Episode 264: Dead Men Walking (2005) and Dead Men Walking (2009)

DEAD MEN WALKING. Pfff! Where to start with this one? I went into it with high hopes for the 2009 Canadian movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carridine, and zero hopes for the 2005 maximum security prison lockdown story. How wrong can a man be?

Ok, so neither was great. The 2005 movie tells the story of a guy who kills 4 friends with a shotgun because they are clearly infected with a biotoxin. He is sent to maximum security prison where this becomes a prison movie. Asshole guards, a nice guard, the overworked warden and his son, the dubious doctor, and prison inmates thinking the killer Travis is fresh meat. The issue being Travis was smeared in infected blood and is now highly contagious. Enter squeaky voiced CDC agent Beckett and her inability to be taken seriously. The gore is well done, the practical effects and the locations are all fine. The Lieutenant in charge of the guards had some great lines. All in all I was surprised.

4.5/10

Our second DEAD MEN WALKING is also known as AUTUMN 2009  Canadian horror film directed by Steven Rumbelow, written by David Moody and Rumbelow, and starring Dexter Fletcher. It was based on Moody's self-published novel Autumn. Fletcher plays a schoolteacher who must survive in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by evolving zombies. This was the final film of David Carradine before his death.  I think seeing this movie may have killed him.

Inconsistent. Awful music. Poor shot choices. Repetitive elements. Outside of Dexter Fletcher this was a bag of shit.  The mostly negative reception of Autumn led him to direct his own films from then on, which were better received.

2/10

If this movie had been made based on something I had written I would change my name and move to a different country