Director: George Romero
Cast: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander

If you’re going to set a zombie movie at a military installation – as the recent ‘n’ decent 28 Days Later – you need to do it like George Romero’s Day of the Dead. Set after the events of the superior Dawn of the Dead, this apocalyptic thriller has a small group of soldiers and scientists hiding from the zombies in an underground fortress. The scientists are the good guys, seeking a way to understand what makes the zombies tick while trying to ensure the ongoing survival of the human species. The soliders, meanwhile, are even more loathsome than the zombies.

For a long time, the movie is zombieless, delving into the political struggle between these two parties. As I watched, I wished it were different, but now I understand how crucial that was to the story. The last third is basically the all-out zombie carnage you expect, with utterly realistic gore effects from Tom Savini and company, with countless bodies being ripped apart, intestines
spilled and flesh ripped. The acting is amateurish and the score better suited to a B-level ‘80s teen film, but they still can’t bring down the power of Romero’s zombies. Has there ever been a Romero film that was truly well-acted anyway?

Anchor Bay’s new two-disc collection comes with a pair of commentaries, one with Romero and one with Dead fan Roger Avary (director of The Rules of Attraction). You also get an excellent 40-minute making-of documentary, half an hour of behind-the-scenes footage, a promo video for the mine the film was shot in, plus trailers and TV spots and more! It’s a very nice package that makes me salivate for AB’s upcoming deluxe treatment to Dawn of the Dead, arguably the best of Romero’s zombie trilogy.

Director: Wellson Chin
Cast: Michael Chow Man-Kit, Anya, Ken Change

Asia loves mixing up their kung fu with monsters on occasion, though the end result is not always as great as one would hope. Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters is not Hark’s best work; in fact, it’s not even really his! The director of Once Upon a China, Time and Tide and, um, Black Mask 2 merely serves as screenwriter of this horror-action combo that offers nothing new, but does an okay job of doing what very little it does.

Four guys – named Thunder, Wind, Rain and … I can’t remember, Precipitation? – spend their days fighting vampires and zombies. That’s about all the plot there is, which explains why the film often slows to a halt whenever they’re not fighting the vampires and zombies. There’s some mumbo-jumbo about a treasure of gold and a wax museum, but really, all you want to see is gore and wirework. It gives you that, but not as much as you’d like.

Director: Patrick Lussier
Cast: Jason Scott lee, Jason London, Craig Scheffer

Not a single cast member from the Wes Craven-presented Dracula 2000 returns for Dracula II: Ascension, the first of two straight-to-video sequels, and who can blame them? Unlike D2K, which was fun in a pure genre way, Ascension is only occasionally fun in a really-bad-movie sorta way.

Picking up where D2K ended with the count burnt to a crisp on a neon crucifix, Ascension wheels the charred, crispy body of the vampire into a morgue, where the enterprising workers steal the corpse, sensing an opportunity to make some money. They take it to the conveniently vacant and isolated mansion of their professor, Craig Sheffer, who is confined to a wheelchair because of
cerebral palsy and has his left hand drawn up and turned in a way that looks like he’s constantly playing charades and no one has yet guessed “hieroglyphics.”

Sheffer – like Stephen Hawking without the RoboVoice and the charisma – believes the key to his cellular regeneration lies within the blood of Dracula, so he has his students revive the body by literally giving him a bloodbath. It works, and the first to die is former Playboy Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick, who briefly comes back as cinema’s only vampire to sport matching red bra and panties from Victoria’s Secret semi-annual lingerie sale. Eventually dying (but not soon enough) is the token black guy who, after sprouting fangs, exclaims with no irony, “I got the hooyah power in me!”

Meanwhile, the increasingly oval-faced Jason Scott Lee tracks them down. He’s a priest-***censored*** vampire hunter, as quick with the scythe as he is with the scripture, and he is as intent on saving souls as he is severing heads. Oh, and what of Dracula? He’s tied up for nearly the entire movie, freed of his chains only at the end to set up Dracula III. Maybe that one will have more bite.

Sold via late-night TV commercials, Hollywood Hottest: Body Shots purportedly collects the 30 best nude scenes of all time. This is a terrific idea – I thought of it 10 years ago – but the execution here leaves a lot to be desired.

For one thing, it’s a countdown hosted by some numbskull comedian who thinks he’s hilarious. He’s hilarious-looking (that earring does you no favors, boy), but absolutely humorless and annoying. I’m not going to tell you his name or anything he says because that would only serve to encourage him. Anyway, the effect of him talking between all these nude scenes is like having your grandma stick her head in the door every two minutes while you’re having sex. In other words, ice water.

Secondly, the quality of the clips either scream “bootleg” or “taped off TV.” They’re dark and grainy, and that just defeats the purpose of admiring the female form.

But most of all, the clips they choose are just bizarre. Granted, Jamie Lee Curtis taking it off in Trading Places or Kelly Preston getting her undergarments removed in Mischief do deserve to appear on the list of “30 all-time sexiest nude scenes.” But what random person picked Daryl Hannah in At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Madeline Stowe in China Moon? You just can’t have some rail-thin arty actress like Kristen Scott Thomas make the list while Jennifer Connelly’s Hot Spot exposure goes unnoticed.

The companion tape Love Scenes is more of the same, only a countdown of sex scenes between actors and actresses (not to mention a cameo from Bruce Willis’ penis). But who wants to see Kris Kristofferson or Debra Winger going at it? Not I! Especially when something like Shannon Tweed’s seductress from Hot Dog … The Movie! can’t even make the cut. Nearing the top of the list are Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas making it like monkeys in Original Sin. Looking at this, it’s hard to believe they weren’t actually banging for the camera. Also looking at this, it’s hard to believe anyone could take this movie seriously, what with Jolie’s breasts flopping around like they’re trapped in a wind tunnel.

If you must: www.hollywoodshottest.net. 

Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Cast: Jet Li, DMX, Kelly Hu, Mark Dascascos

I don’t know why Hollywood feels you have to merge martial arts with urban themes, but it does, and Cradle 2 the Grave is the latest example. But this one I enjoyed the hell out of.

Jet Li stars as a Taiwanese cop in L.A. searching for stolen black diamonds, which rapper DMX (playing a character named “Fait,” get it?) has just snatched himself in the opening heist. DMX soon has thugs on his tail, but being the angry-tempered thief that he is, he shrugs them off until they kidnap his young daughter. Then DMX must team up with Jet so they can both get what
they want, and kick a lot of ***censored*** in the process.

This loose plot enables Jet to have a cage match with several Ultimate Fighters and a midget at once, to descend a high-rise using only his bare hands and to square off against Mark Dascascos (Brotherhood of the Wolf) in a ring of fire, plus allows DMX to have a high-speed chase on an all-terrain vehicle, even going up stairwells and jumping rooftop to rooftop! Though the movie may be formulaic, these are things I haven’t seen before in an action film. Plus, Bring It On’s Gabrielle Union does a striptease and has a kung-fu catfight with Kelly Hu from X2.

As directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak (you know, the old Polish guy who gave you Exit Wounds), Cradle is a fast-paced, ultra-slick actioner with no brain in its brawny body. I really think Li should stick to grittier stuff like Kiss of the Dragon, but this handily beats Romeo Must Die or The One.

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Rod Lott is the publisher of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity.