Monster of the Day #1606

Updated on July 20, 2017 By Ken Begg 58 Comments

Sorry about yesterday, folks, I very rarely sleep late, but I did yesterday and had to run right to work.

I can’t even imagine how shocking it was to audiences when the film graphically portrayed the zombies to be flesh-eaters. We take it for granted now, but this was literally very strong meat indeed back then. The way the film escalates shocks obviously was more striking for then contemporary audiences, but even today again reveals how well made this film was for all its limitations.

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  • Gamera977

    I would make a ‘tastes like chicken’ comment but I guess it would be rather ‘tasteless’.

  • Actually, humans taste more like Spam.

    …

    …

    …

    …

    Well. Sometimes I get hungry.

  • KeithB

    I remember reading a Reader’s Digest (!) article deploring the graphic nature of this movie, describing the entrails eating scene. Of course, it made me want to see the movie!

  • bgbear_rnh

    ask Mike Tyson

  • sandra

    Oh, I remember that article. It described parents dropping their kids off to a matinee of the movie, and the kids freaking out. I also remember the first time I saw it, at night, all by myself. I was very nervous going home, afterwards. A horror film that was actually frightening was a whole new experience. Too bad they don’t make them anymore.

  • Ericb

    An ear is all skin and gristle. You’d probably need a special sauce or prepare is in some unique way to make it palatable. Gordon Ramsey would be appalled at Tyson for eating them raw.

  • Rock Baker

    These scenes were also filmed MOS so the actors let fly a variety of ill words as they mimed gobbling down what were actually slaughterhouse meats and organs. “I can’t believe I’m doing this” was one zombie’s mumbling during a close-up, I understand. Once spent a considerable amount of time with Karl Hardman and his wife Marilyn Eastman (the Coopers), delightful people filled with stories like that!

  • Flangepart

    Suzi is sushi.

  • Flangepart

    I read that. By Roger Ebert, IIRC.

  • Gamera977

    Well, as the saying goes- if a vegetarian eats vegetables what does a humanitarian eat?

  • Ken_Begg

    Sorry, folks, I’ve having site issues. Back soon, we hope!

  • bgbear_rnh

    I am sure you can bring it back from the dead.

  • Eric Hinkle

    When it’s back, we’ll be here waiting.

  • Ken_Begg

    Still locked out. I’ve been a dick and reliant on an old friend to handle all my administrative stuff. Until I can get into contact with them I’m pretty much up the creek. Still, I imagine it will be sorted out eventually.

  • bgbear_rnh

    Russian interference no doubt.

  • Russian interference no doubt.

    My first thought on reading this was “Oh, those Russians”

    Now I’m going to have Rasputin stuck in my head.

    Thanks. Thanks a lot.

    Ra ra Rasputin
    Lover of the Russian queen
    There was a cat that really was gone
    Ra ra Rasputin
    Russia’s greatest love machine
    It was a shame how he carried on

  • Marsden

    Boris: “We will get Moose and Squirrel!”

  • Eric Hinkle

    BTW, anyone else hear the sad news about June Foray, voice actress for Natasha and Rocky? Guess Boris and Bullwinkle gotta go it alone from now on.

  • bgbear_rnh

    I believe every memorable voice from childhood is gone now.

  • Ken_Begg

    Sorry, folks, As you might have gathered, our site issues continue. I did reach our (non-pay, volunteer) tech person. She offered to work on it despite being on vacation, and I didn’t have the heart to victimize her even more. So she’ll look into things once her vacation is over. Hopefully things will be cleared up quickly at that point and I can start *cough* posting regularly again.

  • Eric Hinkle

    As long as you’re okay and the site will be back eventually, that’s what matters.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I’m wondering if radiation from the recent Venus probe may have had some effect on the blog.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah gee, let her enjoy her vacation- we’re not going anywhere!

  • Gamera977

    Well shucks, I was going to post something on the forum while things are dead here and I can’t log on.

    Oh well….

  • Eric Hinkle

    You can post it now!

    And yay, Jabootu is back! My offerings of those SyFy Original CGI shark movie DVDs before the household altar (AKA the trash can) were not in vain.

  • Ken_Begg

    OK, things are moving in the right direction. I still can’t log in to do posts and such, but the page is back. For myself, I can’t just use the URL directly, but I can Bing the site and follow the link.

    Computers make no sense to me. So not 100% back, but getting there. Thanks for the patience, people!

  • Marsden

    Since I can see the site again, I’m going to post this

    I saw Spider-Man Homecoming! It was excellent. I really liked the Vulture and the other villians that got some time that you might not expect would ever get into a movie. And Peter/Spidey was great! I really like how they referenced a lot of what came before without really just going over the same ground again. I’m not usually in favor of reboots, and most of them are really… bad. I mean like Star Trek, Robocop, Ghostbusters, you name it, the reboot was really not worth the effort, they just make me want to watch the original again if anything. This was completely different. I think a reboot isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the movie is a good movie and this was really good. I wasn’t planning to see this one after Guardians 2 but I enjoyed Spider-Man even more than that one.

    Thor is next movie I plan to see, that’ll be 3 movies this year!

  • Eric Hinkle

    If anyone cares, Sharknado 5 is on right now. This time the sharks eat Europe!

  • bgbear_rnh

    I hear good things about a Mediterranean diet.

  • Time did what Ghidora and Hedorah couldn’t. Haruo Nakajima, the first Godzilla, has passed away.

  • Gamera977

    I can get the site now but still can’t post. No big deal, it wasn’t anything that great anyway.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Godzilla finally met the one foe he couldn’t defeat.

    I salute the fallen giant. Sayonara to arigatogozaimashita, Nakajima-sama.

  • Eric Hinkle

    DeviantArt has a LOT of people making very respectful and sad posts about this. I admit, I’m surprised.

  • I’m not. From what I’ve read, Nakajima was a pretty neat guy above and beyond the parts he played.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I meant more that DA seems to be getting as nasty as so many other places online of late. The remarks I read said pretty much what you did. Apparently Mister Nakajima was a very well loved man in fannish circles by everyone who met him.

  • The Rev.

    I planned to see that just because the trailers gave us 1. an actual teenage (or at least teenage-appearing) Spider-Man with the right kind of one-liners, 2. a Vulture that was the mix of classic and “realistic” that, much as I love Raimi, he didn’t pull off with the Goblin’s appearance, with 2b. Michael Keaton playing him, who is a damn good actor. The word of mouth I’ve heard has pretty much sealed the deal.

    We did catch Wonder Woman a week ago, and quite enjoyed it. Most of the issues I had were, in the grand scheme, quibbles more than problems. It clicked along well, and gave us some great supporting characters and action scenes that actually felt like comic panels come to life. I can’t claim to be a WW expert, but to me Gal Gadot has set the bar ridiculously high for any future portrayers. Man, I loved her. (I love her more after reading about her background, and seeing her interactions with young fans at recent conventions.)

  • The Rev.

    I can’t believe it took that long for them to get out of the U.S.

    Do any of you think the sequels are worth watching? It hasn’t sounded like it to me. The original was goofy fun; I haven’t gone past the second one, where everyone being in on the joke (witness all the cameos) kind of ruined it, and I get the feeling the rest of the series has followed that playbook. Also, I’m still pissed they didn’t whack Tara Reid and let Vivica A. Fox take over. I’d have kept watching if they’d done that. But nope, Tara goes budget Ash Williams and Vivica gets easily the most mean-spirited death in the movie. Feh. (I will say I was delighted to see Tiffany Shepis, even if in a fairly small role.)

  • The Rev.

    He was a damn fine man, if my meeting with him and Ken Satsuma is anything to go by. You’re right, though, in that I’ve never seen an unkind word about him.

    Man, first Banno, now Nakajima. Rough year for us Godzilla fans. Rest well, sir, and thank you for all the memories.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Ken, that sounds (possibly) like it might be a DNS issue. If you open up a command prompt, type “ipconfig /flushdns” (without the quotes, and with a single space between the g and the slash) does that help?

  • FWIW, I really liked the 3rd one, probably my favorite They realized just how silly it had gotten, dialed it up to 11 and rolled with it. The 4th though was plain awful, dull and forced.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Who is/was Mister Banno?

    And ugh, we lost Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia, Adam West, and now Mr. Nakajima… What a year for us older nerds.

  • Eric Hinkle

    The third one is still okay — they have the President of the US giving Fin (the series’ hero) the Order of the Golden Chainsaw; a tornado dropping the Washington Monument point first through the White House; and Fin fighting sharks on the space shuttle while armed with a LIGHTSABER CHAINSAW.

    Agreed on missing Vivica Fox, a lot of people seem to wish they’d kept her.

  • Banno was the guiding force for Godzilla v. the Smog Monster, wrongly believed to be the worst Godzilla movie ever made. It’s maybe third or fourth in that running

  • Eric Hinkle

    Has anyone else here heard about the new Quatermass series coming to TV? Apparently it’s going to be all modern and high concept and everything. Like the new Dr. Who.

  • Will it also be preachy, sanctimonious, full of out of character UST, and borderline unwatchable? Because that also describes nu-Who pretty well. (Well, for me it has finally crossed over from *borderline* to *actually* unwatchable, but at least that means I no longer have to give a damn about whatever this year’s stunt casting will be.)

  • Eric Hinkle

    We can always hope they do a good job of it. That can happen, right?

  • I’ve seen nothing about a new Quatermass, but if they follow the original story near to the letter I’ll be there to watch it. The movies were great.

  • Marsden

    Me, too. I want to see the stories, but it’s just too much of that “stuff” you list anymore. Makes me sad. Plus, the channel I get it on is BBC America and I can’t stand it. It’s the only thing I watch, used to watch, on that one and they blast me with so many of their ads for their other shows it’s dreadful just to plow through it all.

  • Marsden

    Vulture was great. And Damage Control and the Tinkerer! There was so much good stuff without seeming overstuffed. I like looking back at some earlier movies or shows and thinking those thugs probably got those fancy weapons from Tooms Salvage.

  • The Rev.

    Man, do I disagree with that. Maybe if we only considered the Showa run it’d be in the bottom four. But I’d say it’s better than two or three of the Heisei movies and damn near all of the Millennium run. I am probably in the minority with this opinion, though.

    Yeah, Fisher and West sucked, as well. I loved the “Batman” show, and find myself hoping Ken and Sandy will show the movie at T-Fest sometime. It’s not out of the question, since they ran the “Batusi” sequence once, during which Sandy Batusi’d like there was no tomorrow.

  • I gave up cable a few years ago, so I have been buying the new episodes in bulk from Amazon at the beginning of each season (there’s a small discount that way) and then streaming them the day after they show on BBC America. But after last season I was so disappointed that I dropped to buying them one episode at a time so that I could quit if they continued to get more obnoxious. Slogged through 4 eps in this year and was then glad that I could just stop giving them any more money. It’s a shame as I have followed the show since the Pertwee era and actually loved the first two Matt Smith seasons.

  • Hope springs eternal. I just have this feeling they won’t be able to resist the additions of emotional baggage and personal attachments that don’t wear well with the cerebral and (emotionally) cold Quatermass. This is a guy who understands the cold equations and has no hesitation in applying them, which may make him too unsympathetic to the management without significant reinvention.

  • Hey, I can now finally navigate straight to the home page instead of having to back into the site, so I take it that’s a good sign?

  • What is this Heisei and Millennium run you speak of? They didn’t make any more Godzilla after Terror of Mechagodzilla.

    Man, did the Nineties suck for genre flicks. Comics too. Yeesh.

    I’d argue that v. the Smog Monster is better written than the majority of the Heisei series (why do I feel like adding “I’m not crazy, honest” after that statement?) And maybe I’d put most of the Heisei on the same level. v. Megaguirus, too I guess; man was that a dumb flick.

    The thing is that I think they’re more mediocre than truly bad. Though in fairness it has been much, much longer since I’ve watched them than I watched v. the Smog Monster…

  • Man, was the third Matt Smith season bad.

  • And things did not improve from there.

  • Didn’t look like it. I made it about two episodes in to Capaldi and just flat out stopped. Which was depressing as he looked fairly decent as a Doctor.

  • He was decent, although I always felt his characterization went a little too far in the old=crotchety direction when he wasn’t trying too hard to be cool and relevant instead. But both his stories and companions were mostly just plain awful. And Clara’s whole plot derailment of the show continued well past what should have been her natural point of departure. I’d have quit watching earlier except hubby was still holding out hope for improvement, even my Who obsessed teen quit watching before we did.