Look at that, it’s time for another round of torture the zombie. I know. Don’t look the gift horse in the mouth. I could be lying on the cold ground with a machete in my skull, yada, yada, yada . . . . But could the ZSC gift horse stop dredging up SyFy films for me to review? Obviously they didn’t learn their lesson after I reviewed 2012: Zombie Apocalypse. As a matter of fact, the plots for the two films were so similar, I stopped to make sure I hadn’t watched the first one again by mistake. So, what is Rise of the Zombies about?
Starring:Mariel Hemingway, Chad Lindberg, LeVar Burton, Heather Hemmens, and Danny Trejo. Rated: TV-14 (Violence, gore)
Synopsis: In the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, a ragtag group of people finds save haven in Alcatraz, until the undead manage to swim to the island and put them all in danger. Driven from the prison, the survivors of the attack hunt down a scientist who is working on a vaccine for the zombie virus. He may be their only hope to survive in a zombie-filled San Francisco.
I had to write that synopsis myself. SyFy assumed the fans didn’t need to know what the film was about beyond “zombie” being in the title. Because in their world, there is only one zombie film. They just rotate out locations and actors. Gotta say, the casting for Rise of the Zombies caught me by surprise. In a good way. If the cast hadn’t been so wonderful, the awful cheesy dialog would’ve been completely unbearable. How many times did they honestly need to shout, “There’s another zombie!” Yes, we see the zombies. They aren’t exactly ninjas. And there were a lot of them. Over an hour of the film was pure zombie attack scenes with little or no dialog. Which may be why, by the end of the film, I had no clue who the characters were. They had no history. No back story. We catch up with them at the prison and as far as viewers are concerned, every single character had been born there from two rocks rubbing together vigorously.
The blood and gore for the zombies themselves was pretty good, aside from a few understated background zombies who got too close to the camera and looked like Cousin Joey who happened to be in town that day and sneaked onto the movie set. Again, SyFy abused the hell out of computer-generated blood splatter. Why does anyone go that route for easy-to-rig FX gags? CG blood looks cheap and only really works as filler. Not the entire effect. Then it looks like someone handed a kid frames of the film on MS Paint and let them use the spray paint brush on it willy-nilly. All of the FX makeup budget went on to the zombies. The gags rigged for humans were seriously lacking, downright laughable at points. Apparently they were an afterthought.
SyFy tried to make Rise of the Zombies edgy. They even ripped off some of the philosophical issues brought up on The Walking Dead —Suicide, children born in the apocalypse, and what God thought about them killing zombies. The problem is, the script sucks. So while the writers thought they were being deep, the actors had nothing to deliver other than a hazy conviction that they were right. We get no emotional attachment to the characters. When they die, oh well. What’s the point of watching a post-apocalyptic film when you’re watching the clock so you can move on to something else? The film is not engaging for fans.
I’m going to give Rise of the Zombies two ruptured eyeballs out of five. Like all SyFy original movies, this is best viewed while surrounded by friends and a keg of beer. Maybe two kegs.
Successful novelist and mom by day; bada** zombie-killing machine by night—when it comes to the Infected, Serena Rouge knows what it takes to make the killing blow. When the FBI forces her into a Special Ops, Serena’s all well and fine with the mission . . . until her targets kidnap her children. Then, all bets are off and she’s looking to kill.
“I’ve trained for years to learn how to take down the zombies–and avoid them the rest of the time. Now the FBI wants a writer to go undercover and get information? My gut says something isn’t right, and the rest of me will pay for not listening to that instinct.”
—Serena Rouge
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Getting kidnapped by the FBI is pretty low on my list of things I want to do. It’s right up there with meeting terrorist groups and writing their side of the story. Why a successful novelist like me? Turns out I’m a scapegoat for someone with some serious health issues—they’ve contracted the zombie virus.
I’m a zombie killer, killing them as quickly as I can. But I’m only one woman. You’d think being an Immune was great, but no. Ever since the government purposely tried to infect me with the zombie virus, they watch me closely to see if I turn. Not happening.
The FBI wants me to accomplish something big two thousand miles from home. When I arrive in El Paso, Texas after my strenuous drive from Washington, my contact agent, Joseph Connelly, isn’t available. Being tortured by a zombie for two days is an excuse I can accept after saving his ass. These aren’t your Hollywood zombies; not right away. They never get sick, their IQ triples, and their sex appeal? Off the charts. Until they die and resurrect as true horror flick zombies, with brains. Trouble is, some of them have developed a taste for meat—human meat—before they die.
Problem with governments screwing around with our DNA is things never go as planned. When terrorists kidnap my kids, all bets are off, and Agent Connelly agrees. If we don’t save my kids and steal the antivirus without getting killed, the whole world is going to have a really bad day.
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Mayhem in Mexico will be available on Amazon, All Romance eBooks, iBookstore, and Nook on Halloween for $4.99. Click HERE for more details.
*Warning: strong language and graphic violence
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Leona Bushman goes by many names, but the most common one is Superhero. She earned this name from saving a kangaroo from a tree—and yes, that is as hard as it sounds. The dragons taught their queen how to write, and Queen Leona hasn’t looked back. Even when her muse tries to muck things up.
She can be found goofing off and loving dragons and other creatures of the supernatural at the following sites:
Review by: A. Zombie
Rated: R (Strong zombie violence/gore. Language and brief sexuality)
Starring: Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, Richard Fitzpatrick
Brr…it is getting cold in here—actually I’m always cold, but that isn’t the point. Hell has frozen over, folks. The ZSC commanders handed me a Romero movie to review this time around. I’m so happy, I could jump for joy. Except jumping requires basic motor skills, and let’s face it, I’m lucky to be able to type. Jumping is not in my skill set. Alright, on to the film…
Official synopsis for George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead:
“On a small island off the coast of Delaware, live two families locked in a struggle for power and control over the fate of the undead. The O’Flynns approach the zombie plague with a shoot-to-kill attitude. The Muldoons feel that the zombies should be quarantined and kept “alive,” in hopes that a solution will be discovered. For both families, existence on Plum Island is a nightmarish world where humans are the minority and zombies rule.”
The part the synopsis fails to mention is the fact that there’s a random squad of AWOL military folks who happen to stumble into the middle of this large-scale domestic dispute. Why are they there? I don’t know, but someone had to talk sense amongst all the “my family is better than yours” squabbling. Though they really don’t talk sense. The military squad is a means to an end; get one of the crotchety old men back onto the island. They don’t add anything or take from it. They’re just… extra bodies to talk on screen so the film doesn’t seem quite so Hatfield and McCoy.
Let’s talk zombies for a moment. Romero couldn’t possibly screw those up, right? First off, when did he start using the word, “zombie” in his movies? Second, Survival of the Dead is supposed to take place after the drastic change in behavior from the undead in Land of the Dead, in which they began to evolve and remember how to do basic things like using tools. They also regained muscle memory of sorts and tended to repeat behavior they’d done every day while alive. The dead in Survival kind of took a step backwards. Yes, they exhibited this behavior, but one would think being isolated on a small island would give them a learning curve. There’s less to remember if you’ve lived in one very rural place most of your life. Only one zombie truly embraced this idea, and she used her skills to ride a horse. Oh yeah, that’ll get you far in the movement for Undead Rights.
The makeup was typical low-budget Romero. Possibly too low-budget. The first zombie on screen looks like a kid working his first night at a haunted house—pale skin, darkened eyes, slack mouth. He didn’t exactly scream “undead”. I’ve seen Goth kids with more makeup and zombie appeal. As the film progressed, the makeup got better, but it wasn’t congruent to the story line. A pair of supposedly “fresh” children zombies looked liked they crawled out of their graves after a year’s dirt nap, while older zombies looked like they fell into a pile of baby powder. It is rare that I nitpick makeup on Romero’s films. Survival was, by far, the worst in this department.
All in all, Survival of the Dead gets three bullet-riddle brains out of five. I love Romero and his contribution to the dialog about zombies reflecting the current ills in the human condition, but this film fell flat in comparison to his past work. It is disappointing for genre fans when the low-budget zombie master can’t succeed in the niche he created.
Reviewer: A. Zombie
Rating: R (bloody violence and gore, adult language, some sexual content
Starring: Michael McKiddy, Ross Kidder, and Markus Taylor
Awhile back, this movie came across the front desk of the ZSC—okay, their Twitter account. But with the insanity that’s happened since, it got shuffled under a pile of reports on zombie bunny behavior and lost. Well, they found it and passed it off to me to review. So how does Deadheads measure up? More importantly, what is the movie about?
A guy wakes up inside a lab and frees himself. He stumbles outside and discovers, not only is he undead, a lot of other people are too! However, Mike has been revived with his intellect intact, he’s not one of the mindless undead he encounters. Somehow he happens to stumble across the only other fully functional zombie wandering the woods, Brent. Together they decide to drive across the country and visit Mike’s girlfriend—almost fiancée—in Michigan, who is completely unaware he’s spent the last three years taking a dirt nap. But the trip won’t be easy. The corporation who owns the lab want Mike and Brent back, no matter what.
Deadheads is a love story, a buddy comedy, and a splatstick film…with zombies at the helm. They’re intelligent zombies who do far more than drool on themselves and fight over scraps of flesh like starving dogs. Actually, they’re pretty funny, too. Not as funny as I am. It takes a few years of being dead for the self-censoring mechanism to rot away. The dialogue alone is worth giving the film a chance. Make a game out of catching the massive amount of pop culture references.
The film raises a good question: If you were to come back to life as a zombie with all of your self—personality, memories, etc—intact, would you see it as an opportunity to make something of the life you were ripped out of? Would you reconnect with your family and loved ones? Here’s the thing, Mike’s girl never knew he was dead. She thought he’d left town. Anyone else attempting his mad scheme would cause undue trauma to the people they care about. Of course, with the limited exposure of the zombie outbreak—Mike and Brent are some of the first to escape and wander far from the lab—no one knows they’re undead or considers the possibility of them being more than sick guys on a road trip. Though, let’s be honest, they are covered in blood and Mike is sporting a pair of bullet holes in his skull. Middle America is seriously unobservant.
I have to give it to the filmmakers, Deadheads was shot really well. Despite being a “Zombedy”, it is almost too pretty—even when there are close-ups of severed body parts and intestines. Speaking of the FX makeup, it holds up to scrutiny. The main pair of zombies are “different”, not nearly as rotten as their mindless counterparts. Even then, the level of rot is believable and consistent throughout the adventure. There are som instances of computer-generated gore that fail to impress and could have been left out altogether. Zombies don’t bleed. Why they felt the need to add bad CG blood in one particular scene baffles the mind.
For the most part, the characters were written and acted convincingly. There is a zombie slayer who would fit in perfectly with Jinxie’s Yellow Brigade—she’d appreciate his ruthless tactics. However, two of the characters seemed to be created to annoy the ever-loving hell out of viewers, McDinkle and Emily. McDinkle is written to be obnoxious, that much is true. The overacting drove it over a cliff into a fiery crash of “holy hell, get this guy off the screen”. Needless to say, there was cheering any time someone hit him. Emily is supposed to be a frazzled, slightly ditzy and girly personal assistant to the main corporate bad guy. Done correctly, she would have balanced the malice of that character. Instead she is visibly acting, being a caricature instead of the character. After her first scene, I renamed her Food.
Overall, I’m giving Deadheads three and three-quarter decapitated heads out of five. This is a feel-good zombie movie you can sit down and enjoy with friends without worrying too much about grossing anyone out. I wouldn’t suggest children watch it, though. They curse more than sailors on shore leave.
It is that time of the year again. The time when half of the entertainment industry—from video games to feature films—descends on San Diego with sizzle reels, swag, and actors in tow. “The Walking Dead” blew everyone out of the water with their epic four-minute trailer. What did the people involved have to say about the upcoming fourth season?
The producers hit the stage first at the hour-long panel on Saturday afternoon. The general consensus was season four would be, “Way crazier,” “Going to get insane very quickly,” and a series of escalations to keep the danger inherent in their world ever-present. Producer and FX genius Greg Nicotero hinted that the walker “gags” for the upcoming season are above and beyond anything fans have seen so far. As a matter of fact, the Thursday before everyone packed up to fly from Atlanta, GA to San Diego, they’d filmed a rather gruesome walker scene. Or so we were lead to believe. The producers remained rather mum about season four. Instead they let the trailer do the talking.
The cast couldn’t say much about the new season, either. They covered a lot about the previous season and coping with the numerous main cast deaths. It isn’t easy for the actors, they form bonds with these people in character and out. Then they’re suddenly gone. Danai Gurira admitted it was rough losing the person who’d indoctrinated her in the “Walking Dead” universe. But all of the actors understand early on, with the volatile nature of the world, people come and go in their lives. They have to go with the flow.
Going with the flow seems to be the theme for the upcoming season. They’ve brought in the survivors from Woodbury and built a city confined within the gates and walls of the prison. With the tension natural between large groups of people, all they can do is take it one day at a time. There’s no one person in the group capable of predicting human nature, any more than they can predict the walkers. Don’t assume this means the show will shift its entire focus to the dangers from the living, though. Everyone was adamant about the walkers still posing a significant hazard. The proof came in the trailer. Dang, those zombies are looking really ragged this season!
Rating: PG-13 (intense frightening zombie sequences, violence and disturbing images) Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, and Daniella Kertesz
First thing’s first, this reviewer is fully aware that World War Z is based on the novel by Max Brooks. However, seeing as they don’t give me any books—just stacks of movies to shuffle through—I haven’t read it. This review will focus solely on the merits of what was on the screen during the film. Nothing else. Now that the business portion is out of the way . . . have I mentioned how much of a pain it is to not only sneak into a theater without freaking out the humans, but also get a pair of 3D glasses to stay on when one of your ears fell off fifteen years ago in New Mexico? Let’s just say there was liberal application of duct tape in the moments before the lights dimmed and the film began.
World War Z starts off with disturbing news reports of a rabies-like virus sweeping over the globe. America is seemingly unharmed by this virus. Our hero, Gerry is happy to be at home with his family and not with his old bosses at the United Nations dealing with the mess. Then everything flips on its head. Gerry and family are caught in the middle of a sudden outbreak of the zombie virus. In seconds, Philadelphia is overrun with the undead. The family escape and Gerry is called in to help the UN figure out how to deal with the zombies. He’s sent to every corner of the earth searching for answers in unlikely places. In the end, it seems the world’s only hope stems from utter devastation.
The opening is slow, designed to lull you into a false sense of security while simultaneously feeding viewers information through numerous television news clips—the tried, true, and vastly overused method of plot progression available to the zombie film genre. This is of course after viewers suffer horrendous vertigo and nausea from the title sequence, which is designed to make maximum use of the 3D format. Essentially, you can get stuck in line for popcorn during the first seven minutes and not miss anything vital to the film’s plot. A zombie movie is a zombie movie, is a zombie movie. Anyone hoping World War Z would prove to be ground breaking and different in this aspect is fooling themselves.
That’s not to say once the action kicks in, the film isn’t interesting. The mechanics of the zombies alone cause a lot of heart-stopping, breath-holding moments, and even a handful of really well thought out scares. The zombies are fast. Obscenely fast. They have no physical limitations, easily leaping over two cars to take down their prey. Any reservations the person held alive are gone after death, allowing the undead to climb over each other, sacrifice each other in the name of sinking their teeth into something alive, or even bash their skull repeatedly into a car’s windshield in order to get to the gooey yummy treat inside. The makeup ranges from normal looking people covered in blood, to the hero zombies who were desiccated, rotting as they wait for fresh food sources. Two of the hero zombies in the final act of the film were by far some of the best zombies character-wise I’ve seen in any genre film. They were wild, uninhibited in their ferocity and sheer weirdness of undead traits.
Brad Pitt, despite reservations about an A-list actor stepping into a genre film, delivers a wonderful performance with the script he’s given. He brings to screen the only compassion seen from any character, really. Some of the supporting cast shine—most of the good ones don’t get nearly enough screen time. Other members of the cast failed to give a performance capable of making viewers want to see them survive. Isn’t that the point of being one of the main characters? We want to see you live, not listen to you whine, garble lines, and have little to no facial expressions. When a zombie has more facial expressions than the wife of the main character, a main character who’s in mortal danger, there’s something wrong.
What can be learned from World War Z? Duct tape is your best friend. Armor can be made from fashion magazines. The police are indeed people and cannot be relied on after the undead invade your city. And most importantly, if you’re not careful, a can of Mountain Dew could very well lead to your demise.
I’m going to give World War Z four severed hands, out of five. The epic scale of the film was hard to ignore—something genre fans haven’t seen since Romero’s Land of the Dead. Bypass the 3D experience, though. The foot chase scenes in 3D format induce headaches. Chewing on aching brains isn’t good eats. Think of the zombies waiting outside for a snack when you head to the theater.
Rating: PG-13 (Zombie violence and some adult language)
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Rob Corddry
Another zombie film has hit the theaters, which means a day pass for yours truly to get out of the Zombie Survival Crew command center’s detention room for a couple hours. What is the latest zombie flick to hit the big screen? An adaptation of Isaac Marion’s novel Warm Bodies.
Boy meets girl. Boy eats girl’s boyfriend’s brain and absorbs his memories. Boy falls in love with girl and saves her from having her entrails spread over the ground. Girl begs her hard-ass father not to kill her undead love. Sounds romantic, huh? Not if you care about a little thing called necrophilia.
I had a hard time with the premise of Warm Bodies from the start. Not just because of my standing as one of the shambling undead. Zombies are, and have been for decades, soulless reanimated corpses who only want one thing—to feast on the flesh of the living. Going into the theater (hidden under a large Hello Kitty blanket), I knew I wasn’t the target audience for the film. The previews and trailers showed fresh-faced kids traversing the zombie apocalypse and surviving on the strength of their love. Call me jaded, but a gun goes a lot further to keep one safe from being eaten than doe-eyed heroic zombies.
The saving grace for the film is the smart, witty performance from Nicholas Hoult. He took what could have been dead (no pun intended) jokes and made them work with a well-timed glance or shrug. His counterpart, Teresa Palmer, started out the film strong-willed and capable of defending herself, however, as the movie progressed she became whiny, cried more than should be allowed in a zombie movie—even one billed as a teenage chick-flick—and could not keep up with the performance of her co-star. The production company did their best to make Palmer into a blonde Kristin Stewart—which is no surprise since the distributor for the film is responsible for releasing Twilight. Is it too much to ask for a young actress to thrive on her own merits? In a time when Hollywood is all about chasing trends and beating them over the head until their brains ooze across the floor . . . no. The film’s producers wanted a young woman with looks similar to someone who has been proven popular and shoved her in a role written to be dependent on a boy. And when things get too rough for her, she breaks down, cries, and then does some of the stupidest things ever witnessed in a post-apocalyptic film.
Congratulations, you replaced sparkly vampires with shambling corpses. Or did they?
The undead in Warm Bodies are vastly different from traditional zombies. The corpses, as they’re called, retain more of their humanity and are capable of minimal speech. They also move far too fluidly to be truly dead. The minimalistic effects makeup on the corpses made it difficult to tell who was dead and who was alive. I’m not saying they needed to have huge chunks of flesh falling off, but something more than pale skin and visible veins would have been nice. Again, the corpses were awfully similar to vampires.
Warm Bodies was fun to watch for the humor—most of it from R, the main corpse character. There are some cringe-worthy performances; a lot of repeated and unnecessary lines, and John Malkovich’s normal brilliance is buried under teen angst and daddy issues. As one of my undead companions said, it is a chick-flick worthy of a night-in with friends and your beverage of choice.
Overall, I’m going to give Warm Bodies three and a half gnawed-off fingers out of five. It had potential, but fell flat under the pressure to fit the current the teen movie trend of cute and heart-warming monsters instead of standing on its own merits.
I’d like to give a shout out to the Fresno Zombie Society for inviting me out to hang with them for the film’s screening. You guys sure know how to make sure a dead guy has a fun night out.
From the mobile unit of ZSC Commander-in-Chief, Juliette Terzieff, with special guest Gary Streiner:
When we think of iconic horror movie moments it isn’t long before visions of Bill Hinzman lurching through the Evans City Cemetery towards unsuspecting siblings Barbra and Johnny in the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead float to the top. Like the gruesome murder of Janet Leigh in the infamous Psycho shower scene, or Linda Blair’s impossible head gymnastics in The Exorcist, the image of that first modern-era zombie seeking out a meal remains a favorite of horror fans around the globe.
George Romero’s black and white masterpiece is legend. A singular piece of filmmaking that has inspired generations of writers, artists, musicians, actors and filmmakers to probe through decaying flesh in search of the monster inside us all.
Night of the Living Dead fans and members of the movie’s production crew have joined forces in a labor of love to save the chapel featured in the movie’s opening sequence—which happens to be the last original building from the movie that still stands. The Evans City Chapel hasn’t been in use for decades, except as a storage shed, and is facing the wrecking ball.
Over the last year my guest today, Gary Streiner, NOTLD’s sound engineer and brother of Russ Streiner who played Johnny, has been helping drive a campaign to save the chapel. In that time Fix the Chapel has raised almost $50,000, inspired videos and given birth to an anthology Stories from the Chapel.
But the battle is not won yet. Even if the campaign successfully raises the fund’s required by the cemetery association to prevent a demolition, campaigners will be in place to help oversee the repairs.
Many of us in zombie Survival Crew Command, such as myself and Green Brigade Commander IronE Singleton, trace their love of zombies to this groundbreaking film. We’re sure many of you feel the same! So please, go check out the website and Facebook group, and get involved in the effort to
Being a zombie is no picnic and it’s one hell of a handicap in the romance department when you fall in love with a ‘breather’:
Aleta is a breather with short blonde hair and brown eyes – two of them! – and the whitest smile Fred has ever seen. Every day at a certain time she sits at her window, and every day he stands in the rubble across the street among a crowd of zombies waiting to break through the fence and eat her.
‘You are beautiful, like an angel’, he thinks, but all he can moan is, “Braaaiiinss.”
Still, as zombies go, Fred’s quite a catch. Underneath all the gangrene and rot, Fred is different. This girl will probably turn out to be yet another dead end, an infatuation, someone whose image he cannot get out of his mind and whose taste he cannot get out of his mouth, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
For breathers, it is always only a matter of time, however beautiful they are and whatever the government is assuring people.
Which makes Fred sad because he has a beautiful 11 year old son called Timmy, and Timmy may still be alive.
Excerpt Chapter I
Commute
Fred’s ruined face stared back at him from a fractured, mold spotted mirror. The remains of breakfast pooled around his feet and a pair of lace panties clung to his shoe, glued there by God knew what.
Bits of flesh were stuck between his yellow teeth, along with the sodden remains of a hand-wash-only label. There was no denying that he’d seen better days.
Being a zombie is no picnic.
Compelled to pause and take stock of himself, he wiped his gore stained hands on a filthy shirt, unsure if he was cleaning the hands or the shirt. His right eye looked like a crushed egg yolk and his left leg was broken in two places. A large splinter of bone poked through the nskin above his thigh, fine dark lines etched across the surface like a bad piece of scrimshaw. The open wound on his neck had started leaking again, but at least the fluid was mostly clear now.
No use dwelling on negatives. Time to get to work. He turned away from his reflection, and limped out of the men’s room of the Vince Lombardi rest area.
An overly bright morning sun assaulted him as he stepped outside.
Fred gave a mental wince, wishing yet again that he could blink.
Sunlight had no adverse effect on the undead, but he had never been a morning person. Rain or shine, today he had to shamble over to Terminal C of Newark Airport, where eight breathers were making their last stand. Zombies were lone hunters and rarely worked together.
Every so often, however, a kind of collective broadcast signal went out over the undead grapevine, announcing the newest brain buffet – in a shopping mall, a church, or an airport – with predictable and satisfying results.
Dozens were already making their way down the New Jersey turnpike. By their mindless, movie-slow pace, he knew they hadn’t fed.
Zombies weren’t Jesse Owens on the best of days, but they tended to move a lot faster with a little brain in the old furnace.
If Fred could breathe, he would have sighed. There’d be hundreds of zombies, all ready to fight over eight brains and assorted bits. The breathers would probably take out ten to twenty percent of the attacking hoard before being overwhelmed. That left about ten zombies per breather. With luck, by the time he got there he would still be the brainiac of the pack.
Having his wits about him gave a zombie an edge in the hunt. The effects of the virus or whatever it was that put the mojo in their mortified flesh varied from corpse to corpse. Most became textbook droolie ghoulies, but some could reason and even remember who they were as breathers. So far Fred hadn’t come across any other thinkers, but he doubted he was the only one.
By mid-afternoon he found himself enjoying his walk down the turnpike. Most of the fires had burned themselves out and although the air still reeked of burning gasoline, the skies were more or less smoke-free. He might be a walking corpse, but he appreciated a warm spring day like this one. He pulled his lips up in what should have been a grin.
Death, ruin and destruction improved the New Jersey Turnpike.
Not that there wasn’t a black lining to be found around Fred’s own little rainbow of a life. Most of the zombies were a few hundred yardsdown the road, but two lesser undead doggedly tagged alongside of him, putting a bit of a damper on things. The virus left them as nothing more than … well, nothing more than zombies. They were about as interesting as slugs and moaned so much that, were Fred alive, he’d be sporting a hell of a migraine.
All in all, however, the day was turning out quite well. He almost convinced himself being undead wasn’t so bad. Sure, it was bad luck that he was forty-five years old with a rather large potbelly when he had been bitten by that damned clerk. Being cursed to wander the earth in search of brains was bad enough, but why couldn’t it have happened when he was twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter?
He was imagining wandering the earth in search of fresh brains as a slimmer, sleeker and younger Fred, when the head of the zombie on his left exploded.
About the Author:
Lawyer, Writer, Zombie Man
I have no real interest in anything and therefore write about everything. Think of the funniest person you know. I’m just a little bit funnier. Same goes for humble and good looking. Stick around. We’ll have some fun.
We managed to catch up with Bisi Leyton during her busy tour with Bewitching Book Tours for the release of Wisteria and had a chance to ask her a few questions. Keep reading below the interview to find out how you can win a Kindle Fire!
Blurb: Sixteen year old Wisteria Kuti has two options—track the infected around the Isle of Smythe or leave the only known safe haven and face a world infested with flesh eating biters. But even with well-armed trackers, things go wrong and Wisteria ends up alone facing certain death, until she is rescued by the mysterious Bach. Uninfected, Bach is able to survive among the hordes of living dead.
Eighteen year old Bach, from a race known as The Family, has no interest in human affairs. He was sent here to complete his Great Walk and return home as a man—as a Sen Son. The Family regard humans as Dirt People, but Bach is drawn to this Terran girl, whom he has never seen before, but somehow knows.
Hunted by flesh eaters, cannibals, and the mysterious blood thirsty group called Red Phoenix, Wisteria and Bach make their way back to the Isle of Smythe, a community built on secrets and lies.
Interview
When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to write your first book?
The first novel I wrote was when I was twelve and I was inspired by the Sweet Valley High Series. So I wrote some ‘interesting’ fan fiction called Beach Landers. I started writing it because I liked the SVH stories, but never liked how the stories ended and also because I only owned one book. My classmates seemed to have hundreds.
What books and authors have most influenced your life?
Roald Dahl and Jeffery Archer really got me to love reading.
Tell us a little about your main character, Wisteria Kuti. Is she based on any real-life person, or entirely from your imagination?
Both: She’s named after my niece, but a lot the bullying she goes through is from my teen years. In some ways Wisteria is who I wish I was in high school, even with all her baggage.
Faced with a world infested with flesh-eating biters, what would be your go-to method of defense and why?
Select an island with only one bridge in or out and with some farm land. On my way in, fall in love with an army Major and convince him and his company to come to my island (they’ll provide security and organise the workforce). Getting to the island blow up the bridge and trade with pirates.
In this ever-changing world, it behooves us to be prepared for disaster to happen at any moment. The Zombie Survival Crew members have a “go-bag” filled with items essential for their survival should disaster strike and they must flee to survive. What are the most essential items for your go-bag and why?
A crowbar – good for fending of zombies and marauders and breaking into places
Rat trap – Because face it, we gonna need a practical source of food and I can’t kill a deer.
Water purifier – For obvious reason, we need clean water
Map of whichever country I’m and how to get to Norway – lots of island and a very small population, so hopeful won’t be dealing with a lot of infected
A tool kit and instructions on how to use the tool kit – because you’ll never to what I’ll to break into
Book on Neuro Linguistic programming – so I can brainwashing anyone I need to help me and ensure in the survivor camp people don’t (a) plot against me (b)use me for food.
Having lived and worked in several countries, how do you feel that has shaped the person you are today?
Totally, because I’ve travelled some much right from when I was a kid, I don’t feel I can write about the normal world because I don’t know what that’s like or where anything is.
Is there anything you find particularly challenging in writing for a young adult audience?
My worry is to make sure I’m not patronising my readers. I don’t really feel I should dumb down my writing. I know my readers are smart (and I’m learning they are a lot smarter than me). I also worry about the amount of violent, swearing and sex include and how to talk about it.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
If you have an idea, start writing and find people who you can talk to about your ideas. You will be surprised how much that helps you develop your story. Also, be clear who your audience is, it helps you focus.
What are you working on now? Can you tell us your latest news?
I’m working on two things. First will be the second and third book in the Wisteria Series. I hope they will be out mid-October and Early December respectively.
The second project is my new Young Adult Paranormal Series that I’ll launch in 2013. This will also have zombies, but will include a re-imaging of Frankenstein’s Monster.
Is there anything you would like to say to your readers?
I just want to thank them for reading the post and taking the time to check out my book. They can find out more about Wisteria on my facebook page or my blog. And of course can email me at bisileyton {a t } gmail dot com
Wisteria Book Trailer
Author Bio:
Bisi Leyton was born in East London in 1978. She grew up in London, Nigeria and the States, listening to the stories life and love from aunts, cousins and big sisters.
She lives in London, but has worked around Europe including France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium and the Czech Republic. She has a fondness for reading graphic novels.
Leona Bushman goes by many names, but the most common one is Superhero. She earned this name from saving a kangaroo from a tree—and yes, that is as hard as it sounds. The dragons taught their queen how to write, and Queen Leona hasn’t looked back. Even when her muse tries to muck things up.
Reviewer: A. Zombie
First thing’s first, this reviewer is fully aware that World War Z is based on the novel by Max Brooks. However, seeing as they don’t give me any books—just stacks of movies to shuffle through—I haven’t read it. This review will focus solely on the merits of what was on the screen during the film. Nothing else. Now that the business portion is out of the way . . . have I mentioned how much of a pain it is to not only sneak into a theater without freaking out the humans, but also get a pair of 3D glasses to stay on when one of your ears fell off fifteen years ago in New Mexico? Let’s just say there was liberal application of duct tape in the moments before the lights dimmed and the film began.
The opening is slow, designed to lull you into a false sense of security while simultaneously feeding viewers information through numerous television news clips—the tried, true, and vastly overused method of plot progression available to the zombie film genre. This is of course after viewers suffer horrendous vertigo and nausea from the title sequence, which is designed to make maximum use of the 3D format. Essentially, you can get stuck in line for popcorn during the first seven minutes and not miss anything vital to the film’s plot. A zombie movie is a zombie movie, is a zombie movie. Anyone hoping World War Z would prove to be ground breaking and different in this aspect is fooling themselves.
That’s not to say once the action kicks in, the film isn’t interesting. The mechanics of the zombies alone cause a lot of heart-stopping, breath-holding moments, and even a handful of really well thought out scares. The zombies are fast. Obscenely fast. They have no physical limitations, easily leaping over two cars to take down their prey. Any reservations the person held alive are gone after death, allowing the undead to climb over each other, sacrifice each other in the name of sinking their teeth into something alive, or even bash their skull repeatedly into a car’s windshield in order to get to the gooey yummy treat inside. The makeup ranges from normal looking people covered in blood, to the hero zombies who were desiccated, rotting as they wait for fresh food sources. Two of the hero zombies in the final act of the film were by far some of the best zombies character-wise I’ve seen in any genre film. They were wild, uninhibited in their ferocity and sheer weirdness of undead traits.
Brad Pitt, despite reservations about an A-list actor stepping into a genre film, delivers a wonderful performance with the script he’s given. He brings to screen the only compassion seen from any character, really. Some of the supporting cast shine—most of the good ones don’t get nearly enough screen time. Other members of the cast failed to give a performance capable of making viewers want to see them survive. Isn’t that the point of being one of 
What can be learned from World War Z? Duct tape is your best friend. Armor can be made from fashion magazines. The police are indeed people and cannot be relied on after the undead invade your city. And most importantly, if you’re not careful, a can of Mountain Dew could very well lead to your demise.
I had a hard time with the premise of Warm Bodies from the start. Not just because of my standing as one of the shambling undead. Zombies are, and have been for decades, soulless reanimated corpses who only want one thing—to feast on the flesh of the living. Going into the theater (hidden under a large Hello Kitty blanket), I knew I wasn’t the target audience for the film. The previews and trailers showed fresh-faced kids traversing the zombie apocalypse and surviving on the strength of their love. Call me jaded, but a gun goes a lot further to keep one safe from being eaten than doe-eyed heroic zombies.
