DEAD MOON RISING
MOVIE REVIEW

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ETHAN PECK)

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A SIERRA NEVADA
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UNIVERSAL DEAD
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GARY GRAHAM)

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THE CRUSADER
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GARY GRAHAM)

Review by
E.C. McMullen Jr.

DEAD MOON RISING

- 2007
USA Release: March 4, 2008
Anubis Digital
Rated: USA: R
USA Release, April 1, 2007

My bro, Kelly, loves a bit of dialog from The Muppet Movie, where the Muppets are heading to Hollywood to become movie stars and meet up with Gonzo, who also wants to be a movie star.

Gonzo: "I want to go to Bombay, India and become a movie star.
Fozzie: "You don't go to Bombay to become a movie star. You go where we're going: Hollywood!
Gonzo: "Well, sure, if you want to do it the easy way." 1

And now to my review of DEAD MOON RISING. See Writer and Director, Mark E. Poole, wanted to make a feature length movie. He has dreams of becoming a movie director, see? But he also likes it in Louisville, Kentucky (NOT pronounced Louis-Ville, this movie will have you know), and he doesn't want to go to Hollywood to make his movies (actually, there is a bit of argument even among the citizens of Louisville, just how the name of their fair city is properly pronounced).

So like any maverick film maker, Mark went out and became Writer, Director, Cinematographer, Producer, Editor, Composer, and Visual Effects artist (he did the digital compositing) on DEAD MOON RISING.

Tsk! Tsk!, say the Hollywood folks.

The latest Hollywood mantra of 2007 says that Directors should never edit their own movies - they're too close to it! (I know it sounds stupid, and there is almost no evidence to back it up, but that's what they say). Have a Director edit his own movies and you'll wind up making garbage like Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Sam Raimi, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino. In Hollywood, the latest flavor of stupidity is never examined. Thinking through anything is almost always discouraged in Hollywood, and I've heard this meme repeated dozens of times in the last few months. It doesn't hold water, and the second you question it, said person abruptly changes the subject and ignores you.

Which is how they do conversation here.

Why the hell film makers like Robert Rodriguez and Mark E. Poole (not that they are at the same level) would turn their backs on all of this is beyond me!

So Mark made his movie. But just because he did a lot of things doesn't mean he did everything. Tons of people bought into his vision of a whacked-out zombie movie. So many in fact, that Mark applied to Guinness World Book of Records as he thinks he may have broken a world record for having the most actors dressed as zombies in a movie.

TRIVIA

1 What was hilarious anarchy in 1979's THE MUPPET MOVIE, became amazingly prescient in 1990, when Bombay, India (now Mumbai), became the entertainment capital of the world, annually producing more feature films than the rest of the planet.

2 I had a chance to speak with both associate producer, Troy H. King and co-composer Alan Groshieder. I asked them the correct way to pronounce their hometown of Louisville. Both had a different inflection.

Conversing with a Zombie is difficult in the best of times, and since a Zombie Apocalypse can never be considered The Best of Times, learn your lingo with Internet's good old,

The Zombie Translator

And just what is this movie?

Jim tells this story a la FIGHT CLUB, often stopping the action just to look directly at us to explain the inanity of something. Jim (Jason Crowe: INTO THE WOODS, MONSTROSITY) is a work-a-day schlub managing a cheapo car rental company when the Zombie Crises hits. For some people, zombies are a devastating holocaust of biblical proportions. For others, like Jim's employee, Nick (Mike Seely), the zombie outbreak is a wonderful opportunity to see if all of the assholes he knows have turned into zombies - and if so, then it's okay to blow their expletive head off!

Yes, the zombie crises is a problem, but someone will take care of it and meanwhile, there are bills to be paid and work to be done. Business would go a lot better if customers could make it inside the building long enough to pay, before they were attacked and eaten by zombies!

Eventually, Jim and his crew have to admit that the problem has gotten out of hand and it's time to vacate the premises. The best course of action would be to get the hell out of such a highly populated area, but Jim, Nick, and their ever-expanding group, love Louisville2, don't really want to leave, and would prefer to just stay in town and hole up somewhere safe until the zombie crises blows over.

I mean, how long can rotting people keep moving around, right?

And so we have a zombie movie which really has no plot other than: Stay one step ahead of the zombies. In the course of staying alive the group expands with people like April (Erica Goldsmith), straggling car rental customer, Dick (Gary Williams), Jim's former warrior girlfriend Vix (Tucky Williams), Myrtle the Church Lady (Kiki Wallace), Sarah the Cop (Jennifer Shank), the agitating asshole, Scar (Jeff Mitchell), and so many more. Hundreds in fact.

Most of the jokes go thud but its hard not to be caught up in the enthusiasm and knock-about fun of the movie. Poole's editing is usually crisp even when his direction is flat. Mark also allows way too much time for his actors to hold the camera's attention while they mug to a joke that wasn't funny.

Some of the best scenes are the regulation "We have to show that these people have real problems and depth". George Romero pulled that off quite well in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Nearly as well in DAWN OF THE DEAD, somewhat less in DAY OF THE DEAD, and totally lost it in LAND OF THE DEAD. I'm not sure you need such a scene or scenes in a comedy Horror movie, but since Poole wanted to make fun of the very idea, it goes down way better than some idiot watching zombies attack a city of innocent humans and say, "They are only trying to find their way."

DEAD MOON RISING is a slapstick uneven high-octane comedy that hits the wall as many times as it hits the target, but it always takes another shot and keeps them coming.

5 Negative Shriek Girls.