Survival of the Dead and Black Butte Porter

Survival of the dead is the sixth of the Romero films.  I read about it at length prior to its release.  It was said to be a sort of zombie western.  I’m not a fan of westerns so before I even bough the DVD was disappointed.  Sergeant Nicotine Crockett (what a name) was a survivor from Diary of the Dead.  He was the head of the National Guard unit that robbed the kids.  He was also in Land of the Dead where he played a soldier in charge of military vehicles and supplies.  He became a zombie in Land of the dead but that didn’t mean Romero couldn’t cast him in the two movies that followed.  I think its proof that George plays favorites.

The beer for tonight will be Deschutes Black Butte Porter.  I just love porters.  I am fascinated by the history of the beer.  The history of porters and stouts are intertwined.  A strong porter was called a “stout porter” later shortened to “Stout”.  Sound familiar?  Porters range widely in bitterness and gravity.  In some cases porters can have more IBU’s and higher alcohol than a stout.  The difference for me is all in the taste.  In all the porters I brew I use chocolate malt for a much of the dark color and roasted flavor.  My stouts use a great deal or roasted barley.  The main difference being that stouts usually have a more assertive flavor weighing heavily towards the dark roasted malts, whereas porters are generally softer and smoother with a subtle chocolaty flavor.  The style was almost lost in the years after prohibition.  It’s back now and more widely brewed than ever.  I’m pushing porter!  Drink it!

Less than two minutes into the movie and we have a zombie attack.  Crockett is making a soldier put down the zombie of another soldier whom he had somehow caused to be infected.  The soldier gets bitten, Crockett pus them both down like a young Mike Tyson.  The CGI of the zombie head exploding when shot with an M16 was not only fake in production but also in theory.  A M16 round would not explode a human skull.  Thus starts the beginning of my rant.

The first scene on the island shows the exile of the O’Flynn crew by the Muldoons.  It’s a classic case of the Hatfields vs. the McCoys.  Those who want to kill the zombies and those who don’t.  The Muldoons are the sympathetic ones who still think that there could be some cure for the undead.  The O’Flynns are more concerned with securing the island for its living inhabitants.  The Muldoons get the upper hand in a confrontation and it’s off the island for the O’Flynns.  One hell of an eviction notice.

Time for some tasting notes.  I grabbed one of Deschutes flag ship beers and poured into my pint glass.  It’s a little low because its 4 ounces less than the glass will hold.  Something that irks me every time.  It’s got a smooth roasted nose with grainy notes, full mouth feel, and big character.  Chocolate and roasted malt pound my tongue as the hop bitterness acts like a football player spiking the ball.  Touchdown my friends, touchdown.  It’s smooth and round flavors show exactly what a porter should taste like.  It’s very easy to drink with only 5.2% abv and 30 IBUs.  This beer is perfect for guests who think they like beer but aren’t ready do dive into the world of excess with Barleywines and IIPAs.

This movie is crystal clear in HD.  The fall colors of this Delaware island are beautiful.  The makeup is the most realistic yet.  It was a nice departure from the almost comical zombies in Land of the Dead and a more graphic version of the ones from Diary of the Dead.  It’s later on in the epidemic and the bodies are decomposed.  Dark veins ripple under pale skin and the wounds are covered in gore and realistic.  I know it’s easy to rip on the acting but parts of this are really bad.  Not all of it is bad mind you but enough to leave the bitterness of disappointment in your heart.

The whole western film and rivalry thing really gets old.  Muldoons are killing anybody that comes to the island in an effort to keep it safe for his family.  I don’t think that during the end of the world people would revert back to ten gallon hats, six shooters, and the semi silly language that goes with it.  I mean come on.  There would be filth, and violence, and guns,  but it would be 2010 filth and Glocks not Smith and Wessens.  But all that aside, the part that really irked me wasn’t the cowboy bullshit it was the horseback riding zombie twin sister.  She comes galloping in and out of the movie at various points in the movie.  Each time I grit my teeth and wonder if I could come up with an equally terrible idea and somehow get $4 million to make a straight to DVD zombie film starring zombie rodeo clowns, or zombie personal trainers.

There have been enough zombie movies made that people should know there is nothing left of the people that used to be inside that zombie shell.  Point in case when the girl walks up to her twin sister (a zombie) because she thinks the zombie recognizes her.  She gets bit in one of the stupidest deaths in zombie movie history.  How many times in the last forty years of zombie cinema has this played out.  I find it easier to count the movies where people are able to kill loved ones.  I did like how they were able to villainize O’Flynn who makes the seemingly logical choice of killing the zombies.  The movie showed that the ideal that each side was fighting for outweighed their concern for the outcome.  O’Flynn puts his own daughter down before she can turn into a zombie.  But it was done in a way that lets you know he didn’t kill her to save her from her fate but rather to prove his point.  To show he was right and sound in his resolve.

I keep watching Romero films hoping to see another Dawn of the Dead but each time I’m let down.  It’s not often that a director get the green light to put together an epic 127 minuet (156 extended cut) zombie film.  Maybe next time George?

The Beer:

Aroma – 6/10

Appearance – 4/5

Taste – 6/10

Palate – 4/5 

   Overall – 15/20

Total = 35/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 3/5

Gore – 3/5

Zombies – 4/5

  Overall – 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

Diary of the Dead and Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter

Tonight is going to be a double movie night as I need to stay up as late as I can to adjust to going on a night watch starting tomorrow.  The first movie of my marathon is going to be Diary of the Dead.  I know that the zombie aficionados out there might scoff at the way I skip right to one of the worst of the Romero movies.  For the unschooled zombie viewers "Romero" is George A. Romero the director the original, groundbreaking film Night of the Living Dead.  He then went on to create the iconic Dawn of the Dead and the lesser Day of the Dead.  More recently with the revival of the genre in 2005 he directed Land of the Dead (swing and a miss) and then Diary of the Dead.  Last year he released Survival of the Dead…not even worth mentioning.  Despite what many would consider a slew of terrible movies George still holds his head high as the father of the Zombie movie.  He is the inspiration for every zombie movie in the last 50 years so give him some credit.  Diary of the Dead came in the wake of the Blare Witch 1^st person craze.  The story follows a group of film students around as the zombie apocalypse begins.

I chose Flying Dog’s Gonzo Imperial Porter as the beer to pair with this movie.  It’s a powerhouse of a beer that is always in my fridge.  Strangely enough it’s the only really stand out beer that I’ve tried by Flying Dog.  Don’t get me wrong I give them a lot of credit for producing the wide range of styles that they do.  I just don’t think any of them are as knock me down awesome as Gonzo.  It’s worth buying a sampler to say you tried them but none will be the life changing beer that Gonzo is.  I’m serious!  This 9.2% abv with 82 IBU monster changed the way I drink beer.  I never really drank dark beer until I took my first sip of Gonzo.  It's the Fight Club of beers.

The first scene of Diary of the Dead was brilliant.  It was the raw footage of a news clip where some of the first dead people turn into zombies.  It's the perfect grey setting with very real zombies sprinkled with just a dash of racism.  An man kills his wife and teenage son before eventually killing himself.  As the reporter is telling the story the camera man notices one of the bodies starts moving.  The next thing you know paramedics are doing karate, lots of gunfire, and one face getting ripped off..  Well done George.  Now when I heard this was going to be a first person style movie my stomach turned.  Not another headache causing shaky screen mess!  Another movie where instead of an adequate budget and trained actors they will just shake the camara and run arround in the dark.  YES!!!!!  Luckily it was not.  Because the people shooting the film were film students they had professional cameras.  A breath of fresh air.  This movie was the first zombie film to be shot in this way and for that I tip my hat.  Now I only wish that the acting didn’t seem like it was done by disseased monkeys.  There were a lot of scenes that seemed forced an overacted.  I'm sorry the scene where the girl from Texas is chased through the woods is terrible.  The guy keeps filming instead of helping even though he's the only one there.  Then he yells "CUT!" to distract the zombie (cheap cheap cheap).  When the girl  clubs the zombie and knocks it out she turns to the camera fixes her hair and says "Don't mess with Texas."  Really?  Did we forget we're filming a real movie.  A movie that is going to be shown in movie theaters.  This scene made me so angry I thought about cashing in my Roth so i could buy a plane ticket, fly to California, meet this acress, and thrown salt in her eyes.   But alas i'm lazy.

WARNING SHE IS NOT A REAL ACTRESS.  SHE WILL RUIN THE MOVIE.

My favorite scene in this movie is when the students run into the zombie fighting mute Amish guy.  This bad ass carries around a little chalk board to communicate and throws cartoon style dynamite at the zombies.  How can you have a zombie movie in the country part of Pennsylvania without the Amish?  Personally I think that would be an idea for an entire movie.  Then again the Amish aren’t known for their knowledge of weapons or ability to defend themselves.

I poured the beer into my 12 oz snifter glass.  It’s shaped perfectly for angling the aroma to your nose.  And what an aroma it has.  If you ever find yourself sitting around wondering what Cascade hops smell like go ahead and open a bottle of Gonzo.  The aroma is incredibly hoppy.  More than most IPA’s I’ve had.  I'm suprised this beer isn't green.  But don’t think this is going to be a super bitter hop bomb.  It’s got malt packed on top of malt.  Thick beautiful black malt.  Clean bready malt.  You can almost chew this beer it’s so malty (the word malt was just used 4 times in 4 sentences to stress the maltieness) .  This beer is light on the bittering hops but high in flavor and aroma giving it a very unique taste.  As the beer warms in the glass it becomes more and more complex.  Each sip releases notes of chocolate and coffee with heavy roasted flavors.  When tasting the beer it’s important to swirl every few sips in order to oxygenate the beer and release those hop aromas.  The beer is perfectly balanced yet forceful and unique.  This beer is to Budweiser what Nirvana was to 80’s hair metal.

If the art on the bottle seems familiar to you....it should.  It's an illustration by Ralph Steadman!  He's the one that made Hunter S. Thompson's novels into wild and often offensive pictures.  The two were a pair that covered many stories together.  The owned of Flying Dog Brewery used to be a neighbor and was a good friend of Hunter S. Thompson.  This beer is a tribute to Hunter and in many ways is a piece of him.  It's wild, bold, and unique.  If i were to die and have a beer brewed in my tribute it would be this one.  Damn you Hunter.

This movie isn’t terrifying, it’s not overly gory, and it’s not insightful or groundbreaking.  It just IS?  It’s entertaining enough.  There's supposed to be this threat of social satire that focuses on the human rubberneckers.  It’s interesting.  People filming the horror instead of acting or living.  People now go to concerts and watch the entire thing through their cell phone screen.  We’re living behind lenses.  Slow down to check out car accidents and youtube horrific events and then forward them to our friends.  We need to record things and when it comes to violence or horror we need to see it.  At the same time there’s a limit.  There’s a point at which I have to believe people would spring into action during a crisis, or at least they would be so enthralled by the horror that they would be forced to live in it and not just watch it behind a camera.  That’s where this movie went too far.  I understand that if in every scene that a zombie attacked everyone put down their cameras the movie would be really short and wouldn't contain any zombie scenes.  But it still just makes things feel cheap.

I don’t want to end on the negative though.  The movie overall was enjoyable and the beer is fantastic.  I learned a lot from this movie.  When the zombie apocalypse happens (and it is inevitable) I won’t go to a hospital (Day of the Dead (remake), Planet Terror, Diary of the Dead) and I won’t go to Amish country (the Amish arn't fighters).  And most of all I won’t spend the entire time filming the end of days with a cam corder.

The Beer:

Aroma – 10/10

Appearance – 5/5

Taste – 9/10

Palate – 5/5

 Overall – 19/20

Total = 48/50

The Movie:

Production – 4/5

Plot – 4/5

Gore – 3/5

Zombies – 4/5

 Overall – 4/5