Backwoods Horror

Happened to be sent a link from a friend of mine about a zombified version of “tag” goin’ around the college campuses.  Check it out:

By Matthew Daneman, USA TODAY
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -

Al Palmer has a slim build, an easy smile, and a near-insatiable hunger for human flesh.

Palmer, 27, of Litchfield, Maine, is an industrial-design student at Rochester Institute of Technology. He wears in his headband the IDs of 17 students who had been humans until he tagged them, turning them into zombies.

“I get the biggest kick out of walking up behind someone who’s looking all around except behind them,” he says as his group prepares to head out into the night. “It gets your heart pumping, that exhilaration.”

Welcome to the world of Humans vs. Zombies (HvZ), a tag-like game that is the latest trend in campus entertainment. An HvZ game typically involves hundreds of students and runs 24 hours a day for days on end; dwindling numbers of humans try to fend off and outlast growing legions of zombies.

The rules are fundamentally simple: Zombie tags human, human becomes a zombie. Unlike movie zombies, with shambling walks and undead makeup, zombies in the game just wear headbands to distinguish them from armband-wearing humans. And they are free to sprint.

Humans ward off zombies with Nerf guns or by hitting them with a balled-up sock - a defensive move that stuns the zombie, usually for 15 minutes. The goal is to still be a live human at the end.

A group of students at Goucher College in Towson, Md., is credited with starting the game, which has spread across the USA. Addicted to the first-person shooter video game Splinter Cell, the students wanted to create a live version of it on campus; it turned into tag and then became zombie-fied, says Goucher graduate Brad Sappington, one of the creators.

“It just unfolded like that: ‘We like zombies. Let’s find a way to make real zombies at college.’ It was alcohol-induced, I’m sure.”

The Internet has played a big role in the spread of the game. Goucher students created a website (hvzsource.com) that is a repository of information about and rules for the game. And YouTube videos of the game being played at Goucher have found fans at other schools.

Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., hosted its first student-organized HvZ game last fall after one student stumbled across online video footage of the game and brought the idea there, says Jason White, 23, a senior from Indianapolis who is organizing a tournament there this week.

RIT hosted its first HvZ game last fall after Zack Bessler, 21, a computer science major from Lyman, Maine, said he came across information about the game.

“It just sounded like ridiculous amounts of fun,” Bessler says. “Does it get any better than zombie-themed tag?”

That’s fuckin’ sweet.  Check THIS LINK for more on the game….  Sounds like a cool-ass Halloween party game to me…. Once again…sweeeeeet…

One of my continuous sources of creamy horror goodness, Shock Till You Drop, released some info. on the upcoming George A. Romero Zombie flick…and guess what, it’s not a sequel to the abysmal Diary Of The Dead.  Seems like it’s gonna be an entirely original flick in his Zombie canon.  The most information they’ve got thus far is that it’s going to take place on an island.  Not a huge scoop, but stay tuned boils ‘n ghouls because as soon as I know more, you’ll know more!
This probably explains why he postponed his visit to Charlotte, NC (nearby stompin’ grounds for yours truly). 

Keep It Creepy!

The indy pic Zombie Strippers is coming to haunt video store shelves on October 28th.  For those not in the know:

“The film opens with a news montage explaining that it is set in the near future where the Bush Administration has been elected to a fourth term, shut down the United States Congress, instituted a ban on public nudity, and is embroiled in a war with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Canada, and an independent Alaska. To support the war effort, a secret laboratory in Sartre, Nebraska has developed a virus to re-animate dead marines and send them back into battle. However, the virus has broken containment and infected test subjects and scientists are at risk of escaping the lab. A team of marines codenamed the “Z” Squad is sent in to destroy the zombies, but one of the marines named Byrdflough (Zak Kilberg) is bitten and escapes. The infected marine ends up in an alley outside an underground strip club named Rhino. The marine dies and awakens as a zombie that goes into the club.

Rhino is run by Ian Essko (Robert Englund). A new stripper named Jessy has arrived at the club to save up enough money for her grandmother’s operation. She is introduced to the club’s star dancer, an intellectual stripper named Kat (Jenna Jameson). Kat begins her dance on the stage, but is attacked by Byrdflough, who ends up biting and infecting her. Essko is concerned about losing his best dancer, so he lets her go back on stage as a zombie. To everyone’s surprise, Kat is a better and more popular dancer as a zombie than she was as a human.

The other strippers now find themselves faced with the prospect of losing their customers, since the men now prefer zombie strippers instead of human strippers. One by one, the human strippers become zombies, some by choice in order to compete or (in the case of a Goth stripper Lillith played by Roxy Saint) for fun. During private dances, the zombie strippers bite and kill their customers. Essko tries to keep the zombies hidden in a cage in the club’s cellar, but eventually, the zombies escape and overrun the club. The strippers fight each other for supremacy, which includes a moment where Kat shoots ping-pong and billiard balls out of her vagina at her opponent.

The remaining humans in the club struggle to survive until the “Z” Squad burst in to destroy the zombies. But they discover that the zombies were allowed to escape by the Bush administration, who hoped that the ensuing zombie plague would distract the population from the war and the economy.”–From Wikipedia

Sounds like this flick is going to be full of horror comedy cheese.  I mean, Zombies AND Strippers…how can it go wrong?  We’ll see on October 28th.  Check out the Trailer below: