The Undead Symphony

Darren Smith, Michael Avery and Guests
  • 3.7 (3)
  • Arts
  • Updated Semiweekly

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. 5d ago

    Episode 388: Les Revenants/The Returned (2004)

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. I asked ForeignHorrorMovies on Insta for a few recommendations and this was the first one available to me. Les Revenants/The Returned from 2004.  Worldwide 70 million people who died in the last 10 years return from the grave, but rather than blue faced Romero zombies, crumbly and crusty Fulci zombis, 28 Days Later messy infected, or rotter and walkers from The Walking Dead, these are pastel wearing serene, and slightly sinister sedate mental patients, who can't create new ideas and space out a lot. So basically grandma. It is effectively a pastel French version of John Ajvide Lindqvist's Handling the Undead, even to the level of centring on 3 stories of grief, a wife, parents of a returned child, and an elderly couple. Again, very Handling the Undead, just creepier, with zero gore. So zombie movie fanatics may hate this. It is much much better than the later Scandi movie. And you really don't get a lot of explanation as to the why's and wherefore's of the situation, why did they come back, why don't their brains process new ideas, why can't they ad lib, does this mean the Returned Improv nights are off? Moreso what are they planning, why, and where did they think they were going? So many questions, no answers, but still a solid 6/10 for me.

  2. Sep 3

    Episode 387: Zombies! Wicked Little Things (2006)

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. If you take the Lou Diamond Phillips zombie movie Route 666 where a road gang of zombies use their road digging tools to kill people on the stretch of route 66 they died on, the 1980 The Children where a school bus of kids were killed in a tragic accident and come back to kill, and Maggie you get Wicked Little Things.  It stars Lori Ann Heuring who hasn't done a lot since, Scout Taylor-Compton who played the Jamie Lee Curtis character in the Halloween reboots, and a 9 year old Chloe Moretz. And they are grieving the loss of the father of the family to a long drawn out battle with cancer that left them broke, so broke they end up moving to a shack in rural Pennsylvania that was in the dad's family since forever and is right by a mine where the evil mine owner murdered a couple of dozen orphans with dynamite. So it's Sometimes They Come Back, and get revenge on the living, but "they" are cute little munchkin kids in 1900s costumes covered in soot. 5/10 not as bad as IMDB makes out, and only have 3 shots of the moon to tell us its nighttime.

  3. Aug 29

    Episode 386: Code Red (2013)

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. A bizarre horse dick of a Bulgarian (country 45 baby!) zombie film that starts brilliantly before collapsing into absolute diabolical nonsense.  The WW2 openng section, set during Stalingrad, is brutal, tense and genuinely exciting. Hans, played by Valeri Yordanov, is easily the highlight as he battles advancing Russians, rescues wounded comrades and eventually faces zombies created by a mysterious chemical weapon. I’d happily watch an entire film about Hans trying to survive. Maybe someone should make it. Then we jump to the modern day, and everything falls apart. Paul Logan plays an American weapons inspector using an alias, despite the Bulgarians not knowing who he is, with all the charisma of a wooden plank, surrounded by dreadful Bulgarian villains, terrible acting, awful CGI, shaky cinematography, constant rubbish music. Although the zombie makeup and weaponry was pretty good. The plot involves biochemical genocide, secret weapons, military cover-ups by a dodgy Bulgarian moustache and his brothel owner business partner and a seemingly endless repetition of “CODE RED.” I think the final count was a dozen repeats of the title. Everyone got a shot at the titular line.  Zombies overrun a Bulgarian town, people make spectacularly stupid decisions, a lot of f*****g stupid, a really annoying stupid child and the film eventually just… ends. They literally stop filming and just go with stills. Did they run out of film? 1/10 for the modern-day mess, but Hans saves it from total disaster. Final score: 4.5/10.

  4. Aug 26

    Episode 385: Night of the Creeps

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. A fun one for our 400th zombie movie or show, a classic that was one of the IMDB top 50 zombie movies and the only one of that top 50 that we were yet to cover. And there is a lot to unpick here. We have aliens sending an experiment in mind control down to Earth in 1959 at the same time as an axe wielding serial killer escapes an asylum and starts killing locals. The experiment involves brain altering slugs that when fired into the mouth of a victim, control them, then incubate before their head bursts and numerous slugs come out to infect more people. This is what happens in 1986 when two freshmen, Chris and JT, are tasked by a frat house to dump a cadaver on the doorstop of a rival fraternity. The mayhem ensues with slugs, zombie frat brothers, an animatronic  zombie cat and zombie dog, as well we a flame thrower, and one of my favourite horror movie quotes, "I have good news and bad news, girls. The good news is your dates are here." What's the bad news? "They're dead." Tom Adkins on form, some great quotes, mostly from other movies from him, and a load of a characters named after the great horror movie directors, from Raimi to Romero, Carpenter and beyond. 6/10 and so much fun

  5. Aug 24

    Episode 384: The Dead 2: India

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. The Ford brothers are at it again, after The Dead (2010 and episode 36 of the pod), in which a white American must fight his way from one dry, desolate village in Africa to another during a zombie outbreak, we have The Dead 2: India (2013), in which a white American must fight his way from one dry, desolate village in India to another during a zombie outbreak. And yes, despite knowing of this movie for the entire lifetime of the Undead Symphony, it took me 348 episodes and being stuck in a cottage in the middle of nowhere to finally get around to it. In this movie English actor Joseph Milson (Moon Knight, Ashes to Ashes, Penny Dreadful) plays Nicholas Burton, an American wind turbine engineer who is fixing wind turbines 300 miles from Mumbai when the outbreak happens. The issue? His pregnant girlfriend, his second pregnant girlfriend, as he has issues with condoms, is in the city with her oppressive priest father and ominously bitten mother. The movie suffers in many of the same ways as the first, with the mostly Indian cast struggling with the English dialog, continuity errors, and poor direction, seriously the scenes on the motorcycle in the desert and the mass grave could have been so much more, also an unsatisfying ending, but it was ok. It was better than the first, Milson does the best job with what he is given to work with, and so it is a 5/10 for me.  As gritty stories about trying to get from A to B in an apocalypse in a foreign country go, with a juxtaposition of the quiet countryside setting verses the hectic city setting, this one is ok.

  6. Aug 22

    Episode 383: I am Omega

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. By far the worst adaptation of Matheson's I am legend, with Mark Dacascos high kicking his way through a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles full of rubber suited bald zombies with their vertebrae hanging out. His wife and kid died. He scavenges from the wrong places. And somehow has working electricity, internet, satellites, and running water, whilst the rest of the city pisses in the same pot they drink out of. Enter somehow immune car whisperer Brianna, thuggish Vincent who wants the world to stay as it is, and it all turns into a mess and a half. 3/10 and 90 mins of my life I won't get back. The highlight of my 90 minutes watching this movie was sneezing four times and getting a little bit of a head rush.

  7. Aug 22

    Episode 382: Dead Don't Die in Dallas

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. A random from Amazon, the 2019 LGBTQ+ Dead Don't Die in Dallas aka Kicking Zombie Ass for Jesus. Drag Queen salon owner Beth Ann Fetterman and Preacher Daniel butt heads as they end up together with the preacher's promiscuous wife and a lesbian boxing champion in an abandoned building as the zombie outbreak wipes out their pissant Texas town. With social commentary laid on a thick as a whale meat omelette, and campy gags from Beth Ann and travelling drag queens Tipper Sommore and Dr Cunni Lingus, this basic zombie story is actually ok.  Many will hate it, the acting is poor, the Preacher's wig is ludicrous, and the cheap use of grindhouse mock film effects is annoying, as is the 8 times we see the moon, the message may get on your nerves, and it is overegged at times, but the gore is well done, the story holds itself together so it was a 5/10 for me. Darren has spoken!

  8. Aug 17

    Episode 381: Hello Zombie! (2014)

    I'd love to hear from my dear listeners. Recommend a zombie movie or show I haven't covered, or some on and chat all things zeke. Or just like and share. A low budget Japanese indie with a runtime of 45 minutes this follows the well trodden path of a production company making a zombie movie only for then the zombie apocalypse to actually happen around them. It is rarely done well, I am thinking the godawful Reel Zombies as well as Diary of the Dead, one of George's lesser movies. In this move, bought on Amazon for £3.99, Dom, Tommy and Gen are friends who run an independent production company that has had it's day. They have no money and so are making a zero budget zombie movie in Okinawa. After filming a scene they head into the woods, and a cursed copse where a real zombie attacks and kills their lead actor, before chasing the other into town. Add a funny scene of a drunk avoiding death, and a LOT of blood sprayed over everyone, and this low budget short is actually quite watchable.  I would give it 5/10.

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Ratings & Reviews

3.7
out of 5
3 Ratings

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 - 2026
  • Episodes
    388
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Undead Symphony
  • Show Website
    The Undead Symphony