The Undead Symphony

Darren Smith, Michael Avery and Guests
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An undead podcast discussing all things zombie. Movie reviews and TV shows, franchises and chats with fans and the ghouls and boils who bring us this much loved genre.

  1. 1D AGO

    Episode 300: The Thing(s)

    Send us a text In this episode, the 300th anniversary we go off-topic again. After Dog Soldiers and werewolves in episode 100, Hellraiser in space aka Event Horizon for 200 we are covering The Thing universe.  We read, or listen to, Cambell's 1938 source material Who Goes There? before watching the 1951 cold war classic The Thing from Another World, the seminal 1982 John Carpenter The Thing and the 2011 Mary Elizabeth Winstead prequel The Thing. Was MacCready infected? Was Child's? Did the prequel suffer from the CGI comparison to the 1982 effort? Was The Thing in the ice the pilot of had The Thing assimilated it? And will we ever know it's true form? Join Michael and me as we discuss all things Thing, the claustrophobia, the snow, the long johns.

    2h 7m

  2. DEC 17

    Episode 299: Zombie School

    Send us a text After a surprise effort from North Macedonia we are returning to our favourite source of zombie entertainment – South Korea. A country that has delighted us for many years and 2 entries in our top 10 with train to busan and all of us are dead, if we are including tv shows.  And they really get it with period shows like Kingdom, and the movie version Rampant, modern series such as Newtopia and Happiness, and mock reality shows like Zombieverse.  The blurb for this one - Arriving at a reformatory school, a group of students sent there to work on their attitude issues try to stand up to the teachers trying to control, but when a diseased pig from an undisclosed pandemic awakes and turns the faculty into zombies the students are forced to find a way out of the school. We follow three kids, a fighter, a thief and a spoiled brat party girl, as they are taken by boat to a reform school on an island. It is run by a bully boy principal, who kicks down, bully his VP, who in turns bullies Mr Park a teacher, who in turn bullies the pupils. No one bullies the kids like the gym teacher though, he is a violent piece of work. After a slow start where it's all about the thief being bullied by Chicken Hair, and the party girl bullied by Red Hanky, in the space of a few minutes the Principals cat is killed, then he is bitten by a rabid pig that turns him into a zombie. He kills the nurse, who kills the canteen lady, who then combine to kill the gym teacher and before long we just have the cowardly VP and the kids left. We get carnage. And it does have poor man's Battle Royale vibes. It wasn't the worst zombie movie I have seen. And it is encouraging that a bad South Korean zombie movie is still better than a bad US or UK zombie movie.  Oh, and we get a cover of Cranberries zombie as the final theme song.. oh my It was better than the Japanese Junk and much better than the lowest scoring South Korean Gangnam Zombie. I wouldn't watch it again. Probably a 4/10 for me

    31 min

  3. DEC 16

    Episode 298: M - Beyond the wasteland

    Send us a text The blurb Marko, shielded by his father's iron grip, must face a shattered world shrouded in silence and peril along with a boy with Down Syndrome. Or Beyond the Wasteland follows two kids who form an unbreakable bond in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies. Or The world has been ravaged by a pandemic. Alone and outside the safety of the forest, Marko faces a shattered world shrouded in silence and danger. 5.8/10 on IMDB which is very good and 3/5 from the UK Film Review  And it is from Macedonia and you know what that means dear listener it makes it the 40th country we have covered movies from.  Set in the woods after a global pandemic turned virtually everyone zeke a 8-10 year old Marko lives with his dad in the woods. It had a lot of surviving with dad in the woods.  Practical survival stuff. Hunting. Traps. Silence. It felt a little at times like the movie Here Alone, but then with the whole Huckleberry Finn meets The Peanut Butter Falcon but, you know, with zombies and in Northern Macedonia. Innocent and endearing. I felt like the sections of JoJo Rabbit when JoJo and Elsa are hiding together after JoJo's mother was hung. But with plenty of menace from the overbearing and quite frightening father, the infected, the marauders, and the soldiers. The hunt for mom, and going to the hospital felt like Apocalypse Z: The Beginning and the end was very tense for me, as you just didn't know what they were going to do. In the end this was a very watchable 6/10. I liked it!

    35 min

  4. DEC 13

    Episode 297: Glowzies (2023)

    Send us a text Take a really good actor, like James Remar, give him a bad script, awful CGI, terrible co-stars and some of the worst green screen I have ever seen, and you end up with a sub-par Remar. And that is what we get in Glowzies, yes, glowing zombies. And it is the sort of glowstick/predator blood glowing too. After an alien goo related incident 30 years earlier a bunch of pointless influencers come to investigate an old steel mill in a Colorado valley. They go to the local diner where a huge chef plies old men Remar, Tech and Smelly with food. The guys have no memory of the day before, their lives, or anything and don't think it is weird at all. But they agree to go with the kids to the mill. There their memories start to come back and it turns out they were there when the incident happened, alien goo etc, and since then have been used as canaries by the Department of Defense. They have been drugged every single day for 30 years? Yes, makes no sense. Anyway, the zombies are part of a glowing alien hive mind, and we have about 5 episodes of plot elements from Rick and Morty crammed in. A glowing gooey zombie episode of Goosebumps. Below average. I liked the drugging idea, but the rest was pish. 3.5/10

    38 min

  5. DEC 10

    Episode 296: All You Need in Blood (2023)

    Send us a text One of three DVDs in the Christmas box this year, along with Eat Brains Love and Zombie School, and all three nowhere on any list I have ever created. They were all very randomly found. After watching the Thai Zomvivor (still an awful title despite the show being awesome), I tried to find any South Korean zombie movies I hadn't seen that had good ratings and discovered Zombie School. Unavailable to download in the UK so I got a DVD from Korea. Eat Brains Love based on a novel of the same name next. Again, unavailable so a DVD came from the US. And then this... All You Need is Love... sung to the theme of All you need is love? by the Beatles? It is written and directed by Bucky Le Boeuf and is one of those lower budget awkward movies that have cringe elements, cheese but ultimately appeal to some... like Gentlemen Broncos, or Evil Alien Conquerors. And if you loved those you may well like this. 16 year old Bucky lives with his alcoholic pest control officer widower dad, and the talking urn holding his mums ashes. He is a filmmaker, making overly arty pieces with his mute Indian friend Nish. But when Walter Herzog-esque Franz von Franz comes to town to judge the local horror cinema contest, Bucky must swallow his pride and get gorey to win the $2000 first prize. What to do? Well, the meteor crashing into the garden and giving dad space AIDS and turning him zombie helps. Add Menu Suvari as a coke head trailer trash diva, Eddie Griffin as a detective , and Emma Chasse as a stage fright suffering wannabe actress,  and we soon have a zombie movie within a movie... not original I know, see Reel Zombies, Diary of the Dead, Zombies are Coming to Town, and the list goes on... Is it any different? Yes, it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and is amusing rather than laugh out loud funny, with running gags throughout... A 4.5/10 for me. I wouldn't hurry to watch it again, but I would recommend those who like awkward indie movies like Gentlemen Broncos give it a go.

    22 min

  6. DEC 4

    Episode 295: Zomvivor parts 5 to 7

    Send us a text More Thai chaos at the university as the zombies run amok. We have too many characters still and now we learn more about the evil Patron and his evil son Joe. Shall we call them Donald and Don Jnr? Lots of lying from the central family, we learn all the mom in a coma's back story and we also have the most unique element of a zombie story I have seen in a long, long ass time - zombie factions and a hierarchy. Just brilliant really. I went into this show on Netflix thinking I would hate it, but I didn't. I actually really liked it. Although none of the characters really appealed to me other than Lily and actually Aunty Jit, poor lass, I was engrossed. Netflix is full of hits and misses, but this was a hit for sure. Check it out now. Not as good as All of Us Are Dead, but not far off. 7/10

    1h 15m

  7. DEC 2

    Episode 294: Zomvivor parts 2 to 4

    Send us a text I am loving this show. It may not be at the height of some zombie cinema, it isn't better than All of Us Are Dead, but it ain't far from it. I was skeptical after seeing over 30 pretty Thai boys and girls on the poster. And there a lot of characters. A lot of red shirts. A lot of extras to be eaten. Although, that being said, the deaths are getting more and more from the main cast now. I have to contradict the IMDB reviewer who said there was nothing new here. There actually is. Alphas. We have seen a lead zombie in many many movies, 28 Years Later, House of the Dead, Army of the Dead, Land of the Dead to name but a few. But in all those cases the Alpha is the biggest brute of the horde, the huge monster from 28 Years Later, the original soldier in Army of the Dead, the Mechanic in Land. The Alpha here is very intriguing. And the use of emotion too, zombies fearful of the Alpha without the Alpha being a physically dominant specimen. Great stuff all around, I am loving it.  The whole storyline of the menial staff being used is sad. But it is a harsh reality of life. Zombies now self repairing. And getting stoned. This show is better than Happiness, better than Newtopia. It isn't far off All of Us are Dead. And that is saying something.

    48 min

  8. NOV 30

    Episode 293: Zomvivor intro and part 1

    Send us a text There are over 30 characters on the poster for this Thai Netflix effort, and none of them are zombies. That's right, it is a Bangkok university based zombie outbreak story with effectively half a dozen boy bands all vying for the attention of 3 girls - the bright top of the class Ning, the arrogant actress Lily and the morbid goth Prau. The guys all have slightly different outfits and haircuts, a la battle of the Asian boy bands however, that being said, it's alright. After one episode it is clear this is not ALL OF US ARE DEAD. Nowhere near. Not even close, Bud. Is is better than BLOCK Z? I think so. Ning and her group meet up with her brother Noon and her boyfriend?? Zan's group, making 16 of them escaping the zombies across campus to hold out at the under construction library. They put out a message on the PA system forwarding a military signal on the radio about chopper rescue, before water and power go down. And her message is heard, by the armed boy band in the rain, and the scaredy boy band in the hallways. So I will have another 8 boys to learn the names of in the next episode. As the power going out means the zombie will no longer have bright lights to stare at in a docile manner, so now head towards the living meat at the library. It's ok. I have seen far worse. Onto Episode 2...

    37 min
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

An undead podcast discussing all things zombie. Movie reviews and TV shows, franchises and chats with fans and the ghouls and boils who bring us this much loved genre.

Information

  • Creator
    Darren Smith, Michael Avery and Guests
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    300
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 The Undead Symphony
  • Show Website
    The Undead Symphony