I should say that I wrote this days ago. But then all those riots started up in the South, and I realized that if you replace the word zombie with looter, it would basically give an accurate representation of what ended up happening, it only stopped because it began to rain, and the rioters didn’t want to get wet, and they stayed at home. So I waited a few days to post. But I guess the rioting did end up proving my point here. One bit of disorder and the UK is royally screwed. Scary, isn’t it?

We all have problems, issues, things that bug us, or just small annoyances we can do without. We all have different ways to dealing with them. Ignoring them, avoiding them, taking large amounts of drugs, suicide, murder, cheating, divorce, theft, super villainy, becoming Batman. But the downside with those is they only fix some of the annoyances some of the time, and more often than not they can and do cause more problems than they fix.

The solution to everything?

The Zombie Apocalypse!

Now, before I start. It’s important to point out that a proper Zombie Apocalypse must follow the rules set down by Romero and improved on by Robert Kirkman. Nothing else counts. They have to be slow, lumbering, stupid but highly dangerous in groups. No other variation is acceptable. Can only be killed by a shot to the head/brain stem. Nobody really knows how they started, and after a while nobody is going to care either. Recently dead and anyone bit by one eventually turns into one of the zombie horde. They don’t run around saying “Braaaaaiiinnss!” or wisecracking (Return of the Living Dead). There’s no animal zombies (Resident Evil) and they don’t run around at all, ever (the remakes). Most importantly you need to remember that at first, the Zombies are not going to look TOO different from the living. Recently deceased is just that, recent. Chances are you wont even notice unless you take a good look, slight discoloration perhaps. Except for the violently injured types, but since those would be moving even slower (or not at all), you wont come across them to begin with.

How it would begin

Almost always you only see how the US would deal with a Zombie outbreak. How it would play out in the UK is generally ignored save for a few very low budget movies (which doesn’t include 28 days later, which is NOT a zombie movie, and don’t you dare say it is). So how would it go down here? Pretty badly I’m afraid, if our country’s response time to emergencies is anything to go by.

So lets assume an unidentified source suddenly causes the recently dead to return to the land of the living in all their worm eaten glory. How or why doesn’t matter, but for the sake of arguments we’ll simply assume it might have something to do with a space probe ala Romero’s early hints, and occurs at approximately 8:25 on a Wednesday morning. The day starts off completely normally. The five people in England who still have a job, head to their places of work, while everyone else in the country settles down to their daily dose of Jeremy Kyle followed by This Morning with Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby’s cleavage, and all the chavs are shuttled off to the Job Center’s “work improvement program” also known as drop-in centers for the feckless and work shy.

Because it’s required reading

8:25

So then, it begins. The dead start to reanimate, slowly at first as the infection takes hold. Where are the recently dead then? Well most would say graveyards, but when you take into account the time taken to process the dead and eventually get them buried. Then with the bodies being in a box and six feet under the earth. It’s highly unlikely you’ll get many, or any zombies appearing early on in those locations. It would take far too long for them to claw their way out of the coffin and then through all that dirt. Perhaps one or two from very recently buried corpses, but  nothing that would draw any sudden attention. No, the real danger would be the morgues in the hospitals. The LAST place you want Zombies to appear. There’s very little activity down there, and the few orderlies who come across them would first think “ah my mate is playing a joke” and simply not realize until its far too late. Quickly adding to the number. You wouldn’t even need many to kick things off, not considering the amount of “cattle” waiting a couple of floors above…

Because keeping dead bodies on ice was always going to be full of win

Indeed, what else is in a hospital? Sick people. People in hospital beds, weak, and if conscious then unlikely to be able to defend themselves anyway. A few overworked nurses, and being the UK, visitors wandering around with their heads down avoiding eye contact with everyone they pass. In a usually unfamiliar building filled with strange quiet corridors, unusual noises and all types of people you’ve never seen before. A place where seeing someone a bit messed up looking, or with blood on them is far from unusual or any cause for alarm considering old people with dementia tend to wander half dressed, and drunks often end up wandering the hospitals after introducing their faces to the sidewalks the previous night. That’s a lot of initial numbers added to the undead, and its not even lunch yet.

11:15

You will though begin to get panic calls through to the Police, and a few running to safety. But in a world full of Zombie movies, its going to be considered nothing more than a prank. Even when the cell phone vids are uploaded to Youtube, you’ll get the usual suspects shouting FAKE and PHOTOSHOPPED FTL! As more turn up you’ll probably start getting claims it’s some ad stunt, and the fakers and spammers will further compound the problem by using it to try get credit or sell their unrelated wares. We’re now around the five/six hour mark. Something is going on and word is spreading, but with the our desensitized none trusting nature, nobody is really paying much attention to it, how often do you hear about some horrible accident on the radio/TV and not really pay much attention? Be honest now. Exactly.

13:48

By now though the Police are beginning to take things seriously due to the number of calls across the country. But faced with something like this, and the fact the hospitals are practically out of action. They’re completely overwhelmed. All the while the Zombies are spreading out from the Hospitals, swelling their number thanks to appearing like homeless people selling the Big Issue, shuffling around mumbling incoherently to themselves, and the first reaction for most people when walking towards someone who appears to be a homeless person is not to make eye contact (it’s true, how often do you really look if you can avoid it? We’re ALL guilty of that). Well bub, you’ve just become dinner. As for passersby when that happens? It’s a horrible fact that especially in the UK, there are often many assaults and murders going on right there in the middle of the day, in front of other people, and nobody looks or does anything to help, for fear of being hurt themselves. Zombie paradise basically.

Be alert! Zombies can look indistinguishable from Justin Bieber fans. Reduce risk to yourself – shoot first, check their ipod later.

15:05

The army will be called in about now, assuming there is an army to call in. But with cuts and the fact nobody would really be prepared for this. There’s going to be very little they can do, and thanks to over the top Human Rights and Health & Safety laws, they will probably be expected to “request the undead return to its alloted place in Hell and leave the area immediately”. How do you successfully isolate a city when it only takes one Zombie or one scratch/bite victim to get out of the quarantine area? Nobody is going to suddenly stand still and stay where they are if they think its a dangerous area, no matter what the movies might make you think, people only behave like headless sheep at Primark.

16:54

It’s now mass panic, and offices are emptying with people wanting to go home, either confused or entirely unaware something has happened. Not to mention a few Zombies probably got into those places of work and caused havoc at reception. Large groups of people all over, and you can bet there’s a few undead in those groups, numbers increase even more. Traffic becomes uncontrollable, accidents begin to happen. More dead coming back to life.

We’re not even through a full day and already the UK is basically fucked. Small roads plus tons of traffic and pedestrians and public transport, in city wide panic, it’s going to be a horrible mess. Of course news has already spread to other countries, but they too are trying to deal with the problems in their own way. Closing borders is a none issue and unlikely to happen as all attention is focused on the bigger cities. Back in the UK though, London is pretty much overrun. The panic has brought out looters and crazies. The army, unable to deal with the sheer weight of the problem has begun to lose any control and are shooting randomly at anything that moves (after filling in the required forms, in triplicate, to allow the use of firearms), tons of panic and the majority of deaths being caused, not by the Zombies, but by the fellow living. Nobody has yet worked out what’s really causing it. So this behavior is unintentionally making it worse.

19:00

The UK, both the living and dead, all stop for tea, with Yorkshire Puddings and Gravy, and watch Coronation Street for half an hour, before continuing the Apocalypse.

21:01

Of course there’s TV and radio reports, and those out in the sticks and suburbs have some idea what’s going on. For now at least, these area’s are still safe, until the possibility of infected people who’ve rushed home in panic thinking they were just attacked by a weirdo and having not paid attention to the news. As many would be women (not meant to be sexist, just a fact) they’d find friends/family to comfort them. A soon to be mini Zombie factory. You’ll notice that at no point have the local councils actually responded or put any kind of plan in action. If you’ve ever dealt with a local council in the UK you’ll not be surprised at this for a second.

Thanks to the internet, and the finally believing public. It’s quickly becoming clear that a) the best way to get proper news is the net, not the TV b) it’s happening everywhere. Unfortunately that’s becoming quickly clogged and unreliable as major sites begin to crash under the load. News sites, Youtube, all failing. IM networks crashing. Cell Phone networks, often at the limit on a normal day are also becoming quickly unstable with the amount of bandwidth being used.

Makeup can only go so far to disguise the onset of Zombification.

23:19

Now things have really taken hold, the night setting in has just made things even worse. The one thing most out in the quieter areas wont do, is take any advice to go to rescue centers. It’s common knowledge that’s never a good idea! Besides, most Brits are so far up our own arseholes we’d not be seen dead sharing a makeshit cot with the undesirables that live on the same street (oh come on, each and every British person reading this is quietly thinking the same bloody thing). The ones in the city, stranded and far from their homes, unable to get out, will do though, if they’re told there will be tea and jam tarts. It’s acceptable to assume they’ll be Zombies soon enough.

Others will hole up at home. Which leads us into one of the bigger differences between the UK and the US. No guns. At least not like in America. Sure the gangs (busy looting and fighting amongst themselves) will have them, but they’ll quickly wipe the majority of each other out before becoming a bigger threat to the general public than the Zombies themselves. So the whole shooting zombies in the head, defending ourselves in general is going to be difficult to say the least. Before anyone suggests using bats and things. You also forget that we suck at sport too, we can’t hit a ball, we’re not gonna fair much better with smashing the undead braincase while bits of blood and guts fly in our faces.

Also if you read the papers, you know full well that the majority of these inner city gangs have the aiming abilities of am Imperial Stormtrooper. Either completely missing the target and hitting someone innocent around the corner, or filling them with enough metal to construct a small car, only for them to recover a few days later and appear in the papers talking about how they didn’t feel anything and are putting the bullets on eBay. It’s pretty safe to say that the actual targets (the Zombies) wont be all that worried about the gangs carrying guns getting any headshots. Unless someone builds an Xbox controller based firearm, then they are kinda fucked.

End of Day One

So then.. It’s barely been a day since it began and all control of the UK has been lost. The tendency for the British to ignore their neighbors and think only of themselves means its quickly every man for himself. We cannot cope with emergencies, we panic at the slightest Earth tremor or slight flood, and the country pretty much shuts down when there’s a little bit of snow. So where the western world is concerned, the UK is out of action early on. With lack of any real way to defend ourselves. Few will venture out and will die from starvation or other causes. The gangs will quickly turn on each other and wont last long as their groups and support system fails.

Course, a small number of people will survive one way or another, dotted about the country and highly unlikely to be in groups of more than four or five. Their only real predator being the slow moving Zombies. But with the amount of untouched tinned food and such a small population left to make use of it. Survival at this point would be quite cushy, providing you didn’t get sick in any way or break anything or got too close to the larger towns.

Unfortunately Indian call centers will continue to operate. Fortunately no phones will be working. So the end of the world is not all bad, right?

In conclusion, what did we learn?

When there’s no more room in hell, the British stiff upper lip is gonna get us all brutally killed.

If you find this ‘hot’, you may be suffering from the initial stages of becoming a Zombie. Or, you’re just very lonely and in need of a good fuck.

Wait a second.. Where’s the part when it fixes all my problems?

Well, precisely that. The UK pretty much wastes itself within a few more days. Those who survive will also be staying in their homes, boarded up and avoiding unwanted attention. The remaining gangs and AWOL Military will stick to the obvious area’s and eventually kill each other off. Shopping Centers being off limits because far too many will think they’re a good idea, lol.

But more importantly. I no longer have to worry about paying my credit cards, or have those annoying loan spammers pestering me on the phone day and night, and also the Zombies will either kill off all the people I don’t like, or make it incredibly easy for me to finish them off myself, with no fear of Police intervention.. Oh ok, I actually planned for this entry to focus more on how I’d personally benefit. But got entirely carried away with the whole UK falling to its knees within a day side of things, which seemed somewhat more entertaining than me moaning on about finances and the usual “Imma get me a plane n fly 2 Canada” survival method.. Which I’d still do, after stopping off in various locations and getting rid of a few ‘problems’ along the way.. in the head, because as much fun as it would be to see them suffer as the undead, my general bad luck would insist on a cure being found and they’d be back to normal like nothing happened. So maybe a few hours zombified for my amusement, before burning them to a crisp and moving on. If anyone asks, I’ll just say they were like that when I got there. Who they gonna believe, me? Or a flesh eating Zombie? There we go then.

How cool is this btw? Lego Zombie Apocalypse!

http://www.horror-movies.ca/horror_13051.html

Addendum

So what happens after all this? Well the very nature of Zombies means it wont last forever. The human population will drop to perhaps a million in all, spread around the world. Eventually the Zombies themselves will simply fall apart, depending on the location this might happen really quickly, they are after all, dead meat. Some people like to go into super realism about how they’d freeze quickly etc. but you’re being silly using that level of realism when discussing reanimated corpses. Wild animals, scavengers etc. will pick them apart too, as will all manner of creepy crawlies and bacteria. It will be a very, very horrible, smelly time. But ultimately nature will clean up the mess. The humans that are left, now in smaller groups will at this stage be more careful with disposing the dead, and avoiding injuries which could lead to such a fate. Eventually they’ll begin to contact each other, forming into larger groups. Making use of knowledge gained from discovered science journals to improve crop growth and making plants larger and more beneficial to the survivors.

Unfortunately, screwing with plant genetics will lead to the remaining human race being wiped out by hordes of killer Triffids which were accidentally created during the search for larger tomato plants.

Insidious Clacking Fiberglass Death Rattle of Doom

The End

No Blog should be without one!

However my little review is going to be somewhat different… Because I really like the movie!

Now I admit that I’ve seen plenty of youtube clips from it, and read the funny reviews. But I never actually got around to watching the film itself. I’m ashamed of this and I apologize. But it was on my list of movies to see before I die and I finally got around to it while laid up sick. I was surprised the movie was made in 1990 too. Maybe it’s just my age but the 90′s don’t feel that long ago to me, and the film has more of an 80′s feel to it. Maybe that’s why I like it? I do have a soft spot for the 80′s. All the “trolls” appear to suffer from psoriasis when in human form, and are led by some mad woman who uses trickery to look pretty. The urge to mention similarities with Keeping up with the Kardashians is strong with this one, but I’ll do my best to refrain from doing so..

The story in a nutshell

The movie begins with Grandfather Alan Titchmarsh reading a story to young Josh about goblins and the art of planting early for a better garden. Turns out he’s not really there and Josh has a case of the crazies, his somewhat emotionless mother drops it on him that they’re all moving to the ass end of nowhere for the summer with a family there from the town of Nilbog who’ll be living in his house and jerking off in his bed, which pisses him off no end that some random country bumpkin will be going through his porn collection and eating all his gobstoppers, along with the boyfriend of the eldest daughter, who is clearly as gay as they come because a) she’s hot b) she’s happy to put out c) he’d rather sleep in the same bed as his male friends from the AV club than do the dirty with her in the woods.

So anyway, the family, Elliot the gay boyfriend who didn’t learn his lesson from E.T’s finger many years previously. and his red shirt friends who don’t really do much besides shit in the woods and watch weird movies on TV, tagging along to supply compost fodder for the goblins later on, head off to the town of Nilbog where much hilarity is expected. Now the trouble is, the town is like Goblin central, which is why they named it goblin backwards, because goblins do do that. There’s also nothing to eat except white and green. Alan Titchmarsh keeps contacting the youngest, Joshua and warning him about Goblins that eat people and that he’s not to tell anybody about their secret games of hide the red truck. Nobody believes him anyway because he’s just a kid, even after he pees on food, gets caught in a church gangbang and works out the incredibly difficult backwards town naming trick, his family still think he’s full of shit, and over the course of the movie there is much eating of people and turning of them into mushy peas suppers and indoor plants. Toward the end of the movie, Alan Titchmarsh appears from a mirror doing his best impression of Chuck Norris and helps prune the goblin plant people (see, I had a reason for Alan all along!), along with Josh and the family, who by touching a piece of druid scaffolding, save the day. Except for Elliot’s friends, who all died. But nobody thought to mention them again, or how devastated their families would be.

Oh there’s also a queen goblin who seduces underage teenagers with corn on the cob and popcorn murder, is in desperate need of ChapStick, loses her hand and gets it back again through the power of druidism and can also jump through mirrors. She also appears to have the ability to change into whoever the hell she wants, but sticks with chapped lips for some reason. We’ll call her Charlie Dimmock, except she’s wearing a bra.

Brilliant scenes in Troll 2

Josh pissing over all the food during the family dinner at the new place, to prevent his family from eating anything tainted by the goblins and turning into mushy peas. This film really taps into the young kid mentality doesn’t it. How many of us wished we’d done that as kids when our moms tried to make us eat our greens?

The following scene, or rather the line delivered by the dad “You can’t piss on hospitality! I WONT ALLOW IT!” I have to find a time to use that myself, haha.

After Arnold chased down a cute blonde girl who then asks if he’s human. “I’m very human.. wanna see?” Typical male teen response hahahaha.

A double decker Bologna sandwich killing off the bad guys (I kid you not). Who needs to blow up Death Stars or go on rampages in unfortunate yellow colored tracksuits to win the day when a nasty sandwich filling will do the trick??

When the family arrive back home toward the end of the movie. The scene inside the car is exactly how people would react after all of that had happened to them.

Turning into goblin food gives you bigger boobs.. Watch the bit at the end.

Corn Cob seduction techniques 101. You really just have to watch the movie to truly appreciate the surrealism in this. I swear if I ever tried to seduce a girl with a corn cob (no pun intended), she’d never speak to me again!

The family + the is he or isn’t he gay, boyfriend, cornered in their house by the goblin horde and about to die a horrible death. “Please, lets talk! We’re all humans here!” brilliant line from Elliot.

“They’re eating her… and then they’re going to eat me… OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!” Doesn’t need a comment, we all know this one. Love the little touch of a fly on his forehead too.

I’ve seen worse

Yeah the acting is atrocious, I wont argue with that. Though reading up on the background, not only did the actors have little to no experience (ok, like that wasn’t obvious?), but supposedly they were hired under the pretext of being extras. I suppose for an extra to suddenly become part of the main cast is pretty cool though, you’d not see that happen often in Hollywood, right? On top of that the crew didn’t speak English. With all the things against the entire production, they did pretty damn well if you ask me. The idea of working with a cast who couldn’t understand a word you or your crew spoke, and reading from a script you wrote in a language you couldn’t speak. Well, the thought would terrify me!

Grandpa Seth is awesome too. I bet most kids would want a long deceased crazy old teleporting Axe wielding, Molotov cocktail building puller out of thin air, lightning bolt firing, goblin thumping, mirror jumping grandpa. Who wouldn’t? It beats the usual type who go on about during the war and begin crying when they crap themselves during social gatherings. He’s like uber-granddad and he kicks butt.

The Special Effects

Not great, but not really any worse than most effects found in the majority of movies back then, and the Arnold Tree (I want to keep calling him Harold*) is pretty well done and pretty damn creepy really. As for the they’re eating her scene. I think everyone has seen this, and it cracks me up every time. Thing is though, when you watch it in context it makes complete sense (and isn’t half as bad as it appears). He’d actually just drank some of that plant stuff and couldn’t move. So really his acting isn’t that bad and fits with the situation. The whole plant pot thing he turns into is kinda really well done to be honest.

If you imagine the movie remade, with various improvements such as the acting, effects, lighting, etc. etc. etc. etc. But retaining the err unintentional? comedy moments, it would actually make a pretty awesome movie! Unfortunately though remakes and reboots tend to get ruined unless Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson has a hand in them, and a bad remake of a good bad film, would just be bad bad in the wrong kind of way….. Frightnight remake.

The worst movie ever made?

Is it deserving of the title of worst movie ever made? No, but if it hadn’t been for that, it’s unlikely anyone would even remember it. How many other films from back then are no longer remembered? It is a bad movie, make no mistake. But there’s far FAR worse out there, like Catwoman, or anything made by Uwe Boll, or starring Tom Green, or the Horrid Henry movie, or AvP without three hours of me explaining my own backstory to make it fit (which awesomely looks like Ridley Scott is doing with his new film along similar lines). As far as bad movies go, it’s actually really good, and certainly highly entertaining!

Is it worth watching if you haven’t already? Oh hell yes! It’s brilliant in its silliness. Also Connie Young is HOT, actually so is Deborah Reed (Kim Kardashian) when she’s all dolled up for the aforementioned corn cob seduction scene, but not the corn cob seduction itself, which is just funny.

I may come in for some stick about making fun of Kim Kardashian learning she has psoriasis. I should mention I suffered from that terribly quite a few years ago and I know full well it’s no laughing matter. Will it really ruin her career? Yeah it probably will actually. Course she has millions of dollars to blow on clearing it up. Though I found that a simple cream from the doctors appeared to work wonderfully. That and smoking lots of weed and avoiding stress helped too. But yeah, it’s no laughing matter and it’s a horrible thing to have. Worse because it can flare up at any time and on anyone (it’s not hereditary, if it is then I must be adopted?).

Supposedly there is going to be a Troll 2 Part 2, it may even be finished by now, I’m too tired to check. Unfortunately awesomeness such as Troll 2 needs to be carefully cultivated over many years and just being lucky, so it’s unlikely Part 2 will be any good, not even as a good bad film, it’ll probably just be very bad.

Worst Best Movie (2009)

I’d also suggest watching this more recent documentary of the film, made by the now adult Josh. It’s hilarious and very well done. Fun seeing what became of them all.

*Required plant related Fallout reference