The Doghouse and Brewdog's Dogma

I read the description and passed by this movie the first time.  It doesn't fit into my cookie cutter zombie movie formula, then i usually have no use for it.  As soon as i found out the zombies in 'Return of the Living Dead' couldn't be killed i hated it, as soon as Bub picked up that gun in 'Day of the Dead' i gave up, and the first time i saw Land of the Dead i was ready to punch kittens.  You need to go by the formula!!!  Right?  But then i watched the trailer for this movie and was pretty impressed.  It looked witty and gory enough.  Maybe i had the wrong idea about this movie?  I decided i would give it one sceptical viewing to see if it was worthy for purchase and immortality in my collection.  The idea is that a group of friends are taking their recently divorced buddy to this village (English movie) where women outnumber the men 4 to 1 to get him back on the horse.  It's going to be some sort of revitalizing man retreat.  I'm sure most men have encountered some sort of similar situation so right away there's a basis for connection with the characters.  I recognize several of the actors from other decent real life movies.  The divorced guy is Tommy from Snatch and his womanizing friend is in the straight to DVD (sensation) Severance.  It plays through with the rhythm of all other mass produced horror.  There's the slow moving build up where you start to connect with the characters while getting hints of the disaster with some strong and obvious foreshadowing.  It's fun at first so you can relate and get a good case of the giggles before the horror begins!!!

In the spirit of breaking away from the normal i went with another of Brewdog's beers.  Not just any of their beers, a complex ale brewed with guarana, kola nut, poppy, and Scottish Heather honey.  I don't normally like beers with fruit, honey, or heavy spices but i guess you can't write off everything that doesn't fit in the narrow window of your preferences.  I break out my lucky snifter to once again serve me in my beer adventures.  The beer is an orangish red color with an off white foamy head that leaves nice lacing.  The aroma is pungent flowers, honey, and a bit of citrus hops.  There's also slight peppery notes that fade with each sniff.  It has a great big mouthfeel with medium high carbonation.  Husky and sweet maltiness fills the beer with a strong base.  This malt is evident from the first sip.  Thers' also some citrus and caramel swirled with a peppery bitterness.  This beer really has an astringent bite underneath the honey and hops.  It's not a particularly drinkable beer.  It feels much hoppier than it's 65 IBUs and much stronger than it's 7.8% abv.  It's not a perfectly balanced beer or a face smacking good beer.  It's a unique and wild experience than you need to try to understand.

There's a lot of testosterone fueled man rants in this movie.  One guy pays their van driver to go by the name Candy instead of her real name Ruth.  It's hard to capture the cockey sexist way that he did it without showing his flashy mannorisms.  For the record I think this guy's AWESOME!!  This movie does a great job showing the obvious behavioral line in the sand between men and women.  It makes the movie more fun.  They all arrive in Moodley only to find there's nobody there....at first.  One by one they discover the "Zombirds", zombie/cannibal women who prey on men.  These are not the zombies I normally like.  They use tools, look more like demons than zombies, and get into cat fights.  That being said i love it!  I can't believe i love it but i do.

The zombies all are characters more than people.  For instance there's a horseback rider, one-eyed witch, dentist, butcher, etc, etc...  It reminds me of Day of the Dead or Land of the Dead, Romero style zombies (except they use weapons).  This movie has it all.  A head being split with an axe, golf balls taking out eyes, severed heads being driven around on remote control cars, and squirt gun flame throwers just to name a few.  This movie takes its humor in a direction i didn't expect.  It justifies sexism and promotes men's freedom.  It's so brash and done in such an obvious fashion that one could claim they show the absurdity of the neanderthal like male, or you could take it for what it claims to be.  A man movie belonging in a similar category as Fight Club.  Take that collar off it's time to fight dirty.

It's best summed up towards the end of the movie where our recently divorced star has his mid life crisis.  He rants about how women come upon their men in their prime only to make them more responsible and more conformed to their wishes until they get bored and throw them away.  This movie is a call to arms for all men who find themselves being controlled or bullied.  This isn't 90 minutes about trials of a military biological weapon  designed to decimate a population in a controlled and isolated area, it's about men everywhere keeping whatever it is that makes them men.

This movie will be hit an miss with the zombie crowd.  Purists will smugly dismiss this a joke, but those with an open mind will watch this and appreciate it for what it is.  Another English volume in the Awesome Library.  The characters are all immediately likable, the production is good, the plot is run and keeps you excited, and the humor keeps things light and interesting.  To boot the acting is actually pretty damn good.  This movie has shown me that a zombie movie can be entertaining and meaningful without fitting into the rigid structure laid out before us by Father George.  Thank you England for showing all us in the states what Zombieland should have been more like.  A movie for adults.

The Beer:

Aroma – 7/10

Appearance – 4/5

Taste – 7/10

Palate – 4/5  

   Overall – 17/20

Total = 39/50

The Movie:

Production – 5/5

Plot – 5/5

Gore – 4/5

Zombies – 4/5

  Overall – 4.5/5

Days of Darkness and Brewdog Hardcore IPA

Today’s movie is Days of Darkness and the beer is Brewdog Hadcore IPA.  I had never heard of Brewdog until I saw the bottle with the funky packaging at the shop.  After some extensive googling I got filled in with the back story.  These two guys in Scotland (home of the wee heavy) were tired of the beer scene so they decided to take out huge loans and start their own.  It’s an inspiring story about changing the industry you both love and despise.  I don’t know the story behind Days of Darkness but I’m willing to bet it’s very similar.  A bunch of people were perhaps tired of seeing 3 and 4 sequels of Resident Evil coming out and decided to make an honest gritty zombie movie of their own….maybe….i have no idea but it would make sense.

It's gotta be the hops.  I see an Pale Ale, IPA, or IIPA and my head starts spinning.  And this beer is packed full of them.  I start the beer before i start the movie and this much is sure:  the hops are there to hurt you.  This beer is the closest I've ever seen to getting the real hop flavor into the beer.  That's not to say that this beer is the hoppiest.   No, what i mean is this beer taste like what the hops smell and taste like as your brewing.  For those who haven't figured it out I'm a homebrewer and a hop head.  First sniff of this beer is STRONG.  It pours a cloudy copper color and sits in the glass with a thick dominating presence.  This beer is way grassy and piny with just a hint of citrus.  Not like the other IPA's I'm used to.  It's got a lot of Simco hops in it that's for sure.  Simco have a cat pee like aroma.  Don't knock it, it's actually pretty good.  But that's not all.  Sip away to find that this beer was brewed with Marris Otter malt (no wonder it's $10 a bottle).  For those who don't know what Marris Otter is, it's the 2007 New England Patriots if that had won the Superbowl.  It's the richest and maltiest of the malts.  It gives this beer a strong backbone of maltiness that helps to balance it out.  There is a slight toffee sweet malt flavor if you can find it under the hops.  It has moderately low carbonation and grassy green hop finish.

Now to the movie.  This budget film made me physically ill when i watched it on the ferry from Washington to Alaska.  It hits all the highs and lows in this low budget dream.  A couple goes camping and a meteor hits.  They go to drive home and are attacked by zombies.  Out main character hero protects himself with a Swiss army knife (NOT THE BEST ZOMBIE WEAPON).  They are saved by a gay guy (Simon) with a machete  who brings them to the survivor's camp.  The camp is a run down and decommissioned micro wave station.  The camp has the most amazing collection of characters: a movie star, two used cars salesman, a porn star and her goody two shoes daughter, a gay guy, a preacher's son, a woman with "military training", and our lovebirds.  Some of  the acting is forced.  The woman with "military training", whose name escapes me, is trying hard to be the tough woman but at the sacrifice of being believable.  And the porn star is talking about her sexual exploits out of context which really forces it.

The main character Steve, gets bitten right away but lucky for him bites don't cause zombies.  (If i had been in this movie that would have been the end of Steve.  You have to play it safe.)  Steve's girlfriend falls ill and is found to be pregnant.  This is devastating to Steve who had an understanding with his girlfriend that they would wait till they were engaged until they had intercourse.  (I swear i didn't do it with another guy!  I must be infected with zombie meteor dust dissease!)  I wouldn't buy it either.  Steve is forced to stay the night in a room with a zombie until they can be sure that he's not one.  He finds that the zombie's penis falls off.  Yes you read correctly.  The zombie's penis falls off.

As the movie progresses I move onto my third beer of the night (the second part of the Brewdog).  All of these beers are over 9% and I'm feeling pretty good.  Good thing for me because this is the point of the movie where they decide to investigate the part of the zombie that the penis fell off.  They poke and prod where the penis should be but it's a bloody stump.  It's uber gross.  The whole time Steve's girlfriend is continuing to plead her innocence. "Not now honey i'm messing arround with zombie crotch.  You always pick the worst times to have these conversations."  What happens next is amazing.  The preacher's son (Trent) is ripping on the Simon (gay guy) for causing the end of the world.  Simon gets so angry that he cuts his fingers off with a machete.  He's not taking any bullshit.  But for revenge Trent lets the zombies into the compound.

I'll skip a bit and hit the highlights.  They go to re-secure the perimeter.  The camera angles are awesome.  The big black jacked guy wears a skin tight pink shirt that says "hugs not drugs" and beats some ass.  This five minutes is worth the $20 i spent on this DVD brand new from Best Buy and the fight that ensued with my wife.  I guess in retrospect a low budget zombie DVD isn’t an essential item when your low on cash during a cross country trip?  Anyway.....the gore is amazing!  A beheading, a behanding, several zombie splatter stomps.  Not all of our characters make it but it's still good fun.  At this point i can't help but point out that the spot of the roof of the compound where Trent hangs out has the word "Chode" spray painted on it.  Nice.  Back to the plot though.  They take one of the zombies they caught inside and examine it.  There is a large sack where a dick should be.  When they cut it open (friggin gross) they find a small fetus person in the sack.  Holy shit balls.  Now comes the full autopsy where Steve just start pulling all the organs out of the zombie body.  They find a vein that goes thru all the organs and into the head.  When they open the head.......bingo!!! Alien spawn!

There are a couple of deaths and a strange underage pseudo love scene before we hit the big bingo.  The alcohol was what protected these survivors from the zombie plague.  This is why i make sure i drink every night!!  Steve ends up using alcohol to cure his girlfriend, who isn't pregnant.  She just infected with the zombie fetus plague.  A giant, bloody, half formed tentacle zombie shoots out of her vagina.  No big deal!  They drive off to Chad (the actors) ranch where they will be able to grow their own food and brew their own beer!

This movie wasn't bad (despite what my dad says).  The acting is boarderline with its highs and lows and the gore is decent.  But this is not your typical zombie movie.  Aliens is my least favorite explanation for the zombie apocalypse but for some reason it worked.  I was feeling so good from the beer that the end of the movie seemed to fly by.  It's a must see even if it's not a must own.

The Beer:

Aroma – 8/10

Appearance – 4/5

Taste – 8/10

Palate – 4/5

   Overall – 16/20

 Total = 40/50

The Movie:

Production – 3/5

Plot – 4/5

Gore – 4/5

Zombies – 3/5

  Overall – 3.5/5