I Spit On Your Rave

Check out this nifty knitted zombie!

Hannah Simpson knits the undead (amongst other things) for her etsy store. Anyone else making corpse crafts?

We were tipped off to this handsome chap by eagle-eyed folks on twitter. So thanks @louby, @snotd, @harkenback, @iamlumberjack, and @astroair. (Extra points go to @louby for “I spit on your crochet” and @harkenback for “darn of the dead”.)

We asked Paul McEvoy at Film4 Frightfest to give us the lowdown on the horror festival’s zombie greats. And we challenged him to come up with some undead films you might not have seen. Check it out:

Zombies, zombies, zombies.. those perennial slow walking or fast running fan favourites seem to be everywhere.

At this years Film 4 FrightFest we are showcasing a bunch of new films featuring the rotting rotters. From the sensational French short film Paris by Night of the Living Dead to the UK low budget feature Zombie Women of Satan with burlesque zombie babes. Nasty Nazi zombies rear their ugly heads in Norwegian snow bound splatter Dead Snow and it’s all out hard gore action in French zombies vs hoodlums vs cops feature The Horde. Finally we will be short film showcasing Canadian entry Deadwalkers – zombies in the wild wild west. Something for every fan
of the human munching bad guys.

One of our weekend highlights is sure to be our Sunday evening treat Andy Nyman’s 100 Best Deaths, where the star of the simply superb Dead Set will be hosting a live guide to the best and goriest cinema shocks that is sure to include some great zombie action!

Casting a look back  there are a handful of fright flicks that have featured zombies that you may not have seen:

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie aka Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue is a 1975 Italian entry from director Jorge Grau that while campy retro fun also delivers some fine shock sequences and great splatter scenes – well worth seeking out!

Dance of the Dead which we screened at FrightFest  to tremendous acclaim last year is a contemporary shock and laugh barrage of sick humor and edge of the seat chills. Gregg Bishop’s work culminates at the school prom dance of the movies title.

The Dead Outside is a beautifully shot slow burn Scottish zombie virus outbreak feature that ratchets the tension and paranoia to intense levels in the Highlands. Director Kerry Anne Mullaney is a name to watch out for.

Spain’s Amando de Ossorio served us up a whole slew of zombie films in the early 1970’s including Tombs of the Blind Dead. The films have been released globally under so many different titles that it boggles the mind! All the movies focus on the 13th Century knights Templar and their insatiable flesh lusting ways. Atmospheric and scary.

So, with George A Romero’s eagerly awaited “…of the Dead” with us shortly and a proposed 28 Days/Weeks Later spin-off due and a rich vein of big screen terror still to be chewed in the brilliant on-going comic book series Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead, it looks as though the zombies will be stalking us for many years to come!

Keep running!!

Paul

On 17 July Carl Whitely organised a zombie walk for charidee in Manchester.  Looks impressive, no? If you’re feeling inspired Carl tells us he’s organising another one in October, alongside Manchesters first horror film festival. Details will be appearing on his site soon.

Zombie Info have given us a great write-up. They’re based in Canada so watch out for marauding undead at key border points.

Are you a Flickr user? Joined our group yet? We’ve got 5 pairs of tickets to give away to the people uploading their images to our group on Flickr. How it works:

Take a photo of your best zombie roar or snarl
Upload it to Flickr
Add it to this group
Tag it with bigchilltickets (this bit’s important, it’s how we’ll know your picture is a competition entry)

The 5 scariest zombies will be selected by a panel at Channel 4 and Warp Films.

This competition is open from 3pm 10 July to 5pm 14 July BST so get those pics in quick!

All the info is here. So get snarling and snapping, and we might see you at the Big Chill in August!

***UPDATE***

This competition is closed now. Of course you can still add your pictures to the group, and they’ll still be featured on the site. In fact please do keep adding your pics, we really want to see those zombies! We’ll post up the winning zombie snarls here and on the group very soon.

Timo Grubing has been posting a zombie a day since 31 October last year, and is going to carry on until 31 October this year.

Yesterday’s was pretty good:

The 20 June’s is chilling:

And 30 December’s was done on an etch-a-sketch:

See the rest of them at Blog of the Living Dead.

“I’m not like other guys…”

Whatever your views on Michael Jackson, you can’t deny that his Thriller video was a masterpiece. Sadly the embed code is disabled for the full version on YouTube, but click on the King of Pop’s face to take yourself to 13mins of awesomeness. Oh, and check out Film4’s tribute to the man’s on-screen legacy.

Argh! We’re alive! (well, sort of) Welcome to the site of the film of the festival of the undead.

So, what’s going on? Well we (Film4, Warp Films and the Big Chill peeps) had an idea. The idea goes like this: Everybody loves music festivals, and we like making movies, and we all know that zombies are cool so… let’s put that altogether. Even better, let’s put that together with LOTS of people and have as much fun as we can in the process. What’s not to love?

The big question is: Are you in? We’re aiming big, we want as many zombies as possible to join in with this madness. Did you know that there’s a world record for the number of zombies captured on film? We’re aiming to smash it!

So if you’re going to the Big Chill this summer please come in costume. Filming starts on Thursday 6^th August, so you may need to take an extra day off work. We’ll have some make-up there but we think you can do it better – show us your best wounds and rotting flesh! We’ll be looking for featured extras, fast zombies, slow zombies, hippy zombies, mashed zombies, all manner of undead.

We’re right at the start of this, and we’re still putting the script together. We’ll post up bits of it here when we can, and give you details of what we’ll be filming and when.

If you’re not coming to the Big Chill you can still join in. August is a long way off and there’s lots to do. We want to fill this site with your best zombie pictures and videos. We want your ideas of good places to get costumes, and the best gruesome make-up. We’ll be filming in other locations in the run-up to the festival and we’ll need zombies, so keep ‘em peeled. We’ll announce more stuff here and on our twitter feed soon…

Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaains…