SPLICED Magazine Issue 01 Oct/Nov 2013 | Page 105

Can Be Funny Too Zombieland If Jesse Eisenberg can survive the zombie apocalypse, so can you. Ditto for snogging Emma Stone. There’s nothing about this movie not to love – gore, production value, scripting, casting. It’s just fucking awesome. Just remember: Rule 1. Cardio. Fido The over-saturated over-stylized 60’s technicolour tale of a boy and his pet zombie (Billy Connolly) in a Canadian Pleasantville town that has managed to tame the flesh-hungry, but not themselves. The treatment gets a little tiresome, but the premise and old-school horror filmmaking references are entertaining enough to keep you gleefully watching. Shaun of the Dead Lesbian Vampire Killers Lesbian. Vampire. Killers. Fullstop. Piranha 3D Prehistoric piranhas find their way to the surface; and create the context for the best paragliding scene ever. Dead Alive (aka Braindead) This title has been on every must-see list since its release in 2004. There’s a reason; it’s fucking hilarious. Largely due to the Wright, Pegg and Frost trifecta. The last of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (the second being 2007’s Hot Fuzz), The World’s End is releasing in South Africa next month. Peter Jackson in schlock form pre-Tolkien and adulation; though he still shared a body with Michael Moore. Factoid: Dead Alive held the previous record (broken this year by Evil Dead) for using the most fake-blood in a movie. Young Frankenstein Snakes on a Plane The hammy 1973 parody of the 1930’s classic (even utilizing the original set and props). The plot follows the great-grandson of the famed mad scientist who inherits the estate and, after reading his great-grandfather’s journals, decides to carry on the Fronk-en-steen legacy by grave robbing a deceased criminal and unwittingly transplanting a clearly-marked abnormal brain (A-b) creating a creature thus named Abby (Peter Boyle of Everybody Loves Raymond). The cast and crew had so much fun making the movie they kept adding scenes to prolong the necessity to wrap. Reason enough to watch it. It’s Mel Brooks (who wrote and directed Spaceballs and The History of the World Part I) so it’s ridiculously silly which makes it brilliant. Snakes. On a motherfucking plane. Who target genitals. As snakes do. Richard Attenborough must be kicking himself for not thinking of it first. Buffy the Vampire Slayer The feature-length origin of the series. The movie was like, totally fluffier than screenwriter Whedon originally intended. The series was created to be more in line with his grittier vision, and hence spawned 1000 post-feminist undergrad theses. It’s still fantastic though; in that early-90’s Californian kinda way. Strigoi Astoundingly, one of the best indie vampire/ zombie hybrid flieks produced in recent years – and it’s Romanian. A down-onhis-luck guy goes back to his village to see his father, only to find its inhabitants acting strangely after committing vigilante justice on the local patriarch. With a social commentary throughline touching on land reform, capitalist ideologies and sugared with the distinctively twisted Eastern-European humour, it’s a gem of a movie, and an interesting take on the genre. feature / movies / movie list of horror! 105