Outpost
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
This is another of the “not a zombie movie” reviews that ends up recommending that you watch it. It’s a good movie. It’s just… 90% Ghost and 10% Zombie. And I’m being generous on the Zombie side of things. This is a great little movie about a group of soldiers in the wrong bunker who are never going to leave the bunker. But first, there’s going to be shitloads of automatic gunfire and bloody stabbings and body parts rupturing and then more gunfire and creepy things about corpses and ghosts grabbing you from behind when you just turned around. This is more a movie about being afraid of the dark- or at least firing automatic weapons into it- and the reasons why these are both good and bad ideas. There’s a lot that was done good here, nothing really that was done poorly, and although it’s not zombies and it’s definitely not anything innovative or bar-setting for the Zombie genre. That all said, if you’re a beer and movie kinda guy who likes guns and doesn’t think that it’s childish to shoot a scene with bright lights behind trees to make spooky shapes, then this is a movie for you. I liked it. I remembered very, very little of it, and it was better than I thought it was. It was NOT the movie that I thought it was, thank God. I don’t recommend trying to impress anyone with this movie, though. It’s not that good, and there are points where the “walking through dark hallways” and “talking about stuff” drag on a bit. But that kind of soups up the action when it restarts again, and it always does. Don’t think too much, look up Quantified Field Theory and The Philadelphia Experiment on your own… get really confused ‘cause there’s no mention of Mathew Broderick in either one… And then watch put this in your watch que for a boring, rainy day. You’ll be glad to have it, sort of like a really basic snack on a long bus ride. The trick to really enjoying this one is to be hungry. You’ll want to eat it in little bites to make it last longer.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- “The deal was made in Denmark on a dark and stormy day…”
- We find the bunkers. Because… we can’t trust the guy who hired us.
- People shoot at us and we shoot back but there’s nothing to show of it
- We watch Nazi Cartoons and wake up Nazi Stipe
- Who summons Nazi Ghosts
- After failing to activate the Stargate in the last few moments possible, ya’ll die.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
So here’s the thing. I’m not sold on this being a zombie movie. Yes, there are some VERY zombie-heavy elements to it, but I think that ultimately, this is a ghost story. Or rather, a Nazi Ghost Story. See, back in WWII the Nazi’s built this machine that tunes human magnetism to a frequency that either turns ships invisible or traps a man’s… not soul, but… evil essence? In some other place that… When… bothered? Can come back and be really evil and nefarious in killing all the interlopers? By lunging out of shadows and magically appearing and disappearing with the dark and not being able to be killed at all, even when shot through the head. And they weren’t into biting, either- I mean, probably yes, as an evil thing to do to you, but that’s just if they don’t have any shell-casings to jam into your eyes or pick-axes to base-ball swinging-for-the-fences you. I really would have preferred it if they just wanted to eat your head.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Everything about this- even the silliness of the script- had the potential to be really good. I think most everything but the script came through, and unfortunately, the explanations stuff was just too overwritten to really make a dent in the “who cares?” machine. That said, *all* the special effects were great. The Nazi Ghost Zombies were well done, even if they were mostly just shadows in the shape of a helmet with a greatcoat. I loved the gunfire. I loved the tactical retreat scene. The actors were even really good, but Jesus, why did you make them all have accents like that? Seriously- re-dub the movie with more understandable dialogue and you’ll reach so many more people. This is top notch acting for the zombie genre though. I’d love to see this cast come together again.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
I think the Redneck doing his “Wolverines!” moment towards the end of the movie was the best thing, and I have to say, I do love to see AK-47s in all their glory. As for best actual weapon used though, I think I have to discount anything that the humans used, since the best they could do was impart a little kinetic energy to the Nazi ghost zombies to push them back a bit. I think the best Nazi weapon was just the head-squeezing. That was amazingly well-done gore, and it was ucky. If you don’t want to accept that as a weapon, then just think about having empty rifle cartridges hammered into your body.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There were some great hand scenes here- first when Stipe announces his presence, and then later when the hand reaches out of the dirt and grabs the soldier? Such good stuff! Lotta good backlighting, lotta bullets punching through bodies- but this isn’t a zombie movie, so they did not adhere to any of the zombie movie conventions. Such as- you can shoot 2/3 of a zombie’s brain out the back of his head and he still has the telekinetic ability to order around a legion of ghost Nazis up outside the bunker all around it. There’s some great zombie stuff here, even if this isn’t a great zombie movie.
That was new!
That was new!
Watching someone get tortured with bullet casings. That’s new and wrong. Raising flags to taunt the Nazi Ghost Zombies is new, too. Incorporating Unified Field Theory into a “Zombie” movie is pretty new, but at this point, if you need to find a reason for your zombies, you can just Google “Science” and pick something “to go wrong” with whatever it returns. And the result? Nazis. I mean, Zombies. Who are really ghosts. In fact, the whole “Explain everything with a really old and stylistically cool Nazi Cartoon” was a great little addition. It was like when movies add in CGI without the budget and they screw things up? This is the exact opposite. They didn’t *need* to go this animated route, but they did, and they succeeded wonderfully.
Review Notes
Review Notes
They do not make eastern Europe look appealing. Wet. Very very wet.
At a bar now… the standard employment talk…
The guy just happens to have exactly $5,000 in a messy wad in his pocket?
Soldiers in a truck. Talking about how their employer must have secrets.
Looks like this is a bit of an active war zone.
I really want that truck.
And now they’re off into the woods.
Why… is that guy carrying a radio from the 1950’s?
Horrible radio death-squeals and we all go deaf.
“You’d be smarter if you weren’t so fucking stupid, you know that?”
They’re at the bunker… Which is unlocked.
And dark. And has something running around in it.
I wish I had an abandoned bunker to explore.
Reflection in the tree line, and we start shooting!
Everyone back up, keep shooting!
More squealing!
Oh. He got shot.
Argument over who is going to go check the woods…
Nothing.
“This place is a tactical nightmare.” I just love using that word.
Ok. There’s been so much “Walking around in the dark” time that I just ate a taco without missing anything.
So they found a radio.
So they found a medical experiments room.
Just found a huge pile of corpses.
SHIT!
That’s a hand! BREACH!!
Oh. The lights are coming on. In a very menacing way.
An old movie projector is coming on. In a very menacing way.
And there’s our swastika flag.
The survivor isn’t communicative.
“You can say what you want about the Nazi’s, but they had style.” Where do I have that line about how fascists always have the best uniforms from? Argh!
Soldier chatter. Pretty good stuff.
Shouldn’t have stolen that watch.
Shouldn’t be challenging him to a chess game, either.
I wish I could look through film and documents. Open boxes and take keys out. Disturb dust.
I would not shut myself into any of the rooms down there.
He found a big… machine. Thing. Without looking anything like them, it feels like Stargate or Prometheus kinda stuff. Old forbidden technology.
Using a Sat Phone to send ominous messages!
The Redneck is taunting the medic. Never fuck with the people in charge of keeping you alive.
Quite the traditional chess opening. I prefer wilder gambits. That quite often don’t pan out.
I’m sorry, I can’t understand your Scottish accent.
That… was fucked. Dudes behind a table. But not.
Back fiddling with the strange machine…
There is a Bad Man behind you!
Gotcha. This is a “don’t go in the shadow’s” kinda movie.
I’m seeing a lot of Nazi ghosts. Not so many Zombies though.
When chess fails, gun-cleaning always works.
“The Holy Grail of Physics” Unified Field Theory. They dragged Einstein into this movie.
Now it’s the medical guy who is by himself in a dark and shadowy room.
Those are definite zombie sounds…
Oh, that’s fucked. One of the corpses just jumped up and ran out. The guy didn’t even notice.
“That bright light… it ain’t heaven, son. It’s just the muzzle flash.”
Oh. A typewriter. Damn. I want one of those. An old wartime German one. The idea of inventing new keys… something blows my mind.
Like the PA randomly blasting classical music…
“I fucking love culture.”
I’m going to call the survivor “Stipe”
Crazy lights going on woods…
Lumbering shapes in the woods… Pretty sure those are zombie Nazis.
For professional soldiers, these guys have zero shooting discipline.
A wind comes in that they can’t deal with? Everyone cowers…
I think Stipe is telepathic.
Number 5 is gone!
I think I just blew a chunk of triscuit out of my nose.
Found a Nazi medal out in the woods.
The commander is drinking and punching things.
Threatening to shoot Stipe.
Oh. Stipe is looking at him. Stipe is frightening.
A bunch of fake hooey about the age of a 7.62 round that they pulled out of the guy who got shot. That bullet never hit anything, and I don’t think the German Army was shooting 7.62 anything in WWII, although I might be wrong. Always thought of that as a soviet round. Might be wrong.
Now we’re watching the movie projector.
Occult stuff. The machine. Explanations of the whole movie, I guess.
To sum the past few garbled explanations up, the Nazis were doing Philadelphia Experiments on soldiers and then shooting them in the head. Seemed to think it would make them… either invisible or something. Through magnetism. And Unified Field Theory. See? This isn’t just a movie about zombie Nazis, or Nazi zombies, or world-weary zombies. I mean mercenaries. This is intelligently thought-out science fiction that forces us to confront the realities of our race’s direction and future. Or not.
Cartoon… of… Nazi zombies taking over the world. Pretty cool cartoon, as cartoons go.
“All existence is nothing more than vibration.”
“So fuck your Nobel prize!”
Uh… after more talking… it doesn’t really matter.
Screaming from the woods… Oh fuck!
The zombie Nazis just tortured a guy to death by hammering bullet shells into his body… then into one of his eyes! That was yuck! Fulci, eat your heart out! This has the squish that you always wanted!
“They’re playing with some black dice now.” I like that. Gonna try to remember to use it sometime.
These accents are so hard to understand I have to keep turning the subtitles on and rewinding a bit. Kinda a pain in the ass.
Holy Jesus… Just had the BEST hand-out-of-the-dirt… It’s horizontal- out of the muck. And it grabs a guy in the foxhole!
And then… Fingernails on chalkboards now rate 2nd worst sound ever. Daggers against one’s teeth is worse. But then they finish things with the double eye-ball stab. Jesus.
The next morning…
Wow. Oh shit. The two dead soldiers are propped up together in a strange… hug?
That’s a hell of a way to claim territory.
Jesus, this guy never stops looting.
“We gave up that right when we started killing men who believe in things for money.” There’s intelligent writing here… it’s just hidden by unintelligent accents.
Shit. All the lights just went out in the bunker. For a second… Back on.
Zombie just pinned him to a wall with a pick-axe and then pushed on his head so hard it… ruptured.
And then disappeared in a blink of darkness.
So these are ghosts down here?
“I didn’t get shot by some fucking spectral entity here.”
“And the last time you found yourself dealing with the undead… What did you do?”
I’ve never seen anyone throw out the flag of challenge to the undead before. I’ve seen brazen displays of bravery, but this… I thought the white flag meant surrender. Evidently, if it has a number written on it, it means that’s how many fighters are left that you have to kill.
Oh! Stipe is the old general of this bunker back with it was a Nazi base,
Oh. Shit.
“Well, that worked. His brains are all over the wall. That’s good enough for me.”
Evidently, not.
Lights go out and one of the soldiers disappears and then they find him knifed up on the flag, and he’s got a big bloody 4 carved in his chest. Shouldn’t have challenged Stipe to chess.
Soldier leader looks like Bradley Noel.
More science crap. Evidently the soldiers are getting tired of it too.
Something about bringing the soldiers close and then trapping them in the machine. This is getting Ghostbusters up in here.
Why are they doing this fortifications montage? Especially talking about keeping them in firing lanes and whatnot when these things can come out of any dark?
“But they’re fucking unstoppable.”
“Ay. And so were we, once.”
“No matter how bad things get, there’s always time for another joint.” I like it and agree.
Green klaxons are going off.
Zombie Nazis are lining up.
Stipe is somehow out there with them.
Fuck, I love the Redneck. I want a t-shirt of him.
Well, these Nazi zombies are unkillable.
This is actually pretty cool tactical stuff. Very much like Way of the Gun.
Shit! They just killed the Redneck! That sucks.
And the machine just set off a blue pulse that knocked all the Nazi Zombies down.
And the machine is… failing. Oh, thems some old fuses.
And that’s not the good place to be standing.
Wonderfully slow Nazi zombie re-animation.
Oh shit. The guy’s getting the Dead Snow Nazi Zombie Stabbing Treatment.
The leader is hurt, the other guy is making an “escape through the ducting”…
Nazi Zombies just standing around.
Oh, that’s a lot of corpses…
That’s a very bad place to be.
And the circle continues. Stipe is back!
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
The first and most important take away from this story is that I did not and do not pee the bed. But I sure try to. I had another of a series of dreams a couple nights ago. These dreams are my “trying to pee but can’t” dreams. Sounds frustrating? It totally is.
In my dreams, I’m desperate to take a leak. I’m in physical distress, I’m singularly focused on relieving myself- but I’m not able to. I mean that I can’t actually pee. It’s like getting startled and clenching up, like getting pee-shy, but I simply cannot force myself to begin urinating. And I’m trying; this isn’t one of those “running around, trying to find a place…” dreams- no, at this point the urgency is if I’m dreaming I’m in a nightclub I’m going to pee in the corner, and if I get thrown out and the dream police show up, I’m going to pee on their shoes.
I also sometimes dream in not-life, such as dreaming in videogames, which used to happen more back before I broke the addiction. But a couple nights ago, I crossed a threshold and ventured into new territory. Well, not new, exactly. South Park has been around since what, 1997? I remember it came out when I was working as a bartender at a place since closed called Ebeneezer’s, which was a grand converted railway station from way back in Framingham, Mass.
On the east coast, there is a period of infrastructure that is huge stones and huge beams and the feeling is like a citadel. One side of the building had three levels of bars, one with an interior balcony, which stepped out into the other half of the building, which was open with a stage area and gorgeous old booths and separation panels.
For the first season, I think we played it on the tv on the 2nd floor bar. I remember wondering one night why the stairs were roped off, and when I went up I found a bunch of the servers and the 2nd floor bartender drinking and watching South Park. As someone raised without a television- and then on a steady diet of Simpsons, South Park was sort of an awesome annoyance.
I got into it a bit later, around the 9th or 10th season, when I was able to pick up a couple box sets on DVD for cheap, and then when streaming came along I’ve sort of wandered my way through the years catching up on never-seen episodes. I rarely watch an episode more than once though. I probably get into a cartoon mood once a week? So it came as a complete surprise to me when I dreamed in South Park the other night.
In my dream, I was at school with the guys, and I was in the bathroom and a handful of them were there too. The walls were the right colors, the stalls and sinks looked the same, but the urinals had moved to the back of the room, as well as changing to a more European (pun intended) style of a small trough of water running along the floor with a wall to pee on.
In my dream, I was standing to the left of Cartman, and trying desperately to pee. Then a toilet flushed and I knew that we had to jump backwards, because the sudden change in water pressure was going to cause the urinal-wall-water to surge, and it’d splash out a bit and if you were too close you’d get wet.
Everyone has a bad story about a toilet system like this. If you don’t, you were raised with a level of money and privilege no matter what you think. But the toilet flushed and Cartman yelled “Goddammit, Kyle, you’re supposed to say when you’re going to flush!” as we jumped back to avoid the airborne splish.
But I couldn’t pee. The moment went on forever. Me, standing at the wall, looking at the little rivulet of water, wishing I was adding to it, but unable to hit that relaxed state “point-of-pee”. And then I woke up and it was all a dream. I woke up and realized that not only am I really fucked up to be having dreams woven from alternate fabrics of reality, but holy Jesus I needed to pee!
So, racing downstairs, letting the dogs out, standing there for almost a full minute… I am so afraid of when my body fails in this “don’t pee when you’re sleeping” thing. I know some kids have a really hard time locking this behavior down, I think there’s even a name for when you don’t have a physical reason but still pee the bed all the time anyway; I know things could be a thousand times worse- and I’m sort of afraid for their arrival.
What is it going to be like though? Am I going to start to go and then wake myself up, or will I wake up with my wife yelling and furiously smacking me with a sodden pillow? Will I dream on and then wake up cold, wet, and as ashamed as I’ve ever been in my life?
If so- what will the REST of my dream be about? Getting stuck in a wading pool and I’m late for class but I can’t find the stairs up out of the wading pool so I’m anxiously and wetly worrying? Wow. That’s getting weird. Ok. Want to talk about Weird, to keep using W’s? X.
Yeah, I know that makes no sense. But it looks pretty cool, like a tattoo that someone faking astronomy knowledge would get. But what I mean about X is the movie “X”. It’s just “X”. Kinda like tonight’s movie is just Outpost. Not “The Outpost”.
But I suppose “The X” doesn’t make anything sense unless you heard it on the X, so we’ll move on. X makes… both very little sense, as well as perfect sense. It was strange for me, but I found myself able to empathize (I know, right? Me! Empathy!) with almost all of the characters. Even the old lady…
Look, sexuality doesn’t stop when we stop looking sexy. Ask any of the unsexy people. Some of them are the most sexual people that you’ve ever met! Crazed with it, at times! But the movie X does such a good job evoking loneliness that you don’t hold the wicked things done against them- or at least, I didn’t.
It’s one of those “It’s not what *I* would have done, but…” moments. A “I said the right things, I just said them the wrong way.” kinda feeling. It’s a really good movie, and only made better after a huge bowl of pho and then hot-boxing the car to the point of near-asphyxiation prior to the film starting.
I remember sort of watching myself make conversation with my wife in the theater from a couple feet up and to the right of where I was sitting, I was so high. Then I ate all her popcorn. It was a great night.
Less so what I fear I’m setting myself up for tonight. As I already said, the movie I’m going to do is Outpost, which I *think* I actually watched 10 or so years ago for a previous, unlaunched version of The Guide. So I have a muddled feeling that I remember the general direction this movie goes in. That said, I have the memory of a gnat post-windshield and this description doesn’t ring any bells. “In war-torn Eastern Europe, a world-weary group of mercenaries discover a long-hidden secret in an abandoned WWII bunker.”
The picture is the backs of a couple guys standing around looking at what looks like a trophy for sport-fishing or something sitting in front of a wall draped with a Swastika flag. One of them men is wearing a beret. I think my biggest question is in the phrasing of “world-weary” … I know what you’re trying to say- these guys been around the block, and I don’t mean The San Francisco Way. We’re to understand that these are battle-hardened men.
But you tell me you’re World-Weary, I’m thinking you’re tired of the world. Tacking a “-weary” to the end of something makes you weary of it, isn’t that the rule? Like when you call something a burger? Maybe that’s a horrible example. I’m really hungry. Not only are the munchies in play, but all I’ve eaten today is 3 pieces of raisin bread. The obsession continues. I do have tacos and half of last night’s pho in the refrigerator to look forward to though.
Nazi zombies, huh? I’m kinda feeling this. I’m also… bothered by the “Well, war in eastern Europe is currently happening.” angle of this, too. Thank God it was probably filmed in New Jersey. Ah! Yes! There was one other thing I was going to bring up.
The movie “Videodrome”. It’s an old David Cronenberg movie with the always awesome James Woods in it, which unfortunately has not aged as well as intended due to our current online-reality outstripping the movie’s wildest imagination- well, not really.
I think the movie has, like, a brain-frequency-wave that takes you over and starts mutating your body… *THAT’S* not actually happening- yet- but the storyline centers around a TV executive who is searching for the most graphic content available.
The movie is a warning of where our interests inevitably lead, but the reality is we’ve traveled far past the movie’s examples. So. Uh… Videodrome is a good movie, but aged kinda poorly. Definitely not Cronenberg’s best. Naked Lunch, maybe? Definitely the weirdest. X? Not Cronenberg, but definitely worth watching. Outpost? Think we saw it years ago, Amazon is telling me I started it and got about 15 minutes in at some point. Let’s see if we can get farther this time. Do it for The Guide!