Seth Grahame-Smith Eats Jane Austen's Heart Out

While the rest of the world continues to amuse itself by adding the phrase "in bed" to the end of whatever very American-ish adage it finds in its fortune cookies ("You will prosper greatly...in bed;" "An hour with a friend is greater than a year with 10 strangers... in bed;" "Milk Duds are better... in bed."), Seth Grahame-Smith (author of a variety of guidebooks covering topics from politics to porn... and Spider-Man) has raised the cultural adaptation bar 100-fold by imagining what great wonders might result when one tacks the words "and zombies" onto titles of classic English literature.

Smith's book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which supposedly contains the original text of Jane Austen's novel amended with interstitial scenes of unapologetic zombie-on-human violence, is currently ranked at #86 on Amazon's top-selling titles... three months before it's even released. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen anticipation of this magnitude since the Punky Brewster cliffhanger episode where Punky got trapped in a cave with the spider from It.

No word from Smith on whether he plans to "plus" other classic novels, but I'm hoping his next target is Hemingway; he'd add a whole new dimension to A Farewell to Arms.

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will play hockey

It’s been so long since I actively followed the making and marketing of Kevin Smith’s movies that I completely forgot that there are actually people out there who do. Bless ‘em all, though, for without a few other pairs of observant eyes, I wouldn’t know about Smith’s first foray into fear flicks.

Those who do keep tabs on Smith and his View Askewiverse might assume I’m referring to Red State, the politically overt horror film he’s been working on (currently slated for a 2010 release). But while Smith temporarily tabled that project so he could squeeze out another wacky, offbeat romantic comedy, his interest in horror is manifesting on the big screen nonetheless, albeit on Seth Rogen’s sweaty chest.



The promotional still above, from a scene in Smith’s latest, features Rogen and New Jersey’s favorite video store clerk paying homage to the original Dawn of the Dead as teammates on a hockey team titled the Monroeville Zombies. The new film was shot and is reportedly set in Monroeville, PA, and includes scenes filmed in the same shopping mall where the dead once famously walked the earth. And, as is typical with the props and fake brands featured in View Askew movies, Smith’s stick-wielding stiffs have shambled onto real-world jerseys you can buy from his Secret Stash comic shop.

And that’s just the start of Monroeville’s resurging undead infamy. While attending the June HorrorHound Weekend in the Pittsburgh ‘burb, the crew of NOTLP met and interviewed one of the guys behind Monroeville Zombies: The Zombie Experience, described as sort of a zombie museum/theme park/gift shop hybrid coming soon to a vacant mall storefront. There’s not much up on the project’s website yet, but it definitely sounds like it will be worth a trip to Pittsburgh.

Whether or not it justifies actually braving a shopping mall is another matter entirely…

If I Only Had 18 Bucks

For the first time ever, tax season has come and gone without a check from the government hitting my mailbox. This year Washington plucked a few bucks from my bank account instead, which is unfortunate, because if I did have a few extra bones lying around, I’d be stimulating the economy over at Busted Tees by picking up the best T-shirt this side of the rainbow.

The Thrill of It All

This year De of the Dead made my bloody valentine by gifting me with the 25th Anniversary edition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which includes a DVD featuring the complete 13-minute mini-horror film that first taught me to love zombies and dance poorly.

The video is still amazingly fresh and effective (probably in part because we’re not used to seeing a Michael Jackson that resembles a human being with a real nose, let alone one that’s wolfed out or been zombified), and features what I to this day consider to be one of the top three “corpses coming out of the ground” sequences of all time (the other two appear in Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and the original Return of the Living Dead).

But a true acknowledgement of “Thriller’s” legacy is really not complete without recognizing some of the masterpieces the video inspired, all of which are now preserved forever (or until the FCC goes all Orwell) on YouTube:

The Michael Jackson Original
Co-starring the voice of Vincent Price and a girl I always thought was Tootie from The Facts of Life.

The Indian Version
This is easily my favorite “Thriller” knockoff, if not for the weird “chicken variation” on the signature “creep” dance, then for the muffled mystical voice at the beginning that makes it sound like the paunchy lead is being turned into a monster by the ride operator on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

The Lego Adaptation
Amazing. Someone buy these guys some space sets so they can remake Moonwalker.

The CPDRC Inmates Version
You’ve got to wonder how they decided who would play the girl.

Where's George?

George Romero is appearing everywhere this week the opening of Diary of the Dead -- except, most likely, for a theater near you.

I’d known all along that any theatrical release granted to Diary (which Grandpa George intended to send directly to video, initially) would be limited, but to the Weinstein company, “limited release” is apparently code for, “We are afraid of the Midwest.”

The official Diary of the Dead MySpace page (a phrase that's probably a more telling social portrait than the film itself) posted some additional theater listings last Friday, including some in Chicago and Kansas City, but while the film is playing on multiple screens in several cities, there are practically entire time zones of the country that would need a few tanks of gas and a couple days off work to make it to a screening.

Here’s the latest list, and below are some digital Diary nuggets posted around the web (including some originating from archaic regions beyond the coasts!):

• Romero’s chat with EW
• George’s impassioned plea to kids who’ve never heard of him
• One large popcorn, a box of Skittles, and a massive wound to the head
• DOTD on the Rot-o-Meter