HairyLime Blog

Caught this one the other night on cable. Wasn't expecting much, but it was a fun zombie/apocalypse/survival flick with appealling leads and only a few shortcomings. I've never seen the original of this, but I've seen Night of the Living Dead numerous times, and now am kind of curious to see the original. Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley give good performances and the action is well paced and exciting. Some of the characters have "red shirt" written all over them from their first appearance, and a few of the sequences and one liners seem blatantly ripped off from other movies (one line that the 'annoying boat owner dude' uses is straight from Pulp Fiction, and the whole 'rescue the dog across the street' sequence is pure Rear Window, and the final 'escape from the mall' sequence quite closely resembles 'Road Warrior' in many ways). A fun zombie romp, and I may be checking out the original Dawn of the Dead, and perhaps Day of the Dead next.

I have a soft spot for old cheesy Joan Crawford movies. Poor Joan, always the long suffering martyr for love and family values, always over the top with the most laugh out loud dialog in all her movies, but you can't help but love her sincerity. In films like Mildred Pierce, or Sudden Fear she's had to deal with murderous ungrateful daughters and homicidal husbands, and in this one plays a lonely workaholic spinster who falls for an unbalanced young man (who of course doesn't show any signs of his mental condition until she's married him) and then a previous wife and concerned father who aren't what they seem to be pop out of the closet and things really come to a head. Fine scenery chewing performances from Joan, from Cliff Robertson as the unbalanced loony of a husband (who just needs 6 months of psychiatric care and a few shock treatments to put him right!), and supporting work from Lorne Greene and Vera Miles. I've always been fascinated with Joan, she's not conventionally pretty, in fact she frequently looks as if she were a man in drag, with those chiselled features, heavy eyebrows and gobs of makeup who is frequently softened thanks to a talented lighting technician who always manages to hide her wrinkly 'old lady neck' in shadow, no matter which part of the room she stands in. Good cheesy fun, not to be missed.