In Movie Scum Episode #19, our good friend Kenny from United Front Gaming mentions George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead. The topic of that episode? Worst movies ever. After viewing this, I would say that it is better than Diary of the Dead. Just barely.
There is a place called Plum Island, that is inhabited by two families: The O’Flynns and the Muldoons. The Muldoons are especially happy with this arrangement, as they do not care for strangers. Plum Island is in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, as the events of Survival take place after the events in Diary. The Muldoons, led by Seamus, do not kill zombies. Rather, they chain them up and let them live, in in the hopes that there will be a cure so that their loved ones may live again. The O’Flynns, led by Patrick, prefer to dispatch anything that is undead. Much like a pro choice debate, this causes a rift and ultimately leads to Patrick O’Flynn being sent off the island. Patrick’s daughter convinces Seamus to send him packing rather than killing him, as he would have preferred. Weeks later, a group of 4 military deserters, Kevin, Cisco, Tomboy and Sergeant Crockett (from Diary) have a shootout with some hicks in the woods (who have several zombie heads on sticks just moaning in the night) and gain a 5th member to their group, who is called kid throughout the film (but apparently is named Boy). He shows them a video via his iPhone and whatever mobile internet connection is still available. The video is of Patrick, but he calls himself Captain Fabulous, and advises anyone watching to come to Plum Island. The group head the to dock and find that Patrick (a some others) just want to rob them and they end up commandeering the ferry there. Patrick is the only one in his group to survive the zombies and ends up on the ferry as well. They all head over to Plum Island. Once they arrive they see former residents, now the undead, chained up, doing whatever they were doing while they were alive. The mailman is still putting mail in a mailbox, for example. However, they find countless bodies of people that came over to the island by ferry (sent by Patrick, partly to rob them and party to piss off Seamus) that were simply shot for being strangers. Eventually we learn that Seamus is trying to tech zombies to eat animals, rather than people, so that they don’t have to kill them and they can coexist with their former living family members. So there we have the coinflict of the film: should zombies be killed, or should humans try to teach them to respect the living and live peacefully among them?
My main problem with this story line is, what if they did learn? What’s the point? They are never going to be their former selves. What happens when they eat all the animals? Zombies never stop eating, animals would never survive. Then the humans die also, because they cannot feed themselves (or the zombies go right back to eating them having no more animals to eat).
This was really not much of a zombie film in the traditional sense. This seemed more like a philosophical discussion on the treatment of zombies. There were a few attacks shoved in to the film, but most of the violence was quick shots to the head and not much horrifying slaughter. As the characters were pretty one dimensional, there is no rooting for anyone per se. I guess you are just supposed to pick one side of the argument and hope your side wins. It certainly is not scary by any means, and lacks any overt social commentary that the other Dead pictures have. The reason why this one is better than Diary is simply because, although one dimensional, I did not despise the characters. They were not, to quote Puck, “a bunch of unlikeable douche bags.” I was actually able to sit through Survival comfortably because of that.
In Episode #19 Kenny mentions a zombie riding a horse. Having not seen this film yet, I could not imagine any scenario that would justify a zombie riding a horse, and that this would be possibly one of the dumbest things I would witness. I assure, it was. Basically, in an effort to create some more conflict between Seamus and Patrick, the horse riding zombie is Patrick’s daughter. Seamus captures her because she is smart enough to learn how to ride a horse, and perhaps will be smart enough to eat one. You’re fucking with me, right George?
The worst of all this is, they is a plenty big hole open for a sequel, or continuation or whatever the hell these pictures are in relation to each other. Not necessarily the worst zombie film, but almost bottom of the list for the Dead series.
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