The living dead emerging from The Dead Pit (1989)
Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues! If you’re like me you’re bored with zombies and pseudo-zombies. The 21st Century is as mired in tiresome, cookie-cutter zombie flicks as the 1980s were in tiresome, cookie-cutter slasher flicks.
Here is a look at seven films which, while technically classified as zombie movies at least adopt unique perspectives and don’t follow established formulas.
THE DEAD PIT (1989) – This horror film was the directorial debut of the very prolific director Brett Leonard. While not a four-star movie The Dead Pit is enjoyable enough for the Halloween Season and should certainly appeal to anyone into 1980s horror flicks. This movie’s hybrid of zombie elements and slasher elements is both its charm AND the reason behind its love-it-or-hate-it status.
Don’t expect non-stop Resident Evil-level action but DO expect to see some in-your-face gore very early in the flick for lovers of guts and decomposition. A physician (Dr Swan) at a mental hospital discovers the secret sub-basement where a rival MD (Dr Ramzi) is subjecting hopeless patients to horrific experiments involving a combination of science and the supernatural. Continue reading
Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog! It’s hard to believe there are still 1970s Marvel Comics characters who have NOT been adapted for the big or small screen yet. Simon Garth, former plantation owner cursed to return from the grave as a zombie is one. Here is the cover to one of his battles with the vile Mister Six. 
I AM SCROOGE – A ZOMBIE STORY FOR CHRISTMAS (2009) – Written by Adam Roberts. This book was a gift from a friend a few years ago and it’s pretty entertaining. Think of The Dead Next Door set at Christmas. 
By reader request here’s my semi-regular Halloween Season blog post Zombies of Monticello, my mock movie review. I first ran this in 2013, but it may not seem as irreverent this year in the wake of the large-scale criticism of Thomas Jefferson.
THE SHIP OF SILENT MEN (1920) – Written by Philip M Fisher. The crew of a ship called the Lanoa set out from Hawaii. A few days later an abnormally powerful electrical storm strikes, leaving the area unusually cold in its wake. 
THE SPECTRE LEAGUERS – In 1792 the Gloucester Leaguers returned from the dead to plague Massachusetts 100 years after their horrors had first been unleashed.
He tries to liven up his boring gig on local radio by suggesting some unorthodox public behavior to his listeners and is as surprised as his female producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) when people around the area begin taking him up on the suggestion. As reports continue to come into the tiny radio station it soon becomes apparent that the population isn’t just extremely receptive to suggestion, many of them have become living zombies with a desire to kill anyone not similarly stricken. 
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