Bonus video review: "Dead Snow"

Here's everything you need to know about this Norwegian horror comedy: It has zombie Nazis.

ZOMBIE NAZIS!! I mean, doesn't that say it all? I think after hearing this information, pretty much everyone can decide whether they want to chow down on this goofy helping of splatter fun, or avoid it like the plague.

Count me among the enthusiasts.

Directed and co-written by Tommy Wirkola, "Dead Snow" is a gleeful send-up of the zombie genre, while delightfully reveling in the blood-and-gore celebration.

The characters -- a bunch of medical students taking an Easter holiday at a remote cabin in the snow-choked mountains -- will often break into English to quote American movies or talk about them. One chubby fellow, who's a professed film nerd, even wonders if they aren't acting out the plot of a cheap horror flick with their ill-advised trip to the middle of nowhere.

When the group discovers a cache of gold hidden in the cabin, this same character intones: "Fortune and glory, kid, fortune and glory."

(That's from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," for those slow on the uptake.)

Unfortunately for our friends, the treasure was stolen by the Nazis from the local populace, who eventually rebelled, driving the greedy soldiers into the mountains to die. But their withered corpses -- still dressed in suspiciously fresh-looking World War II uniforms -- remain hungry for the treasure, and human flesh.

For a low-budget horror movie, the bloody special effects are pretty impressive. One person's head is ripped apart by several zombies, leaving his brain to splatter on the ground in front of his friends.

There's a lot of entrails -- they even play a role in the plot. One guy gets disemboweled and keeps on running, but his progress is halted when his intestines snag on a tree branch.

Another fellow makes like Ash from "Evil Dead 2" with a chainsaw.

"Dead Snow" manages to be both funny and horrifying. For people (like me) who love generous helpings of cinematic gore, this flick is a banquet.

DVD extras are pretty generous, and run longer than the movie's 91 minutes.

There's a detailed making-of documentary, and featurettes on the make-up and special effects processes, outtakes and sound production.

There are also a pair of lengthy video segments that chronicle the production ("Madness in the North!") and the film's marketing in the U.S. ("Madness in the West!"). Amateurish but often hilarious, these videologs capture the cast and crew in amazingly frank commentaries.

For example, Wirkola says that in casting his film, he simply chose the actors who would work the cheapest. The actors themselves jokingly (?) berate the film company as a bunch of cheapskates and amateurs.

Especially humorous is the cast's trip to the Sundance festival, where "Dead Snow" was a huge hit. One actor -- sporting a massive cold sore on his lip the whole time -- crashes a fellow cast member's bath, and comments that the rich American food is causing them all to poop several times a day.

What a load ... of fun.

Movie: 3 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Video review: "Zombieland"

There's always been a comedic element to zombie flicks, at least in their modern incarnation. George A. Romero had several moments of dark humor in 1968's seminal "Night of the Living Dead," and the laughs have shambled side-by-side with the flesh-eaters ever since.

If other movies have dipped a toe into humorous waters, then "Zombieland" dives head-first into comedy, with often uproarious results.

The set-up is similar to a hundred other films: The zombie apocalypse is upon us, and it's up to the few remaining humans to survive. Our foursome of heroes take the names of the cities they're from: Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a video game dweeb; Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), a pair of butt-kicking sisters; and Tallahassee (a hilarious Woody Harrelson), a redneck who was born to eradicate the undead.

The filmmakers seem to know and love every convention of the zombie genre, tweaking them for comic effect while still delivering a satisfying helping of gleeful violence. At one point, Tallahassee takes out a grocery store full of walkers with a banjo.

Whether you're horror fan or just want a good laugh, "Zombieland" offers plenty of biting humor.
DVD extras cover a nice scope of material, though they're not as engrossing as you'd like.

Two making-of featurettes total about 30 minutes, but there's nothing really new other than the revelation the project was originally conceived as a television pilot. Seven deleted scenes are similarly underwhelming.

Better is the feature showing how the special effects were achieved, combining live action with layers of CGI.

I was glad to see a commentary track that actually has the participation of the stars: Harrelson and Eisenberg are joined by director Ruben Fleischer and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

The boys keep the banter flowing at a nice pace, although the constant complimenting each other gets to be a little much.

In addition to these, the Blu-ray version also comes with a "Beyond the Grave" picture-in-picture track with storyboards and animatics, plus a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Zombieland"

Zombies have become a powerhouse franchise. Movies starring the walking dead, already popular for decades, have seen a resurgence, and zombie literature is on the rise with books like "World War Z" and even classic literary spoofs like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

The next logical step was zombie comedy films. "Shaun of the Dead" got the ball rolling, but "Zombieland" immediately leaps to the front spot of an admittedly nascent genre.

Hip, ironic and often raucously funny, "Zombieland" will have you holding in your guts with laughter almost as often as the zombies try to rip the viscera out of their onscreen prey.

I mean, what other zombie flick would pair two of indie film's young rising stars, Jesse Eisenberg ("The Squid and the Whale") and Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), both known for their shy, introspective roles, as post-apocalyptic ass-kickers?

Well, not quite: Eisenberg's still pretty dorky as Columbus, a lonely dweeb who spent most of his days playing "World of Warcraft" before the undead outbreak. He's come up with a list of rules for surviving what he calls Zombieland.

The first one is "Cardio" -- as in, maintain your ability to run fast. As the droll prologue narration notes to a scene of an obese guy getting run down and feasted upon, the fatties were the first to die.

Other rules include the "Double Tap," which instructs that even when you think a zombie is dead, put another bullet in its brain just to be sure. When the world is infested with creatures that want to eat you, now's not the time to get stingy with the ammunition.

Columbus soon happens upon a guy writing his own rules, which all boil down to kicking walking corpse butt in as many inventive ways as possible -- baseball bats, chainsaws, even a banjo. Tallahassee (all the characters go by the name of the city they're from) figures that everyone was put on earth to be really good at one thing, and his just happens to be killing zombies. It's Woody Harrelson's best roles in years.

This intrepid pair meets up with a pair of sisters, Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Breslin), who pull a con on them and steal their guns and ride. Soon enough, though, they've joined forces, with a love struck Columbus making plans to invade Kansas.

Director Ruben Fleisher, in addition to showing a good eye for the action scenes, keeps the tone goofy and light. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick seem to have watched every zombie movie ever made, and joke around with the conventions while clearly reveling in them.

So when the boys stumble across a Hummer loaded up with assault weapons, Tallahassee shouts to the heavens, "Thank God for rednecks!"

The movie reaches its full stride of daffiness when the foursome arrives in Hollywood, and they decide to crash in a celebrity mansion, only to find the one belonging to Bill Murray still occupied by its owner. In a short but rich stretch of screen time, Murray plays "Ghostbusters" with his guests and even delivers an apology of sorts for those awful "Garfield" flicks. (Stick around after the end credits for some more fun.)

Based on "Zombieland," I'd say the undead comedy genre deserves to rise again.

3 stars