October Horror-thon #28: "Night of the Living Dorks" (2004)

Night of the Living Dorks delivers on its title by starring the most socially-awkward geeks you've ever seen. Philip (Tino Mewes) is the bashful nice guy with a thing for the resident hottie. Konrad (Thomas Schmieder) is the know-it-all who literally keeps every time he's been beaten up on record. Weener (Manuel Cortez) is the pothead who's too stoned to feel insulted. All live perfectly average high school lives, until a voodoo ritual turns out three zeroes into zombies. Upon this realization, the guys use their newfound abilities to get back at campus bullies and win over the student body. But the need to feed soon comes calling, leaving the trio mere hours to reverse their curse before their humanity is lost for good.

The vampire has been romanticized for so long, it's about time another movie monster got its turn. The zombie may not be a likely candidate (what with eating brains and the whole rigor mortis thing), but being undead has its perks. You never need to sleep, you can take a lot of punishment, and you can ingest all the booze you want, all sure-fire ways to wow your friends. Germany's Night of the Living Dorks plays this premise for laughs, sending up sexploitation cinema by way of George Romero. It's a big goof being made at horror's expense, yet it remains more respectful than Twilight and its many unintentional titters. While there's some reliance on reference jokes and riffs on zombie lore, it's never overdone. Similarly, there's not a teen stereotype the script doesn't address, but it's all done in the good name of satire.

But with so much sustained lunacy taking place, viewers might end up feeling like the walking dead themselves. After its off-the-wall introduction, Night of the Living Dorks started buying into all those conventions it was just giving atomic wedgies to five scenes prior. All its good will and offbeat charm vanish under a glut of derivative gags. Sure, it's funny when the guys start shedding appendages at inopportune times, but rehash the bit twenty times over, and you'll beg the film to make with the credits already. Though the three leads perform just fine (with support from Collien Fernandes as a cutie pie Goth girl), the constant potty humor makes it hard to accept their characters with even a fraction of the seriousnessness the story requests.

Night of the Living Dorks will do the trick for an evening with (preferably) inebriated amigos (switch over to the dubbed version for maximum laughter). But its effect stops there, for if you set the film in front of seasoned horror buffs, you'll get more complacent shrugs than guffaws.

October Horror-thon #21: "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1953)

In turn of the century England, Dr. Henry Jekyll (Boris Karloff) hopes to curb mankind's murderous instincts by way of medical experimentation. Unfortunately, in the process, he unleashes Mr. Hyde, a ghastly alter ego who's embarked on a citywide killing spree. But who better to take down one of literature's most terrifying characters than Bud Abbott and Lou Costello? Well, a lot of people are more qualified, but that doesn't stop the dynamic duo, as a pair of bumbling American cops, from setting out to nab Hyde themselves. But with a lab full of diabolical potions and a hulking assistant at his disposal, Jekyll has more than enough firepower to stop the boys in blue from ruining his plans to woo his young ward (Helen Westcott).

Universal Studios had a huge horror roster to its name, but the one property it never staked was Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." That is, unless you count this pow-wow with the masters of schlock treatment themselves, Abbott and Costello. This picture came after the guys already tangled with the Frankenstein monster and before their rendezvous with the Mummy. It also arrived near the end of their cinematic career, which is all too evident from how often the script's joke well runs dry. Abbott and Costello were corny from the start, but they're just scraping the bottom of the barrel here. This was a chance for Universal to have fun at its own expense, and it wastes its time having Lou trip his way from set to set, while Bud shakes his head in shame.

Granted, the humor is innocent enough and nowhere near as campy as other Universal thrillers that tried being serious. But the schtick does get old fast, and you wonder why they didn't just make a straightforward horror flick instead. It already has a solid production design, boasting sets and atmosphere that'd be right at home in a traditional tale of terror. But it all goes to pot when you first glimpse at the absolutely unacceptable make-up effects. Hyde is bad enough, looking much like a melted caveman, but there's a curious mouse transformation about halfway through that's a few steps below just buying a Halloween mask from the drug store. I really expected more from Bud Westmore, who helped design the Black Lagoon's Gill Man but whose work here is reminiscent of a five-year-old's first day at make-up school.

The only thing that Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has going for it is its third-billed star, my boy Boris Karloff. Though Hyde duties were reportedly assumed by a stuntman, it's interesting to see Karloff play Jekyll as equally evil as his other half. It's a unique twist on the character deserving of a much better film, and though it adds a little juice to one of A&C's last screen adventures, it's far from a gut-busting monster mash.

October Horror-thon #20: "Evil" (2005)

Whilst toiling on a construction site, a trio of workers uncover a mysterious cave deep in the earth. After heading down to explore, the men are attacked by an unseen entity, only to emerge with no memory of the incident. But as they return to their mundane lives, it's clear that something has effected the men for the worse. Almost at once, these guys turn from ordinary citizens into rabid zombies, quickly tearing through innocent bystanders in a frantic urge to feed. Mobs of the infected congregate in no time, leaving a requisite band of survivors to fight back. From a wiseass cab driver (Argiris Thanasoulas) to the token badass (Meletis Georgiadis), the group teams up to find some way out of the city, before the living dead consume them all.

If you're like me, then the closest you'll ever get to Greece's picturesque shores is if you're roped into a Mamma Mia! screening. And if you're like me, you've thought the landscape could do with a few mutilated corpses strewn about. In that case, you're in luck, as Greece has retired from providing wacky families for ethnic comedies to create its first zombie romp, Evil. Unfortunately, this bizarre distinction is the film's sole novelty, one that wears off lickety-split. The set-up is textbook stuff: ragtag troupe of quirky archetypes deal as much damage to the undead as the effects budget will allow. But as derivative as Evil gets, to its credit, there is a sense of fun at work. The opening moments are especially sardonic and silly, as when the aforementioned cabbie mistakes a zombie mob for rowdy sports hooligans.

The zombies themselves are standard issue, though Evil makes up for it with some very ambitious splatter sequences. Bodies are halved, heads explode, and one grisly moment takes the term "gut-wrenching" to a new level. But while the filmmakers have an eye for gore, they're not the sharpest of storytellers. Evil possesses little plot to begin with, but what's left resembles random images whipped into a Romeroesque shape. The cast seems lost when required to act beyond their respective stereotypes, while the editing suffers even worse. The film regurgitates more arbitrary jump cuts and split-screen effects than an epileptic Michael Bay, culminating in an ending so anticlimactic, you'll swear the editor keeled over in post-production.

Evil kills time well enough (though not without a few dull patches encountered), but its commitment to zombie basics is its downfall. Without a couple unique traits, what's there to distinguish your film from those of every budding director nudging their foot into show business the easiest way possible? Evil is serviceable, but there's little meat to be found on this ditty's bones.