You're listening to the survival podcast for zombie nerds everywhere is zombies ate my podcast hello and welcome to zombies ate my podcast i'm your host ryan murphy and joining me as always is the busy zombie lord lou page how's it going lou i think i'm a bad parent That's not true. I know that's not true. I've seen your Christmas cards. You're a great parent. And for the record, people, that is because...
Dead Rising, the remastered remake, is now available and playable on Steam Deck, so I could actually buy it and play it because my laptop won't. I played through the game and my four-year-old watched me play through an entire run of Dead Rising. And all along the while, it might not surprise any of you out there, she giggled and laughed as Daddy cut zombies in half. And said, Daddy, Daddy, get the mower. Get the mower. You have to mow them down. Oh, no.
I mean, she understands it's a video game, right? She understands they're monsters, right? But my favorite part of the conversation was, she said something about zombies. I said, well, zombies aren't real. She was like, not in this country, right? I said, no, not at all. They're just not real. And she's like, but they have them in other countries, right? I said, no, no, they don't. She said, oh, okay. It's like when my kid asks me about tornadoes or earthquakes.
Like they're a natural disaster? Yeah. Oh, no. No, I mean, I think Dead Rising is very lighthearted. It is very comical. It is very... I mean, it's pretty tame. Some of the stories I hear from my oldest and what the other kids are playing, like Grand Theft Auto comes up a lot. You know, Fortnite's not like... violent gruesome but it is violent guns i suppose but i mean i like kids are playing this stuff they're selling you know kids clothing with fortnite logos on it like
There are way worse experiences for kids, even just in video games. I think Grand Theft Auto is like, okay, guys, what are we doing? Call of Duty is, is pretty violent too. Like I, I think, but, um, if it makes it any better, I beat dead rising and then she said, okay, daddy, can we now play Paw Patrol again? Sure. That makes it way better because now you're taking it in the other direction. It's too kiddy. How does it run on the Steam Deck? Run well? It ran great.
My only issue running it on the Steam Deck is the opening scenes where you're in the helicopter and then when you get to the lobby of the... the uh mall and you there's all those cut scenes and then the old lady moves the it wants to get her dog and it lets all the zombies into the mall that situation You get some slowdown and some chugging right there. And there was a couple of points with the outside stuff running between the areas of the mall where you'd get some slowdown.
It wasn't any, it didn't, it reminded me of when I played it back on the day on the 360. Like, none of the stuff that chugged was unfamiliar to me. Yeah, because it's I mean, like, it makes sense that it runs. It runs well in the Steam Deck. The funny thing is, is it felt like the fans on my Steam Deck ran harder during cut scenes than when the game was actually just running.
Maybe it's loading in the background and it's causing it some, some stress, but. Yeah. Like I'd be watching, I'd be watching a cut scene and all of a sudden you could hear the fan on my steam deck across the room go. I was like, oh, wow. Okay. All right. All right. You were playing docked then? Is that what you're doing? Yeah, I was playing docked.
Yeah, I have to get back to that one because I really did enjoy what I played of it last year and it's a solid remaster. I think they did a great job with it. I was so impressed. My thought process went, yeah, I'm never going back to the original version of this game ever. And I want them to now do this for the second game.
Yeah, well, I think that's what's next. I would imagine that that second game remaster gets announced, if not this year, definitely next. Yeah, I think that that's going to be coming.
I don't know if we'll get one for the third game or the fourth game, but I bet we get one for one and two, and then maybe we get a fifth game. Maybe. I know they have, like, the original studio that was working on it, which was out of Vancouver, but there's no... reason they couldn't you know spin another studio back up to to build it or hand it to one of their other internal studios but uh
yeah i i think that's a solid remaster if you haven't had a chance to check it out it's available on steam deck now so it runs well there as lu said as someone who played the original Being able to aim the gun and actually move is amazing. The fight with that stupid guy in the food court that you end up having to do like seven or eight times.
unless you reload the last save file, which I didn't. I would get to that, I would die, and then I would reboot, then level up three more times by the time I got to him. die again, do the whole section again. And I did that like seven or eight times. So by the time I'd played maybe like two hours, I was already like level 25. I knew how to game the system. Some of those encounters are really not fun when you think about it. But you're right. Being able to move and shoot is a big deal.
Being able to shoot him and duck behind cover while still aiming or step out from behind the cover while you're already ready to shoot and hit him. The fight with him. I remember it being the biggest pain in the butt the first time I played the game on 360. And with this, it was like, oh, this is a piece of cake. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you were able to get some time in and make it a family event. There you go. But probably these next few stories, you're going to want to keep the kiddo.
at bay but uh we'll see let's talk about it the virus has completely devastated over 150 of the world's major regions and is spreading rapidly All right, we're quickly approaching The Last of Us Season 2 season as it is going to debut on April 13th, which is a Sunday. And yeah, just around the corner, like six weeks. Not a long wait now. No. And I'm going to try and go into it as blind as possible.
Oh yeah, that's right. Cause you never played the game. So you kind of have. Yep. Yep. I'm going into this one is, is blind as possible. I've watched all the trailers and we've talked about what happens in the game. I've even listened to your chat about the game that you did with. did on this show with a guest because I didn't play the game. So yeah, I've even listened to that. So I know stuff, but I didn't see it personally. So it's still.
not as fresh in my head as it would be anybody else's. Yeah. So I'm going in, I'm going in semi blind. yeah we did a we did a special myself and john jagger from the core podcast we did like a three hour three and a half hour special that we split into three episodes we ended up recording for almost three and a half, four hours. And, uh, I realized like, well, I don't know if I want to like release all of this in one huge thing. So he kind of chunked it out.
And I really enjoyed the game. It was divisive when it came out and, you know, people were upset before it released due to some leaks and some out of context stuff that, you know. People were upset. I think the show has an opportunity to showcase the story again in a different medium. I don't know how Neil Druckmann and team are able to like revisit.
the trauma that was that uh that the release that second game because like all that work they put into it for it to leak and then people to to you know send death threats and and be you know very judgmental before the game even came out. And I mean, you're allowed to not enjoy a story a hundred percent, but you know, when you kind of like go after the creators in a way that's, uh, you know, not great.
it kind of brings the whole room down in my opinion. But, uh, I think the show has an opportunity to like really, you know, showcase this story again. I'm not, I doubt they're going to make any changes. Any big changes, but some tidbits that came out of this this announcement. We got some posters. Our first good look at Abby, who is the new main one of the new main characters, I should say.
Um, and, and I'm not super familiar with her, her work, but there was some conversations, uh, in discord, um, specifically her work in, this is actress, uh, Caitlin Dever, her work in like, it's an alien movie. I'm just trying to pull up the name of it. I'm more familiar of, of her work on the show. Justified. Oh, she was in justified. Is she like the, she's. Play someone's daughter, I suppose. There's a character that gets introduced in the second season. A drug dealer gets gets killed.
And another family takes the girl in. And it's part of the running plot that... the main character is like trying to keep the girl out of trouble and she keeps finding herself in trouble and he kind of has to keep bouncing her. keep trying to he has to keep rescuing her as things go on and she becomes a reoccurring character who shows up once or twice a season usually in some kind of trouble and he has to bail her out of the problem oh okay interesting
I did watch Justified. I don't remember that specific scene. Do you remember Mags? I do remember that. She's the girl that Mags was taking care of. Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds right. The movie also that was discussed in the Discord is No One Will Save You, which is like an alien sort of invasion. I just heard about that recently, yeah.
Yeah. And not just from our discord. I heard about it recently for some reason. Yeah. Uh, and, um, they also talk about how the show could be four seasons. Um, and like, that's. Um, that's them definitely adapting this part too, but I don't know if that's like them looking at a third season. I mean, I didn't think season, I think, didn't think part two was that big to warrant three seasons, but it's HBO.
Think about how long they made Game of Thrones when it didn't need to be. Well, true. That's true. So yeah, we'll definitely be discussing it. Whatever, however many episodes air by the time we're recording after the 13th, we'll talk about those and we'll check in throughout its run. I believe it is seven episodes in total. So seven weeks of The Last of Us starts April 13th. Let's take a break and head back to video games with The House of the Dead actually heads back to video games.
we just did last of us is a video game. Um, but this is a true blue video game. This is house of the dead to remake. Uh, the demo is part of the steam next fest, which is running right now until March 3rd. It has been so long since I played these games. I'm going to have to try this demo. I've almost pulled the trigger on the original House of the Dead remake on PC, but I can't imagine how much fun it's going to be using my mouse to click rather than having an actual light gun.
Like that's my biggest worry is that that's not going to be fun, but they've given me a demo. Then I, that lets me play around and mess with it. And that lets me play around and mess with it. And I can decide if I like it or not. Yeah, I think that makes sense, like playing the demo. The only thing I will say is the developer is Megapixel Studio. And they are known for doing several of these remakes. And I will admit that I have the remake they did for Panzer Dragoon.
And I did not enjoy that remake. I played it a long time ago when it first came out, so that might be why it's not good, is I played it back when it was probably still buggy. But I remember trying to play it and being like, yeah, I'm not playing this. This is glitchy and buggy, and it shouldn't be. Yeah. I'm just looking at the community stuff, and yeah, people are...
People are not happy. It's hard to gauge what is actual feedback and what is people just upset, but there's a lot of comments of like... They literally gave these guys another chance. This is crazy. So, yeah, one person saying they literally learned nothing from the first remake. I don't even understand how a second opportunity was even granted to these guys. So maybe, yeah, check out the demo. The game is not out yet, but it is marked coming soon. But yeah, this is an arcade game.
i'm sure it was out on other consoles but like yeah as you said it's traditionally a light gun game like arcades and stuff so uh yeah i think i played some of these a lot of these games where i played most of them were on the wii you know with the See, I've always been an arcade guy, so I've played through one, two, and... I've played three and four in the arcade, but I didn't beat them. I've played all the way through one and two before, though. There's actually a...
There's a round one arcade near me. And I was surprised when they first opened it up a few years ago that one of the biggest arcade things in the... The place was a House of the Dead five or six. And I was like, wait, there's five or six of these now. I didn't even know Sega was still making arcade machines. Well, you have at least maybe, hey, maybe the movie will be good. You have the movie to look forward to from hit director Paul W.S. Anderson. He can't do any worse than Huey Bull.
Oh, that's right. I forgot Uwe Boll did that movie. I think I saw it in theaters. Which was a mistake. Oh, it's bad. It's awful. It's probably my least favorite zombie movie I've ever seen. I'm honestly like when we talk about, you know.
uh and it's it's so far out it's people aren't going to remember this but um i'm honestly surprised when it comes to extra life when we can say hey suggest a film i'm sure that movie is easy to find did we watch it i feel like we watched a bad movie that kind of reminded me of house of the dead maybe it was something else i want to say we watched it but i don't think we did i think we watched we watched uh we watched um what's it called um
the other series that's kind of sort of in the same vein. Oh, Return of the Living Dead? Return of the Living Dead. Yeah, I remember watching that one. And that has some of the similar, has similar vibes. But it's better done. Maybe we watched... I will say, you can probably find it on YouTube. One of the most entertaining things about the original House of the Dead film is find the making of...
They put a making of on the DVD, and I remember renting it from Blockbuster, and after watching it and seeing how bad it was, I was like, I have to watch this making of. Yeah. So there's a, sorry, there's a making of house, house of the dead from movie bowl. Was this when he was going, like, he was like boxing people. We didn't know who he was at the time. Oh, okay. Like this was like.
One of the things that people learned who he was and my favorite part of the, the, the, the making of is better than the actual movie because they literally cut to these scenes where you, we bowl is being. talked to by the person behind the camera and they're like so what do you think of this game and he's like i don't like games they're like okay and he's like and they're like he goes they gave me this script
They wanted me to make a horror movie. I don't want to make a horror movie. I want to make an action movie. So that's what we are doing. We're making an action movie. And I was like, oh my god. I wanted this movie so bad. I mean... He's busy. Like, Uwe Boll, like, he's busy. He took a break, took a big break, and then he's back. 2024, he directed two films. He's got...
He's got a movie in post-production called Run, and then he's got a movie in production called The Dark Knight. Probably not the one you're thinking of. oh uh oh i don't know if that movie will get made uh we'll see but uh yeah it's look house of the dead it's not happening um we'll watch maybe we'll watch the paul ws anderson film I would see that. I'm not going to say Paul W.S. Anderson is like my favorite director or anything, but he...
His stuff isn't always awful. I don't like his Resident Evil movies, but every once in a while he puts out something like Event Horizon. His original Mortal Kombat movie isn't so bad. For when it came out and what it is, it's not bad. It's not bad. He's at least passable as a director. Did you watch his Monster Hunter movie or no?
No. No, I didn't either. I think that was an easy pass. I saw it, and then I saw who was in it, and then I saw what it was about, and I saw that it looked like it had nothing to do with the video games, and I went, sounds about right.
what do they call it in anime? It's an Iseki film. It's when the main character gets, you know, transported into another world. And, um, I think, I think it's, uh, um, mila jovich who gets transported yeah like whatever look it's a it's a paid vacation for for him and his and his wife to just hang out and shoot a movie and have fun like i get it i get it whatever
No judgment. Who doesn't want to get paid millions of dollars to hang out with your significant other? Yeah, I mean, who cares if it's a box office bomb? He doesn't, clearly. Nope. Nope. One last story here. And this isn't surprising that we got this news alongside The Last of Us confirmed season two debut. But The Walking Dead Dead City season two.
will premiere May 4th strategically placed three weeks after the last of us. I think it's a mistake of them to try to think that they can like, you know, as long as it doesn't come out on the same night. Well, I'm pretty sure Walking Dead is also Sundays. I'm looking up May 4th. Yeah, it's the Sundays. It's literally like the same day. Oh. Yeah. It's over This is going to be Dead City's end Dead City's dead in the water, is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah
I mean, because, like, if you look at the lineup, and TV's different these days, I get it. Like, you don't watch the show at 9 o'clock on Sunday. You watch it... days after on streaming when you have a chance to watch it and i think that goes for both shows but in terms of like water cooler chat and you know where our attention is and where
where the public's attention is, it's going to be on the last of us, especially if those first three episodes hit hard. Um, so I think it's going to be tough for folks to be like, they,
They might say like, you know what, I'll get to Dead City when The Last of Us is done. And I think that's why I always thought, well, The Walking Dead is going to premiere in June. Because why would you compete with the only other large... blockbuster zombie show out at the same time it makes no sense to me um and and honestly dead city is probably a reduced season probably six episodes so like
you're only going to have like two weeks to yourself to two or three weeks. Um, so maybe, yeah, I think if, if, Last of Us is only going to be six or seven episodes. Is that what we said? Seven. Seven episodes. Seven. And Dead City is only going to be six or seven episodes. So it looks like they'll both be running at the same time.
And overlapping and then not overlapping. And I don't know how, if Dead City doesn't pick up traction right away, I don't see it doing good numbers. Yeah. I don't think it's going to... do big numbers either and I think that the novelty of Negan and Maggie returning for a second season especially with how it ended I think My understanding, talking to anybody that watched the original Dead City, like us, a lot of people went into it thinking it was going to be a one and done.
And that as it got closer to the end and we realized they were going to try and give us a second season, I think a lot of people lost their enthusiasm for it. We all went into... the Daryl Dixon show, knowing that Daryl was going to be at least two seasons, if not three. So knowing that, knowing that we're going into this without that.
this time, knowing that it's two seasons and a third season could be possibly in the air. I don't think people are going to go into it as excited as they did the first time. Well, I think the big difference is that I think that... With season one, we were always wondering, like, how are they going to reintroduce these characters in that conflict between the two of them? And that was reintroduced and it was somewhat resolved.
And I think going into the second season, we're wondering like, okay, how are you going to convince me this is not a milk in it situation? Although they did leave Negan in a precarious situation where he is kind of tied to these, you know, the Dama and a couple other characters that are trying to take over New York.
Uh, but we'll watch it. I mean, like it's on our list. Um, I think the new actors they've added with, uh, is it Kim coats? Is that the guy's name? Is that, that's ringing a bell. I think so. Yeah, he's going to be in it. We'll watch it. I don't like I don't. It's going to be really tough to put down The Last of Us and watch it. But I mean. maybe it's timing works well for us. We can take a break from the last of us. Check in with, it might even be worth, it might even be something to worth, um,
It might even be something worth waiting until it's run its course before we watch so we can do it in one go. Yeah. Well, just based on like the plot of. dead city season one i think having one large conversation worked quite well but like the plot of the last of us is is quite dense there's a lot no no i i think last of us i think we can definitely have at least two chats about it i think
Dead City is going to be one. All right. That sounds good. Well, that is going to do it for our news. And we're not done with video games yet because we're heading into our main topic, which we didn't mention at the top of the show, but we're chatting about. George A. Romero's Resident Evil. This is a documentary. Came out this year, just last month. And we watched it and we've got things to say.
Resident Evil. All right. You heard it there. George A. Romero's Resident Evil. This is a documentary. Came out in January. a documentary that brings to light the vision that director George A. Romero had for an adaptation of Resident Evil, using newly filmed interviews with those who were there and unravels the secrets behind why it was never produced.
Lou, you knew a lot more about this than I did going in. I think that this is, you'll agree with this, that this is a documentary that doesn't necessarily bring new shocking information to light. I went into this hoping I would learn something I didn't know already. And there was a few small details that I didn't know. but nothing that was like a game changer like i was like oh my god i didn't know that it was all like oh yeah that that that makes sense that that's a behind the scenes thing that
Most people were already suspecting of any way. You just confirmed a bunch of internet theories. Cool. Okay. This is an interestingly shot documentary. I think they did these cut scenes in a mansion with people dressed up as characters from the game. And I don't think it added anything to it. I think it was padding to extend. the film by like another 15 20 minutes and i mean that's that's fine um they borrowed a lot of tactics i've seen in other documentaries
where you'd watch the interview and it would be like a TV on the TV screen that was showing it. And I've seen that before in a lot of recently done horror documentaries I've watched in the last few years. And it's fine. It was definitely a documentary that was trying to be more artsy than it was. The thing I will say that I learned the most about watching this is... I knew Romero shot a Resident Evil commercial for Resident Evil 2.
I'd even seen the commercial way back in the day. I remember people posting video captures of it on websites and before the age of YouTube. We were doing our damnedest to watch it on the internet. So there was that. And I remember seeing copies of that commercial.
And I knew that Brad Renfro was in it as Leon, but I didn't know any of the additional details in the... about the making of it I didn't know it was filmed in LA I didn't know any of that so that was interesting but once they got beyond that and they got to the actual making of the movie I knew most of this stuff going in There's two scripts. There's one by another writer that I forget his name. And he wrote an adaptation, and they talked about an article with PlayStation Magazine.
where there was a leak of that script, even though Romero was attached to it and was going to write a script, and that wasn't the Romero script. And I remember reading that article in PlayStation Magazine and being like, what's this crap? And... than them saying, oh, no, no, no, that's not what we're doing. It's going to be...
It's going to be Romero. And then I remember the backlash when Romero got cut from the job. So they talked about the history of it. And it was all stuff that brought me back to being 14 years old and reading magazines again. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is a documentary that lays out the pieces really well, explains what happened.
As you said, there's no bombshell moment. There's no new information that you might not have been able to glean from other sources over the last, you know, this is a well-documented situation. It was nice to get confirmation of things that basically most people have thought of and kind of put the pieces together themselves over the years. It's nice to... um, it's nice to have confirmation of some of the internet theories that were out there. Yeah. And I mean,
For myself, I really enjoyed it. It is a long documentary. It's about two hours. But I did really enjoy it because it pieces together Resident Evil, which is one of my favorite. franchises uh you know going back to when i when i first experienced it resident evil 2 On the N64, I know, terrible version to have started off my journey with. But where it really kicked off was with the GameCube remaster that they released. That was the first one that I played through.
you know, classic dog jumping through the window scene, all that fun stuff on the old purple lunchbox. But, you know, having enjoyed the franchise for a video game perspective to a movie. And at the time, when those movies were being developed in the games, I knew nothing of George Romero. Zombies were kind of like video game things, not movie things.
Um, I was aware of them, but I, I wasn't, I hadn't seen it. And then after that, discovering George Romero's work, uh, you know, with, you know, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and then, uh, the remake, uh, uh, Dawn of the Dead with the... from Zack Snyder, like kind of discovering it backwards. Whereas I think for the most part in this documentary, they're outlining it.
Like the first half hour is really an introduction to George Romero and the Resident Evil franchise. And then from there moves into the development of the commercial and the movie. And goes from there into, like, where the movies went and where George Romero went. And then, you know, touching on his passing as well in 2017 to kind of wrap up the film. So it's really a movie that's kind of bookended by... George Romero's life with the Resident Evil movie in the middle. When the...
Movie starts and they basically run the details of what's going on with Resident Evil. And it's like 15-20 minutes of them explaining to the audience what Resident Evil is. And then it's... And that was interesting when they interviewed people from the making of the original game. That was interesting, but I knew some of that already. There wasn't anything that was like, oh yeah, no.
I have a ton of, I have like two books on Resident Evil. And some of that stuff has been talked about in them. So, and I've seen other things and read tons of interviews. So there wasn't anything in that. regard that was new to me, but it was nice to see somebody talking to somebody about that stuff and it being explained to what would essentially be
an audience that doesn't know anything. Though I don't know if you don't know what Resident Evil is, you care about a George Romero documentary about Resident Evil. So explaining to the audience about a game that they've all probably played a hundred times seems a little redundant. They dwell on it for a bit.
That's fine. Most documentaries do stuff like that. It's one of the reasons why I hate going into a documentary when I already know that I'm maybe not an expert, but I'm a highly enthusiastic. knowledgeable person on a topic. So now explain to me why I know some people who are into certain things and they hate certain documentaries. I now understand that. I didn't hate this. It was fine. But there wasn't...
Then they explain the history of Romero. And I think we've covered a bunch of that stuff here on this show over the years. I think that there's been tons of articles written. It was about 15, 20 minutes of Romero's.
life story that was sort of... If you know who he is, you know most of this stuff already. And that was fine. That was fine. And then they talked about the commercial. The thing I found the most interesting... was that when they were done filming and he was done editing, one of the interviewees said that they were brought together with Romero and there was a filming...
They ran the commercials for everybody involved so that the crew got to watch the cut of the commercial. And then supposedly after the commercial was run, Romero goes, okay, so now do you want to see the movie? And then apparently he ran a longer version of the commercial that they called basically a mini movie. I would like to see that. That's what I want to see. Yeah. The story, you know, around the commercial and how that was the precursor to George Romero possibly...
Well, he did land the role of writer and director, but he was he was fired. Fired is such a strong word. Like, I feel like there's a missing piece here in that. He wasn't fired. I don't know. It's almost like they just didn't tell him he was no longer, his services were, like writers write treatments all the time, submit it, and then it's almost like they ghosted him. That's what I kind of got from the film.
Okay, so my theory on all of this over the years has always been, so he was attached to the project. I knew that they were ready to shoot. I had read enough Fangoria to know how far along the project was. They talked about it about every three months in Fangoria. I knew a bunch of this information. But then I remember, I think they showed an interview, I want to say it was GamesRadar maybe, or somebody along, one of those gaming websites, had an interview with the head of Capcom at the time.
And they basically insulted Romero and said his his his script was garbage. It was goofy. It was this. It was that. And they were going in a different direction and that he was fired. And I remember reading that and no, I mean, we had land of the dead and he did make some goofier stuff later in his career after that, that I wouldn't say is up to par with his earlier work, but.
He's an independent filmmaker and he had less of a budget than he used to. That's just going to happen. But I would never have called him anything he did goofy. I've always been under the stipulation that they just something happened. And I think that Capcom was trying to save face. They needed to sell more copies of the game because they had a three coming out and.
The idea was, yeah, no Romero movie. We got to throw Romero under the bus because we can't let it hurt game sales. That's the way I always viewed it. And I think that that might have been what's going on. Ben Capcom's point of view. That was the other part of this that I didn't know but had speculations of. The people that own the rights from Capcom, Constantine Films. They were the ones that didn't want to go forward with Romero because it was too gory. And again...
It's executives that don't know anything about anything trying to make decisions on something, and their only point of view is to make money. So they're going for the lowest common denominator. What will get more butts in a seat? They don't care that there's gore. They don't care about the artistic point of view of it. It's about getting butts in the seat. And they thought going PG-13 would do that.
Not that that's ever worked for any horror movie ever. Yeah. Well, I mean, Resident Evil, when it came out, was still rated R. Like, it was... still restricted right like i know i believe i believe the first film is pg-13 um i don't think so but maybe it was maybe it's not rated r maybe it's it was a lower I just remember not being able to see it. I'm looking it up as we speak. Yeah, let's look that up. I'm getting, which is weird, I'm looking Resident Evil. So Resident Evil 2002.
Rated. Oh, gosh. Oh, rated R. Yeah. Is it rated R? Okay. Yeah, that's what I thought. Oh, well, in Canada, it was rated R. So let's look at US. I think US, it might have been PG-13. No, rated R. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because I remember watching it and being like, ah, this doesn't seem... gory enough for oh yeah you're right it is a rated r yep now in uh in japan it was rated pg-12 in so maybe maybe that's that's why i don't know
And I mean, I'm not going to say I don't like the first Paul W.S. Anderson. I think it's the best of the bunch. I think afterwards they severely got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. But that's just me personally. I've never been a huge fan of those movies. And they talked about that movie coming out and people's reactions to it.
I definitely think that there was a missed opportunity with Romero making the Resident Evil movie. I don't think you'll ever find anybody that isn't a horror fan that ever has a different opinion than this was a missed opportunity. It was funny to me. I was basically, when they discussed the scripts, and they talked in vivid detail about the original script that Romero wrote, and it getting leaked online on message boards and stuff.
And they were like talking about people reading it at PDFs of it and this, that, and the other thing. I was one of those guys. I remember I had a downloaded copy of the script on my computer. 1998 or 1999 when they were talking about it. And I can remember reading it and I can remember being like, I like this. No, I don't like that. I can like this. I don't like that. And I remember thinking, I remember thinking.
That could have been a decent movie, but we're going to get a Paul W.S. Anderson movie. He made Event Horizon. It won't be that bad. And then I saw it and I went, oh, yeah, I like that Romero script better. Yeah, I remember when we were talking about the script when I think it kind of resurfaced while we were doing the show. And I think we looked at it as like, oh, this is...
closer to the games than the movie we got. It's not exactly the games, but it was closer. It was a more faithful adaptation. Like I said... I was reliving being 14 or 15 years old, reading this script online where Chris Redfield is Native American and he grew up playing in the mansion.
And there's secret passages. And I remember reading a scene where Chris is hopping around a mansion through these secret passages, avoiding the zombies so that he can rescue Jill. And I remember reading it and being like, wow. This is definitely different. And so they talk about that specifically in the documentary. And I was like, yeah, I don't think anybody read that and didn't have the same opinion. I said, this is different.
Well, and that's the other thing too, is they're definitely looking at this project with rose colored glasses and then it is a project we didn't get. It is. You're wondering like what could have been, uh, there's no, there's nothing. saying that this film would have been better or performed better. Like, there's no evidence that that...
It can be 100% true. However, as a fan of George Romero's work and a fan of Resident Evil and a faithful adaptation of the movie, of the video game, you can be like... you know, you can look back and be like, Oh man, I wonder what could have been because they talk about this in the documentary that like his work would have been very, um,
close to the video games having a lot of references a lot of characters you know some characters even having the same deaths that they got in the video games like he wasn't afraid to include those details whereas um Constantine, the production company, they also paint Constantine as the bad guys, the big bad Hollywood folks, although they're a German production company. But they're the big bad studio folks.
Capcom's kind of kept to the side outside of like one comment where they like mentioned that they fired George Romero in a gaming magazine. Yeah. Without George Romero realizing that he had been fired, he was waiting for word on his script that he had sent in. I mean, I believe he was paid for his work. There was not money owing, but they kind of went in a different direction without...
you know, having the professional courtesy to let him know that, Hey, we're, we're heading in a different direction. Um, but there was also talk throughout the documentary that like Georgia Romero was like, kind of. unsure of wanting to do the movie. Yeah. Um, it started out that way. Yeah. And then I think he like, it almost seemed like he convinced himself that it was, it was going to be a good idea and, and.
You know how sometimes you psych yourself up for a project, right? And then you're like, okay, I can do this. I can do this, you know? I don't think without his experience making this movie, I don't think we would have gotten Land of the Dead. Yeah, and they do touch on that too in the documentary that he was, because of the work he put into Resident Evil, which was to be a large, big budget film.
He kind of refocused on his own properties with Land of the Dead, which was a big production with top-tier Hollywood actors, big budget, big sets. But then after that, he did get a taste of it. And then after that, he kind of went back to more of his own. And I mean, if you look at his film history, he made a bunch of movies up until like the mid 80s.
And then he kind of just disappeared. And then this Resident Evil commercial thing happened in like 95 or 96. And it kind of reinvigorated his career after that. And he did a series of other movies and different things. He did a movie called, I think it's called Bruiser. And it is something that came out in like 98 to 2000.
I've only seen it once. I saw it a long time ago, so I'm probably going to get it wrong. But it's like this guy who ends up getting a mask, and when he wears the mask, he forgets that he's... like who he is and he uses, nobody can see him, see who he is with this mask on. And so he takes out and he, it basically, it's like, he's anonymous when he wears the mask. So he goes around killing and taking in.
killing people that have wronged him and he gets away with it because of this weird mask that he's wearing. It's a weird movie. I don't think we would have gotten that if he hadn't been. brought back by the Resident Evil stuff yeah yeah I like and you know he comes back he does his Hollywood stuff but he never really truly goes back to that big budget stuff
And that's not a bad thing. No, I mean, look, like, I think this is something they touch on at the end of the film where they're talking about... before his passing and setting up the George A. Romero Foundation and talking about his legacy and how... He was unsure about like his work when really you and I both know that he made a huge impact on films. We talked about this when he died. there was that interview where he says like i don't know but i like he he didn't think he was that big and
they even touch it and touch on it in the documentary that like literally they put a Hollywood square on him. And like, he got like a cover page on variety about like Romero's his, like, like he was loved. He just didn't understand it. He he was he thought that you had to be Spielberg to be like loved. And I don't even think Spielberg is Spielberg anymore. So like. Yeah. Well, it's not even just that. It's it's like.
There are many directors and actors who make it big. And like, sometimes you just want to focus on what makes you happy. Like George Romero. I think did what he did and, and he was happy for it. And I think that was the, and you see in this documentary, like everybody was really happy for him. A lot of these, a lot of the interviews, it was definitely something I liked most about the documentary is they didn't.
interview somebody like greg nicotero they did not interview tom savini they did not interview any of the regulars that if when that whenever romero gets brought up they did not interview any of those people these were all people who knew him personally, that he mentored, that he did things with, people involved in his foundation. They constantly bounce back.
I'm going to butcher the guy's name. His name is Ben something. And he is part of the curate, the curation of the Romero foundation, the Romero collection at.
Pittsburgh University um and in the early days of the pandemic was when they got that collection and I've talked about it on the show before but I was able to get um a zoom that they were doing because we were all in lockdown you couldn't actually see the the the um collection and they were still archiving it at that point and and collecting things and
They did a private presentation. You had to get tickets, and I got a ticket. I got to see the thing. Afterwards, there was a two-hour Q&A where you could ask them questions, and they would answer things. answer what they knew. And there were so many other projects that Romero was involved in that got dropped that aren't even on his IMDb. There were projects that we as people that were...
interested in were bringing up to them as the archivers, and they didn't even know what we were talking about. There was a film, it went through several names. But the one that landed the most was the Diamond Dead. It was supposed to be about a rock band, a metal rock band that come to find out they were actually zombies.
and that they were basically being brought around by their manager and that it was a weird goofy plot where the the the rock band it was like kiss was a bunch of zombies and And their manager was still bringing them on tour as the zombies. and making them lip sync to the thing, and then feeding them brains in the evening, and then some production assistant figures out what's going on and is trying to stop them. It was an interesting idea.
apparently Romero tried to make it for years. We brought that up to these guys and they were like, we don't even know what you're talking about. And this is like road of the dead. Is that what it was? No, no, this was not Road of the Dead. This was something totally different. Road of the Dead is a later project that came up, came later in life after this Diamond Dead thing was talked about before Land of the Dead.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember that conversation that we had when you had watched that webinar and you'd sort of engage with these folks. Seeing them – seeing they interviewed several people that I saw on camera and seeing them interview and being like, this is weird. I've talked to these people before. So this is kind of uncomfortable and this is weird. And knowing that –
I did that. We as fans sort of knew more than they did. And hearing them talk about it, like they were this, like, yeah, I was like, okay. Well, they're curators. I mean, he did say they had like, what, 32 boxes of paper. because he wrote everything down. One of the things they shared with us is one of the parts of the collection was something they didn't know what they were going to do with. It was some huge sign that was part of one of his movies.
And it was like it took up a warehouse space. And they were like, we don't know what to do. Did you get it? Did you say I'll take it? I wish. I wish. I mean, and part of the thing I think is interesting is I don't think we got. The amusement park that got released on Shudder a couple years ago. I don't think we would have gotten that without his estate passing everything to be archived.
As a part of the foundation, I think that I know that they were working on getting the amusement released before George died. And I know that I think George viewed a screening of it before he passed away. But. It was not a done deal that that was going to get released anywhere. I think that happened post his death. And I think that them getting this stuff, it brought him back into the zeitgeist of...
what he viewed himself as not being popular and his dying basically rebirthed his career again in death. Yeah. And it's too bad. Yeah. He had passed away from, I think, lung cancer. Right. So, yeah. It's a really tragic thing. And it caught us all by surprise. And I didn't know. So going into this documentary, I thought, how are they going to do a two-hour documentary about this?
failed movie and really it's about a 45 minute documentary about that and the rest is about the surroundings of it the life of George Romero the franchise of Resident Evil Not to say that they don't like I enjoyed it. I really did enjoy the whole story. I do like watching documentaries where I have even more, you know, much of the info. I like the way it's laid out. I love horror documentaries. If you haven't seen it, it's called Into Darkness. It's three parts. It is a curation of 80s horror.
Part is, I'm not joking, it is five or six hours. It is the fastest five or six hours of your life. They cover each... Part of the film, of the documentary, covers probably like 40 or 50 movies in six hours. So they cover almost like, it's like 160 movies. over the course of the three parts and it's it did well enough that they're doing a a 90s version so they're going to do another trilogy that's 90s the 90s um so
Horror documentaries are awesome. And I went into that one knowing a bunch of that stuff and still being surprised by things that they were talking about. This I wasn't as surprised. But it was good. I've watched other ones on... Other movies, like there's a Fright Night documentary on the making of the original Fright Night from the 80s. That's a fun one to watch. So horror documentaries are not, you know.
I don't watch them regularly, but when it's a topic I'm interested in, I definitely go in excited. And I was going into this one excited, and I knew about 20 minutes in, I was like, oh, yeah. There's going to be a few nuggets of really good information in here, but I'm going to know most of this. Yeah, and we knew that going in. And that's fine. I watched it while I worked today. So I was like, yeah, okay. All right.
Well, there you go, folks. George Romero's Resident Evil documentary that we watched. Hopefully, if you haven't watched it and you're curious, definitely check it out. It's available to rent. on uh a majority of video on demand stuff yeah i would say if you liked romero you've liked this work but you didn't know anything about this resident evil thing you're definitely going to learn something but if you've been a fan since since like the 80s or older and you knew about him making this
movie that didn't come to fruition if you knew any of that you're probably not going to get a whole lot new stuff but if this is new information for you this is a new idea for you then you're going to walk into this with all kinds of information yeah yeah So definitely check it out. Coming up, though, on ZAMP, what we're looking at next as we patiently wait for The Last of Us Season 2 kicking off on April 13th. We have more Extra Life movies to get to with Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later.
So we discussed it. Our last few films have been, you know, heavy, lots of moving pieces, you know, drama, action, documentary. So we're going to watch Shaun of the Dead next. Do a little comedy. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I haven't seen it in a while. I have a couple copies of it floating around the house.
I think I own a digital copy and I know I have a DVD and possibly a Blu-ray somewhere, but I'll find it streaming somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to watch that for our next episode in just a couple of weeks. So stay tuned. for that. And before we go, I want to thank our patrons, patreon.com slash Zombies Ate My Podcast. All your support goes right back into the show, helps us pay for hosting, renting movies.
All that fun stuff. So check it out. Patreon.com slash Zombies Ate My Podcast. You can visit our website, ZombiesAteMyPodcast.com for show notes and all our previous episodes. Send us an email and we may read it on the show. Info at zombiesatemypodcast.com. Join our Discord at tiny.cc slash azampdiscord. You may be wondering, hey, that's a new link. Same link, different shortener. Bit.ly is now having interstitial ads run on their free redirects. So we're moving to a different service.
The inshittification of free services, it's a real thing. So tiny.cc slash Zamp Discord. It is the best place to connect with fellow listeners as well as Lou and I. So definitely jump in there. This has been Zombies Ate My Podcast, and as always, we close out the show with some fine zombie knowledge from the busy zombie lord himself. Take it away, Lou. Resident Evil. Ooh, that was good. Resident Evil