Skip to main content

Dead Snow (2009)

What’s better than a zombie movie? A zombie movie with Nazis! Nazi zombies, that is. Picture it: Seven Norwegian medical students retreat to the mountains in the dead of winter (When is it not winter in Norway, anyway?), set against a Scandinavian pop and punk soundtrack. All except one, who went ahead of the rest but is mysteriously missing. An old timer advises them to “tread gently” because of the “evil presence” left by the occupying Nazis during World War II. Apparently these particular Nazis were more evil than their ordinary counterparts; they cruelly mistreated the Norwegian villagers and then stole all of their valuables. At some point the townspeople had had enough, rising up to kill as many of their tormentors as they could. The Nazi commander Colonel Herzog plus several of his men fled for the hills with gold and silver in tow. Instead of succumbing to the cold, they became zombies.
The gang finds a wooden box filled with gold coins from the 1940s and precious jewelry hidden under the floorboards where they were storing their beer. In this case the young people are not being punished for their sexual desires but for the bravery of their forefathers. The Nazis want the gold, for sure, but being zombies they are out for a bit of live disembowelment, too. This horror-comedy features very focused, fleet-of-foot zombies; no lurching about like The Walking Dead. The students fight back heroically as they arm themselves appropriately with scythes, chainsaws, and sabers. This film is not for the faint hearted; gird yourself for plenty of blood and guts! With subtitles.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Frank Bender: Local Artist Who Became a Forensic Phenomenon

“If Frank does your bust, you’re toast.” (John Walsh, former host of the long-running television show  America’s Most Wanted ) Although the mustard-yellow building located at 2215 South Street next to Bicycle Therapy now houses an art gallery, from 1986 until his death in 2011, Francis (Frank) Augustus Bender, Jr. lived and worked in this small space. He was first known as a talented painter and sculptor, but in the late 1970s, he embarked on a second career in which he helped local and national law enforcement officials to identify victims of violent crime and to track down individuals who had managed to elude justice for years and even decades. Fascinated with human anatomy, Bender regularly visited Philadelphia’s morgue to learn more about this topic by viewing corpses. After examining a woman whose features had been obliterated by multiple gunshot wounds, Bender boldly declared that he knew what the victim’s face looked like before her injuries. Although he helped ...

The Emotionally Fraught World of the Turkish Language

My Turkish mother did not speak her native language with my sister and I during our childhood lest it prevented us from attaining fluency in our native tongue. Linguistic research has proved my mother wrong. She did, however, often take us to visit our grandparents and other relatives in Ankara,Izmir, and Istanbul almost annually. Before and during our trips, I took self-administered language courses whose curriculums consisted of poorly written instructional books. If only I had had an app like Duolingo back in the 80s, I’d be fluent by now. My studying didn’t go very far. My younger sister Katie and I would commiserate with one another (in English) on the conversational sidelines as my mom engaged in animated dialogue with her many relatives. “They might as well be  barking ,” I complained.  The barrier was felt to be THAT great. “The goat is in the box” became a treasured phrase, but not one likely to prove useful. (Humorous aside: my closest encounter with farm animal...

Blackfish (2013)

Watching  Blackfish  reminded me of the scene in the first season of  The Walking Dead  in which Rick rides a beautiful chestnut horse into Atlanta. He has no idea that he is entering a dead zone of utter destruction and chaos. The viewer soon recognizes that he has placed a beautiful, noble animal—and himself—in peril. The horse is visibly terrified by the smell of death. Zombies attack almost immediately. They tear apart its flesh, devouring it while Rick beats a hasty retreat into a nearby tank. This is the one scene in all four seasons of the series that I dread. Of course, there are countless human victims in the show, but there’s something special about animals that touches our souls. Killer whales have a rich, inner emotional life that neuroscientists and animal behaviorists have observed. They communicate through a complex series of sounds that together form a type of language. In the wild, they travel in families, or pods. The children of a female killer ...