Book Review: World War Z

I used to think I was going slightly mad when I'd hear my friends at university start conversations with remarks like "well my plan for the Zombie Apocalypse is.....". Everyone I knew seemed to have some sort of contingency plan, not for a nuclear attack, terrorist outrage or natural disaster, but in case corpses started to get up and devour the living. 
What, I thought to myself, would possibly motivate people to enjoy thinking up such macabre and strange scenarios?. It was some time later that I picked up Max Brooks' "World War Z" (actually I saw it in a friend's coat pocket and nabbed it) and began to read. 
The tacky, cheap, pop-fiction horror romp I expected was in reality a carefully constructed, cleverly presented, poignant, enthralling and outright frightening book. Set out as a series of interview transcripts recorded some years after the events they refer to this "oral history of the Zombie War" recounts the beginnings of infection in China, the spread and global panic to world-wide pandemic and human counter-strike that came to known as "World War Z". 
You would think (as I did) that such a fanciful tale could never take root in your rational mind as a serious possibility, but as you read each interview, all realistic to a phenomenal degree, you begin to let yourself believe it could, indeed may, happen. 
Realism is the cornerstone of Brooks' work. The attention to detail and brutal (in)humanity entrenched in the pages of every section bring a stable horror scenario out of make-believe land and very much into our own real world. 
The responses of individuals, organisations and governments to the problem of walking, hungry corpses are probably as close as we will ever come to how we all might actually react to a zombie plague. Each interview is long enough to be engrossing and short enough to hold your attention and in some cases leave you wanting to know more. At times I was actually rueful an account didn't go on longer and into more detail, I felt an urge to know more about a situation or the fate of an individual in that grey, bleak and moan-haunted world Brooks' forces you to visualise.
As a backdrop to his other work The Zombie Survival Guide (which I have not yet read in full) World War Z is an fantastic devise, even tying the two books together into a canon universe that's ripe for further expansion. Any zombie horror fan will enjoy this book, I myself am not a devotee of the zombie genre but I cannot recommend World War Z highly enough to anyone who is fairly open minded literature-wise and wants a gripping read. 
Now I fully understand what my friends were thinking when they were planning escape routes and weapon acquisition. Maybe I'll keep a sharp instrument closer to by bed and make sure all the windows are locked....you know...in case of....burglars... 


Justification Score: 5/5

Honkey Joe's Blaxploitation Review 1: "Blacula" (1972)

Fans of the 1971 hit "Shaft" will not be new to the blaxploitation sub-genre. For those of you who are (shame on you) it's definitive feature is the use of black American culture and dialect in order to deliberately appeal to a black audience and provoke a humorous response from White audiences. Thrusting into this parody rich field of cinema only a year later in 1972 comes the hammer-horror "Blacula". 
Essentially a rehash of the Stoker classic with an "ethnic" twist, our undead hero "Prince Mamuwalde" takes a holiday from resisting the African slave trade (us big bad white folks!) in 1780 to visit Count Dracula in Eastern Europe (roll with it I promise it gets better). With a dash of racial prejudice more pronounced than a Klan member at Sasha Obama's birthday party he takes a bit of a shine to our Prince's missus "Luva". After a slapstick scuffle and some candle magic Drac turns our hero into a blood-sucking vampire and locks him in a coffin, imprisoning his wife in the same vault for all time. Two centuries later two queer queens (sorry male "interior decorators") purchase the coffin at a furniture auction at Castle Dracula (Bargain Hunt does USSR Satellite Sates can be seen on BBC2 at 2pm on Thursday afternoons)   and ship it to 1970's L.A. 
Various racial stereotype hilarity  (White and Black) ensues and we learn that pretty young thing Tina is some sort of reincarnation of Mamuwalde's old lady and he'll stop at nothing to win her back. Things take a surprising turn when Blacula hypnotises doe-eyed Tina into falling in love with him (yes really). Meanwhile Dr. Gordon Thomas, afro and wide shirt collar included, the "rude nigger" cop of the film (i.e. he's bad ass and gets police work done black man style) is busily tracking down the pesky vamp, following the trail of expendable plot exposition characters, and kills his recently created minions before going after Blacula himself. A chase/fight ensues, Tina is killed and a distraught Mamuwalde commits suicide by sunlight, ending 93 minutes of glorious blacktion.


As cult classics go, this one is a gem. Snot-nosed hippies and screaming 16 year old girls might decide it's "racist" but in actual fact the grim realities of racial prejudice are not to be found in this film. All the characters are 2D card board stereotypes including the white ones wokin' fo da Man. The "special" effects and continuity errors add an endearing element of care-free nostalgia to the proceedings  which play out in 35mm technocolour fabulousness. William Marshall actually excels in this role as the dammed African prince as does Thalmus Rasulala as the hard-bitten no-smiling black cop who seems constantly pissed off by everything and everyone who comes under the fearsome glare of his moustache. Blacula slipped under the radar of many niche-culture enthusiasts but retains a respectable cult following on both sides of the Atlantic, earning cameo mentions in both the Simpsons and Futurama.  One to buy cheaply and enjoy for the retro-film fan and curious horror buff alike.