Episode 386: Code Red (2013)

A bizarre horse dick of a Bulgarian (country 45 baby!) zombie film that starts brilliantly before collapsing into absolute diabolical nonsense. 

The WW2 openng section, set during Stalingrad, is brutal, tense and genuinely exciting. Hans, played by Valeri Yordanov, is easily the highlight as he battles advancing Russians, rescues wounded comrades and eventually faces zombies created by a mysterious chemical weapon. I’d happily watch an entire film about Hans trying to survive. Maybe someone should make it.

Then we jump to the modern day, and everything falls apart. Paul Logan plays an American weapons inspector using an alias, despite the Bulgarians not knowing who he is, with all the charisma of a wooden plank, surrounded by dreadful Bulgarian villains, terrible acting, awful CGI, shaky cinematography, constant rubbish music. Although the zombie makeup and weaponry was pretty good.

The plot involves biochemical genocide, secret weapons, military cover-ups by a dodgy Bulgarian moustache and his brothel owner business partner and a seemingly endless repetition of “CODE RED.” I think the final count was a dozen repeats of the title. Everyone got a shot at the titular line. 

Zombies overrun a Bulgarian town, people make spectacularly stupid decisions, a lot of fucking stupid, a really annoying stupid child and the film eventually just… ends. They literally stop filming and just go with stills. Did they run out of film?

1/10 for the modern-day mess, but Hans saves it from total disaster. Final score: 4.5/10.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

It's a little bit funny, uh, this feeling inside. Um, I'm not gonna launch into song, uh, but it it's it's interesting. Um now that I have started uh making move uh movie or finished one, um just waiting to uh it's in post. Let's just say that's the IMDB status of Draydler of the Dead. Currently waiting on some uh a reading from Daniel Hirsch, the star. Um and also uh I need to film three pickup shots this weekend uh coming up. We've got a bank holiday weekend, so I could literally do one a day. Um one of them needs uh me to be in it. Uh the the sailor scene, me and two other sailors looking out with binoculars uh at New York City. Um and uh two others, two other pickup shots, uh, which I think are gonna make the movie even better. So three shots this weekend over the next three days by the time I get home tomorrow from my coastal cottage. Um back to the point of uh it's a little bit funny uh because now I'm doing this and I already have neck the next project planned. I've got a few screenplays that I want to push. Um, and I could do that, you know, if that's a thing. When Drader of the Dead is at uh uh festivals, I'll go, well, I have these two scripts. Would anyone like them? Uh or to work on them, and maybe if if Draid of the Dead does get some attention, does pick anything up, then uh maybe someone will go, hey yeah, you what you've got some stuff, you know. I'll I'll take one of your scripts off of your hands. Uh but I've also got this the next animation worked out in my head. Um and I need to decide how I'm gonna progress that and whether I'm gonna just you know move forwards with it myself, uh, or whether I'm going to, you know, maybe partner with a couple of other production companies uh and then see if we can't make it up make it and then push for distribution um or get a bigger company to come in and you know fund the whole thing. The idea really is that someone like Troma, uh, when Uncle Lloyd Kaufman would come in and go, I really love your new idea. Um, here's a sack of cash. Get the right people because in my feed I have the right people. I have puppet makers, I have animators, I have actors, musicians, I have people that are brilliant at computing and uh computer graphics, not AI, proper old school CGI. You know, I I've got people that could do all of the different things I need to make this movie. Um but uh for me to get them all involved and therefore uh have the right people, um it's gonna cost money, so I'm not put I haven't got any money to put in myself, I have a nine to five like the rest of you. Um so it would be a case of someone coming in and funding, and if I can get someone to come in and fund my project, then I will be knocking on doors. One of those doors, and this is back in the day I used to I used to write when I was living in New York. I lived in New York from 2000 uh all the way through to 2002, uh, and then 2002-2003 I lived in San Francisco, and then 2003 to 2010 I I lived in uh New York. So um, you know, I lived in New York, but a lot of my friends in New York were quite creative, the creative type. I mean it's it was a mix because I was walking off, I was working off of Wall Street, so I worked at Corbyn Sachs, uh down at one New York Plaza, over by um uh South Street Seaport. I worked at uh Mel Lynch down by Century 21, down at the bottom by um uh City Hall. Um and so I was working at those banks predominantly, but the people I hung out with weren't banking types. So my crowd were the um Philo Lexicon Society from Columbia University, or they were the sight and sound crowd from uh from NYU, which is the effectively the the movie making crowd from NYU. So I had those guys, and you know, I'd hung out hang out hang out with them all in the East Village, which was you know their neighborhood. Um actually what probably my neighborhood of choice for hanging out, or my neighbourhood. So I lived in Hell's Kitchen. So I I lived on 43rd and 9th, uh between 9th and 10th in one of the nice big modern uh buildings. I have my own you know apartment that sort of overlooked uh the Hudson. So um not as good as my apartment pre-9-11, which was down on Battery Battery uh Park, uh, which faced, I mean, literally I could sit up and see the Empire State building. But um, that's aside. So I I I had all these creative friends and sort of like I had friends who um were working in movies at the time. So I was chatting to this guy who was working with Dito Mondrial on a guide to recognizing your saints at that point in time. So he was I was talking to him about we were working thinking of working on one of my books because this was the thing, I'd written several books, right? So I'd written The Benz in 2001, Shadows Bliss, which was about an unemployed actor in New York, which is 2002, um, and then I worked on Fade in 2004, uh, and then a couple of others. And I was a member of the you know, the the Writers Guild of America, uh the dramatist guild of America as well. Uh because I'd written a couple of plays, and so I saw new actors, and I saw new actors. So I knew a guy that was actually working as an executive producer on um uh an associate producer, I think. Um on uh was he an AD? Could have been an A D. On a Guide to Recognize in Your Saints. Uh there was another guy I used to have drinks with. Uh we used to hang out at um uh Deacon Brody's um on uh in Hell's Kitchen. And uh he you know he was like trying to get any trying to get roles, trying to get roles, trying to get rolls. Um ended up in sort of like some of the a couple of episodes of um Flight of Concords, which was cool. Um so I ended up with sort of like a good crowd in like in San Francisco when I was there. I also met others, so like I I actually had quite a lot of dealings uh with David Silverman who created um uh the Wild Thornbury's. He uh worked on ALF and so I actually ended up with ALF merchandise with David Silverman. He actually took one of my novels, actually, the second one, Shadows Bliss, and turned it into a short, which was really cool. So I've got all these other people that I know, but one of the guys that's just appeared from nowhere, um and I haven't spoken to him in eighteen years, maybe eighteen years, is Michael Cuomo. Okay, Michael Cuomo, um, who when I met Michael he was trying to make his short. Okay, his short was called Happy New Year, and it was about veterans, uh, an army veteran who um you know had come back from Iraq um and and the struggle of uh the veterans, uh especially when they were injured, uh, you know, at Walter Reed, to to reintegrate into society. And he uh was was for promoting the short, trying to get the short finished and then promoted, and you know, I sort of lost track of him because I sort of headed back to the UK and ended up working with Kathleen Couture um on the Benz, and she was making a uh movie that she asked me to get involved with, which was about the um the Spanish tomato throwing festival, and and uh estranged brother and sister, who after their mother dies sort of they do this pilgrimage to the the tomato festival, um which if you think about it probably has some of the greatest aesthetics. So you could have this whole journey of them, but when they get there and they're in rival trucks or the same truck, and you are literally just throwing these uh tomatoes at each other. I mean, it's hilarious, it's fun, it's cathartic it's cathartic. So um I would say, yeah, if you could set a movie finishing at that, then brilliant. So Kath and I were working on that at Soho House. Uh we were trying to push the Benz to get the Benz made at the time, and we ended up with um um actually Eddie Redmane when he first was starting. I think he had just been like in The Good Shepherd or something. So we messaged him and said, Hey, would you like to you know play the central character? And he was like, Absolutely, if you can get this off the ground, I'm there. And unfortunately we didn't get off the ground, which was a shame. But so I've had all these like these bits and pieces with people over the years, you know, who've gone on to do different things, and you know, been an actor here or a producer there, or director here, or writer there, and it's just good to collect them because sooner or later you'll be on a project and go, I need someone, right? So at the moment, if I needed um a an American man in his late 40s who could be an authoritative teacher or a um sort of like second husband to a slightly older character, uh and you know, um I would I would call Michael in a heartbeat. It would surprise him because I haven't spoken to him in 18 years, but I I would certainly do that. Um and the reason I'm saying this is because you know I there's so much AI at the moment that it's offensive. Um, and so I put a post out today and it was talk basically talking about you know, you could literally just go into AI, and I've seen so much of it now that people just put it into AI and make a movie, a whole movie. The filming, the acting, the music, the special effects, everything is all just done by AI. And I was thinking, well, Drade of the Dead is I'm I filmed, I wrote Draid of the Dead, right? I filmed Draid of the Dead on my dining table. So it's a it's a tabletop movie. But since I filmed it, okay, I have also involved one way or another, Josh, who's my poster artist, Green Man, who's my graffiti artist, Irene, who's my violinist, acting-wise, I've got Daniel, Tina, Rob, Mandy, Frank, Hank, Lisa, Lydia, Danny, and Daniel too, as well as me. Animation, Max and I did the animation. Uh, contributors, Max, Jared, and Lee, all gave me parts of their movies. Daniel's done a couple of rewrites, but mostly it was me. I did the editing, I did the music licensing. Print of the Dead did my modelling. Quasi did my blinks and my winks, uh, so that's like post effects uh animations. Um, Razel did my green screening, so he's gonna do me as the sailor, and he did uh Daniel as the um as Daniel, or as Eli, um with in the model backdrop. Um and I did the set building and all the cinematography, albeit on an iPhone 11. Um so even though it was just me that did 99% of this project, there were 20 people involved now. And this is a small tabletop movie that lasts 29 minutes. If it was an actual movie, like I was making the actual movie of it, it's 50 people or more. So you need to know these people, you need to get a you know, a Rollodex of names. And that's what we all need. A Rollodex of names. I am more than happy to help any of people out there. If my modicum of writing skill or um zombie uh zombie knowledge, zombie movie knowledge is helpful to you and your production, then I will gladly help your production. Okay, if you want to basically parse a screenplay past me, um, or just bounce ideas off me, you know, you could say, you know, much like Lee could have done um with uh Dead Zero, he goes, Oh, we've got I've it's an alpha. And I went, okay, cool. And he was like, Well, you know, it's unique, and I went, Well, here's 10 movies where there's an alpha. However, you know, set yourself apart, and he is actually, he's setting himself apart, it's quite unique, and we actually are interested to see where he's gonna take Lucius Bain. Whereas the other, you know, the others are kind of like maybe it was the first, so it's kind of that whole vampire thing of you know the first is the you know the leader, and then it sort of like trickles down like a family tree, um, or the most powerful, you know, kind of thing. So that aside, if you need my help, just reach out. I am always more than happy to help someone get their projects in the can. I do have after Draidelin the Dead, I have 15 other movies that I've helped one way or another on my IMDB. So help me help you. Reach out. Now that was a giant giant giant giant chat. It was just a chat, because I'm here on holiday and I'm heading back to London tomorrow. So um what I want to talk about is the next movie. The next movie is the 2013 Code Red. Um, what do we know about the 2013 Code Red? Not a lot really. Uh it's um directed by Valeri Milev, so it does sound particularly Russian, although it's set in present-day Bulgaria. Uh the plot is that uh during World War II a secret chemical weapon uh developed by Stalin to bring back soldiers from the dead um is used in anger uh but then hidden in an ammo dump. Present-day Bulgaria, or this is present-day 2013 Bulgaria, the gas resurfaces and the ghastly side effect reanimates dead corpses. Well, I don't know what other corpses there could be, corpses into aggressive flesh-eating zombies. Um a seasoned American soldier, uh John McGahee, played by Paul Logan, arrives to investigate the outbreak and teams up with a doctor Anna Bennett to survive the horde and protect her young daughter. Um it scores 4.2 on IMDB, which isn't hideous. It is on I've got these two new channels on uh Amazon, so um it is on 50 cent action. Uh how do we feel about 50 cent action? It's actually got quite a lot of movies that I like. Um it's got you know that uh Lock Up was it? That movie with Guy Pierce, it's got Kill Bill, it's got the Matrix movies, it's got it's just action movies. And I'll tell you what, action movies made at the turn of the millennium are my fucking bag. So cool. Okay, so the first review. I'm just gonna read the first three reviews. I'm not gonna order them, uh I'm just gonna basically read the first three reviews on IMDB. First, five out of ten, low budget looking decent. I'm not gonna say that this one this one is a low budget movie done right, nor am I gonna praise it and recommend it to anybody, but I will say that I was pleasant uh relatively impressed. Why? It doesn't look cheap, doesn't act like yeah, either the makeup is acceptable, the story works, not too thin, not too complex, and the acting, except for the main character, oh dear, is okay. Not much to say about Code Red, a simple and maybe effective zombie story, does not act like a tryhard and most definitely not like a gore fest. It is an okay movie, one of the few that actually managed to make a positive impression. So will I recommend it? Well, it's not as bad as Zombex. Well, Jesus Christ, if you've included Zombex, you and I should talk. Uh, but not as good as uh Outpost Rise of the Specsnaps, which is the third outpost outpost movie. It's somewhere in between, therefore you have an overall reference point, so you'll know what you'll be up against. Overall, cold code red shows what an effort was that an effort was put into it and somehow wanted to make something. A zombie movie with a small budget, there won't be a laughing stock as many are. Well, that's not bad. Well done, patient 444. Um next. Uh who's this? Oh Jesus, they wrote an essay. I'm not gonna read that one. Next, apart from the opening scene, this was a pitiful zombie flick. Three out of ten. Three out of ten, they also wrote an essay. Maureen Smith V. Maureen Smith 5. Interesting. Uh wrote this. So is there anything even enjoyable about this zombie movie? This is a three. Yeah, well the opening World War II sequence. The sequence was a truly thrilling scene. That was a brilliant start to any movie. Its action was brutal and very gory. You could feel every beat, see every limb lopped off, even the ribcage torn out, and every bit of saliva from the guy we were following's mouth. As movie openings go, this is up there with nearly everything to be honest, and certainly the best for a poor movie. But it's such a shame they ruined it after the terror pr with a pretty terrible zombie movie that made even the zombies and their kills pretty tepid. The act tepid. The acting was f catastrophic. The action after the opening bland, the character's very annoying, the effects poor, it it was way too short, laughable dialogue, and it had plot holes, galore, and stupid decisions. Main hero and little girl turn up at the exact same place the mother was looking for her. Two characters run straight into gunfire, idiots not listening to get out of the bunker sooner, little girl nearly the only one outside alive, even though the rest are either gone or turned. Heck, they even had the little girl, best of a bad bunch, bitten, even though she's clearly never was before it cut to her on an operating table with a massive rip to her face, who then lunges at the camera as a full zombie before the movie ends. I hate that. And that leads into a ten-minute credit sequence. Why? This is only a three-star movie for that awesome opening scene, otherwise it would be a contender for the worst zombie flick. Okay, and last. Four out of ten, so then a five, a three, and a four. Bulgarian war zombies. Code Red is a cheap, dark, zombie war movie shot in Bulgaria, even though although financed in the US. It lacks a proper cast and any proper named actors, and it features a wealth of low rent military action if that's your cup of tea. There's hell of a lot of shaky cam work here, sitting alongside mild gore scenes, shootouts, executions, and more besides. The plotting isn't very complex, and half of it is delivered in amateur explosions, expl exposition scenes of guys sitting around smoking cigars in offices, that kind of thing. I hate those scenes. To put it simply, a biological weapon has the power to turn people into zombies, and our squad of soldiers must escape a war zone filled with a very different kind of enemy. Code Red is a very low rent and is very low rent and lacking even the most basic characterisation, but a fast pace means I suppose it passes the time quickly if you're in the mood for trash. I am in the mood for trash, and so this is Darren Smith. And this is Code Red 2013.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Hi, I'm Ellie Ray Winstone, and I play Laura and Sophie in Employee of the Dead, and you are listening to the Undead Symphony.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Hello there, I'm Erin Truss, and I'm the co-writer and director of Employee of the Dead, and you are listening to the Undead Symphony podcast.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Okay, so I'm gonna get I'm gonna have to do this quick because I've only got 13, 12 now minutes until I have to leave the house because I'm going to dinner. Um sushi around the corner with friends. Um however, I need to get this out. I need to get this out. I need you guys to realise there is shit out there to protect you from it. And so, yeah, so it has now been four days since I recorded that intro to Code Red. Um I've been putting off this bag of shit. I mean, it's supposed to be American, other than the lead, nothing is American. One of the writers is American, uh, one of the producers is American, but this is about as American as I am, having an American stepfather and an American ex-wife. Um, it is Bulgarian. So, um we start with a bit of a documentary, a very brief bit of documentary from World War II about the Battle of Stalingrad with a very poor Scottish narrator, um, which then turns into an actual World War II drama. The Germans are fighting the Russians. If you remember, the Russians lost two million soldiers in at Stalingrad. Stalingrad fighting the Germans. Now you gotta remember this is fucking Stalin, who is just as insane as Putin, who'd be quite happy to lose two million of his own if he could actually win the Ukraine. Excellent battlefield stuff, excellent gore, execute, excellent bullet wounds, exciting action. Hans, who is the main German, saves his buddy who's been shot in the knee. The buddy who's been shot in the knee will not stop screaming. Umries him into a building where there are lots of Germans, it's obviously they're like holdout. Um he's trying to find a doctor, but then there's some Russians charge in and he shoots one and stabs the other in the face with a bayonet. And other than his over-the-top contact lenses, which are very blue, um guy's really good. I'd actually watch 90 minutes of Hans running around trying to survive. It's very exciting. Uh Hank kneecap guy then blows himself up while looking at a picture of his wife and child, and Hans continues to look for the doctor, finds him singing and humming to himself before he blows it blows his own brains out after saying Heil Hitler. So Hans for me is the star of this movie as he finds his friend uh spread out all over the corridor in which he left him, and sadly that is the end of the good bit. Um we then switch to modern day, and a very unconvincing Scottish actor playing a US Ranger General is talking to a human plop block of wood in Paul Logan, uh, who is a muscle bound inverted commas expert on something. Um Hans killed himself in a psych ward in Berlin a few ye months later, apparently. Um and whilst uh Paul uh whilst uh Paul Logan's character, McGay, it's actually we don't know what his character's called, right? This is a bit weird. Uh the general gives Paul Logan's character an alias, which makes no fucking sense. Because no one knows who he is. So why have you given him an alias? Um anyway, so uh whilst Paul uh Paul Logan's character is going through this um uh uh notebook owned by Hans the German, which look shows that he's clearly nuts. Um the US general says this is biochemical genocide. Well, it's not really genocide, genocide will be trying to wipe out our whole people. Please get that fucking understood. The only people the only people who've ever tried to do genocide in the planet fucking Nazis trying to wipe out the Jews, fucking uh Jap Japanese trying to wipe out the Indo-Chinese. Okay, no one else has tried that. Oh, and the Americans obviously trying to wipe out the Native Americans. Anyway, back to Hans who's hiding from the advancing Russians. There's a lot of them. He tries to radio out, but the but the weapon is sorry, the radio is broken. Um and again, I would watch a whole movie with Hans. Uh the Russians are mu are moving out in a hurry en masse, and then from the sky, a bad CGI parachute drops a bad CGI canister, it explodes, and a cloud of smoke fills the building. And this is Stalin's master plan. Hans, by the way, is played by Valeri Jordanov, who is very good. He puts on a gas mask and he's running around, and then we start hearing growling from the different directions from the from the smoke. The dead are getting up. And only headshots will kill them, but he wastes a few of the body anyway, and they are everywhere. But the issue at the moment is the camera is jumping around too much. That Scottish guy, by the way, has been in 80 movies, including Casino Royale and the Queen. But I'm guessing that he doesn't speak much in those movies and certainly not have the volume of lines that he has in this. You probably get stuck with thug number three kind of thing. So, anyway, this is a chemical weapon created by Stalin that brings the dead back. So, what would happen is who whoever's dead well, all the dead bodies, regardless of whether they're being a Russian or German in the battlefield, uh, will just get up and start killing everyone around them. So the idea is get your people the fuck out of Dodge, and whoever's left, ideally the enemy, will just get killed by the zombies. Now, this is done in my favourite comic book of all time. Uh, it isn't um uh uh Watchmen, though I do like Watchmen, it isn't um Tank Girl, I do like Tank Girl, I did like Batman versus Predator and lots of other comic books growing up, mostly uh Dark Knight comics. Um, however, the comic book I'm talking about from 2000 AD was the four-parter that was Bad Company. One of the episodes of Bad Company, one of the four parts of Bad Company, has this idea of using a zombie beat and this smoke to bring the dead back alive again, and then they will just kill anyone near them. And this is that. So uh the general has given uh Paul Logan's character an alias, John McGahey. Uh awful name, by the way, very gay. Um, it just doesn't sound right, and it's like the guy should be like John Stone, Jack Bullet, or something like that, but it's a John McGahey. Um anyway, so he's basically gonna go in under this guise of being a UN weapons inspector. And then he needs to find out what's going on with this thing. Yeah, it's an awful CG. Well, actually, first of all, he meets the soldier who gives him some information at some place. I'm guessing Sophia, because this is Bulgaria after all. He then flies on a very bad CGI plane that lands very bad in CGI Lee on an island off of Bulgaria where this all happens. Uh, we have a bad, bad American accent from Harold, who is an American soldier who meets him. Bad cinematography, bad shot choices, bad CGI, bad green screen driving, bad pianoism. Gahee uh makes the private take him to see a doctor who wrote the original report. Dr. Bennett, who is an American doctor, and her annoying fucking child. Neither of them can act. Uh I will just say that. It's probably the first role of both of them. And at this point, constant shit music. Um and the doctor is also pretty awful. I just was thinking that maybe this is gonna go bad. Um last week, according to the doctor, her report was about a soldier who came in after a chemical spill. She is at the military base that holds all of these World War II weapons. Uh the nurse is awful and overacting. At one point she goes, Doctor, you need to stop, because the d Bennett was doing CPR. He goes, he's already brain dead. The respirator is the only thing keeping him alive. Uh he's only just died. He's also not on a respirator. He's connected to an ECG that's not a respirator at all. Um so I will just point out those facts. Um then we have this bad CGI of the heart restarting, and then the soldier comes back from the dead after bad CGI boils appear on his neck. So more bad cinematography, constant bad camera shake, and bad music. The dead soldier then gets up and attacks the nurse before Dr. Bennett runs at him, slides along the ground, and shoots him repeatedly, including in the head, whilst sliding. Is that where the fuck did those skills come from? Um however she is then uh sent home and suspended from duty by the evil J Colonel Borov, who is the guy in charge. He is a bald, mustachioed uh Bulgarian colonel um who looks very much like um what was the fat New Jersey guy who lived next door to um Aquitine Hunger Force. Anyway, 25 minutes in. Uh at this point, I actually need to pause. I actually needed a pause after 25 minutes uh because anything was better than this. Uh so I actually went to the gym and the grocery store and walked the dog because Logan's acting was like an angry plank of wood. The Bulgarian villains couldn't be more bland, mustachioed, and villainous. Bennett's kid is bullied by Bulgarian kids, and to be fair, she fucking deserves it. Um, there is this wholly unnecessary and unnecessarily horrible um old woman with too much makeup in the hallway, and I need to pause there because I'm gonna go to dinner.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Hey y'all, this is Stephanie from the Listeners of the Dead Podcast, and you're listening to the Undead Symphony.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Okay, so I am now back. I am back from uh Eat Tokyo, it's called, uh and I I had uh what was it? Shabu Shabu. Shabu Shabu. If you haven't had shabu shabu, uh basically it's like boiling hot water, well, boiling hot soup, uh that's kind of like tom yum guy or something, that they put on to a heat um put a hot plate in the middle of your table that keeps it constantly bubbling, and then you have all of the food, which it can be for me, it was like steak, mostly wagyu beef, finely sliced, some shrimp, some tofu, some mushrooms, some uh oodon noodles, and then you um chuck it in, let it cook, and then uh eat it, and it was lovely, and I know that I know you wanted to hear that, uh, because that is actually gonna be a lot more exciting uh than this. The continuation of Code Red. Okay, so if you remember Borov, that's the Bulgarian Colonel Borov has been selling weapons via his greasy brothel owner c uh partner, um, and he knows that if um Magehi uh finds out that um that basically it's game over, they're all gonna end up in prison. So he tells the greasy brothel owner no more, even though we've got clients waiting for weapons, we're not gonna sell them any weapons and pretend to be pretending they were stolen. We're actually just gonna blow up all the warehouses to hide our tracks because we've already sold you hundreds upon hundreds of weapons, and uh McGay's gonna find that they're missing. Um he then goes he goes a bit nuts at his second in command saying that you know I I know that you're trying to get your wife and daughter out of the city, and the second in second in command's like, What? Well, yeah, that's that other guy who ended up you know attacking the nurse and being shot by the doctor. I mean, he was infected by something. What what is infecting them? And Borov basically just blackmails him to stay. He says, You're not allowed to leave if you do you're we're all going to prison kind of thing. Okay, so now Magehi is gonna go and sneak into the warehouses to find in the camp first and then to the warehouses in the camp to find out what weapons are there. So let me just picture let me just paint the scene. It is Bulgaria. It is winter in Bulgaria. There is four or five inches of snow on the ground and it is snowing. So guess what McGahi, the muscle bound American lead, is wearing? That's right. A muscle tight skinny t-shirt, a single t-shirt, and a pair of gloves. So basically like fighting gloves, not even like keeping yourself warm gloves. So he's wearing what you'd wear to maybe a uh the gym. You know, maybe a bare f uh you know a fighting competition. So he it's the middle of fucking winter, even the Bulgarians are wearing multiple layers. He's wearing a fucking t-shirt and gloves. A fucking T-shirt. Um so he goes into he sneaks in, sticks past the guards, um, who are also in on it, so they'll be um blowing the place up later. Uh he gets in an elevator that has no lights. And then goes down in an elevator that has no lights onto but all these floors have no lights. I was like, if anything, at least the elevator would have lights. No elevator has no lights. There is no such thing. It's absolute horseshit. Uh at this point it was 35 minutes into the movie and I wanted to hurl something heavy at the television. Uh this this bit is so bad, which is such a shame because the World War II stuff was awesome. So, whilst uh Captain Frozen Nipples and his t-shirt is running around because it's not real snow, it's fake snow, uh the Bulgarians are planting the bombs that will blow the place up. He then find basically there was there's two guards and the colonel, and basically he runs into one of the guards, and they have one of those noisy foo, pho, pho, pho fights they're really loud where they're they're like making the noise while as they're hitting people. Uh, and after he knocks one of them down, the second one comes up behind him and knocks him to the knocks him out with the buttle of his rifle. You're not that great, are you? And then they leave, and as they leave, a giant chemical explosion uh in the night goes up at the um at the uh military base and the military warehouses where they are holding all of those weapons. Yeah, it's all gonna kick off now. Uh then we jump immediately to the next day, and it's already morning. There is a PA system saying there is radioactive material at the base. Please get to the closest bunker. Lots of CGI plume of smoke in the background as loads of lots of very, very shaky, shaky cam. As everyone from the city is running as a group, falling over each other, falling over stuff, trying to get to this bunker. Bennett is separated from her annoying daughter, both of them screaming each other's name as they say there's too many people in this bunker now, we're just gonna close the close the gates and stop people getting in. Which is ridiculous. Um so now we have the useless, annoying kid walking around the city by herself. For some reason, half of the city is on fire, which makes no sense. Uh, we have a lot of overacting from uh Bennett and that non-American American soldier Howold who are looking for her child. So there is this hot that horrible neighbor, the uh horrible, unnecessarily horrible and uh horribly unnecessary neighbor. It's a big old woman. Uh the door is now open rather than on the latch as the girl walks past to go home. And the old woman is a zombie and chases the kid up the street, uh sorry, up the uh into her apartment, and then bursts through the door, but the girl comes out and manages to get out on the street. Where anyone that was left in the town is now a fast running zombie. She's just about to get grabbed, the girl, by a fast moving zombie, when she is run down by the military transport that was carrying Magehi. Again, fast moving zombies actually look all right, ble bloody, messy, boils, that kind of thing. Uh back at the office, Borov, Colonel Borov, uh the bald uh mustachioed guy Carl. That's what I was trying to think of earlier. The next door neighbour to the aqua teen hunger force is Carl. That made me laugh that it. Uh, because I often think that the uh Belarusian uh president Litvachenko looks like him as well. So Borov is filling sacks full of cash when and he lies to his superiors saying, Oh, yeah, yeah, don't worry about it. It's just a training exercise. Um when his assistant, well, his number two comes in and says, My my you know, I'm bleeding through the neck. And he's like, he's like, You don't know what's going on out there, do you? And he goes, What's going on out there? And then he shows his neck and has a big bite wound in it, and he goes, My daughter did this. And he goes, What did what did you do? What are you doing? And he goes, Well, and he says, Yeah, I've told I've told Sophia, which is the capital of Bulgaria, that um there's no problem. He goes, Well, you better fucking tell them there is a problem. Um, Bobov then kills his second in command and then says over the phone, we have a code red emergency. Uh people in the bunker have now started turning and killing each other. So Bennett and the soldier run out onto the street uh with two well all the other survivors are easily picked off by zombies. Uh McGahey was in the military transport that crashed earlier. Uh the kid goes to the back door and says, Can you please um can you let me uh basically the guard the McGahee says, Find the keys, find the keys. Earlier we saw the driver and the guard get killed quite easily by zombies without actually fighting back. Fuck knows where the military training is. Um lots of overacting and not really, really fake tears on the kid. And she goes and gets the pair the keys uh off of one of the corpses and then gives it to uh McGahey. He has the again, he has the acting range of a block of wood. Um he has this whole I'm invincible air, I've got this rugged jawline, you know. We saw him without his shirt in his room earlier, and he's got dog tags. Whose dog tags? Because McGahee, we already know, is just an alias given to you by the unconvincing Scottish general earlier. Anyway, very unconvincing, even though you've got this invincibility here, you've already been knocked anged by a pissant Bulgarian soldier after your ff f f fighting style. Um you're just pretty fucking useless. But she lets him out and then he shoots the zombies that are around them. Borov, basically there's one bridge, because it's an island, remember. So there's one bridge out of the island, and uh Borov escapes via the bridge with his giant sack of cash as um CGI APCs head out and into the city, although they might not be CGI APCs uh armoured personnel carriers, because there are armoured personnel carriers in later scenes driving about. Bennett makes Harold, the soldier, drive her to her building. They have two uh kids in the back, although the 20-something year old couple. Um, meanwhile, the sweaty scumbag brothloner, and it's a classic, easily written thing, right? He his his number his muscle, his bouncer carries one of his prostitutes back into the club and says she's been attacked. And the the oak the the sweaty oak scumbag brothel owner is like, Oh, we'll go and fuck that guy up, grabs his gun and goes outside. There are all these trucks outside, it's a truck stop brothel house, and uh he goes from truck to truck to truck, and there's no one in any of them, and then suddenly one of the zombies jump out of the truck and he shoots it dead, gets covered in its blood. When he heads inside, he's basically says, you know, to his bouncer, Okay, we need to get the fuck out of here, and then they hear banging from the room where they left the body of the of the prostitute, and he goes, Are you sure she was dead? She then comes out, she bites the bodyguard, the bouncer, the scumbag brothel owner then shoots both of them, and then he is gonna leave. But first of all, he calls someone and says, We have a code red, whatever that means, and then uh he gets jumped on by a zombie version of the bouncer who does the whole thumbs and the eyeballs thing. Meanwhile, Magehi and the annoying kid go to her school, which is stupid, they are chased, which is stupid, and then they get chased by including zombie children, which is stupid. She ends up running in, she has this fucking rabbit, Mr. Bunny, toy. She drops it and she's gonna go back for it, but then she climbs up the one of the climbing frames, and he and he turns up in the nick of time to shoot all of the fucking uh zombies, including the zombie kids. The the two idiots who are in the back of the car with Harold the Soldier, Unconvincing American Soldier, and Bennett then spot this military convoy of guys in white. hazmat suits that are gunning down zombies and then incinerating them with um with flamethrowers they think this is um a good uh these are the people you want to look after you so they run to them and say hi hi help us help us help us and they get shot dead and then burnt burnt uh their corpses are burnt because the as the soldier says we've got a code red the other two though jump that's Harold and Dr Bennett jump in the car and then drive off being chased by APCs and at this point we still have half an hour to go and we are questioning whether our lifestyle choices are the correct ones so they then McGehee and the kid this is arrive and there is a an APC with a an like 15 white suit hammer hazmat suited soldiers there advancing. He runs to them and says Infected are coming guys infected are coming guys and then the Americans shoot all the the guys in the hazmat suits shoot all of the infected and then they're gonna shoot McGahee and uh and the kid why? Well the leader of them says in case you didn't know there's a code red in effect so it's like five times in the space of two minutes we've actually heard the fucking phrase code red code red emergency gets a code red in place. Borov uh his plan is now to bomb the town and destroy it with incineration much like they did in World War II to get rid of the infected however the infected get the better of all of those soldiers and they are all killed other than the one who told him it was a code red and refused to take the kid he then shoots that guy in the face and says well at least you'll die human the only person alive at this point is the APC driver Alex and basically Alex is told you will drive us to the bridge and he's like okay I'll drive you to the bridge but he says I'm running out of fuel so they drive to a gas station earlier Harold the American unconvincing American soldier and Dr Bennett were walking walking through the city and she says we need to get some water and then keep going which is basically a very telegraphed way of saying let's go let's stop at the next shop. The next shop was the gas station so we almost have a moment where Harold the soldier unconvincing American soldier um he captures Alex and then Harold and um McGahee have got a face off but you don't know they don't know it is each other because Alex is between the two of them and then they move Alex moves out the way he goes oh Harold it's you we have Spooky Unions yawn but then the infected come running but what the infected have also done is they've infected Harold the American soldier who jumps on and starts attacking McGahee. McGahee kills him but McGahee then says oh I've been bitten on the arm you guys keep going to Overly sentimental music so they're going to be going to the bridge we then do have the fun of Alex driving the APC rolling over all of the abandoned cars on the bridge but for some reason they can't breach that final barricade at the end which is absolute nonsense played a stop uh Borov is telling his men to shoot them all but the Scottish general the unconvincing Scottish general in the US Rangers arrives to say I'm in charge now because he wants Dr Bennett who knows about this stuff to come and talk to him the idiot child and Dr Bennett then get out of the APC because Alex can't take it any further and refuses to get out of himself and now they are basically there's bodies everywhere. The idiot child drops her bunny Mr Bunny and starts screaming at the top of her lungs that she wants Mr Bunny where's Mr Bunny I've dropped Mr Bunny and then the infected start running towards them because she's making a fuck a load of noise then she starts screaming which makes more noise stupid fucking brat she is picked up by her mother and they are attacked on the way by the infected whilst the American soldiers advance shooting them. The kid keeps repeating I've something's cut my hand mum something's cut my hand meaning that she's been bitten and now this is the weirdest bit of this awful awful movie. Rather than the end of the movie being filmed we now have stills black and white stills of Dr Bennett and her daughter being separated we see flamethrower so I'm suggest I'm gonna guess that Dr Bennett is killed and then we see the general the unconvincing Scottish general looking at the child who is tied down to a gurney and clearly a zombie before and the awful awful awful ending of the girl zombie sort of jumping up at the camera to do that final jump scare except it wasn't a jump scare it was just a pathetic fin. Right I'm gonna have a quick sip of tea and I'm gonna conjugate that movie what a fucking mess I kind of mostly echo this this is the this is the first review I opened on IMDb one out of ten hilariously awful a Bulgarian zombie flick with no storyline Paul Logan was more wooden than Sherwood Forrest and the rest of the archetypal cast were terrible as well don't know what happened at the end they must have just run out of film I mean we to be fair we never saw what happened to McGahee he literally just said you guys go on without me you're supposed to be the fucking star Tom Cruise isn't with 10 minutes to go gonna go you guys just go on without me and then without then you don't even see what happens to them it and it did just feel like they ran out of film at the end because why else would you suddenly fucking move you've had documentary for the first few minutes of the movie then you had all the World War II stuff that was really fucking good in black and white and then we sort of moved on to the modern shit and now we're finishing with photographs which make no fucking sense it does feel like they just ran out of film so another sip of tea god almighty the world war two bit I could watch an entire movie of the World War II bit the first ten minutes where hands was superb um it was tense it was brutal it was warlike it was great and then we moved to the modern day overly macho American bullshit don't you know there's a code red in effect while you fucking said it whenever you could everyone got in the titular line now when I first watched this this is I've been to dinner since uh and had uh shabbu shabu um I was gonna give it four point five out of ten and that's mostly because of the World War II bit and the fast-paced being chased around by zombies there are some decent elements I did like the miserable old woman who you know was mean and mean and mean when you saw her then she was a zombie um but the rest of it was just a fucking mess um I'm I'm gonna class it as Bulgarian um rather than American um because really it was just one actor well potentially the girl and the mother but certainly Logan Paul or Paul Logan whatever his name's gonna be uh as the lead one of the writers and one of the producers were American but everyone else involved in this project was Bulgarian so I'm gonna say this is a Bulgarian movie which makes it the 45th country baby so that's actually one of the highlights when one of the highlights is where the movie is from I mean I know that's gonna be true for Z Mom when I watch finally watch Z Mom from Cambodia but this is a new country for me so I did have it as 4.5 out of ten and I would genuinely say that the first bit with the World War II bit is really fucking good. The World War II bit is with Hance is really good. The rest of it is average at best um and brings the average down is it I'm gonna give it I'm gonna leave it at 4.5 it's not quite recommendable it's not rewatchable so I'm gonna leave it with 4.5 out of ten and that is if you didn't know already because there's a code red in effect is that it was code red