City of the Living Dead and Stone Sublimely Self Righteous Ale

So when I was a kid and began watching horror movies I remember being wowed by the first Final Destination movie.  I thought it was the first movie that really focused on each death scene.  I had been used to movies that relied on cut away shots and the idea of gore instead of in your face gory fun.  Then I saw my first Italian zombie movie and found out that gore existed well before Final Destination.  City of the Living Dead is a okay zombie movie and an AMAZING horror flic.  Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.  I have seen this movie once before.  Knowing how amazing this movie is I needed to pair it with an equally amazing beer.  In the perfect pairing of dark and soulful beer and zombies I chose Stone Brewing Company’s Sublimely Self Righteous Ale.  It is strong enough to punch you in the mouth with awesome flavor yet gentle enough to settle your stomach after watching all the gut wrenching horror in the film.

WHAT IS THIS FACE!!!

This movie starts out like so many other awesome/horrible zombie movies…with a séance.  This group of crazy kooks is sitting around having a séance when one of the women gets a vision of the end of the world (all originating with a priest hanging himself thus opening the gates of hell).  She gets so scared she dies!  There is some real comedic gold as the cop questions the other members of the séance after her death.  He’s convinced they’re all on drugs and he’s hell bent to prove it….even if balls of fire emerge from the floor for no reason at all????  “WHERE’S THE STASH!  IS IT IN THE TOILET!!!!” I love it.  Then we introduce the other three characters from which this movie revolves; a reporter who’s determined to discover the truth, a crazy woman, and her shrink.  The reporter actually went to the cemetery to snoop around and ask questions about séance dead girl’s death.  He’s the hero as he hears her screams and rescues her.  “But I thought you said she was dead?” you ask.  Well that my friends….is the magic of Italian horror.  They do whatever the fuck they want and don’t apologize for it.

The beer!  The website claims they use Chinook, Simcoe, and Amarillo hops.  I’m a HUGE Chinook fan.  They fight where other hops roll over and play dead.  Amarillo is another wonderful that’s interchanged with the famous Cascade quite a bit.  I like them a lot.  The beer pours a DARK almost opaque black with hues of brown at the edges when held to the light.  A nice thick creamy brown head floats on top.  It’s a lot more than I expected from such a strong dark beer.  Bottle says 8.7% abv and website claims 90 IBUs.  That’s a lot!  LOVE IT.  Have your wife put the kids to bed it’s time to drink!  The aroma has a punch of hops.  There’s loads of citrus and pine, pulpy fruit and dark sweet malts.  It smells slightly burnt and pretty well balanced for so many IBUs.  The first sip leaves my head spinning.  I don’t wait the required few seconds for taste buds to fully appreciate the beer before I’m gulping away again.  This beer is irresistible.  It’s a perfect balance between a crisp dryness, and a deep complex sweetness.  There’s the hop bomb that you expect with the maltiness and roasted character you didn’t think you could have. Stone really does….have their cake and eat it too.  A nice full mouthfeel with slightly above average carbonation rounds this beer out and makes it much more drinkable than you would expect from 8.7% and 90 IBUs.  For all the boasting Stone does they really do back it up.  Budweiser as the king of beers?  That’s delusional.  Stone as Sublime and Self Righteous….they really do deserve it.

There moto should be…Stone beers.  Making life suck less, one beer at a time!  Or something like that.  Here's their rant that they put on the back of the beer.  IT'S AWESOME!!!

The plot jumps around more than a fifteen year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert.  This movie has something to do with Salem which burnings but the town that this takes place in isn’t Salem….it’s Dunwich.  They never really explain why the witches have anything do to with this but it’s okay.  We’re not watching this movie for the plot we’re watching it for the best gory gem Lucio Fulci has ever shit out.  Let’s go through some of my favorite scenes.

Trapped – So the young physic that was temporarily dead (Mary) came to inside of her coffin as she was in the process of being buried alive.  She claws at the coffin and gets really bloody.  Then our hero reporter decides the best course of action is to start slamming into the coffin with a pick ax.  He connects several times right next to her face.  It’s wild.

Guts – The dead priest has my all time favorite superpower.  Just by staring at someone he can make them vomit out their guts.  This is by far one of my favorite horror movie scenes.  The amount of guts that push through this girl’s mouth is inspiring.  You can even see the stomach and the liver at the end.  AWESOME.  It goes something like this....

Look into my creepy eyes.  I'm a dead priest!

Oh my god my eyes are bleeding but i can't look away.

Oh now I feel so sick.....like my guts are....AHHHHHH.  AHHHHHHHH...blwohsod  FUCKING AWESOME!!!!

The Drill – Creativity is important to me.  I can only watch the same shot of a person ripping away a fake plastic neck piece so many times.  In this scene a young pervert boy suspected of murdering another girl (the dead priest did it) is caught talking to some guy’s daughter.  He flips out and ends up running the kids head into a big drill bit at an incredibly slow speed.  It’s hard for me to understand his motivation given all the facts surrounding the event.  I love the way you get to see the drill bit coming out the other side of his head.  Well done!  This one goes like this......


I heard you were a pervert!!!!  That girl you were dating threw up her guts!  You made her throw up her guts!!!!  Now i'm going to push your head into a drill.......really........really.......s....l.....o.....w....l....y!!!!!

Maggots – At one point all four of our character sit and chat it out at some apartment.  But at the end of the talk, when the all realize the weight of their situation, the windows fly open and maggots are flying into the room.  Thousands of them.  They stick to the faces of our characters.  I would have ducked or turned away, but all they did was squint and take it in the face.  Real troopers these guys.  The extras have a funny bit about that.

Oh my god i'm getting pelted by thousands of maggots.  What did i do to deserve this?!?  Oh sweet lord no!!!!

Oh wait someone's calling....hello.....oh yes i'll have to call you back i'm being pelted by maggots.  Oh yes i know horrible.  Okay i'll call you after.

Head Busting – The key here is forearm strength.  If you do enough gripping exercises then someday you too can grab the strange budging back of somebody’s head and smush it!!  If the movie is anything like real life the result will be the brains pouring out but the person still able to scream somehow.  I guess the screaming portion of the brain is still intact.

No cool pics for this but just imagine a hand grabing the back of a head till the fake back part comes off.  That's pretty much it.

This movie doesn’t make sense but its still really good.  There are a lot of small scenes of overacted gold that really make this movie worthwhile.  Re-watching this movie makes me think I should go through my top 25 list and reorganize a bit, because this deserves to be in it.  And the beer makes it even better.  It's a get drunk and laugh type of movie.  You need to watch this film.  But not on a full stomach.  It's really really gory.  I have a picture of the last guy that watched this  movie.

Great beer, great movie,.....great life.  Keep drinking.  Until next time!

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/12

Appearance – 2/3

Taste – 18/20

Palate – 3/5 

   Overall – 8/10

Total = 41/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 3/5

Gore – 5/5

 Zombies – 4/5

  Overall – 4/5