Saturday, December 25, 2010

Crappy zombies from Denmark








If you're one of my international readers you may have wondered where my profile avatar comes from; Jack in a Halloween dress up? Jack at a normal day at home? Jack is a zombie for real? Nope, it's from my lousy 15 minutes of fame. Or rather three minutes of fame.

Eight years ago I was a zombie in the Danish amateur horror film RÅDDEN KÆRLIGHED (aka Raadden Kaerlighed) [lit. trans. "rotten love"]. The movie came and went, and would've been forgotten if I hadn't kept flogging the dead horse (yes I'm laughing my ass off here).

It had a quite limited VHS release but never made it to DVD. In fact the only way to get the film since the VHS sold out has been tru me and my blog for my underground publishing label where I've sold it on DVD-R for a couple bucks.

I'm only aware of two magazine/fanzine pieces on it; A review in my own Stay Sick! zine (reviewed by Jesper Moerch) and Henrik Larsen did an interview with yours truly in his mag Obskuriøst. As far as I know there are only three online reviews; Uncut.dk, Cinehound, and on Zombie Movie Data Base.

However, the probably coolest thing of all this was shortly after the VHS release when a friend of mine rang said "There's a poster of you on the door at 'Rock Uglen'!" Rock Uglen is a decade old legendary shop in Copenhagen that deals in heavy metal records and horror/gore films. And sure enough! The directors had made various different posters featuring the cast members but the one on the inside of the door at Rock Uglen was just me or rather my zombiefied self with the (fake) intestines of the unfortunate main actor in my hands.

The film's two directors, Kasper Marbjerg & Martin Forsbom, were interviewed here (in Danish).

Anyway, that's all well and done but it's old news so why flog the corpse once again? Well, cos my friend Fred Anderson just mentioned to me that the full film is now up on YouTube! That's why, LOL. The movie is divided into three parts, runs 27 minutes, and there's no subs. But then again you don't really need to capisce the dialogue (and some of it is so embarrassing that I wish I didn't understand it either!).

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I'm only in this for about three minutes but then again I got to devour the main character and get the last frame, PLUS the "zombie walk from the chapel" scene so I'm happy with that. Needless to say kudos goes to the other cast members, the directors (who I believe are completely out of film productions), and whoever else helped out.

Henrik Larsen was supposed to be in the film too but a fuck up on the day meant he waited for hours at a train station and nobody picked him up. They promised him an added end-scene but they screwed that up too. However, Henrik got his revenge in the movie DEN INTERGALAKTISKE GENVEJ [lit. trans:"The Intergalactic Short-cut"] (reviewed here) where he got to play a cool hit-man out to bump off innocent space aliens. The film is included on my DVD-R of RÅDDEN. RÅDDEN KÆRLIGHED was also shown on a local TV station in Copenhagen when it came out but as I mentioned earlier it has pretty much drifted into the abyss of obscure amateur films. Well, if nothing else it's on YouTube now. xD

The guy who played the main lead began making a new, bigger and better monster horror film a couple of years back that was going to be called PLANET HOLOCAUST (early title: THE MONSTER, THE GIRL, AND THE PROFESSOR) and everyone on the Danish underground film scene and the Copenhagen punk scene were to star in it.

Apparently, about everyone was filmed for the film (including me) but it's been two years now and altho these slow and lazy punks are known for being... well... slow and lazy, I doubt they'll ever manage to pull their shit together and finish the film. A great pity cos the footage I got to see on the day of my own shoots was great. I wrote about it here. Anyway, enough bable! Check the uploads!

[VHS/original fullscreen/Danish audio/no subs]

The complete "Tomb of Dracula" finally coming home



How cool is this! Zuzelo jnr with my pile of "Essential The Tomb of Dracula" volume 1-4 (reprinting every issue of "The Tomb of Dracula" from the early 1970s + crossovers). Argh! This is where the original Blade character stems from! This is Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan's awesome series which I used to read in its Danish translated editions (printed in 1974 and then again in the early 80s). But these reprints (most likely) smoke the old Danish ones; Original text, complete, black & white, uncut. Oh, and the fact that Gene Colan is one of my all time fave artists certainly cranks up the awesomeness volume a notch or ten. Thanks heaps to David (junior's daddy who incidentally does another "tomb") for this awesome (and certainly in my favour) deal! Dude, you're the best! You and Paul (Cooke) are both awesome and I'm happy to have gotten to know ya!


Bottom photo: Daddy Z