Good gut Munching

Had a great time this weekend. Mike brought up several friends and family members who were way cool about letting us slather them up with karo-blood and latex body parts. Being Northerners by nature they were also able to laugh off the cold rain when we later filmed the obligatory "tear the guy open and munch his guts" sequence.

Nice zombie makeup by Mike, as always. After havinng what we thought was a great idea for a slashed throat effect not work so great last week it was real nice to have an experiment actually work out BETTER than we'd expected. Gelatin skin, buttered on one side and colred on the other, makes for a very convincing skin. Easy to tear and edible, too.

Production Meeting This Saturday at 3pm

Any one wanting to be part of our crew for Forever Dead should show up. It'll be at my house in Sanford, NC at 3pm. E-mail me for directions or just MapQuest it: 917 Pendergrass Road, Sanford, NC. Hope to see some new faces!

Christine

Production meeting January 21st

Hi everyone! Happy New Year! We are looking forward to the next phase of our production and thanks to MySpace and Andy we will have some new faces contributing to our cast and crew.

So yes I've been busy! I'm working on storyboards and shot lists for the next 5 months. We didn't really get this organized when we started but the further we got into it the more I realized it was needed, and now with a larger crew it's definitely a neccesity. Hey, we're new at this. Just learning as we go!

Also finished the trailer for Forever Dead with some excellent music provided by Bile. Thanks to Patrick for that connection! I'm still working on all the great footage from our last couple of shoots the plan is to have it all done by the meeting. We'll see... So if you haven't already, check our MySpace page and be our "friend" http://www.myspace.com/theforeverdead.

Anyone who wants to be in the crew come to the production meeting on the 21st. The more the scarier. More details to follow.

Have a great week!!

The Forever Dead is on Vacation

Hey everyone!
Just wanted to update everyone on what's going on with Forever Dead. Right now we're on vacation, sort of. That means the cast and crew are kicking back enjoying a couple of months of spending time with their familys etc. and so on.

I on the other hand am busily organizing every bit of footage we've shot so far trying to piece it together in fairly terrifying way and working on a trailer that I hope will be seen at Nevermore Film Festival with our movie Second Death that I hope to have shown there as well.

You may ask why doesn't Christine take time off? Why doesn't she take time to spend with her family during the holidays? Doesn't she have another life away from all the zombies? Of course she does! So I'm also trying to plan a huge Christmas feast at my house but...before I do that I have to finish painting my kitchen (old house, just bought it), finish of the extra bathroom, attach a few doors, and of course the house has to be spotless for my mom the "queen". I could just let it all slide and tell them they should just be happy I didn't burn the turkey but as all my friends know I never do anything half way. Which is a good thing because it means we will actually finish this movie! ;-)

So Merry Christmas Everyone! I'll see you all again in February!!

Christine (you know if they keep taking "christ" out of everything you'll all have to start calling me "Ine")

Weather in North Carolina

What is it with North Carolina and the weather? The news teaser just came on--usually they have some kind of scare tactic crap like "Is your child in danger from a popular breakfast cereal? Tune in at 11 to see!" and you stay up late only to be told "No, we just made that up."--this time they said the dumbest thing I've heard since the last bell rang at school: "Rain and cold, what does it mean for us? We'll tell you at 11."

What does "Rain and cold" mean for us? How about we will be cold and wet? Geeze! I love y'all but folks around here act like anything other than sunny and warm is some kind of apocalyptic sign from Jehovah.

I almost passed a pecan through my nose the first time I was here and the temperature dropped below 32 degrees. "FREEZE WARNING!" the TV intoned, "FREEZE WARNING! Put socks on the dog and turn your faucets on! Morter up the windows and shower with antifreeze!" Funniest thing I ever saw.

Next day I skidded on black ice and slammed into a guard rail, sending a teachers edition Chemistry book into the side of my face.

Stay warm. I'm gonna post my never-fail torn flesh gelatin recipe soon.

Good Zombie Movies #1

Ok, now here is one that hardly ever gets mentioned and that's a damn shame. part of the problem is that it has too many alternate names and most of them are no good. Apparently Dr. Butcher MD used up too many great titles and this one got left with the table scraps. The original title is No profanar el sue–o de los muertos which my Babelfish translator says comes out to Not to Profane the Dream of Deads.

The hell? Yeah, but it's still better than some of the actual titles they stuck on it. Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue. Yeah, real scary. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. Slightly better, still lame. Morgue is a scary word but Manchester Morgue sounds like a Beatles song. "I met her at the Manchester Morgue (yeah yeah yeah), She said she worked for MoveOn.org (yeah yeah yeah)" Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. Yech. Awful title. Sounds like an episode of Mannix. "Tonight's episode--Tinker Tailor Soldier Dead Man!!!"

If you saw it on the screen in 1974...hey, you're old! Ha! Like me! Anyway, you probably saw it under the wet bed inducing title Don't Open the Window. Wow, now that's horror. Don't open the window. 'Cause, you know, you might let a bee in or something.

Ok, now so far I have been making fun of this movie and, as you may recall, I came here to praise it. So, lousy name(s) aside, I urge you to go out and get the DVD of this movie for your zombie collection so you can look hip to your less savvy friends, the ones who think that classic horror is the first Freddy movie. The rubes.

The Spanish horror movie scene is a strange one and has produced some oddly endearing movies. Under the dictatorship of Franco (still dead, as of this writing) the cinema was heavily censored of political content so the fimmakers had to come up with alternate ways of getting their point across. This film may be chock full of political meaning and if any of you know what it was please send it to www.imliving30yearsinthepast.com. What the hell do I care about the Spanish politics of my youth? On with the zombies!

So anyway, we have a Spanish movie cashing in on the Italian zombie fad inspired by the American Romero movie, filmed in England with a British/American cast. Of all the EuroZom movies, this one is the most Night Of The Living Dead inspired, an altogether good thing, even though it adds a few puzzling additions to zombie lore. Did you know that if a zombie dabs blood onto the eyes of a corpse it will be resurrected? Neither did I, but the zombies here know it. Which is odd since they are initially reanimated by science--some kind of sonic waves meant to kill bugs. They sell stuff like that in TV Guide. You've been warned.

The movie takes a while to get going. European movies tend to take their sweet time. So you have to give it a bit of a break and trust me, when the poop hits the fan it's worth it. The final assault on a hospital is probably the best combination of NOTLD scares and Dawn of the Dead gore that anyone has yet put together.

The zombies are pretty sweet, especially the guy who looks like he woke up during an autopsy. Nice bleak ending. It's a zombie movie, what do you expect, they get better and everybody lives happily ever after? This is reality folks, no time to get sentimental.

This is the face of exhaustion

No, it's not pretty, though the blood does bring out the blue in my eyes rather nicely. If I worked in an abbatoir the chicks would be all over me.

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. I know I'll never be able to look at cranberry sauce quite the same way again.