type O Negative. C____ played me “Black Number One” on the car ride to the concert- it was the first time I’d ever even heard of them, but they were playing live and tickets were $6 and my friend was going, so… I grew up seeing The Bosstones almost once a month for a year or two. Every show was either them opening for someone in a legitimate club, or some tiny place hosting a half dozen no-bodies with the Bosstones closing. I grew up on Devil’s Night Out.
At the gym, I was listening to it for the 2nd time through, on repeat. I was listening specifically to the lyrics- I know them all from when I was 16, but I’m re-hearing them all now though 45 year old ears. I realized that alcoholically, my role models were Dicky Barrett and Bradley Nowell. I suppose that I also have to acknowledge the impact that NWA had; I spent most of my early teens drinking Old English 800 Malt Liquor. Jesus, that stuff was horrible. I remember such a heavy drunken feeling, like a slow stupor that you can’t push through to get back to the party that’s happening just out of reach all around you.
This is why I believe that Gene Simmons is an Apex Predator. I capitalize out of respect. What exactly is an Apex Predator? “An apex predator is a carnivore that’s at the topmost position of the food chain in its environment. This means that an apex predator will have no natural predators of its own, and is prey to no other animal. Many of the species of big cats are apex predators.”
I’m not sure how Gene Simmons feels about cats, or even meat or other dietary perspectives, but I want to focus on the idea of being in the topmost position of the food chain. Why is Gene Simmons in the topmost position of the food chain? It’s not because he’s a 6 foot something scary blood-spitting transvestite-from-hell demon clad in a third of the leather that we’d begin being comfortable with. It’s not that he has enough money and power to disappear a small town if he felt so inclined. Gene Simmons could be a fucking James Bond villain if he were so disposed.
This is a man who remained completely sober while touring the world in a heavy metal band through the 70’s and 80’s.
Allow the utter lunacy of that statement to set in. Imagine the boredom of waiting for the hungover to appear? Every morning? Imagine being the only guy who actually remembered the night before, so you get to set your perspective of history down as cannon? Let it be known here that I am NOT a Kiss fan. I think the only artist I dislike more than Kiss could be Carlos Santana. I even hated Aerosmith until I accidently saw them in concert and realized that that was their thing. The records were just to get you into the house. And maybe Kiss was the same way?
“And got my Kiss records out!” I don’t like their music, I have never owned a recording or any merchandise, I am not speaking highly of the band. However, Gene Simmons is the most dangerous man in the world if he can remain focused and clearheaded through the life that’s swirled all around him. You wonder how did he manage to sleep with such a large number of women? It’s easy to score when you’re the only conscious guy at the party.
I think the odds are slim, but if anyone knows where there’s a dead body, it’s Gene Simmons. Not that he had anything to do with the death, but I can imagine him calmly transporting a dead groupie deep into the Romanian forest while Paul Stanley throws up out the window of the European shitbox that Gene Simmons stole specifically for this purpose.
Scott Bonn was the polar opposite of Gene Simmons. When I die, if I go to heaven, there will be a Gene Simmons/Scott Bonn Master Blaster combination rampaging through the clouds leaving a cacophony of broken harps behind. And I’ll have a dog whistle. But since this is Heaven, I want it to be a Kazoo. I think we’re allowed to request small bureaucratic edits and whatnot.
Gene Simmons is the man who challenges you to a public chess game, but while you’re distracted and sweating that, he sabotages the brakes on your car so that you’ll die on the way to the chess match. I believe Gene Simmons could trick me into trading my life away for “magic pudding”. In the realm of predators, apex and otherwise, I’m somewhere next to “Neutered Chinchilla”.
Gene Simmons is what you’d get if you crossed a cobra with a badger and then raised it with the absolute moral certainty that God was on his side and drugs are bad, m’kay? I have no idea what his politics are, but I would be interested to see what sort of politician Gene Simmons would make.
There’s a part of me that imagines him ruling emotionally and unfairly and cutting babies in half to prove a point, but if the logic that kept him sober and sane throughout Sodom were applied evenly and generously, I’d love to see what compromises and middles of the roads he could find. I see him able to achieve a Spock-like Zen of quiet contemplation and then awakening to deliver a 7-word statement of justice, empathy, and enlightenment. Or he could stick his tongue out. Who the fuck knows?
I do believe in Gene Simmons though. I believe in him like a Golem of justice in the rainy night, never wavering from his focus and intent, moving steadily and as close to the crow’s flight as possible towards his goals. There is very little that I would do differently than Gene Simmons did if I were Gene Simmons.
Meaning, he did a pretty good job and I’m sure I’d only fuck up any attempted revisions, but I would like to have fancied myself a modern-day pirate, and I would have worked to hide jewels and the whatnot all over the globe as the band travelled. I’m not sure why, but it’s easier than living with a parrot.
I might have also gone through a phase of wearing a custom super-hero’s outfit whenever not in stage costume and referring to myself in the 4th person, but as I said, any revisions I’m able to come up with will likely detract from what he’s actually achieved. I do want to be a regular person with a normal head. I am regretful and sad that my life never really had a chance at normalcy; there never was any possibility of a white picket fence, no matter what I was told.
I think that it’s profoundly unfair. I never had the chance at being Gene Simmons. It’s like he’s some glowing being that eats precious metals as I’m nibbling corn pellets and occasional bits of apple. Gene Simmons is the huge glowing blue guy in Watchmen, and I’m that wisecracking Racoon’s younger brother that still lives at home and works part time as a waiter at the Chinese restaurant in the strip mall next to the DMV.
Gene Simmons is 18-volt lithium-ion capacity and I’m a needle that’s been rubbed with felt for a very short while. I can’t even say that I wish I liked his music, I simply can’t care about anything that manufactured, give me Lemmy any day… but Gene Simmons is Chuck Norris’s beard staring down a possible bluff at the World Series final poker table.
I grew up wanting to take the drugs and drink the drinks and that was how I was going to have the fun times. Reading that again, it’s like something sheep or cattle would write. Or carp. If he’s been born a shark, Gene Simmons would have grown up wanting to fly. Or be a celestial object. I suppose it could be both.
Don’t think for a second that I’d join, but I bet Gene Simmons could talk people into moving to South America for the cheap land and abundant Kool-Aid. Damn. Ok, never thought I’d fanboy out on Gene Simmons like that, but evidently I got some mad respect for the cat. The Apex Predator Cat.
As for tonight: The Dead Next Door “The neighbors are dropping by for dinner… and you’re on the menu!”
For a while, I was not the worst person on the block. Or in the neighborhood. When I bought this place, the rental across the street was occupied by a… herd… of biker people. There were a couple of guys who always were wearing colors, a couple of very large women, and a small handful of children. Everyone except the adult men were nice- the guys kept to themselves, unless it was 3am and they had all their friends over in the front yard to rev a motorcycle loudly for 5 or 6 minutes before clacking it into first and running it back up the ramp into the home-depot shed with a blue tarp for a roof that the bike called home.
When these people left, I wandered over to the empty house to see what was left. A horrible odor. Black goo. Intentionally wrecked plumbing. Did I mention the smell? I think they had to re-sheetrock and re-carpet the entire place. Before they left, the idea of zombie bikers would have upset me. But now… I’m the asshole wildcard redneck these parts.
I’m the one getting trucks stuck in the mud of my backyard, or accidently using too much gasoline in the burn barrel and exploding flaming debris out over a 20-foot radius. So… I’m not very worried about the neighbors. Hell, I’m pretty sure one is on permanent disability for head injuries or plain old low IQ. I can’t tell if those are scars or just redneck weathering.
I got no idea what this movie is about. I’m hungry. I want to complain further, but only after someone has brought me some more coffee. Oh yeah. There was one other thing of memorable consequence today. While at the gym, after listening to Devil’s Night Out twice in a row, I had the idea to check out another old favorite, the Gravediggaz.
I think they started off as a Prince Paul and RZA offshoot of Wu-Tang Clan, but that was years and years ago. Found out today that they’ve released a third album! And the weird thing is… it’s REALLY good. I realized this when it looped and started for the second time, and I had a thought that it’s weird to listen to two albums twice each while at the gym, but I was feeling it so I kept it rolling. Damn, it’s good.
Who else has come out with new shit that I’m not aware of? Handsome Boy Modelling School? I guess it’s not a huge surprise that I’m not a Kiss fan. This movie was made in 1989. I’m stoked for some old school shit.
Review Notes
Review Notes
Starts out with the sounds of crickets and… evil. Like, zombies eating sounds.
Akron. Now.
A mad sprint across the yard, a barricaded door…
A woman in pink. Someone put Baby in the corner.
Her dad?
The film is kinda jerky… like, it’s being run on poor quality equipment.
So, they weren’t hiding from zombies?
A zombie just bit the asshole kid!
And we have lots of lower budget gore!
A video store… what the?
A zombie just tried to rent Dawn of the Dead. And then… a bunch of puppet looking zombies jumped up and chased everyone out?
The news… Bloody popcorn.
Oh, this is excellent! As the intro credits are running, it’s nothing but mayhem and zombies everywhere… I think this is showing the initial outbreak. The numbers and crowds of zombies are great, the scenes are good, but the zombies… just don’t have enough fucking make-up on. It’s literally just on faces. Like mime paint. There’s plenty of red liberally splashed around, but the extras…
A few years later.
A cop station wagon. Don’t see many of those. Or, any of those. I like it.
Driving through fields of shambling zombies. It’s pretty good.
Zombie Squad 205. What exactly are they doing if they’re not going to bother killing the zombies?
Bloody trail…
Bloody sounds…
Bird sounds…
A zombie hard at work eating a child.
Shot the zombie in the head, but that didn’t kill it?
Resorting to the machete… effective…
But no, you didn’t look behind you.
Ahh… the old “Hand grenade in the mouth before being thrown out the window” trick.
“But look at it! It’s trying to eat us but it doesn’t have a mouth!”
You never stick your finger in… oh jeeze.
Uh… the zombie head just… passed the severed finger out of it’s trachea.
I’d leave you, you’re such a useless…
Molson? They have a character named after a beer?
So they’re gonna leave their infected, bleeding comrade?
That is one depressing bedroom.
Using a grenade to kill a single zombie for the shits and giggles… Mercer, you’re…
Dude, that’s a lot of zombies.
The camera is out of focus. Seriously.
The white house… capitol mall… zombies wandering around everywhere.
Some kind of protest. “Zombie squad go away.”
Uh… a group of rednecks watching tv?
Randalls?
“Dr. Molson’s torture chamber.”?
“What’s up doc?”
They use the station wagon to transport zombies? And then put them in… cages that I wouldn’t trust to keep me safe from tuna.
That was one throat-ripping out scene. Yes it was.
That is one very bloody head.
“Once I thought I was wrong but I was mistaken.” Seriously?
This dialogue sucks.
“We have zombies that can do the things you do in half the time. Now please leave. You’re making me nauseas.” Ouch. Ouch.
That “Bye-Bye” would have got me.
They’ve implanted a board into the zombies’ throat that allows them to talk through a computer?
“Feed me” and then it starts into the Star Spanged Banner??
Lotta theory about zombie suicide. Zombies take a month to starve to death.
“It is about as useless as a squirt gun in hand-to-hand combat.”
A severed tongue.
Oh, shit, another one of the cops got bit. These guys are fucking incompetent. I’ve seen more of them get bit than regular civilians.
Were they mandated to shoot half of this movie in the hallway?
We’d gone a couple of minutes with no red splashing anywhere, so the zombies attacked the protesters and then the police waded into the fray with nightsticks and it turned into one of those multi-faceted Anchorman shitshow gang fights. “That escalated quickly.”
Akron… pretty sure it’s not a Corporation.
That land yacht is a Cadillac of some sort. Maybe a 1960?
Some guy hiding in the bushes…
Oh, that’s a lot of zombies.
The lady cop uses a cardboard box as a weapon…
Who is this guy? He’s been dubbed in quite obviously.
The kid just mentioned “Reverend Jones”. The damn cat is glitching again. Cycles. Universe, am I still tripping balls on something ingested years ago? Am I twenty-three, standing in a moonlit new England field imagining this all? Am I in a construct that’s showing signs of failure? When I was a kid, I would go to sleep desperately wishing that everything was a dream and I was going to wake up and get another chance to not fuck up. “I don’t want to die… I sometimes wish…”
Down in the basement… False alarm!
OR… IS IT?
She’s walking with her pistol aimed directly at the base of his spine.
A starved zombie corpse… it’s the Dr. they’re looking for.
The soldier is named Mr. Rami. I think one of the other soldiers is named Romero. Really?
Vincent, you’re a scary freak.
Some… poofy haired guy is watching them. With bracelets and a radio.
Vincent is a Jesus freak with trust issues.
That was like watching Michael Jackson try to slam his fists down onto the table. Weak.
What the fuck?? Vincent just freaked out and attacked the soldiers! Green on green or whatever! Not good!
“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted the son of a bitch. Come on, let’s go get the son of a bitch.”
Vincent made it to the get away car… Even after catching a .12 to the back. Kid has… “Spiwit”
This is one of the most underwhelming car chase scenes ever.
The church has a pen full of zombies. That they’re feeding.
Meanwhile… in the cult… there is… things… afoot.
Vincent… what did you really end up doing with your life? I mean, instead of acting?
This cop shows zero sense of urgency to save these people.
The zombies are showing zero sense of urgency to bite those people.
Oh… What the fuck… The zombies all have… face-masks on. Like, protective ones.
Anna loves Vincent.
What is up with the doctor’s sunglasses?
More bloody drool. So much drooly blood.
Kid looks convincing as a corpse though. Best acting out of him so far.
Peeping in the window, a little voyeurism never hurt anyone…
Uh… a bunch of robed dudes using a sword for a ritual human sacrifice? Where did this come from?
I have no idea what they’re saying, but… they think waving their hands is important.
Oh shit! The bloody hand to the window!
A feeding scene. Good, except the zombies look nothing like the other zombies.
The cult leader has a secret from his daughter…
Why does one of the zombies sound like a cat meowing?
Nice… dragging a zombie along… hand shut in the door.
Why is the zombie’s head pulsing blood if it’s already dead?
Uh… was that his daughter? I’m so confused.
That’s a radio?
The doc is going…
“Nothing will happen to Mercer. I’d stake my hat and my life on it.”
Cult members still spying on them and wearing ridiculous hand-jewelry.
The cops stole the zombie…
She’s stealing a gun…
Cult… coming after them.
Those sunglasses are the worst wardrobe decisions made this century.
So… the zombies… in the van… are being used as weapons?
Nice shot.
The zombies aren’t attacking their handlers?
“’Nam flashbacks! ‘Nam flashbacks!”
Liberal use of hand grenades…
So much chaos and bad costumes.
They forgot the dude they were trying to save??
There’s graffiti reading “Romero is king”
And… a zombie crucified to the wall??
Some sort of candle-lit cult service.
“Welcome to Sunday School.”
Mercer zombie can still talk and think?
And the other zombie is melting?
This is the most casual hallway shot gunning I’ve ever seen.
The cult is falling apart…
Cult leader is drooling everywhere.
“Wake up my children. It’s feeding time.”
Zombie Mercer is not very happy with Molson.
Zombie Mercer is drooling blood.
Cult leader’s intestines…
They’ve got zombies stashed everywhere in this place!
“No man, I’m a zombie now.”
So many close-ups of mouths.
Some… kind of secret… kidnapping? That the woman doesn’t remember?
Dr. Savini.
Zombie Mercer is now the leader of the zombies.
At this point, I’d be surprised if someone opened a door and there *weren’t* any zombies behind it.
He locked himself in the cage…
But Zombie Mercer is intent.
Oh, shit! Startled!
He got bit! It’s raining!
“Mercer, you asshole! Give me back my hat!”
Lotsa gore. Lotsa gore.
Nice throat tearing out.
What?!
Human Squad… the zombies have taken over.
Jon Killough. That was Vincent’s name.
————End Transmission——————–
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- I can’t remember how this started, but it just… started. You pressed play, there were zombies.
- There’s yet another group of armed people in blue jumpsuits running around
- Zombies of every make and model rampage around happily. Lots of red.
- A pair of oversized sunglasses look ridiculous on someone that short. A cult? Why?
- Let’s try to introduce all sorts of plot shit when we can’t even remember who is who
- We’re going to turn all the characters into zombies starting a new day and it’s meaningful.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
This is going to be impossible, since there was absolutely no continuity to the appearance or behavior of the zombies. Some of them were full on prosthetic special effects, and then there were hordes of extras with minimalist smudges of green face paint around their cheeks and some red on their shirt. The zombies are medium speed- fast when convenient, slow when they could drag it out, and somewhat able to be… tamed? I mean, they were running around on leashes and not attacking their handlers. Half of the time the zombies were so ineffectual that it appeared the actors were just walking through an apathetic crowd, or it was painfully obvious that the zombies were holding back their actions for the sake of a scene… like when they inexplicably do not reach into the car through an open window to get at the person inside. There’s talk of a virus, and serum, and healing, but it never amounts to anything you care about, even when they do shift it front and center to the plot. It’s a zombie movie that has plenty of zombies, some of them really good- and plenty of gore and people getting their intestines eaten while yelling about their hats.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Bloody drool. Regular drool. Drool with some blood in it. I don’t think they had a big budget to begin with, and it looks like they spent a good chunk of it on what I’d say amounts to 10% of the zombie action in the movie. Then they made do with what they had left for the rest of… everything. One character was given granny blue blocker sunglasses and told to look stern… for a costume. All this aside, the sets and scenes of outside with the cars and zombies and red everywhere? Yes, a lot of the zombies were underwhelmingly made up, but the overall effect of milling corpses came through nicely. The sound effects for this were… mind numbing. If they were outside, the same birds chirping loop was playing. If there were zombies on the screen, the same “zombie noises” loop was playing. Why did they let that one person make cat noises?
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
I’m going with the damn car. Rivaled the Ghostbuster’s rig in terms of big stupid American excess. A Cadillac station wagon kitted out with a zombie-holding pen in the back? Considering the one time they tried to get the zombies out of the car, someone got bit, so I have no idea how they got them all in there in the first place. I took a little detour to look into the car when I realized it was a Caddy. I don’t know much about them, except I’ve always wanted a car with a 500 engine in it. Yeah, I know, they’re crappy engines performance wise, but I want one none the less. I do have to give a shout out here to the tried and true .12g. There is a wonderful scene where the cops are casually running away from the cult members down a hallway and the guy turns and gut-shoots one of the pursuers without breaking his sentence. It’s… soothing to watch.
That was new!
That was new!
So much of this was new that you’re kinda left reeling at how interesting yet bad it is. The zombie with the computer in it’s throat that starts reciting the Star Spangled Banner? They loved their severed heads, and the finger eating scene… was new. The zombies being muzzled isn’t new, but this may have been the best version I’ve seen so far. The cure “working” on a zombie by melting it? Was it melting the zombie away and there was supposed to be a person underneath? Like a rebirth? So much of this movie made no sense that I never was sure if they were shoveling out random tripe or if I had seriously missed some plot turns.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There were some really good tradition nods here, but then again, they also wrote “we like zombie movies” on their knuckles and pummeled us repeatedly. A zombie trying to rent a zombie movie? Graffiti proclaiming the Apex-ness of Romero? There wasn’t any real breach, but there was some good bloody hand window slap, as well as about 30 doors that were opened to a sea of reaching undead. There was a lot here that felt like Romero. There was a lot here that felt like Reanimator too, but in all the ways that Reanimator wasn’t really a zombie movie.
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
I avoid using the idea of something being so bad that it’s good, but if I were to apply it, this would count. This is one long WTF of mish-mash special effects, horrible acting, zombie gore, and pointless plot additions. I don’t think I remember how the movie started. It’s just like, jump off the deep end into shit that you’re not sure if you’re supposed to take it seriously or not, and you can tell that only half the actors in the scene were taking it seriously, if that. There are some really cool little original things in here, and a whole lot of the usual. This movie could be considered a test, a gauntlet. If you think you really like zombie movies, and you think you really like the old early-gore zombie movies, then give this a whirl. If you like it, you’re one of the elite, one of the best of the best of the best, SIR. With honors. This kind of movie separates the chaff from the boys. The men from the wheat. This is how you test the new love interest in your life. Will they accept occasionally watching movies this atrocious in order to keep you happy? I had to look to even find this movie’s existence, and I’m glad that I did. There are only so many movies from this golden analog period of low budget gore-fests, and each one is a building block in what we’re watching come out today. When I think back on what I just watched, I feel more privileged or honored than entertained, if that makes sense. I definitely recommend watching this- hopefully in a social setting where riffing is appreciated, but I caution you to keep your expectations low and your mind open. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.