Zombie Apocalypse (2011)

Today I went for a walk to get groceries and travelled past a yard with a bunch of items sitting out for free on the lawn. I spotted a stack of dusted-over DVDs and stopped to read their spines. Nothing looked too compelling, though I did see something called Zombie Apocalypse with Ving Rhames on the cover, so I picked it up and put it in with the groceries. When I got home, I put the groceries in the fridge and fed the disc into the player, as I didn't have anything going on for the afternoon.

Zombie Apocalypse isn't very good, nor does it benefit from being spectacularly awful. The worst part of the production is the ubiquity of CGI. With every zombie decapitation, there comes a spill of computer-generated gore, the blood physics wildly unconvincing. The same can be said for the layered-on smoke and fire, which look spectral and otherworldly atop the movie's locales. Some present-day pundits may decry AI, but a lot of AI slop looks far superior to CGI of this caliber. I guess the only upside to CGI vis-a-vis AI is that someone got paid for their efforts. On account of the constantly looming CGI and the preponderance of suburban and small-town backdrops, the arena for this zombie apocalypse feels rather claustrophobic. 

To the credit of the writers and filmmakers, though, they did manage to do some world-building. Regarding zombies, we learn how to discern between "shamblers" and "onesies" and get some additional details about their behavior in packs. Indeed, the writers are very eager to share the terminology of this world. This happens mostly through conversations, so there's a lot of expository dialogue in this film. I found this a bit intrusive, though the filmmakers do manage to make some intriguing conceptual space within the limited physical and digital space onscreen.

I'll give Zombie Apocalypse points for the sense of odyssey that it creates. The party of protagonists are on a quest to reach a ship that will take them to a safe-zone, and they traverse various suburbs and small-city downtowns to get there. They're perpetually stumbling upon zombie ambushes as they do so. The film is picaresque in this way. 

The characters are generic and not especially likeable, at least at first, but as their odyssey carries on, I couldn't help but feel some minimal investment in them. Ving Rhames is the only inherent standout, and he does everything that's expected of him. In 2011, Rhames was seven years removed from Dawn of the Dead, and he clearly knows the drill. By this point, he also had the piss-poor 2008 Day of the Dead remake under his belt and was solidly typecast in the zombie-action subgenre. He's mostly just going through the motions in Zombie Apocalypse.

Eventually, the group splits up unwittingly, and one of the subsequent branches encounters a new group of humans. There's a cute exchange when the protagonists and the new group realize that their terminologies differ—e.g. the latter calls the monsters "the dead" rather than "zombies". These little meta moments work in Zombie Apocalypse because they're not constantly shoehorned in as per recent blockbuster tripe such as Love and Thunder.  

In time, we see group members die, and it's not unmoving. In terms of emotionality and plot, this made-for-TV movie moves, if nothing else. All told, Zombie Apocalypse wasn't a total waste of my Sunday afternoon. So if you see it lying on someone's lawn for free, I urge you to pick it up and give it a watch. Once you've watched it, don't throw it away. It's worth passing on to someone else with time to kill.  

Blood Sucking Freaks (1976)

Last night I went on Tubi looking for a grindhouse movie, and damned if I didn't find one in Blood Sucking Freaks. This 1976 film fully delivers as exploitation horror, depicting various means of torture including thumbscrews, guillotines, and electrocutions. And, delivering as promised on its title, the film features an especially memorable scene involving a mad physician drilling into a woman's skull and gleefully sucking out the blood and cerebrospinal fluid with a straw. He gets his comeuppance, though, as the good doctor is torn apart after being thrown into a cell full of long-captive nude women who have turned feral. He's an outlier, as the victims in this film are almost entirely women in the nude, and so the misogyny is pervasive and undeniable. 

The violent vignettes are tied together by a very loose plot in which a demented dramatist named "Sardu" attempts to gain exposure for his Grand Guignol-style act. To this end, he eventually kidnaps a famous ballerina affiliated with the Kennedy Center (the one now chaired by President Donald Trump) and brainwashes her with his sadomasochism gospel. As he subjects her to assorted forms of psychological torture, his assistant Ralphus—a little person with an impressively tall afro—dances and claps with a leering grin. If it's not already obvious, Blood Sucking Freaks is a wholly rebarbative experience. That said, the film maintains a goofball tone all throughout, which by turns helps mitigate the mean-spiritedness (a bit) but also amplifies the carnivalesque madness. 

Yet Blood Sucking Freaks also contains some genuine flashes of artistry. The film culminates in the ballerina giving a public performance in which she elegantly kicks a bound critic to death, which makes for a rather sublime and unexpected viewing experience. Where else but in a 1970s grindhouse movie are you going to see a ballerina leaving a theater critic in a bloody mess? 

When I heard that name "Ralphus" given to Sardu's assistant, I must confess that I thought of World Championship Wrestling, where a schlubby bald man of that same name served as the personal security guard of future WWE legend Chris Jericho back in the 1990s. In the obligatory post-movie Googling, I learned that Jericho, now running out the clock on his career in AEW, is a huge fan of Blood Sucking Freaks. In fact, Jericho considers Blood Sucking Freaks one of his favorite movies, and he's even written a song about it. I find this to be a very telling revelation. It's one thing to appreciate a film like Blood Sucking Freaks as a product of a unique cinematic ecosystem at a particular time, but it's quite another to say it's one of your favorite movies. I mean, the movie involves nearly constant sadomasochistic violence against captive nude women, the dad jokes flying as liberally as limbs. I would ask Jericho, Just how much has this film shaped your sensibilities as a person and a performer? Perhaps the answer would explain some of the questionable gimmicks, storylines, and projects Jericho has attempted in the long sunset of his career.

Chris Jericho, singing for his band Fozzy
(Credit: Lisa, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

As a further aside, I'll note that when I heard one particular swell in the musical score as the mad physician is introduced, I was reminded of hip hop artist Necro, whose track "Evil Shit" uses a portion of the organ music from Blood Sucking Freaks to great effect. Having revealed my enthusiasm for exploitation movies, professional wrestling, and Necro's raps in the course of this brief article, the reader may now be posing serious questions about my aesthetic sensibilities.

Execrable or not, I have no choice but to appreciate Blood Sucking Freaks, as it is an archetypal grindhouse movie. In fact, were I compelled to identify a single movie as representative of exploitation horror as a whole, I might pick Blood Sucking Freaks. With just one screening, it has forced itself into the mix with movies like I Drink Your Blood and Maniac that could also win the ignominious distinction of quintessential grindhouse horror flick. But with that, let me be clear: I'm not saying Blood Sucking Freaks is one of my favorite movies, or even good. Unlike those other aforementioned grindhouse classics, I'm never going to watch this turd again.

The Short Story Substack

Do you like short stories? If so, you're not the only one left who still does. The Short Story Substack (shortstory.substack.com) is dedicated to publishing one high-quality short story every month, and it has won a steady readership. Month to month, the Short Story Substack delivers as advertised. The examples are legion. The January 2025 story, "I Know" by Hannah Smart, unravels epistemically sophisticated dark humor in the style of a more polished, palatable David Foster Wallace. Melissa Ren's "Seasons Change" tells a sad story in reverse to realize a wistful, haunting literary rendering of old age. And the Substack also offers genre fare, such as Tyler Grant's "Worms", a horror yarn that culminates in protracted, gruesome imagery worthy of the basest splatterpunk anthology. All told, there's something for every reader here, making the Short Story Substack well worth the subscription fee. But it's not just worthwhile for readers. Smart, Ren, and Grant each received between $400 to $500 for their pieces, as published authors share in the Substack's subscription revenue. For that reason, the Short Story Substack should draw the attention of writers, too, as they'll potentially be well-compensated for the time and effort it takes to tell a quality short story.

Jason Voorhees Saved My Social Life

As a child in the 80s and 90s, I had a clear-cut vision of what adulthood was. Adults read big books written by towering intellects. They watched sophisticated cinema made by auteurs. They discussed complex ideas and social issues over dinner and drinks, drifting between politics, history, and literature. They looked for intellectual challenges and sought self-betterment, a profusion of novel experiences and imaginings perpetually broadening their frame of reference. Adult potential was boundless.

Then I became an adult, and I must confess I was a little disappointed.

In social situations, I met people in their thirties who read young adult fiction, if they read at all. Their shelves were filled with Ninja Turtles and GI Joe action figures, not books. Their notion of “cinema” consisted entirely of superhero movies, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Transformers. George Lucas and Michael Bay were their “auteurs.”

Video games were all-important, too, with Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Street Fighter factoring heavily into dinner-party discussions. Pokémon came up frequently in several friend groups, and not just those composed of self-identifying geeks.

When groups ruminated at gatherings, they did so over plot points of the Star Wars sequel trilogy (The Rise of Skywalker prompted particularly passionate debate). The most burning social issue I ever heard discussed involved supposedly “woke” casting decisions in the latest iterations of the aforementioned intellectual properties. With respect to new experiences, my friends and acquaintances were content with perpetual reboots, reimaginings, and requels of their childhood favorites.

In short, everyone had franchises they fancied and licensed characters they loved. In any given friend group, these IPs became nothing less than totemic for most members. One could always find the “Ninja Turtles Guy” or the “Hermione Granger Gal”; the “Street Fighter Dude” and the “Pokémon Moll” were never too far away. They could all talk breathlessly about their beloved franchise, ever able to share new thoughts and speculations about prospective reboots while lamenting previous ones.

Many people my age couldn’t be held down to one license. Instead, they had multiple totems to which they gave their love and devotion. Their discussions drifted seamlessly between Avengers and Star Wars and Turtles and Final Fantasy XIV. The references disoriented me, and I felt like I was drowning. Virtually everyone identified with a diverse array of licenses. The associated imagery decorated their phones, clothing, and key rings. Licensed baubles and tchotchkes dangled from numerous parts of their person. They bought stuffies of Mario and Sonic and Pikachu for their offspring and for themselves. For Halloween, they sent their children as the cutest IPs and dressed themselves and their spouses as complementary characters.

I, meanwhile, had IP envy.

It seemed like everyone had their licensed-character familiars except for me. In social situations, conversation would make its inevitable turn to these cherished franchises, and I could only stammer. I’d seen Star Wars and thought it was okay, but I couldn’t discourse on it. I’d played with Ninja Turtles as a child but had forgotten the principal characters’ names. I enjoyed a few rounds of Street Fighter on occasion but had few cogitations on the technical nuances of the gameplay system. I was wholly uninterested in pursuing Pokémon in public as a grown man, and that made me feel like a weirdo.

In the meantime, I watched these fans of manifold licenses advance in their careers, buy houses, and beget children, becoming productive members of society. Yet I was on the outside looking in. I was still trying to make a life by reading big books about non-licensed, original characters and thinking through social issues unrelated to the casting of Hollywood blockbusters. I had nothing tangible to show for it. All told, I was lost in a naive and outmoded vision of adulthood from my childhood.

At the nethermost depths of my gloom, I made a desperate attempt to turn my gaze backward, seeking to dredge up my childhood. Consigned to twisted bedding, I tossed and turned from noon to night, never sleeping, trying to scry into the murky waters of my ancient past. My childhood, I found, had sunk too far away and was fathomless, so I could not pull it back to the surface.

I could, however, see faint traces of my adolescence in the middle depths, and in subsequent reminiscences upon my pubescence, hope reemerged. The fog of past decades parted, and an image rose up from below.

Shooting from the deep came a hockey mask.

Jason Voorhees had come to save me.

As a teenager, I loved the Friday the 13th films. Their promise of violence and brief nudity had consistently captivated my attention. The lakeside setting made for an instant vacation. The teenage party atmosphere spoke to a more promising social configuration (certainly more entertaining than the adult milieu). Rewatching these films as a grown-up, I realized I had not only uncovered an aquifer of nostalgia, but I had found what I needed most: a totemic license of my own.

From that point on, social gatherings became coming-out parties for me, in that I’d advertise myself as a Friday the 13th fan. In my Friday the 13th hoodie, hat, and custom-made sweatpants, I was loud and proud. Going forward, all the Ninja Turtle Guys and Pokémon Molls would know that I was the Friday the 13th Guru. In mixed company, I would reverently take my turn confessing my fanaticism. With that breathlessness of the true fan, I would speculate about potential sequels and castigate entries of the series I found off-putting (e.g. Parts 8 and X). I would fluently spew all manner of Friday the 13th minutiae (or “lore”, as we fans so loftily refer to it), ranging from kill counts in each entry to trivia about filming locations and production schedules. Then I would yield back and make way for the next person so that they could testify to their own personal license-bound experiences. This is socialization.

Truth be told, few of my friends and acquaintances had ever screened a Friday the 13th movie. If they had, it was probably watched ironically. Understandably, the Friday the 13th films struck them as rather quaint and unsophisticated compared to the billion-dollar box office bonanzas for which they live. But now I at least had something they could begin to understand — an obsession with a recognizable IP — and so I was no longer a social zero. I could now float confidently on the periphery of their friend-groups. Jason was my life-raft.

It didn’t matter that most of my acquaintances were too preoccupied with Marvel movies and Star Wars sequelae to hear what I was saying. Nor did it matter that their attention would quickly shift when I gave unsolicited descriptions of Tom Savini’s gore effects in Parts I and IV. I could nevertheless sense that the fellow Millennials I met at parties were starting to respect me, because I too had a license that I loved and lived for. Surely, they could perceive that I was as dedicated to Friday the 13th and Jason as they were to Pokémon and Pikachu or Marvel and Deadpool or any number of other prime licenses, and they could appreciate that. We were all in this overdetermined IP morass together, after all. Finally, they could see me as a true adult in their Millennial mold.

After all that, I still read big books, but now it’s the stately Crystal Lake Memories volume, supplemented by the hard-to-find novelizations of the early Friday the 13th movies. I even bought up Berkley Books’ line of young adult Friday the 13th novels from the 90s. I have cleared my bookshelves of Updike and Sartre to make room for Jason figurines from each episode in their original boxes, not to mention a trio of his Funko Pops (hockey-masked, baghead, and 8-Bit versions). Altogether, they form a household shrine, giving praise to Jason’s salvational powers in the social realm.

Now, fellow middle-class Millennials can come to my place and feel at ease knowing that they are in the home of one of their own. Soon, I may be able to host my own parties, with my guests resting assured they will be swaddled in the comfortable clutter of overpriced licensed memorabilia. Though they may not watch the Friday the 13th movies, they will be soothed by the presence of the IP, even if it is a less familiar one. While the hockey-masked killer Jason may be intimidating to those uninitiated to the franchise, he’s a lot less threatening than the possibility of encountering new and original ideas.

The Author, ready for a night on the town

So if you find yourself adrift in the Millennial experience of pop culture, and you are still trying to take consolation in philosophy, literature, and cinema, here is my advice: rediscover a franchise from your childhood and go all in. Put down the books and the art films and pick up every product bearing your beloved childhood license. And once you’ve done that, find another franchise, and then another, always diving deeper and deeper therein. Each one will anchor you more securely in the zeitgeist. Soon enough, you’ll be fully submerged in nostalgia for your childhood, making you a full-fledged Millennial adult.

[This article originally appeared on Medium.com.]