Undead
(Region 4 DVD)
(2003)
review by Mickey Juice

Made for less than 1 million Aussie dollars the Spierig brothers have quite possibly made one of the best zombie movies, no make that best horror movies, ever to come out of Australia. It may just indeed knock off the current title holders "House Boat Horror" and "Crocodile Dundee in LA". Crikey! The movie has been sold to over 16 countries and has had a successful run at film festivals around the world, picking up various awards along the way. Lion's Gate has picked up the rights for a North American and Canadian release.
Undead was the creation of twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig who hail from Brisbane, Queensland. They split the directing duties between them, along with writing, producing, editing and sound design for the film. After creating the "Undead" trilogy (3 short zombie films) in 1994 whilst in film school, the brothers further expanded their zombie movie making ideas and started on creating an "Undead" feature length film. After they left film school the brothers completed some commercial work and various short films, and the money earned (along the rest of their life savings) would go into funding Undead. There was no studio funding here folks, it was all up to the Spierig’s to raise the cash and complete the movie themselves. Reading about the low-budget nature of the movie, I wasn’t expecting much, maybe something like Blair Witch Project or Howling 3. What they came up with was a very funny, great looking horror flick that is a throwback to the classic all-out-gore zombie flicks of the past.

All is quiet in the rural town of Berkley, Qld, population: not many. That is, until meteorites start to fall from the sky, turning many of the townsfolk into flesh eating zombies.A small group of survivors get together and must make a collective stance against all the invading zombies, as well as contend with various other problems such as acid rain and alien abductions.They initially find each other in the house of local resident, Marion (Mungo McKay) who happens to be the resident gun nut and is also an alien abductee. No one in the town wants to believe his alien abduction story, so he has become an outcast living on his own in his farmhouse. His obsession with firearms also gives the group a distinct advantage when it comes to slaughtering the walking dead. Marion’s trademark triple-barrel shotgun would even give Reggie from Phantasm a run for his money!

Included in the this bickering band of survivors is the foul mouthed local cop Harrison (Dirk Hunter), his new constable Molly (Emma Randall) on her first day of duty, local beauty queen Rene (Felicity Mason), charter pilot Wayne (Rob Jenkins) and his pregnant girlfriend Sallyanne (Lisa Cunningham). The cop Harrison provides much of the comic relief, not being able to string to works together without swearing! They all discover that working together as a team, quickly becomes just as hard as fighting the zombies.

One of the things that stand out when watching this film is the polished production. The Spierig’s set out to create a very professional looking film, basically make it look like a movie with a much higher budget. A lot of this comes from the fact that the movie shot on Super 16mm film and then transferred and finished on high-definition video. The 35mm print made via this process looks a lot better than had the film been blown up directly from 16mm to 35mm. This prevents the low budget look of films such as Texas Chainsaw and Evil Dead. The print is a lot cleaner and blemish free. This comes through great on DVD, and transfer provided by Imagine Entertainment is excellent. The transfer onto hi-def video made it possible for a lot of the scenes to be extensively colour graded, this allowed the Spierig’s to provide a contrast between the early scenes in Berkley to the later zombie invasion scenes. Presented in 5.1DD surround (encoded at 448Kb/s), the audio is of even better quality, the surround channels are used very effectively. The score, composed by Cliff Bradley, plays more like an action-adventure style theme and suits the film well, especially the more comedic moments. The "March of the Undead" theme gives the movie an original style all of it’s own and reminds me of music played over the opening credits of "Brain Dead". Once again low budget restraints were overcome by using a mixture of computer elements (an extensive sample library) and live recordings (recorded in the Cliff’s house). Elements of the score can be downloaded from cliff Bradley's official site www.cliffbradley.com/

The Spierig’s love their horror movies and their influences can be seen on the screen. From the great Romero zombie effects of the first half of the movie, the Evil Dead style humour and visual shots, to the ever present gore and bloody carnage reminiscent of Peter Jackson's Brain Dead. Speaking of which, some of the visual and special effects are some of the best seen in a zombie film. The boys don't hold back when applying the blood (over 600 litres of fake blood was used in the production). As I’m sure you know, the 300 effects shots were also created by the twins at home on their own PC's. Because they were working at film resolution, some frames would take over 24 hours to render, and there wasn't always a guarantee that the computer wouldn't crash! Only 2 of the effects shots were outsourced to another effects company, I’ll let you guess which ones they are.

Successfully melding several movie genres including Sci-fi, thriller, comedy and classic zombie horror, the Spierig’s have presented a very entertaining piece of horror with a few original surprises along the way.
Some may say it’s over-rated or even resort to calling it a "Brain Dead rip-off", but it's been years since a decent straight out zombie movie has hit our screens, so this is a refreshing change.
Put simply, horror movie fans will recognise what this movie is about; a return to the bloody gory days of simple, low-budget, brain munching zombie fun. I'm sure Undead will quickly find a cult audience and be compared to many of the great zombie flicks of the past. And deservedly so…

The DVD
Currently Undead is only available on Region 4 (Australia) DVD, of which this is only a rental disc. The sell-thru version will be released in autumn (the fall) in Australia. The extras are very comprehensive and achieve what all good extras should set out to do, that is, further improve your enjoyment of the feature movie. Low budget film makers owe it to themselves to check them out (the green-screen made from an art canvas is great!). It shows low-budget film making at its best and the total commitment of the Spierig brothers.

Some of the features include:

Crew Commentary from Peter & Michael Spierig Cinematographer 
Andrew Strahorn; Make-up artist Steven Boyle, 
Cast Commentary - Mungo McKay (Marion); Dirk Hunter (Harrison); 
Emma Randall (Molly)
The Making Of Undead (35:48)
Toronto International Film Festival Screening (9:23)
Internet Featurette - The Zombies (1:43)
Camera and Make-up tests (2:11)
Homemade Dolly Construction Video (2:02)
Animatic to Film Comparison (11:58)
Deleted Scenes, 
InternetTeaser (0:21)
Teaser Trailer (1:32), 
Theatrical Trailer (2:29)
Production Notes
Production Stills (28)
Artwork and Design Sketches (14) 
plus Cast and Crew Biographies.

The commentaries and main "making-of" cover pretty much everything      
in the making of Undead, especially all the challenges the brothers 
had to overcome whilst making their film, including the longs hours,
illness and their van which was constantly breaking down. The
homemade dolly construction is also interesting, proving that all you 
need is a mate who can weld in order to make your own camera 
dolly (complete with crane arm). The package is rounded off by the 
usual extras such as deleted scenes, trailers, make-up & camera tests 
and an animatic of the movies final scene.