Zombiethon: Recap

I'll be honest: I'm glad that's over.

Creating and poster a new video review every day for a month was more work than I thought it was going to be, and going in I knew it was going to be a challenge. But it was also fun, and I'm glad I managed to do it because it felt like some kind of true accomplishment. I was originally just going to do a random assortment of reviews based on whatever I felt like watching that day, or whatever random Zombie film I happened to find or rent. But at some point, it turned into an historical journey through the development of the zombie film genre. I'm glad it turned out that way, since it gave me a chance to look at the entire genre as a whole and talk about how it developed, but it wasn't my original intention. Had I known I was going to do a Zombie film history class, I might've chosen the films a bit better, adding in some others and maybe nixing some that I did. But all in all, I thought it was a pretty decent list. I probably didn't need to do Zombies of Mora Tau, however. Nobody cared about that one.

And I ever going to do something like this again? Probably not, but who knows? I actually already have another idea for a long term video review project... and it's a good one. However, I dunno if I'll repeat this format any time soon. Posting a video each day for a month was a strain on both my mental health and my social life. Also, I think it was a strain on my viewers as well. A new video each day -- some of which were pretty long -- is a lot to ask of people. But... we'll see. 

Anyway, just for fun, here are some useless statistics and observations:



Movies Reviewed: 35

TV Series Reviewed: 1

Movies that were new to me: 7

Longest Video: Resident Evil (8 minutes, 54 seconds), but that covered four films. The longest review I did about a single film was Return of the Living Dead (7 minutes, 12 seconds).

Shortest Video: Serpent and the Rainbow (1 minute, 56 seconds).

Most Popular Video: Diary of the Dead / Survival of the Dead. As of today, it has 96 views on Youtube. I'll admit, I was hoping for more. My Planet of the Apes videos got up to the thousands, but maybe that took awhile. I can't remember.

Least Popular Video: Revolt of the Zombies, King of the Zombies, and Voodoo Man are all tied with only 17 views each. I can't say I'm surprised.

Best Zombie Film I Watched: I'm gonna go with Night of the Living Dead, although Day of the Dead and Return of the Living Dead might be my two favorites.

Worst Zombie Film I watched: Revolt of the Zombies was so boring it was nearly unwatchable, but in terms of overall quality, Zombie Strippers was a huge piece of shit. But at least it had nudity and Robert Englund.

Most Common Director: George A. Romero. I watched six of his films. Paul Thomas Anderson and Victor Halperin are both tied for second place with two films, although Anderson might get the nod because he wrote and or produced most of the Resident Evil films, even if he only directed two of them.

Most Common Actor: Here's where things get interesting:

Milla Jovavitch appeared in all four Resident Evil films, but she only appeared in one of my reviews.

Tom Savini appeared in 4 films, but mostly as cameos or bit parts. I'm not sure how many reviews he was in, since I don't think I mentioned him in all of them, then again, maybe I did.

Bela Lugosi, appeared in three films, mostly in starring roles.

Alan Van Sprang, a very good actor who should've gotten more props from me in my videos, appeared in Survival of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Land of the Dead, possibly playing the same character in all three films.

Shawn Roberts acted in three of the films I mentioned. He played two different characters in Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, and also appeared as Wesker in that last Resident Evil movie.

Joe Pilato, who played Rhodes in Day of the Dead, also appeared in a small (and different) role in the original Dawn of the Dead. And, of course, Scott Reiniger and Ken Foree, two of the stars of Dawn of the Dead, had cameos in the remake. Gaylen Ross, the female lead in Dawn, does not appear in the remake, but one of the stores in the mall is named after her.

Oded Fehr, Mike Epps, Iain Glen, Ali Larter, and maybe some other people each appeared in at least two Resident Evil movies.

Don Calfa, a wonderful actor, played the coroner in Return of the Living Dead and was also in the original Weekend at Bernie's. I thought about mentioning that in my video, but decided against it. I'm not even sure why I'm mentioning it here. He's also in a movie called Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, which I've never seen.

And I think that's that. Did I mess anybody?

Number of Times I had to Censor nudity: Three... I think.

My Favorite Videos: As a fan, I've rewatched Plan 9 the most times just for fun, but only because that scene of Tor Johnson trying to act always makes me laugh. In terms of quality, I was happy with how the Weekend at Bernies 2 video came out, and I thought Dead Snow was well edited.

Least Favorite Videos: Well, as the month went on, I think it's clear that my editing work got a lot better. Those first few videos are pretty rough, but I still think they turned out ok. I wasn't all that happy with how my review of Braindead turned out. It's such a crazy movie, and I don't think I captured that as well as I wanted to. Revolt of the Zombies was boring, but it was a boring movie and I had almost nothing to say about it. I only watched it because it was a sequel to White Zombie, which is awesome. I had a much longer version of the Walking Dead that I had to cut down because I had too many clips from the show and youtube kept blocking it on copyright grounds.

Interesting tidbit: Zombieland was the second or third video I put together, even though it was the second to last to be posted. I originally was going to post that during the first few days, but changed my plans when I decided to do everything in chronological order. Anyway, when I was going to post it, I was appalled by how bad the video was, so I went in and edited it and added in some other scenes to make it flow a lot better. I should post to original video for people interested in how these things are edited. 

Movies I didn't get to review: I rented a movie called Flight of the Living Dead that's actually supposed to be pretty good and has a really neat cast, but the DVD didn't work and I was pressed for time so I went to Blockbuster and rented Rec instead. Turned out to be ok, since Rec was great, but still. I also downloaded a Japanese movie called Big Tits Zombie, but I decided not to review it because it was a little too much and I had just done Zombie Strippers. I should have done the recent remake of The Crazies, but I forgot about it.

I really wanted to do a video about a movie starring Boris Karloff, but nothing really fit the bill. He's appeared in many films as somebody who came back from the dead (most notably as Frankenstein's Monster), but never in anything that could really be called a zombie film. I need to do a Karloff post or video at some point, however, since I managed to mention Christoper Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, and Bela Lugosi.

And at one point I was thinking about doing a video based on zombie videogames, but it was just too much work and would've taken way too long, but I may end up doing that someday since there's a lot of material to talk about.

My Next Project: I'm not telling, but it's going to be awesome. Well, for me, anyway. I just need to figure out when and how I'm going to do them, because I don't think I want to do another month-long marathon. Unless people really liked this one?