E14 Halloween

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Brad Harmer

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Favourite Horror Movie: Whittling it down to a top ten would be harder for me, so I’m grateful that I only need to pick one. It’s undoubtedly The Evil Dead. It’s a great "monsters in the woods" movie. It launched the careers of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi...and it fucked off Mary Whitehouse more than any other movie did. That’s got to count for something, right?

The gore’s great, the atmosphere is great...it’s just great.

Favourite Horror Book: I absolutely love Dracula, but I think that’s more of all “all round” love, rather than just as a horror novel. In fact, it’s not particularly scary, and I see it more of a great adventure/action story.

As far as “so scary that your right nut falls off” goes, you’ve got to go with H.P. Lovecraft. I’m going with The Dunwich Horror as it may not be the scariest one I’d ever read, but it was certainly the first time a book had ever scared me, and that’s worth something.

Favourite Movie Monster/Killer: I’m totally going with Jason Voorhees here. He’s not as crafty or magical as some, but he is seven feet tall and psychopathically violent. Plus he is one of the most iconic horror characters ever.

Favourite Horror Video Game: I think the original Silent Hill is probably still the best. Resident Evil was tense, but Silent Hill was the first one that managed to make a video game genuinely horrifying.

Favourite Horror Unplugged Game: I’ve played a lot of horror board games and RPGs, but the only one that fills me with terror is Monopoly.

Best Halloween Costume You've Ever Had: I’ve gotten lazier as I’ve gotten older so I tend to gravitate towards shop bought costumes, which is really terrible of me as a) I swore I’d never do that and b) they are always incredible rip-offs. They’re always built for someone who’s about the same shape and size as a Time Bandit and have an awkward trade-mark sticking out somewhere.

So, the best one I’ve ever made was definitely the time I went as Army of Darkness-era Ash, including a toy chainsaw duct-taped to my hand.

Worst Costume You've Ever Had: I don’t know if I’ve ever home-made one that was excessively bad, to be honest. I went as Rick Dagless from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace last year, and then had to spend most of the party explaining who I was. My explanations gradually went from “Rick Dagless, MD.” to “he was in a Channel Four comedy called Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace a few years ago” to, finally, “I’m a mad scientist”.

Favourite Halloween Memory: When I was very small, about five or six, I went as a ghost. This was a typical “white sheet over the head, with eye-holes cut out” deal. Anyway, my parents threw the sheet over my head, then – as this was the mid-eighties, and before such things as “duty of care” – cut the eyeholes out with kitchen scissors. I can remember standing very still whilst blades danced in front of my eyes and small fragments of eyebrow dropped to the floor.

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Rob Wade

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Favourite Horror Movie: A toss-up between five. If only there was an article detailing my favourites and why...

Favourite Horror Book: I’m quite thinly read on horror novels, so I’m going to go with The Enemy by Charlie Higson.

Favourite Movie Monster/Killer: “The Thing” from The Thing. The movie sets a great tone of not knowing who to trust, and the reason is that the monster can take so many forms.

Favourite Horror Video Game: Silent Hill – to this day, the only game I’ve had to pause in order to get my heart rate down low enough to want to carry on playing.

Favourite Horror Unplugged Game: Hard one here – probably Call of Cthulhu, just because of the absolutely ludicrous stuff that our gaming group has come up with playing it.

Best Halloween Costume You've Ever Had: The Count from Sesame Street.

Worst Costume You've Ever Had: Garth from Wayne’s World – it was awesome, but hardly relevant.

Favourite Halloween Memory: The look on Brad’s dad’s face when I uttered my first “ah-ah-ah” dressed as The Count.

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Blake Harmer

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Favourite Horror Movie: The Thing. An excellent plot, monster, and some of the best special effects in a horror movie that shows that prosphetics will always be better than CG.

Favourite Horror Book: The Whisperer in Darkness by H.P Lovecraft. The first story I read of the Cthulhu Mythos, and of the few stories to have actually made me properly scared.

Favourite Movie Monster/Killer: The xenomorph. An armroured killing machine with acid for blood and can easily take out an entire ship through hiding in the shadows and attacking with speed and ferociousness. It's an iconic movie monster, and deservedly so.

Favourite Horror Video Game: Resident Evil, the first one. Dogs through the window, enough said.

Favourite Horror Unplugged Game: Zombie Plague. It's not got a great engine like Fury of Dracula, or the same epic scope as Arkham Horror, but Zombie Plague captures the same tense feel and need to work as a team that you get in zombie films. Also, as it's a free download, it has superb value for money.

Best Halloween Costume You've Ever Had: My costume last year as Ryuk from Deathnote. Sure, it fell apart and was very obscure; I still loved how accurate and impressive it looked while it lasted though.

Worst Costume You've Ever Had: An attempt at a Teen Wolf style werewolf that went slightly wrong which made me look across between the monkey from Jumanji and a minge.

Favourite Halloween Memory: Kat laughing so much she had to run to the toilet after seeing me in said werewolf costume.

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Charlotte Barnes

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Favourite Horror Movie: Shaun of the Dead. It is really funny and it is just gory enough to make me feel like I am hardcore (I am a big cowardy custard...that's why I never review anything horror based)!

Favourite Horror Book: I am not a horror fan so the closest I get to reading horror books is paranormal romance. My favourite book of that genre is Frostbitten by Kelley Armstrong. It has serial killers and werewolves in it so I guess it kind of passes for horror.

Favourite Movie Monster/Killer: Ludo from Labyrinth! Isn’t he gorgeous?

Favourite Horror Video Game: Well Doom 3 upset me so much I had to leave the room after playing if for half an hour...so I guess Dead Space: Extraction but it makes me feel seasick.

Favourite Horror Unplugged Game: Arkham Horror. It is great fun I have played it so many times and I think there are still some monsters and cards that I haven’t seen before. It can be a bit intimidating and it is definitely not for a newbie gamer but it has provided me and my friends plenty of fun!

Best Halloween Costume You've Ever Had: Dressed up as Carrie last year, that was pretty awesome! The costume took a full week to make, the only thing I regret was buying such a cheap wig, I itched so much!

Worst Costume You've Ever Had: I handmade cat ears and a tail to go as a black cat. It was really hard work but ended up being lame...still I wasn’t the worst one that year one of my friend’s costume was so bad they ended up looking more like a cushion than a cat!

Favourite Halloween Memory: I have two favourite memories and they all seem to centre on Blake. The first year Brad and I had a Halloween party at our house Blake had come dressed as Teen Wolf. However, he couldn’t get hold of any fur fabric so he bought some brown feathery material instead. With that stuck round his face combined with his pink lips he just ended up looking like a minge. The second took place at last year’s Halloween party, when he dressed as an obscure gothic monster from a Japanese film. Although he looked the part, the majority of his costume was stuck on with glue and little bits of it kept falling off, so where ever he went he left a trail behind him!

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Omer Ibrahim

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Favourite Horror Movie: 28 Days Later. As a casual horror fan, this movie is incredibly accessible and was really my introduction to the zombie/infected genre. There are better out there, but not ones that I like more.

Favourite Horror Book: In a move that will have me scrubbing the E14 toilets for a month, I'm going to admit that I've never read a horror. I have, however, skim-read Katie Price/Jordan's autobiography. That was fucking terrifying.

Favourite Movie Monster/Killer: Not strictly horror movie monsters, but I'm going for the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. I know they're oversized and not feathered, but I just love how creepy and intelligent they are. The kitchen scene is amazingly tense, and "clever girl" is the best movie line ever.

Favourite Horror Video Game: Again, I haven't played many, and not any that I liked, but there was a level in the original Turok: Dinosaur Hunter on the N64 that was downright freaky. The game used minimal music, but this level had none, and you wandered through a runic maze, being chased by nasty beetle things, so you had to stare at the floor as you crack off shotgun shells... Then miss the big guy with the axe, who isn't on the floor.

Favourite Horror Unplugged Game: Zombie Plague. Brad introduced me to this one, and the simplicity of it makes for a truly hilarious experience as you end up filming a movie in your head. Usual highlights include Zombies hiding in the fridge and barbed wire 4x2's (No, not 2x4's, the wood's the wrong way.).

Best Halloween Costume You've Ever Had: I make 99% of my costumes each year, so they always stand out, but the hardest, and most E14 one I've ever had was Optimus Prime. It took me about three months, was made out of boxes (Boximus Prime) and was incredibly complicated. The eyes flashed and it had a voice changer, and if I took my head off, turned the body round and sat on the floor, I became a truck. Oh yeah.

Worst Costume You've Ever Had: Optimus Prime. The damn thing was impossible to walk in, I couldn't sit down, drink, eat or even use my hands very much. Or see. (Most of the night was me being guided by a human Christmas tree.) It fell apart rapidly and I had to do constant running repairs. Also, whilst a truck, the only way to "drive" was to reverse-bum-wiggle across a filthy dance floor.

Favourite Halloween Memory: Wrestling on a Halloween show for Triple X Wrestling in Coventry about three years ago. My match culminated in me spearing/Goring my head into a lit pumpkin with the Turkish Flag carved into it. Also, the whole crowd showed up in suits and Lucha masks.

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Kelly Prior

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Favourite Horror Movie: It's impossible to pick just one favourite horror movie. If I was pushed I would have to choose Stay Alive, a tacky American teen-horror that I fell in love with in my teen years. A geeky and modern approach to horror, it's basic plot is that what happens in your video game, happens in real life. Some genius ideas, like using the universal sound of a games controller vibrating, instead of music, to add suspense and warn us when the monster is near. It's fun, it's youthfull, and its actually quite creepy. It's one of those movies you never get sick of watching.

Favourite Horror Book: I'm not a very intense horror reader, but one book that sticks in my mind, again from my teen years, is The Spook's Apprentice by Joseph Delaney. It's a kid's book, there's no denying it, but some bits really got me, and I definitly couldn't read it unless I was under the covers. I also read Clive Barker's Books of Blood when I was a teenager, which I then promptly regretted, because I had nightmares for weeks. But to look back now, that just means they must have been really good.

Favourite Movie Monster/Killer: The monster from movies that scares me more than any other is the bitch from The Grudge. I guess the fact that the thought of her still scares me means she must be a really good horror creation. The "freaky dead girl" gets me every time, even if the movie I'm watching is shit.

Favourite Horror Video Game: The only horror video game I ever played was Resident Evil 4, and I couldn't play it without supervision, because it made me scream.

Favourite Horror Unplugged Game: Murder in the Dark!!! Let's face it, that game was awesome. We used to play a version of it where, when you died, you had to act out your death. That was often hilarious.

Best Halloween Costume You've Ever Had: Ooh! I dressed as Xena a few years ago, it was awesome, I made the costume, and it was pretty darn accurate if I do say so myself. Not the scariest costume, but still one of my proudest. Omer made a Conan costume to match. And this is why we rock.

Worst Costume You've Ever Had: For my birthday most years I have a fancy dress party as it's so close to Hallowe'en. For my twentieth I wanted to be Sally from The Nightmare before Christmas. Now, I normally make my costume every year, but this year my mum offered to buy me the official Sally costume for my birthday, and boy did I regret it. It was the single most unflattering thing I have ever worn. The wig was frumpy and wouldn't stay on and I looked like a patch-work marshmallow.

Favourite Halloween Memory: Every year when I was a kid my mum would drive us to pre-selected and pre-warned houses so that we could "Trick or Treat" them. We always went to my great aunt Aggie's house, and she would always give us a pound that she had very lovingly counted out of her penny jar earlier that day. Sometimes, they were literally pennies. One hundred pennies. One of my fondest memories of Trick or Treating was the first year my sister decided she was "too old", so I brought along a friend instead. We were both wearing Scream masks, and my aunty thought that my friend was my sister. We didn't have the heart to tell her, as she lavished my friend's pocket with one hundred pennies. The next day, my friend and I went to the shop and bought 200 pixie sticks with our hard earned pennies.

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DE PROFUNDIS GIVE AWAY

The Diana Jones 2002 Award Nominated game of psychological horror returns in an all new, and expanded, 2nd Edition. Blending the imagination of H. P. Lovecraft and other contemporary horror and conspiracy writers and themes, De Profundis is a correspondence-based story-telling game that can be played from the point of view of participants from a variety of eras.

Whether you take on the role of a Victorian investigator, a soldier from the front line during WW1 or WW2 confronted by the Weird, a government investigator looking into the strange and unknown, an internet conspiracy theorist in the modern age who gets in too deep, or someone else entirely, De Profundis provides a great alternative in gaming that allows you to participate in an interactive story with friends old and new.

Not requiring the usual face-to-face aspect of most traditional RPGs, the game caters for people who find it hard to maintain a regular gaming group due to time commitments, or for those who don't have any fellow gamers in their neighbourhood.

Utilising a mix of letter writing, email and text based gaming - depending on your chosen era of play - it's a perfect game for the modern time strapped gamer.

Thanks to our friends at Cubicle 7, we've got a copy of De Profundis to give away! for your chance of winning, send your name and full postal address to deprofundisgiveaway@yahoo.co.uk before midday on Wednesday 3rd November. The first name out of the electronic hat grabs the prize!

Book Reviews

Star Wars – The Force Unleashed II: The Graphic Novel Haden Blackman
Titan Books
Available Now - £9.99 (Trade Paperback)
Review by Brad Harmer

The end of the story in the hugely popular game The Force Unleashed left the Star Wars galaxy poised at the brink of civil war.

But before that can happen, the Emperor and his apprentice, Darth Vader, have another plan already in play. The author of the original game, Haden Blackman, returns with a new story of treachery, deception, and the manipulation of the overwhelming power of the Force.

If you’ve read the novel of The Force Unleashed II (reviewed last week), then you’ll probably get some enjoyment from this, as it presents Boba Fett’s perspective on the events. If you haven’t, then you’re going to find this ropey and confusing.

The artwork is really good throughout, and the perspectives and positioning of the characters really works to present a dynamic, action-packed feel. The character of Xasha – Boba Fett’s bird at the time – is really cool, and I couldn’t help but wish that they’d made more of an effort to use her...but I can’t fret too much. This is the Star Wars Expanded Universe...she will be back at some point. Possibly with her own comic.

Unfortunately, asides from adding in a nice Vader/Fett plot point that isn’t covered in the novel, this is a pretty useless extra. If you know the story, it adds very little, and if you don’t know the story...then you sure as hell won’t be able to follow it through this!

Also, whilst the artwork is good, the sense of continuity and movement from frame-to-frame is appalling. The lightsaber combat is all but impossible to follow, and several times I found myself having to re-read segments so that I could follow what the hell was supposed to have just happened. Not a good sign in any comic.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Frequent blaster, spacefighter and lightsaber combat.
Sex/Nudity: Some flirting between Boba Fett and his bird, Xasha.
Swearing: None.
Summary: If you’ve read the novel, then this adds a nice, more Mandalorian perspective. If you haven’t, then you’ll probably find this confusing and underwhelming. 4/10

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Epitaph
Shaun Hutson
Orbit
Available Now - £20.00 (Hardback) & £19.56 (Digital Download)
Review by Brad Harmer

He sucked in a deep breath full of that strange smell he couldn't identify. He trailed his hands across the satin beneath him and to both sides of him and, when he raised his hands, above him too. He knew why it was so dark. He understood why he could see nothing. He realized why he was lying down. He was in a coffin.

A distraught couple thinks you've killed their daughter and they want a confession. If you say you did it, they'll kill you. If you say you didn't, they'll leave you to die. It seems hopeless but there is one way out...What would you do?

Apart from read something else, obviously.

So many authors of the last great horror boom in the 1980s are totally unable to move on, and keep churning out the same Garth Marenghi crap, again and again. Jumping on crass paedophilia sensationalism as if Chris Morris never happened, Epitaph reads like a horror novel written by The Daily Mail.

The plot progresses slowly as treacle uphill, and it’s a testament to the writing ability of this splatterpunk dinosaur that he can write about such subjects as premature burial and child torture with absolutely no sense of tension or emotional involvement whatsoever. The characters are merely puppets of the badly lain out plot, and the ending is, as always, completely botched.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: One vicious beating with a spade. Weird or not, I’ll take that over a flame-throwing vagina any day.
Sex/Nudity: Some references to child molestation, but nothing explicit. Thankfully.
Swearing: Several strong uses.
Summary: Very unsatisfying. The ending is botched, as usual. Hutson sucks at endings. Even fans would do well to wait for the paperback rather than dropping twenty quid on this. 2/10

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When Werewolves Attack: A Field Guide to Dispatching Ravenous Flesh-Ripping Beasts
Del Howison
Ulysses Press
Available Now - £7.99 (Paperback) & £9.54 (Digital Download)
Review by Blake Harmer

If you were ever to encounter a beast as fast, ferocious or simply as terrifying as a werewolf, what would you do? With vampires now becoming creatures of romance and zombies becoming more an object of comedy than sheer terror, it is good that werewolves have always retained their status as a monster that should be feared. Sadly, in the wake of paranormal romance novels such as The Twilight Saga, and the large mass of zombie books and films being released all the time, werewolves haven’t had a lot of limelight recently. Thankfully Del Howison has noticed this, and has brought us a comprehensive guide on how to survive a werewolf attack in the vein of Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide.

The book benefits from being easy to read and covering a lot of ground about the werewolf, from its history dating back to prehistoric times, to ways of defending against, killing, capturing or even taming a werewolf. This is done in an informative way and the accounts, while obviously twisted, do sound like werewolf attacks that have really happened and maintain the illusion that werewolves do exist.

The book does have its drawbacks, though. I did find that Howison can lose his way whilst discussing a certain topic about werewolves and some questions weren’t answered as satisfactorily as I would have liked. But, in a market that seems to have forgotten the werewolf this is still an enjoyable read and a good gift idea for Halloween or even to Christmas to the horror fanatic who has enjoyed similar books, such as the aforementioned Max Brooks classic.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Lots of mention of people being torn apart from eaten by Werewolves but the main focus is on the history of werewolves and how to prevent yourself being torn apart.
Sex/Nudity: None.
Swearing: None, the book mentions accounts of Werewolf attacks rather than telling them as a story.
Summary: An enjoyable read, if a little basic and lacking in originality at times. However, with vampires and zombies at the forefront of the horror genre it is really refreshing to see something about a werewolf for a change. An ideal gift for horror fans out there to tide them over to the next big thing. 6/10

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ROBOT CHICKEN/STAR WARS GIVEAWAY!

Laugh it up, fuzzball...

Star Wars. Seven billion-trillion fans. The most revered franchise in movie history. The pinnacle of cinema.

Robot Chicken. A TV show where toys crash into each other. Sometimes good for a drunken chuckle.

Robot Chicken: Star Wars - Season 1 & 2. Like the twisted dream of a feverish nerd who's taken too much cold medicine. That's right, the stop-motion pyjama party from Adult Swim collides with the most revered fantasy film franchise - with all the subtlety of a diarrhea-suffering Wookie pounding on your bathroom door. If there's a bright centre to the entertainment universe, this double-DVD collection is probably the farthest thing from it.

Spoiler Alert: Contains Ewok violence and (drumroll please...) ...Boba Fett!

Thanks to our friends at Revolver Entertainment, we've got three copies of Robot Chicken: Star Wars - Season 1 & 2 to give away! For your chance of winning, send your name and full postal address to darthchickengiveaway@yahoo.co.uk before midday on Tuesday 2nd November. The first three names out of the electronic hat will win a copy each!

Five Worst Horror Movies I Ever Saw

Welcome once again to Monday on E14. As promised earlier in the month, here are my 5 least favourite horror movies in no particular order.

Jeepers Creepers, 2001

This movie is one of those unfortunate ones for me, where part of the problem is the hype surrounding horror films. You know the kind I mean; they go to a film premiere, rattle off a bunch of newspaper ratings like "film of the year" in January, show a bunch of screaming nancies and then cut to shots of random chumps saying "oh yeah, scariest film I've seen in ages." Straight away this doesn't sit right with me, usually because the people they choose look about ten and probably haven't seen a film since Dumbo anyway. Don't get me wrong, that movie's drug sequence is fucking terrifying, but I don't think that gives it enough to count as a horror movie in the strictest sense.

Anyway, I'd heard nothing but positive hype about this movie, and found myself positively anticipating this movie based on the few snippets I'd seen. It seemed to be an engaging enough idea, and the actors weren't people who pissed me off, so the idea of watching them for an hour and a half didn't bother me.

Man, how that hype has changed my world view. Now I pretty much can't get excited about anything that doesn't have the prefix Fallout.

The movie opens with a pair of teenagers driving across country when they happen upon a scene that looks somewhat suspect. However, they are witnessed as...witnesses, and so begins a frantic pursuit by a terrifying...well, moth. Sorry, spoiler warning. Once the pursuit begins this movie just gets fucking stupid. A monster that responds to a particular song named "Jeepers Creepers" made popular by such greats as Frank Sinatra? Spare me. A monster, more ludicrously still, who has chosen to interpret that song at face value as a reason to rob people of their optical capability? Stupider than a bag of hammers. Particularly stupid hammers, I might add.

As if all that wasn't enough, the "Creeper" just looks fucking stupid, like Beethoven wearing a vacuum bag. At least in Jeepers Creepers 2 some attempts were made to make the film quite a bit funnier, as the main problem with the first one was that I was pissing myself with laughter all the way through and it was supposed to be a fucking horror film!

Trivia: Gina Philips and Justin Long were not allowed to meet Jonathan Breck before filming, in order to get a true reaction from them when they actually did see him with his full costume and makeup.

Creep, 2004

This was another one that was hyped to me, but this one was by a family member who shall remain nameless so as to spare their feelings when I say that I felt personally violated and insulted when I finished watching this film.

Something that you may have noticed about my favourite horror movie article, which you can read Here, is that there is quite often a theme of the unknown running through the movie. In Event Horizon, there was the unknown element of what happened to the original crew of the ship, in The Thing there was the element of not knowing which team members were infected until it was too late.

However, in this film, I spent a large portion of the viewing time wondering one simple question: what the hell is going on? Not in a good way, like one of those suspense thrillers that reveal the plot twist just before the film ramps up, but in the sense that I couldn't follow what was going on and more importantly why I should give a fuck.

The lead character, played by Franka Potente, succeeds only in making you wish horrible atrocities upon her within the first twenty minutes of the movie, in that she's a complete bitch of the variety that usually has me reaching for the nearest bottle of bleach and a shot glass. What is it with horror movies? Either the cast is comprised of completely pitiful figures with enough skeletons in their closet to have bone marrow on draught, or they're tools so big that B&Q would raise their eyebrows.

To this day, I can't remember what the fuck happened in the film, and certainly not why I should give a fuck. Not the best endorsement for the movie, I grant you, but that's sort of why it made the list.

Trivia: When they were filming Franka running through a tube train, the cameraman behind her ran straight into one of the posts on the train.

House of 1000 Corpses, 2003

There's a theme here of "movies where fuck all happens", you'll notice. In this case, this movie was pretty much a sign that Rob Zombie should stick to what he's good at.

The movie did absolutely nothing for me. It wasn't scary, it wasn't disturbing. It just...was, and ultimately that's not why people go to see a horror movie. If the criteria for a horror movie was simply that the actors possessed corporeal form and delivered line after line with no emphasis on scares, then the number of horror films released would be significantly more, and would include things like Caddyshack. Scary in its own right, I'm sure, but not quite there as far as horror goes.

The only thing that people seem to like about it is the abundance of gore. To those people I say that they'd be satisfied considerably more with a trip to intensive care after a particularly nasty bus crash. They'd get their gore fix, and they would also get to see some dialogue delivered with a heap of genuine emotion.

And don't whine to me that Captain Spaulding's an amazing character, and that Sid Haig makes that movie. He tries really hard, don't get me wrong, but that character would be awesome in anything, even Muppet Treasure Island.

Trivia: During its box office run, the movie encountered two instances of the number '666': At the beginning of its run, when its opening weekend was $3,460,666, and at the end of its run, when its per-theater-average (the weekend gross divided by the number of theaters) was $666 per theater.

Final Destination 3, 2006

This film is one of the worst examples of what Roger Ebert called the "dead teenager" genre. Films like the Scream series have popularised it, but the Final Destination series has taken out that troublesome storyline completely, and simply gone with 90 minutes of teenagers being killed by increasingly ridiculous circumstances.

I hate teenagers, it's been that way for some time, especially those preppy American teenagers that have become the stereotype for all teenage girls, and represented the same ungrateful attitude-laced demeanour of any English girl who watched enough TV in the early 2000s. Nowadays those same white kids want to be black, but in those days the main one was wanting to be in Dawson's Creek or some other bollocks.

It's the day that you sit watching a film screaming "That's fucking bollocks, that would never happen!" that you realise that the world has passed you by. In the same way that I simply do not get the appeal of 80% of television "comedy" these days, I cannot get my head around the appeal of these movies. Surely once you've seen one vapid teenage cabbage cheat death, only to be caught up with in an absolutely brutal (and completely impossible) way, you've seen them all right? Right?!

Trivia: In Japan, the film is renamed "Final Deadcoaster". (Best trivia ever).

Dawn of the Dead, 2004

This one may be a confusing one, as in my original list I listed the original Dawn of the Dead as one of my favourites of all time. It's little wonder that the original is in that list, representing as it does one of the all-time greats. As such, my main issue with this particular remake is simple: it doesn't need to be made.

Everything about this movie screams "un-necessary", especially Zombie Baby towards the end, who graces the screen for about six seconds if that. Although this movie gets some props for the inclusion of the excellent Ving Rhames, everything else about this movie is crap. The characters are faceless drones who serve only to annoy, and not even in that good way where you're supposed to hate them and be happy when they get what's coming to them. Just as an aside, I've not got the zombies confused with the survivors; let's just get that out of the way right now.

Here's a point that doesn't get made often enough: ZOMBIES SHOULDN'T RUN! It's one of those commonly debated topics, and so many people sit on the fence and say "well, it's all on how you interpret it." No it isn't. If you're ok with the ideas of zombie running (and let's differentiate between proper zombies and 28 Days Later style "infected"), it's a fairly safe bet that you're the kind of person who sits on the fence throughout their life for fear of going too far in one direction or the other. It's also a fairly safe bet that you have a dead-end job, but you're not unhappy with it. You're just..."meh".

Put in simple terms, death is when all organs and systems shut down. You can make the point that certain body parts grow a few millimetres after death, but I'd wager pretty strongly that those parts are not capable of re-animating an entire corpse AND giving them an entire case of Red Bull to split amongst themselves. What death certainly shouldn't do is re-invigorate a zombie. Unless said zombie, at time of death, was coasting along in a job that was..."ok", and filled their time with Saturday night television and a bottle of the cheapest wine they could get hold of. Death sounds like an upgrade.

Trivia: For the scene where Ana stitches Kenneth's wounds, the director hired a real nurse for the close-ups. She misunderstood the director's directions to go deeper and inadvertently punctured Ving Rhames' skin and stitched the prosthesis to his arm. He didn't say anything until after the scene was done filming and the director thought the blood was merely "a really good effect".

All trivia provided courtesy of The Internet Movie Database

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Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is a collaborative artistic mash-up of George Romero's cult classic. Nearly 150 International artists and animators chose their favourite scenes and re-envisioned them through their own artwork, with no restrictions on style, media or process - resulting in an eclectic 'art show' interpretation of the seminal 1968 film, all placed over the original's audio.

With work ranging from oil paintings to comic illustrations and sock puppets to CGI and stop-motion - Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated not only pays the respect due to this most important work in horror history, but encourages viewers to experience the film in a brand new light that bursts with the humour and horror of a new generation of artists.

Thanks to our friends at Wienerworld, we've got three copies of Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated to give away! For your chance of winning, send your name and full postal address to notldrgiveaway@yahoo.co.uk before midday on Monday 1st November. The first three names out of the electronic hat will win a copy each!