Dead and Buried: Obscene But Not Heard

Dead & Buried, a 1981 lurid crap classic and, despite its budgetary limitations, actually added a new twist to the zombie genre without evening knowing it or promoting itself as a zombie movie. But to tell you what it is, I’d have to spoil the entire thing. By doing so, as the neighbor’s 4 year-old kid says, will have me “going to jail for a very long time.”

Since I don’t want to go to jail for any length of time, I’ll just give you a few of the juicy details – and by that, I mean oozing, shiny juicy gore.

Potter’s Bluff is a small coastal New England town where its residents act nice at first, then bash you over the head with hard objects, tie you up, then light you on fire while you’re still screaming about being hit with hard objects. As you’re doing your best Joan of Arc impersonation, this large group of PB’s citizens take pictures and home movie footage, all the while showing about as much emotion as someone totally wasted on Zima™.

If you somehow manage to live, you get taken to the hospital, where a nurse will give you a co-pay lethal injection in the eye. Then off to the coroner you go, while the local sheriff searches for clues as to who is wasting gasoline and matches on tourists.

Daily explicit and grisly deaths, with the recently deceased showing up soon thereafter, fit as a fiddle, looking no worse for wear and tear (emphasis on the tear). The sheriff is flummoxed (word of the day calendar –sweet), but slowly starts to assemble the clues. It isn’t until he stumbles across footage of the townsfolk’s handiwork that he loses it, especially since one clip involves his wife and… Uh oh.

During this, the emotionally distraught sheriff also discovers who is behind all this madness. And it’s right here we get the money shot. In a sweet twist, the horror of all this “bringing ‘em back to life” whack-a-do pays off like a max bet penny slot machine. Did for me, anyway.

FYI: Due to its unflinching gore and violence, Dead & Buried was initially banned as a “video nasty” in the UK in the early 1980s, but was later acquitted of obscenity charges and removed from the Director of Public Prosecutions’ list. Whew!

An Avalanche of Snow Sharks

Killer sharks that swim through snow as though the snow was water? (OK, I get the irony that snow is already water, just more solid-y.) Two things come to mind: Avalanche Sharks is a blatant attempt to cash-in on the highly successful Sharknado franchise. Second, this premise was already done with 2011’s Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast.

Look for Avalanche Sharks (releasing June 30, 2015) on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vimeo, and VUDU as well as On Demand with AT&T and DirecTV. And to entice you to watch it, here’s the low down on the snow down…

“Bikini Snow Day is the busiest day of the year at Mammoth Mountain and the resort is packed with wild co-eds looking for a good time. When an unexpected avalanche rumbles down the mountain, it awakens ancient spirits in the form of massive sharks with a taste for human flesh. As the body count begins to pile up, the local sheriff must form an unlikely alliance with a motley crew of locals and tourists in order to kill off the terrifying creatures before it’s too late.”

Brain dead/dumbass plot notwithstanding, some clarification is required. First, Avalanche Sharks was originally titled Snow Sharks and might’ve been released on DVD in 2013. (I saw it on the Internet with a bar code and everything, I swear. That, and Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast beat ‘em to the punch by two years).

Secondly, Ice Jaws, the Japanese admat take on Avalanche Sharks is way more awesome. The art for all other snow shark movies gives me sno-cone headache.

Vacationing Snakes

Stranded on Snake Island, so named because of, you know, a bunch of African Safari tourists hole up in Snake Island Lodge, drink Jim Beam™ as though it were bottled water, and fend off hundreds of snakes.

Snake Island must be a cool place to vacation if you’re a reptile as there are a ton of snakes not indigenous to that part of the world that make appearances. If the scenes of snakes dancing during a house music drinking party doesn’t make you kill your TV, then the explicitly non-graphic attack scenarios will.

Some snakes are real. Some are digital. Some are puppets. All are stupid. Like me for watching Snake Island (2003).