Every time I start to get a little tired of the current crop of zombie-related pop culture offerings, something new catches my eye. Here are a few zombie-related items that I found interesting this week:
“The Dead Inside” is making its rounds on the film festival circuit (unfortunately it’s not coming anywhere close to Columbus) and it’s billed as a zombie musical.
Re-read that.
Yep, a zombie musical.
After viewing the trailer and reading the synopsis, it’s hard to tell if zombies actually sing -- to be honest, I don’t even know how zombies factor into the plot, they just sort of show up in the trailer with little explanation.
I guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD.
“The Dead Inside” filmmaker, Travis Betz, is also the man responsible for the low-budget and little-seen demon love story “Lo.”
He seems to have a penchant for mixing the macabre with the light-hearted in a way that reminds me of the zombie-classic Evil Dead trilogy.
This is the trilogy responsible for my love of Bruce Campbell and all things zombie.
To illustrate my obsession, I’ll have you know I wrote two zombie movie-related papers during my undergraduate career. One was about “Army of Darkness”; the other focused on the Bruce-Campbell-as-Elvis movie “Bubba Ho-Tep” (and no, Elvis wasn’t a zombie -- he’s alive and in a Texas nursing home in this one).
Granted, it was an Introduction to Fiction class with a 50 percent focus on film and the instructor was ... well, he was a dork. And he enjoyed those zombie films as much as I did.
Which, in a long and convoluted way, brings me to my next zombie find of the week: Bruce Campbell recently confirmed to Reddit in an online chat that a reboot of “Evil Dead” is in the works.
Even though it sounds like Campbell and original director Sam Raimi (who has more recently done the Spiderman movies and 2009’s “Drag Me to Hell”) will be involved, I’m not sure a re-make would be an improvement -- half the appeal of the original is the cast and the low-budget quality.
And, much like the buzz surrounding the remake of “The Crow,” I imagine there could be some backlash from purists (especially, in the case of “The Crow,” if they cast Bradley Cooper in the lead role -- please, no).
Now, in the spirit of Easter, is my final zombie find of the week: the chocolate zombie bunny.
What started out as an April Fool’s Day prank on the website Think Geek has turned into a real holiday treat.
The bunny is complete with exposed ribs and blood spatters. According the website, it is “8 ounces of vicious, delicious white chocolate.”
After being sold out for a number of days, the chocolate zombie bunny, at the time of this writing, has just come back in stock.
For more of Katie’s pop culture commentary, check out her Intellectual Junk Food blog
Katie McCarthy, a self-proclaimed zombie expert who has yet to watch The Walking Dead, can be reached at kmccarthy@ledger-enquirer.com or 706-571-8515.
