Posted By John Sears on October 3, 2011

I want to put a word of caution here at the start, because there ARE supposedly such things as ‘Zombie drugs’, at least in some interpretations of the Haitian Voodoo Zombification process.

The potential existence of ACTUAL drugs involved with turning a person into a Zombie of some form only makes the following abuse of the language worse:

zombie drug krokodil-turns people into zombies

This highly addictive drug causes peoples skin to rot and start falling off. It has become an epidemic in russia. It seems like it must be fake, but it is real. Some people thing is is the beginning of a zombie Apocalypse.

There are some graphic pictures at the site linked above, so be aware.

Now, what is this ‘krokodil’ drug? A little googling reveals that krokodil is the name for a cheap street version of desomorphine, a synthetic derivative of morphine that actually has some real and legitimate medical potential.. when you don’t cook it up in a kitchen from iodine and codeine:

Desomorphine (Dihydrodesoxymorphine, Permonid) is an opiate analogue invented in 1932 in the United States that is a derivative of morphine, where the 6-hydroxyl group has been removed and the 7,8 double bond has been saturated.[1] It has sedative and analgesic effects, and is around 8-10 times more potent than morphine.

…

Desomorphine attracted attention in 2010 in Russia due to an upsurge in clandestine production, presumably due to its relatively simple synthesis from codeine.[8] The drug is easily made from codeine, iodine and red phosphorus,[9] in a similar process to the manufacture of methamphetamine from pseudoephedrine, but desomorphine made this way is highly impure and contaminated with various toxic and corrosive byproducts.

The problem, and supposedly ‘zombie’ like appearance, comes from injecting this actually CORROSIVE substance into a vein; it basically melts your skin off, slowly.

Hence, ‘krokodil’, as in scaly. Very, very scaly.

Eww.

But why go to all the effort of attempting to smear Zombies by implying that they are, in fact, akin to drug addicts slowly killing themselves with Russkie meth? After all, the users and observers of this drug don’t call it ‘Zombie’ anything, it already has a street name.

I suspect prejudice. Prejudice and yet another case of Don’t Use the Zed Word.

For shame, internet. For shame.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Euro-zom, Journamalism

Posted By John Sears on October 3, 2011

Sorry for the long weekend, I cannot divulge much yet but rest assured it was all for one of the ZRC’s ongoing secret projects.

Mwa ha ha.

Meanwhile later this month the ZRC will be attending The Dark Carnival Film Festival in Bloomington, Indiana from October 21-23rd. This is the fifth year we’ve gone, and the third in official ZRC capacity. The DC is always great for getting a feel for trends in Zombie-related filmmaking, both positive and negative; at the festival in years past we’ve seen everything from ‘Cabine of the Dead’ to ‘Slices of Life’ and ‘George’s Intervention’, so it really does run the gamut.

The ZRC will be there for the whole festival, and if you’re in the area and want to talk Zombie Rights, or help us picket any Anti-Zombie films being screened, let the ZRC know. We’re always up for a good picket.

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | 1 Comment »
Tags: Movies, Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on September 30, 2011

Not so much because of the people involved, aside from Smirky McGee herself Milla, but because it indicates that this, ahem, ‘film’ is still well on its way to ruining an afternoon of mine sometime in the future. Oh, and spreading lots of Anti-Zombie prejudice of course:

Are You Sick Of Resident Evil: Retribution Casting News?

We kind of are! So this is looking as if it will be either the final Resident Evil film (Even though Mila said she wants to do at least one more) or they are just going all out.

I’m actually a fairly sober guy but I swear Ms. Jovovich is going to ruin my liver with these antics.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies, Videogames

Posted By John Sears on September 30, 2011

In the classic science-fiction spoof ‘Spaceballs’, one of the recurring jokes is the hypercommercialization of the Spaceballs movie itself, and the bewildering variety of (sometimes just plain bewildering) merchandise that, allegedly, one could purchase related the film.

(This is pretty obviously a poke in the ribs at ‘Star Wars’ which really did break all sorts of boundaries in the sheer variety of swag it had for sale. There was even Ewok soap. Seriously… I won a bar of it as a prize at Atomic Age Cinema way back when.)

However, even Yogurt, the Yoda (duh) figure played by Brooks himself in ‘Spaceballs’, would have been impressed with the notion of making an entire movie out of a commercial that had been used to sell a basically unrelated property:

Dead Island is a pretty mediocre zombie game. The console version currently holds a 71 rating on Metacritic and has already prompted videogame essayist Tom Bissell to draft a Why-Videogames-Suck-Now mini-manifesto over at Grantland. It’s especially disappointing since Island had such a dynamite trailer — you might remember it from back in February. Lionsgate has officially optioned the Dead Island film rights, and curiously, a press release from the studio mostly just talks about that preview …

But it gets more interesting: The press release also indicates that “the trailer will serve as [the movie's] primary creative inspiration,” noting that the Dead Island movie will “focus on human emotion, family ties and non-linear storytelling.”

…

We’ve seen movies based on action figures, board games, and public-domain fairy tales, but this seems like the potential start of an entirely new trend: Movies based on commercials.

Yes, we’ve come a long way as a culture, when a misleading-to-the-point-of-dishonesty trailer for a videogame can spawn an entire movie based around the game that people *wish* they had been able to purchase in the first place.

Oh, and that movie will no doubt still be viciously Living Supremacist.

Our work here at the ZRC is never done.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Advertising, Movies, Videogames

Posted By John Sears on September 29, 2011

I have a bunch of secret projects on the burner just at the moment, one of which is super time-sensitive and needs a lot of work before Saturday, so the blog will be light for a few days. Rest assured we are still readily available on Twitter and email for any Zombie-related emergencies.

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By John Sears on September 27, 2011

This is one of those products that is sort of ambiguous in its Zombie Friendliness:

Description

Looks like a warning sign-Zombie Zone! Plastic corrugate, in polybag with header. 17in high x 22in wide.

Is this a sign warning people about Zombies, as in, ‘Stay away from these awful Undead creatures’, or warning them to be careful OF Zombies, like, I dunno, a School Zone sign?

Drive carefully in case your Undead neighbor is a bit slow to get across the road with that bad leg? That sort of thing?

Really there’s no way to tell, even if our occasional verbal sparring partners over at BuyZombie have their own cynical take on the matter:

Zombie Zone Lawn Sign

With Halloween quickly approaching some people may want to pick up a Zombie Zone lawn sign in order to celebrate the season. We know the real reason most of our readers would want one though – to let others know not to enter their gated back yard unless they want to become zombie chow. I know most of you out there keep zombies as a form of protection.

It’s a mistake, one that will eventually cost you your very lives or cause an outbreak in your neighborhood.

Ha-ha, very droll.

As to the original product itself (apparently unavailable for the moment) I think it could go either way. Zombie Friendly signage to protect the Undead, or Anti-Zombie product to defame them?

We report, you decide.

Category: Zombie Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: Zombie Products

Posted By John Sears on September 27, 2011

I’d been hearing for some time that the newest expansion in perennial favorite collectible card game ‘Magic: The Gathering’ was going to be substantially Zombie-themed, and I had some hope that it might, MIGHT represent some long-sought improvements to the depiction of the Differently Animated in gaming media.

Whether ‘Innistrad’, the aforementioned expansion, actually does the Zombie Community any favors has yet to be seen, but one thing is clear: the advertising campaign to promote it has been distinctly Anti-Zombie.

Here, take a look at these screengrabs from an animated ad that was running on Penny Arcade last week:

Needless to say, The Zombie Rights Campaign condemns this inflammatory and prejudiced stereotyping of the Differently Animated, coming especially from a company that caters to an extremely wide audience including many impressionable youths! Just think, if the next generation of game players grows up thinking this sort of rhetoric is acceptable, how will they ever learn to adjust to, and even accept, the presence of their Undead fellow citizens?

Not to mention the great offense that Wizards of the Coast has caused to the Differently Animated community itself by running advertising like this.

For shame, Wizards of the Coast. For shame!

Zombie Rights allies should of course feel free to contact WotC and let them know that this sort of Anti-Zombie pandering is simply unacceptable in the current day and age (not that it should have been acceptable years ago!).

(For outreach purposes, I can heartily recommend twitter, and here’s theirs if you want to make a complaint in person :D)

Category: Zombie Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: Advertising, Zombie Gaming

Posted By John Sears on September 27, 2011

Oh yes, this sounds classy:

Set in the aftermath of a zombie outbreak, the film follows a group of likely lads as they head off to a run down military base with a PVC clad stripper for the ultimate stag party experience. Forget paintball, at Zomball you get to shoot zombies with stun guns. It’s a game that is literally more than life or death. After breaking the golden rule of Zomball – “never humiliate a zombie” – it becomes a fight for survival as the truth about the new world order is revealed and suddenly the mother-in-law is the least of Dean’s problems…

So how exactly is hitting a Zombie with a taser for entertainment NOT humiliating? That’s what I want to know.

Anyway after a long journey this, ahem, movie is finally coming to DVD in the UK. If Americans want to review it I would only note that Google and five minutes should tell you how to work around region restrictions on a DVD.

Now, getting it shipped here might be another matter.. our ZRC review copy of Zombie Hotel took months to get through customs!

True story.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Euro-zom, Movies

Posted By John Sears on September 27, 2011

Well, the wave of Euro-Zom films that hate the Differently Animated seems to be coming ashore at last:

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sep 22, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Global Cinema Distribution ( www.globalcinemadistribution.com ) announces the national theatrical release of the Ford Brothers’ West African–set zombie feature THE DEAD. After its successful U.K. run, THE DEAD lurches across the pond and into more than 20 cities across the U.S. beginning October 7th in Los Angeles and October 14th in New York and everywhere else in-between.

Shot on 35mm in life-threatening regions of Burkina Faso and Ghana, THE DEAD takes audiences on a horrifying road-trip through a now zombie-dominated terrain. An American mercenary, the sole survivor of a violent plane crash, maneuvers through the hostile, arid landscape while battling against the newly risen living dead. Almost losing all hope, he encounters an African soldier desperately searching for his son amongst the chaos. The mercenary and the soldier rise up together to forge their way through the unstoppable assault of the ever-hungry undead and forward into an uncertain future.

What is with Europe and Zombie-hatred lately? Is it just that the whole continent needs to chill out? Maybe dropping the Euro would help, I dunno. Seems to be causing a lot of stress.

While I don’t claim to have the answers here, I definitely can identify the problem: prejudice. Prejudice in the European filmmaking industry.

For shame.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Euro-zom, Movies

Posted By John Sears on September 26, 2011

Just a heads-up for the Zombie fans out there in the parched Southwest about a chance to perhaps get your drink and your Zombie Appreciation on at the same time:

Zombies on the Move — The dead shall rise to squeak and gibber their way through the streets of Lake Havasu City at the first ever Havasu Zombie Pub Crawl on Oct. 14. Attendees will dress in their zompacalypse-best and tour local watering holes until their terrifying thirst is quenched. The crawl starts at 5 p.m. at various establishments throughout downtown McCulloch Blvd. ( www.facebook.com/havasuzombiepubcrawl )

I’m not sure about this somewhat inflammatory marketing spin, but at least the Zombies will be welcomed!

Sometimes, shockingly, public establishments don’t want Zombie customers. I know, I know; their money’s the same color, right?

Well, Lake Havasu seems to concur, and we congratulate them for their tolerance.

Kudos!

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Zombie Public Event