Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Director:  George A. Romero

PLOT:  A group of people hide from zombies in a farm house.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Nine Brains 

“They’re coming to get you, Barbra!”

I appreciate Romero’s use of camera angles to give this movie a claustrophobic feel, making it truly terrifying for its time. His use of a zombie as death personified is evident. They are slow, shuffling, cannibalistic creatures – death is always eating us, always coming. No matter how slow it comes, it always catches us in the end. It always rises up the question, just how far will one go to live that little bit longer? Will they become worse than the monsters outside the door, or face the inevitable with honor? Oh, he is good!!! There is a reason that this movie is probably the most influential zombie movie ever. It really set the standard and made modern zombies what they are today. Thanks, Romero!

Budget: $114,000

Gross: $30,000,000

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Director:  George A. Romero

PLOT:  Following an ever growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, a band of survivors takes refuge in a shopping mall.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Eight Brains 

Romero dug his hands in the dirt to make this film. A true master of the genre, he leads us to what I appreciate most about zombie apocalypse books, when they are well written, and movies that go in depth – the way the people become more gruesome monsters than the zombies. Isn’t this what Stephen King is warning us of with ‘The Stand’ and ‘Under the Dome’? Sometimes, the monsters are really each other. I love this film!

Budget: $650,000

Gross: $55,000,000

Pet Sematary (1989)

Director:  Mary Lambert

PLOT:  Behind a young family’s home in Maine is a terrible secret that holds the power of life after death … Based on a Stephen King novel.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Seven Brains 

This movie was creepy! Based on an awesome book, this movie delivers. Loved it! Besides, it stars Herman Munster in it. (I recognized him even if they did use makeup effects and dress him up as a person) How can you not enjoy that? I liked Stephen King's deeper meanings, how being selfish hurts others. And sometimes, we need to let go.

Budget: $11,500,000

Gross: $57,469,179

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

Director:  Wes Craven

PLOT:  An anthropologist goes to Haiti after hearing rumors about a drug used by black magic practitioners to turn people into zombies.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Five Brains 

If you are after Romero type zombies, you will be sadly disappointed. This is about live people in a drug induced trance, voodoo superstitions and one man’s quest to find the truth. (and dramatic music…dun dun dunnnnn!) It is based on a ‘true’ story…ummmm... Well, the movie was good as long as you go into it with the right expectations. It had a creepy feel to it and was pretty well done for what it was. I am more into the ‘eat brains’ type of film, but I can’t knock this one.

Budget: $7,000,000

Ninjas vs Zombies (2008)

Director:  Justin Timpane

PLOT:  Seven friends struggling with late 20’s early 30’s life find themselves in terrifying danger when a dead loves one arises and starts devouring souls.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains 

It was bad. With a title that awesome, how did a movie go so horribly wrong?

The Dead One (Blood of the Zombie) (1961)

Director:  Barry Mahon

PLOT:  A voodoo priestess sends out zombies to bring back live victims for her sacrificial rituals

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

One Brain 

Zzzzzzzzzzzz..humpfffwhaa?? What? Umm movie? (yawn) zzzzzzz….

Pot Zombies (2005)

Director:  Justin Powers

PLOT:  Radioactive weed turns people into zombies with the munchies for human flesh!

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains

 

It was terrible, but I still liked it. You can look at the budget and be smart enough not to get your hopes up. I laughed at the terrible CG effects, maybe that was the amusement. Maybe because I enjoy no budget works. They did miss some great opportunities with this one. Eh, it was better than Swamp Zombies. That is still my rock bottom.

Budget: $10,000

Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies (2001)

Director:  Naoyuki Tomomatsu

PLOT:  In the near future, the entire world is struck with a bizarre malady that affects every girl between the ages of 15 and 17 years old. Victims first experience a giddiness called NDH or Near Death Happiness, an almost euphoric state. Within minutes of death the girls resurrect as a flesh eating zombie, or ‘Stacy’ and must be repeat killed by government formed ‘Romero Repeat Kill Troops’.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Five Brains  

I LOVE Japanese imagination! This was another fantastically imaginative movie. Butterfly twinkle power? I really loved the chainsaws… I don’t want to give up spoilers, but there is a great homage in this one!  Wow! Just…Wow!

The Big Tits Dragon: Hot Spring Zombie vs. Stripper 5 (Kyonyu doragon: Onsen zonbi vs sutorippa 5 (original title)(2010)

Director:  Tako Nakano

PLOT:  A Japanese fantasy-horror  film adapted from the manga Kyonyu Dragon by Rei  Mikamoto that features several of Japan’s adult film stars. The film opens with two strippers killing  zombies with a chainsaw  and a katana! Then, flashback to several days prior to where it all began... Our heroines, Ginko and Lena are working at an unsuccessful strip club. There is a bunch of drama that eventually leads to a chick fight that of course rips shirts, showing boobies and secret door that leads under the strip club. It leads to a strange room that contains the Well of Spirits, a bunch of occult books and some yen. One of their fellow strippers Maria, who also happens to be a sadomasochistic Goth oddity, notices one of the books to be the Book of the Dead and decides to try her hand at Necromancy…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Six Brains  

This movie was fun and kept me entertained. Any zombie movie that has zombies, a chainsaw and a katana in the first minute is a good film. There were ample amounts of blood, some comedy and it stayed true to the Japanese comic book feel.

Wasting Away (Aaah! Zombies) (2007)

Director:  Patrick Horvath

PLOT: An oddball comedy from the perspective of the brain munching monsters themselves.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Nine Brains

This movie was great! I loved the way the film switches from the perspective of the zombies, how they see themselves and how we see them. The acting was good and the effects were good. It was lighthearted and fun. The originality really appealed to me because as a zombie film fan, I am always hoping for something new.

Budget: $1,000,000

Die-ner (get it?) (2009)

Director:  Patrick Horvath

PLOT: Ken is a traveling killer. He enters a lonely diner and murders the waitress and cook, hiding their corpses in the freezer. He is about to commit two more murders when the local cop arrives for coffee and the dead arise as zombies...

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Four Brains

Ken is played by the B rate Edward Norton and is the only character that makes this movie worth watching at all. There were a couple funny one-liners, but overall this movie was would have put me to sleep if not for him.

Zombie Roadkill (2010)

Director:  David Green

PLOT: It is well, umm… Zombie road kill.  A group of teenagers is terrorized by road kill gone zombie.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Seven Brains  

Original and hilarious! I can’t get enough, bring on more zombie white bunny!!!

Zombie Apocalypse (2011)

Zombie Apocalypse (2011)

Director:  Nick Lyon

PLOT: Months after a zombie plague has wiped out 90% of the American population, a small group of survivors fight their way cross-country to a rumored refuge on the island of Catalina.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains  

WTF?! The zombie tiger was the worst zombie monster ever. Ok, so Resident Evil had a huge budget.  Stay within your bounds.  I guess if you just drink the cool aide, you can pretend?  (gulp, gulp, gulp) nope, that is still one stupid looking tiger. This movie was crap, I want that hour-ish of my life back. And the redbox rental money.  Dang it!

Bio-Zombie! (Sun faa sau si)(1998)

Director:  Wilson Yip

PLOT: A group of young shoppers and employees must band together when a zombie outbreak overruns their Hong Kong shopping center in the middle of the day.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Seven Brains  

I don’t want to put out any spoilers, but I will say that this one was a true great. ‘Crazy Bee’ and ‘Woody Invincible’, our unlikely heroes, are hilarious as they wreck a shopping mall by accidentally releasing a zombie on its unsuspecting patrons. This film is brilliant!

Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood! (2008)

Director:  Thunder Levin

PLOT: In the wake of a solar flare of unusual properties, a mismatched group of inner city survivors must put aside their animosity to escape a Los Angeles now free of gang-bangers, but infested instead with blood sucking zombies.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains  

This film was pretty bad. A little drama inside of a catastrophe, rival gang members have to get along to survive the zombie hordes. It was just plain boring, I was terribly disappointed.

Budget: $3,000,000   

Zombie Town ( 2007)

Director:  Damon Lemay

PLOT: Local mechanic Jake LaFond’s life is suddenly disrupted when mysterious parasites transform the law-abiding citizensof his quint hometown into hoards of cannibalistic zombies.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Four Brains 

Better than nothing, I suppose. I wasn’t impressed. Night of the Creeps did the whole ‘parasites make zombies’ much better. This film seemed lacking at best.

Dead Snow (Død Snø )(2009)

Director:  Tommy Wirkola

PLOT: A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi Zombies

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Four Brains 

Norwegian Nazi Zombies…Bwaaahahaha! Dead Snow is a great foreign zombie film!

The Walking Dead (TV Series 2010-)

Creator:  Frank Darabont

PLOT: Based on the popular comic book series by Robert Kirkman… Police officer Rick Grimes is shot while on duty and goes into a coma. He wakes to a zombie apocalypse, seeming to be the only survivor. He returns home to find his family missing and heads to Atlanta to find them.  In Atlanta, he narrowly escapes death as he is aided by another survivor, Glenn. Glenn leads him out of the city to a camp where he finds his wife Lori, son Carl, and best friend Shane. This is the story of their struggles not only with the zombies, but with other survivors…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Ten Brains  

I am a huge fan of the comic book series and have been reading it since I picked up the first TPB years ago. The television series is different and that keeps it interesting. The character development is a lot different, so if you are a comic fan like I am, do not expect the characters to be the same.  The comic book seemed grittier to me, I felt sadder for Rick. (Something about Lori’s death and Rick slipping a cog and talking into a phone pulled at the heart strings, and Carl is much more intense in the comic.) There are different characters as well. The series is more about the zombies and Darabont does a great job with the roamers and lurkers. The makeup effects are great, this looks big budget. The acting is very good and everything is believable. I get pulled into every episode and I can’t wait to see the next one.

Woke Up Dead (TV Series 2009)

Creator:  John Fasano

PLOT: Drex is depressed over a bad love life, so he accepts a pill from a stranger, thinking it will make him feel better. Instead, he wakes up dead in a bathtub full of water. His roommate Matt films it all from there and they begin detective work to try to figure out Drex’s new supernatural undead powers and who is stalking him.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Five Brains  

Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame as a zombie = fun! I loved what zombies eat in this series! I couldn’t agree more, that crap really will bring about the zombie apocalypse someday…hahahaha!

Silent Night, Zombie Night (2009)

Director:  Sean Cain

PLOT: One week before Christmas a viral outbreak  turns the citizens of Los Angeles into the walking dead. On the brink of severing ties with both his wife and his best friend and long time partner, L.A.P.D. officer Frank Talbot finds himself trapped with them. As death closes in on them, their survival is further threatened by the fact that both men love the same woman…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Four Brains  

Low budget zombie fun! I enjoyed this little bit of celluloid cheese, finding it magnificent in its comic indulgences, with the true brilliance being murders to music. The entire movie, I hoped to see Sarah (the wife) ditch both of the loser cops and just use them as zombie bate. If she did, her survivability would skyrocket. Frank is the ultimate screw up, bound to injure or kill anyone around him. 

I, Zombie: Chronicles of Pain (1999)

Director:  Andrew Parkinson

PLOT: A young man gets infected and gradually begins to turn into a zombie

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Three Brains 

It was another documentary, this one told from the zombie’s point of view. It is sad to see his downward spiral as he loses his humanity and the desire to eat flesh is just too much to control. But bad makeup effects and a crappy script were enough to put me to sleep. Not really worth the time.

My Boyfriend’s Back (1993)

Director:  Bob Balaban

PLOT: Missy is the most beautiful girl in school and Johnny has been in love with her for years. One night Johnny is killed while trying to win her over, his love bringing her back from the dead to keep trying…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Five Brains  ~ Enjoyable!

A very cute teen romance with a zombie twist. I loved this film and its one liners!

Special Dead (2006)

Director: Thomas L. Phillips, Sean Simmons

PLOT: When a zombie plague infects Camp Special Dude, a dude ranch for the mentally handicapped, a ragtag band of campers and a counselors struggles to survive the night…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

One Brain

The acting is just plain sad and I was miserably let down at their lack of zombie horses. I watched it because… well, because it is a zombie movie. It was worse than I expected. I had hoped for something ballsy, considering the political incorrectness going on there. Sad!!! 

Re-Animator (1985)

Director: Stuart Gordon

PLOT: A dedicated medical student and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student  arrives on campus.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Eight Brains ~ H.P. Lovecraft wrote this one… Cthulhu will eat you if you don’t like it!

One of the best zombie movies ever made

Budget: $900,000

Opening Weekend: $543,728 (20 Oct 1985, 129 screen)

Gross: $2,023,441 (USA)

Ed and His Dead Mother (1993)

Director: Jonathan Wacks

PLOT: A mourning son makes a deal to reanimate his one year dead mother, however things turn in an unexpected direction.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Eight Brains ~ Steve Buscemi, need I say more?!

Quirky zombie oddity done Buscemi style! Simply great.

Budget: $1,800,000

Opening Weekend: $673 (21 Nov 1993, 1 screen)

Gross: $1,097 (USA)

Dead Men Don't Die (1990)

Director: Malcolm Mamorstein

PLOT: A reporter investigating a drug dealing ring is murdered. Brought back to life by the voodoo spell of a cleaning woman, he goes after his killers…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Eight Brains  ~ Hilarious!

It is silly and cliché, but so funny that I couldn’t stop laughing at Eliott Gould’s performance. Yes, you can see a microphone in a couple shots. Yes, it is silly. I still love this film!

Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (1981)

Director:  Andrea Bianchi

PLOT: A Professor opens a crypt and reanimates rotten zombies. The zombies attack a group of friends celebrating at a party in a villa nearby…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

One Brain  ~ Peter Bark can suck it!

I understand casting an adult due to child labor laws, but for the love of zombies, at least get an adult who can pass for child! Peter Bark with his ‘Mama! Mama!’ was just so creepy. He was like a tiny little man her age, maybe older, calling her mama. And the zombies were bad. Apparently everyone in that region is buried wearing a man-dress made of burlap because that is what they wear when they crawl out of the grave. I fought to stay awake.

Virus Undead (2008)

Director:  Wolf Wolff, Ohumthi

PLOT: Was there a plot? Oh yeah...Umm...Grandpa invents a zombie plague and his snotty shithead grandson umm...I lost interest there.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains for makeup effects…Not the worst, but still pretty bad

An Austrian crap flick not worth watching if there ever was one. The zombies don't even appear until the movie is almost over and when they do, it is a huge failure.  German actors in English with terrible accents and a crappy almost non existent plot.

Last of the Living (2008)

Director: Logan McMillan

PLOT: A highly contagious virus is spreading throughout the land. With one bite, it's only hours before victims will turn into zombies and hunt for human flesh. Morgan, Ash, and Johnny might just be the only humans left, but they don't seem to mind and find enjoyment lounging around in their underwear living in vacant homes. When they stumble upon a hot girl who just may have a cure, the three decide it's finally time to step up to the plate and save the world- and the girl. Now the only hope for survival lies in their hands.

                         

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains for the comedy and entertainment, but bad effects and poor plotline.

Very low budget, but the acting wasn’t too bad and it was entertaining for the most part. I laughed at some parts. Bad makeup, but funny dialogue. I enjoyed it for a ‘one time watch.’

Budget: $5,000 for the first 90%, then put a video trailer on Youtube and got another $40,000

Dance of the Dead (2008)

Director: Gregg Bishop

PLOT: It is prom night in middle America. Tuxes have been rented and dresses have been bought. But when the dead unexpectedly rise from their graves to eat the living, it's up to the geeks, the nerds, the outcast and the losers who couldn't get dates to the dance to save the town from the undead. Unlikely heroes will rise to the challenge as they are forced to put aside their differences and band together to fight for their lives. Armed with bats, sledgehammers, garden tools and guitars, this rag-tag group of high-school teens are in for a prom night they will never forget.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains just because it managed to get me to watch it until the end. Nothing too interesting though.

I HATED the GI Joe who takes charge of the kids, leading them to battle the zombies…He’s a total geek who makes all military look bad. Not really funny, not really bad…A middle of the road film. Not worth watching a second time.

Day of the Dead II Contagium (2005)

Director:  Ana Clavell, James Glenn Dudelson

PLOT: In 1968, at the Ravenside Military Hospital in PA, the military loses control of an experiment – a lethal bacterial weapon that changes the DNA and transforms humans into zombies. A group of soldiers is sent to the hospital to eliminate the infected staff and interns but Pvt DeLuca steals a test tube with the virus and hides it inside a vacuum flask. He is transformed into a zombie and killed but the vacuum flask falls into the grass. In the present days, a group of patients at the mental institution now located there finds the flask and one of them opens the vessel. The culture drops to the floor and a doctor is contaminated.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains ~ Dull movie…NOT ROMERO!!!

NOT a Romero film! Tragically bad zombie makeup. A tribute should have tried harder! Super DULL!!!

Budget: $9,000,000

Children of the Living Dead (2001)

Director: Tor Ramsey

PLOT: In 1987 serial murderer and rapist Abbot Hayes disappeared from the morgue. Shortly afterwards, a zombie plague swept his hometown and many lost their lives in the ensuing battle. Now, fourteen years later, the aging residents of the town are trying to erase all traces of their past. But the arrival of a businessman who relocates the bodies of the local cemetery into a mass grave so he can build a car dealership riles up Abbot, who sets out to create his own army of the undead and take over.

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains

When making a terrible movie, please remember this….

"Plot holes can exist as long as there is enough action to distract the viewer from focusing on them," …Every B-rate director knows that, and every B-rate movie fan knows it, too…Even my ten year old asked what made Abbot Hayes different from all of the other zombies and why he could think when they could not. Talk about some bad cheese…Zombies that eat only adults? Please! We did get a good laugh over the Abbot Hayes Big Foot in the Woods scene though…Dark, he is shuffling through the trees…Five steps, turns and looks at the camera…I swear it is the same shot used in the Inquirer. The only reason I gave it two brains was for the scene with Jesse, the former grave digger/ robber turned recluse who finally gains the courage to leave his room only to be mauled by zombies…I loved his “Wide open spaces” scene! That alone gets it the two brains…lol

Days of Darkness (2007)

 Director:  Jake Kennedy

PLOT: The world watches as a comet looms over the earth for days. The masses were told there is nothing to worry about. It was a lie! An eclectic group of survivors huddle together and battle for their only chance to survive against the uprising of the undead while trying to save the fate of mankind.In a twist on the standard zombie movie of the "Night of the Living Dead" series, the zombies here are infected with alien organisms from the thawing comet, not by being bitten. Holed up in an abandoned military blockhouse, the survivors are a mixed bag; a young unmarried couple, a former porn star and her sheltered teenage daughter, a born again fundamentalist preacher, a gay man, an alpha male movie producer/rancher, a couple of soldiers, one male and one female, a high-roller, and the preacher's infected brother, chained up in the basement. Internal strife hampers the group's events to come up with a plan to defeat the zombies pressing in on the chain-link fence surrounding the site; one by one they begin to fall victim, both to the zombies and to each other.

A comet turns people into zombies…Yes, Alien Zombies! Seed Pods that make the genitals drop off and turn people into flesh eating zombies…But not to worry, these are not our beloved Romero Zombies – a bite will not infect you! Apparently only the comet dust…Ok, I couldn’t find a good synopsis without spoilers…lol…

UGLY MOLLY RATING:

Two Brains..Pretty Bad

Ummm..I’ll give it creativity for the seed pods, and the little religious zealot was funny in his own creepy way…But this movie was just plain stupid. And the ex-porn mom talking like that in front of her daughter? Come on! Please!