In short: Zombie Dead (2008)

An acting-impaired, semi-amnesiac young woman (Ai Kawanaka) wakes up in a deserted hospital. After some hospital-gown clad stumbling around, she meets a hair-impaired guy and steals five minutes of his and our lives looking for clothes, while he just wants to take her somewhere to explain something to her, or so he says.

Turns out there is an incredibly cost-efficient zombie apocalypse going on in there (highest zombie count: three) and some guys in especially ridiculous non-hazmat suits are keeping everyone (yes, all three people) in the hospital quarantined.

More corridor running follows, also more time stealing.

If you have ever suffered under the illusion that all Japanese zombie films are necessarily better than their Western counterparts, this one will cure you quite effectively, for the low, low price of one hour of your life you will never ever get back.

I hope you like pointless boredom, boring pointlessness, rubber-faced zombies who do not know if they are fast or slow zombies, non-acting and pervy "let's shoot her from below" camera angles. But wait, there's even more to make you wish director Kanzo Matsuura had never been born or at least never gotten near his digital camera!

The film also features the longest and most pointless zombie brain bashing scene in movie history. I have heard rumors people have died and returned as one of the living dead just by watching it, although it is certainly possible that the groaning noises just were snores. I, at least, have developed a sudden appreciation for the work of Bruno Mattei.

Dear reader, please don't watch this, unless a psychopath kidnaps you and it is this or slow bodily torture for you. Even then, I'm not sure which of the two choices I'd recommend.

 

Technorati-Tags: japanese movies,horror,why,in short,zombies

In short: Nurse Sherri (1978)

aka The Possession of Nurse Sherri

aka The Borening

aka Beyond the Living

aka Black Voodoo

aka Hands of Death

aka Hospital of Terror

aka Killer's Curse

aka Terror Hospital

Pity the poor soul who accidentally saw this one twice under different titles!

The black magician, cult leader or whatever he's supposed to be Reanhauer (Bill Roy) collapses while trying to re-animate one of his followers who must already be smelling rather ripe.

Reanhauer is brought into something that's supposed to be a hospital, and dies during an operation. We'd all be much happier if this were the end of the film, but unfortunately Reanhauer's spirit decides to possess the body of Nurse Sherri (Jill Jacobson) by crawling inside her in the form of animated glittering snot.

So now the poor nurse has to use her sparse free time to hunt down and kill the doctors who operated on Reanhauer, other people the old dead guy doesn't like and again other people the old guy most certainly never met. In contrast to other people I know, Sherri's boyfriend Peter (Geoffrey Land) really doesn't think too highly of having to have sex with dead people, so he tries his best to put things right.

There's also some business about a black, freshly blinded football star ("It's not the end of the world.") and his dead voodoo priest grandma and some sex farce stuff, as well as the most unexciting car chase in film history to pad out the running time and lull you to sleep.

It's probably pretty obvious by now that I have a somewhat higher tolerance for boring movies than many other people and am therefore willing and able to enthuse about the most improbable directors. Nurse Sherri's director Al Adamson and his hand for utter, irredeemable boredom however have always been too much even for me.

Sherri is often called one of Adamson's more watchable films, and I can see why, really - there are at least five, possibly even ten funny minutes in it. Alas, it has a running time of nearly ninety minutes, with the rest of them dedicated to boring the living daylights out of everyone foolish enough to watch this abomination by the power of the holy trinity of padding, unnecessary flashbacks and mind-numbing acting with a special appearance by our old friend, the night shot with zero visibility and overdramatic music.

Usually, I am able to find something positive to say about nearly any movie I watch, but in the case of Nurse Sherri the nicest thing that comes to my mind is that watching it is preferable to getting one's eyes poked out by spiders. Possibly.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,al adamson,in short,horror,why