Automaton Transfusion

It's late, and I just got done watching this. Instead of a coherent review, I'll just throw this out there. These are some thoughts that I had while watching this movie.



Have you ever wanted to see a guy in a Ramones shirt reach into a pregnant woman's stomach, pull out the fetus, and eat it right in front of her as she screamed, cried, and, ultimately, died? If you answered yes to this question, then you would probably love Automaton Transfusion (or, at the very least, you would love one scene of Automaton Transfusion).

The acting was awful. The characters were all unlikeable (at best). The gore was pretty good for the most part. One girl had her jaw completely ripped from her face. Another was torn limb-from-limb. One guy was forced to kill his own father by pushing his eye onto a shard of glass (kind of like the splinter in Zombi II, but nowhere near as graphic or cool). But, when people weren't being ripped apart like animals, this was a terrible movie. And it was right from the opening credits.

I've never felt inclined to comment on the opening credits of a movie before, but these were terrible. Every couple of seconds, there would be a big flash of light. I felt like I almost had a seizure while I was watching it.

As one of the characters picked up a chainsaw, he said, "Ash would be so proud." That was good for a chuckle.

Our hero is a kid named Chris...some punk who thinks he's smarter than people and makes the worst possible decision available to him at that time. One of these decisions was to make his way across town to get a serum to make him immune to zombie bites...but he has conveniently blocked out the part about most of his friends being eaten alive. I'd say getting bitten is the least of his worries. Another of his decisions was to leave a perfectly safe garage in order to get to the school. His reasoning? "There will be survivors at the school." Never mind the fact that one of the big rules in dealing with zombies is to stay away from populated areas.

He's also terrible under pressure. When rummaging through a lab looking for the serum, his girlfriend cries out, "Where is it? What are we even looking for?" To which our hero replies, "Anything that can save us." I'm pretty sure she meant, "What does the bottle look like? Is there a label? How will I know when I've found this serum?" Jackass. She should have left him right then and there.

The ending will make you madder than you have any reason to be for a movie this terrible. I don't want to ruin anything by saying how it ended, but you will be mad.

In conclusion: if they were to splice together all the action scenes, it would make for a pretty cool 20 minutes. Suffice it to say, that's not what they did here. This was a bad movie with a couple of good moments...but those good moments didn't even come close to making up for the diaper stain that was Automaton Transfusion. That quote on the front of the movie that says, "One of the best zombie films in decades"? An out-and-out lie.

Why...hello there. What's your name?

Zombie Club Update/Zombi 2

We haven't given up on Zombie Club. In fact, Cris has bought a ton of great movies that we're really excited about watching. But the girls have decided to have their book club only on Sunday nights. With it being football season and all, we have been a little preoccupied on Sunday nights. So it's looking like Zombie Club is on hiatus until football season is over.
We did, however, watch a movie that was never talked about. So let's do that here.

We watched "Zombi 2" at our second meeting. This movie cover just says "Zombie", so allow me to explain that.
"Zombi" was the Italian version of "Dawn of the Dead". So, when "Zombi 2" was released in America, it was just referred to as "Zombie", seeing as how our "Zombi" was "Dawn of the Dead". Does that make sense?

Like I said, we watched this movie at our second meeting. We had heard good things about it, but we didn't know what to expect. There were two scenes in particular that we had heard about. One of them was a zombie fighting a shark, while the other one was a woman getting a wood splinter in her eye.
Neither of them disappointed.
The zombie/shark fight scene was a little slow, but it was about what you would expect. An underwater zombie slowly grappling a shark, repeatedly trying to bite it (I think the shark was bit, but there was no blood, so it was tough to tell). Chad had questions about how a zombie was able to "survive" underwater. We consulted "The Zombie Survival Guide" and found a section on respiration, which states:
"The lungs of the undead continue to function in that they draw air into and expel it from the body. This function ccounts for a zombie's signature moan. What the lungs and body chemistry fail to accomplish, however, is to extract oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. Given that Solanum obviate the need for both of thee functions, the entire human respiratory system is obsolete in the body of a ghoul. This explains how the living dead can 'walk underwater' or survive in environments lethal to humans. Their brains, as noted earlier, are oxygen-independent." (pg 12)

The other scene, the one with the woman getting a sliver in her eye, was pretty fantastic. It was slow. It was gruesome. It (somehow) took off half of her head. And it started like this:


The movie started kind of slow, but, once it got going, it was actually really good. The special effects left quite a bit to be desired (especially the Molotov cocktail fight at the end), but it was still extremely enjoyable to watch.

Highly recommended.