Zombies of Mass Destruction and Elysian Loser Pale Ale

Corporate movies suck!  Yes that's right.  I know it's hard to make big sweeping statements like that but for the most part it's true!  When you look at the powerhouse films of the zombie genre almost all of them are indie or low budget films.  Even 28 Days Later is considered relatively low budget.  In that spirit i decided to watch Zombies of Mass Destruction.  This political comedy takes low budget gore and a lot of well meaning enthusiasm and crams it into a feature film.  And what beer would I pair this indie gem with.......LOSER Pale Ale.  This beer, brewed by Elysian Brewing Company here in Seattle, is a strong, kick ass pale ale.  It's brewed as a tribute to Sub Pop Records (Nirvana anyone) who helped bring the underground to the mainstream (thus destroying the underground....a topic better covered by a blog other than this one).  I feel that this beer would be perfect mate for this movie and I'm seldom wrong.

I am not a huge fan of these horrorfest films.  The "8 films to die for" series is okay at best.  But then every once in a while a good one comes along.  This movie has a professional feel with decent production value!  Which is good because shaky camera and inaudible dialog gets old quick.  This movie is classified as a political comedy.  It's an hour and a half of fist shaking at the right wing conservatives and religious crazies, which is tough if you’re looking to pitch to a big audience.  They try and balance it out with a short blurb at the end to make fun of superlibs, but a one liner about liberals with guns doesn't exactly balance out an entire movie of elephant bashing.  I'm not complaining......I'm observing.  The film is pretty captivating with three separate sub stories combining into one hell of an indie film.

The first story is of this peaceful flower child who is running for Mayor against the incumbent, a polished conservative white male with a plastic smile.

The second story is of a first generation Iranian girl (Frita) and her adventures as post 9/11 Muslim.  Dark skin (check).....funny name (check).....terrorist (hmmmm)?  That's the haunting question this film will ask.

Story number three is a couple of big city gays (Tom and Lance) who go back to the island so Tom can come out of the closet to his mom.  Hilarity and a lot of oral servicing jokes result.  Apparently no fruit is too low hanging for the writers of this bad boy.

With a pop of a cap and a quick pour i am filled with this feeling of reassurance.  There's a soft warm hand on my shoulder letting me know everything is going to be okay.  That's what this beer is.  LOSER is anything but.  It's the biggest pale ale I’ve ever seen at 7% abv.  "Well isn't that an IPA zombiebrew?"  You are so ignorant.  I can't believe you're smart enough to plug in your computer never mind actually navigating the world wide web and actually READ something.  NO THIS IS NOT AN IPA!  Just taste it.  It's the most elegant and distinguished of all the pale ales.  Yes it's not in style but that doesn't make it any less of a pale ale.  Let me recreate my LOSER experience.

After a quick peak at the color of the beer in the bottle I pop the cap and take my first sneaky sniff to get those most volatile hop aromas (I'm going to start calling them hope aromas).  It's this fluttering flowery hop aroma with warm sweet baked bread.  I quickly pour into my Great Divide tulip glass and admire.  It's a full and bright orangey amber color with this thick light tan head softer than a baby's ass.  It's not overpowering like an IPA.  It's not a punch in the face........it's a closed door Asian massage.  It's got the sweet smell of orange, lemon, and warm caramel almost like a cow tail!  Then the taste just blows me away.  It's malt driven with a full and smooth mouth feel.  There's just enough bitterness to gently nudge you with a smile.  Those 57 IBUs must be all late addition hops.  The lingering sweetness is pleasant and 7% abv warms the bottom of the belly.  This beer was shocking as I have traditionally low expectations of Pale Ales.  It's a gateway beer to bigger and better things.  Unlike the brutal mouth assault of a Stone Ruination, Elysian's LOSER is a sweet candle lit love making with cuddling at the end.

The movie on the other hand is not as gentle.  There's wildly patriotic American men torturing 1st generation Iranian college girls, Priests with their own special rehabilitation (torture) to homosexuals, and weed whacker zombie carnage.  Honestly it's awesome.  As a recovering Catholic I found the church scenes especially funny.  The two hour services, the declaration of Unitarians as #1 on God's hit list, the intolerance of "the gays", and exercising the right to bear arms while in the lords house all tickled me.  Although, i can see how some people might not find it quite as funny.

The acting at times was sometimes really forced or really awkward.  Especially the scene where Frita is talking to her boyfriend in the car.  Not only is it not very believable (even for a zombie movie) but her boyfriend is just a horrific actor.  He is absolutely appalling.  But more upsetting than that is the awkward conversation between our two gay guys.  When Tom comes out of the closet he goes from terrified to tell his mom to yelling "I suck dick mom" in just a few seconds.  Not normal.

But acting aside this movie was fun.  Killing zombies with a weed whacker was gory and fun.  Frita's father's ability to rip a head off of a fresh zombie was ridicules but enjoyable.  And the boyfriend's face getting ripped off inspiring.  Well done.  But nothing says "I’m pushing all the boundaries" like killing children.  Zombies of Mass Destruction went there.  This little girl grabs Frita and Frita promises she'll be safe and she's going to take care of her.  Not two seconds later as they try to cross the street the little girl is hit by a speeding car sending everything be the arm Frita was holding flying out of the scene.  Now that shows some balls.  Don't worry, don't worry, the little girl comes back..........AS AN ARMLESS ZOMBIE!!!!!! HAAHAHAHAH

Overall I really enjoyed the movie and suggest it for anybody that finds it and as far as the beer goes, if you don't try it your depriving yourself of an hour of full bliss.  Sip with care.  Oh and Fuck ratebeer who only have them a 75 overall and a 66 in style.  You blow.

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/12

Appearance – 3/3

Taste – 18/20

Palate – 5/5 

   Overall – 9/10

TOTAL= 45/50

  

The Movie:

Production – 3.5/5

Plot – 4/5

Gore – 3/5

 Zombies – 3/5

  TOTAL – 3.5/5

Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Stone Ruination IPA

I was forced to make a difficult decision this week.  I knew I wanted to review Dawn of the Dead but I wasn’t sure if it would be ok to so without reviewing Night of the Living Dead first.  I mean, who watches Return of the King without watching The Fellowship of the Ring, and the Two Towers first!  I’ll tell you who…..this guy!  I’m the guy who can’t wait till Christmas to open presents, the one that cuts himself a piece of Lemon Morang pie just before Thanksgiving dinner, and I’m also the guy who reviews Dawn of the Dead before he reviews Night!

That decision being made I still needed a beer.  What beer to you pick for this movie.  You can’t just pull any bottle out of the cooler.  That would be insulting.  Then it hit me!  Ruination.  It makes perfect sense.  Read the back of the bottle.  It’s hilarious!  The beer claims it has a ruinous effect on the pallet and will make everything you eat and drink afterwards seem bland and dull.  What a pair for the zombie movie that sets the bar for which all other zombie movies are measured.  I have spent the last few years watching zombie movies and ending with the same pit of my stomach feeling.  The “well that was okay but it wasn’t as good as Dawn of the Dead” feeling.  Ruination will leave you feeling the same way about every IPA you have after it.

Rotten Tomatoes rates Dawn of the Dead at 94%.  For it’s time the movie was absolutely groundbreaking.  Even today’s movies with their enormous budgets and over the top CGI can’t hold a candle to the original.  The movie begins where Night left off.  The world is a few weeks into the zombie phenomenon and still searching for answers.  The movie opens up with one of my favorite scenes.  It’s the set of a talk show where an interview is being conducted.  Chaos is taking over already as people abandon their jobs and run.  The social satire is evident right from the start.  The opening scene addresses moral vs. logical decisions in dealing with the undead as well as issue of corporations placing money above the lives of people.  All this before I can even open my beer.

I flip the cap off the 22 oz bomber and high pour a third of the bottle into my big snifter.  I have a beautiful gold colored ale cloudy with hop and yeast sediment, bubbling under two fingers of foamy white head.  I raise the glass and bury my nose deep into it.  AMAZING!  This is the reason god gave us noses.  Big citrus swirls of orange, tangerine, and pine waft up to my nose.  Honestly as excited and amazed as I am every time I take my first sniff of this beef I’m equally filled with sadness and disappointment.  Sad because I know that that sniff, only seconds long, will be the most sensitive and fullest smell I will get.  My sense of smell will become desensitized and each sniff will sense less and less of the piney perfume.  I have an inability to just sit and enjoy that smell for all that it is since I know it will eventually go away.  The same is true to a lesser degree with my sense of taste.

Knowing that much of taste is directly related to my sense of smell I rush into my first sip.  It’s slightly syrupy with a perfect full mouth feel.  The mixture of my two favorite hops (Cascade and Centennial) explode like a resiny citrus bomb.  The IBU’s for this beer are well over 100.  The bitterness slams at my tongue with grapefruit and pine.  The bottle described it as I never can a “Liquid poem to the glory of the hop!"  The beer is fresh tasting and green with hops but enough malt background pushes through  with a grainy huskiness that lets you know it’s beer and not hop tea.  It’s bite but not astringent.  It’s hot but not overwhelming.  It’s amazing.

Now onto the swat scene.  Again the social aspect of this film pulses right off the screen.  A whole swat team (mostly white) descends upon a apartment project in order to secure the area and eliminate the dead that were there.  Of course there’s that one racist guy that just goes wild with bloodlust.  Within the first 15 minutes of the movie we see a zombie’s head explode with a shotgun blast.  It’s awesome.  Tom Savini’s special effects work shines in this film.  The exploding head being my favorite zombie kill.  Ken Foree “Peter” ends up killing our racist Swat team friend and thus ending his head exploding rampage.  I can’t help but think that this movie has everything.  Zombies, exploding heads, and one legged Spanish priests.

The movie progresses as two of the swat team members, a news traffic reporter, and his girlfriend all climb into the news station helicopter and end up at…..the mall.  Here they secure the mall and take out all the zombies inside.  It’s pretty creative the way they hotwire the big trucks to block off the doors of the mall.  Roger (the not black swat team guy) gets bitten twice trying to hotwire the trucks.  I’m glazing over this part of the movie a bit.  And by a bit I mean a lot.  But if you were reading this hoping for a play by play then you’re dumb.  You need to watch this movie.  During the time in the mall the four of them fall right back into the mystifying effects of being a consumer.  They spend their days shopping and furnishing their room in the mall to look like an apartment.

This movie is heavy in the character development which makes it much richer than other zombie movies.  There are less main characters than a lot of other movies but when something happens to one of them you feel it much more.  The one thing that drives me a little crazy is the woman character.  Gaylen Ross’s character is a self proclaimed pre Sigourney Weaver strong woman character.  Which I guess means that instead of screaming and running you just stand there and look stupid with a shaky gaping mouth gasp.  I mean come on!  Even towards the end when she was supposed to have turned into a strong and more calloused woman she seems weak and kind of useless.  Maybe that’s the problem with trying to watch a movie made in 1978 in 2011.  It seems out of place.  I have no idea what women in the 70’s were like but if the Resident Evil series has taught me anything it’s that woman can be tough too.  It’s not so much a zombie movie as much as it’s a movie about the strength of women and the promotion of equal rights.  Break through that glass ceiling with karate not terrified gasps and slapping

Now let me move to the ending.  In the zombie apocalypse who is the real enemy?  Who are the most evil people on earth in the 1970’s.  I’ll tell you who….Bikers.   They see the helicopter on the roof of the mall and decide they want in.  So they blow some stuff up, move the trucks, and get into the mall.  In the process they let in every zombie in a five mile radius.  Things don’t go well for anybody.  Most of the bikers get eaten trying to steal stuff.  One gets killed trying to play a game that involves checking your blood pressure.  This is not a good reason to die!  Not even in the 70’s.  In the end it was greed that brought everything down.  Consumerism was painted as the ultimate evil.  But I did like that they exact cause of the zombies was never disclosed.  There were a few theories thrown around.  From those theories the most famous line from any zombie movie, or possibly any movie ever, was born.  “When there’s no more room in hell the dead will walk the Earth.”  Beautiful isn’t it.  Well I think that’s all I have for now on this movie.  This movie was like a mosaic.  It wasn’t one picture but rather dozens of small scenes all amazing in their own way that make this picture a work of art.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/10

Appearance – 4/5

Taste – 10/10

Palate – 5/5

   Overall – 19/20

Total = 48/50

The Movie:

Production – 5/5

Plot – 5/5

Gore – 5/5

Zombies – 5/5

 Overall – 5/5