It's the end of the world as we know it... so now what do I do?

There is way too much to try and slam in this posting, so I'll try to brief on some aspects. The full theatrical trailer for 300 is online; check it out. Next, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning opens tomorrow, so I'll have a review up as soon as possible. Similarly, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2-Disc Ultimate Edition DVD hit stores this week. Like the theatrical prequel, I'll be working on getting a review of that new DVD set up quickly as I have personally never seen the original TCM before. I know, I know, but don't worry, I am ashamed.

On one last TCM note, IGN has a great article about the history of Ed Gein, the inspiration for Leatherface and several other horror movie icons including some current pictures of where the Gein farm used to be and Ed's cemetary plot.

Moving on, I have some great books to tell you about. Return your jaws to the previous position, yes, I did say books. Apparently, hell has frozen over, because I have just finished reading not one, but two books for fun. Both books are by Max Brooks (the son of legendary filmmaker and comedian Mel Brooks) and feature zombie in the title, so it is relevant for this blog.

Brooks' first book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, is a classic parody of the survival guides that have become popular in the last several years. The cover, its size and paper type all mimic the survival guides perfectly. But that's just the beginning of the joke, inside is full of 272 pages of complete straight-faced, deadpan zombie comedy. The Zombie Survival Guide is broken up into sections, which include weapons, travel, defense, attacking, permanent relocation and accounts of "actual" zombie attacks throughout history. Not once does Brooks break the serious tone, he actually makes you want planning for the zombie apocalypse! Well, maybe not quite, but he does include tons of great information about surviving in a chaotic world and makes the reader question how prepared he really is if the worst was really to happen. But, personally, I'm sticking to my guns. My girlfriend tells me that zombies aren't real; that there will never be a zombie outbreak. You know what I ask her: Did anyone think man would go to the moon? Did anyone think that a mysterious disease called AIDS would come from Africa and become a fairly serious epidemic? Did anyone think that primates could be taught sign-language? The answers are no, no and no. I'm sticking to my guns and using Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide as a starter to my zombie scenario plans.

Brooks' more recent book has received quite a bit more hype than his first and the movie rights were fought over and purchased before it even hit shelves. (Brad Pitt's production company won the rights, by the way.) World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War has much of the same serious tone as Brooks' guide without as much of the humor. From the jacket to the introduction to the final chapter, Brooks never breaks out of the future world of his story. The introduction explains to the reader that the author is writing an oral history of World War Z to show the human element of what happened during the war and its effect on people. To set the universe a bit better, the entire world is overrun by zombies, humanity survives and after the war, the author is commisioned to do a report for the U.N. about what happened around the world. The U.N. makes him remove all the human aspects from their report, so he publishes a book. The books is broken up into sections, some long and some short, that are essentially interviews with people around the globe telling about their experience during the Zombie War. Some stories represent major events in the war (the first outbreak, Israel's quarantine, rebuilding government and the turning point in the war), while others are some moments with individuals sharing small events that happened to them personally. Brooks does an incredible job intertwining these two types of stories within the book to give the reader an idea of what was happening on a global scale as well as what it was like for the individuals caught in a world being overrun by the living dead.

In short, I loved World War Z. Yes, it's about zombies, but at the same time, it's not really horror. This is a story, or rather a collection of stories, that tell about humanity dealing with extraordinary situations and finding the will to survive even when almost all hope is lost. If you aren't squeamish and can stand some pretty gruesome scenes, this book will not disappoint.

Lastly, Halloween is rapidly approaching and I'm going to start putting up some recommended movies for the week to start getting into that scary spirit. For this week, I am going to go with Rob Zombie's brilliant two part horror series, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. House is basically a TCM knock-off, but it's so much fun and done so well that it's definitely worth watching. Rejects isn't exactly a horror flick although it is chockful of sadistic violence and gore, so, again, definitely worth a watch.

Thanks for checking in!