The movie is set in a small town in Colorado that becomes infected by an unknown virus that turns people into zombies. As the virus takes its toll on the townspeople, a group of soldiers and towns folks must survive until dawn. Characters include Corporal Sarah Cross (Mena Suvari), Private Salazar (Nick Cannon), and Private Bud Crain (Stark Sands). Ving Rhames (who was in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead) plays a short part as well.

The zombie creation method in this version of Day of the Dead totally differs from Romero’s version. Instead of some unknown cause turning people into zombies, the movie explicitly shows that its some type of engineered virus. Interestingly enough, they never really explain why some townspeople are infected and some are not. Anyways, the zombies do retain some part of their former life. Like the original, one of the zombies (Pvt. Bud) ends up helping the survivors. Also like the original, the movie does involve a missile silo.

The movie has “B-movie” written all over it. The acting was not that bad (I’ve seen worst acting). Plus the special effects was pretty good.

Day of the Dead [Blu-ray]

It doesn’t take long for the hilarity of Fido’s central idea to kick in: the world is reeling from the Zombie War, and the undead are being contained in two different ways. Some of them are roaming loose in fenced-off wilderness zones. The rest are, thanks to the good people at the ZomCom corporation, docile and domesticated–indeed, available as house servants for the upwardly-mobile. Such is the case with the Robinson family, a suburban clan who seem to have stepped straight out of an old episode of Lassie. Little Timmy is happy about the new manservant, whom he promptly dubs “Fido,” and Fido himself is fine as long as the mechanical collar around his neck doesn’t malfunction (in which case he will revert to being a cannibalistic brain-eating zombie). Fido is played, in a stroke of inspiration, by the Scots comedian Billy Connolly, although you wouldn’t be able to recognize him without already knowing he’s in the movie. Dylan Baker and especially Carrie-Anne Moss are just right as Timmy’s parents, who have accidentally wandered out of a John Cheever novel and into a George Romero world. Director Andrew Currie skillfully gets the 1950s satire and the zombie action right, although there’s no way to disguise that this premise is too thin to spread out over feature length. For a while, though, Fido hits a stride–a staggering, vacant-eyed stride.

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Zombie Nightmare is a 1986 zombie movie directed by Jack Bravman and filmed in the suburbs of Montreal, Canada starring Jon Mikl Thor. The plot, in brief: A musclebound teenage baseball player gets run over by a car driven by a bunch of teenagers. The boy’s mother contacts one of her neighbors, a voodoo priestess, who resurrects the lad as a zombie. The zombie goes on a killing spree, hunting down and killing the teenagers responsible for his own death.

Not only does Thor play the part of the zombie, he wrote much of the incidental music, with some heavy metal riffs played by his band, and some synthesizer music played by “Thorkestra.” Several other heavy metal bands contribute to the soundtrack, led by Motörhead with their hit “Ace of Spades” playing during the opening credits. Other bands heard in the soundtrack include Virgin Steele, Girlschool, Fist, and Death Mask.

Adam West plays the local police captain; Tia Carrere makes her feature film debut here as one of the teenagers. Shawn Levy also played one of the teenagers.

The movie was also featured in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Soundtrack

• Girlschool – “Future Flash”
• Girlschool – “C’mon Let’s Go”
• Motörhead – “Ace of Spades”
• Fist – “Danger Zone”
• Virgin Steele – “We Rule the Night”
• Thor – “Rebirth”
• Death Mask – “I’m Dangerous”
• Battalion – “Out for the Kill”
• Pantera – “Midnite Man”
• Knighthawk – “Zombie Life”
• The Things – “Dead Things”