Movie Monthly - Dead & Buried

Edited by Robert Beach

Welcome back to Movie Monthly’s Month of the Zombie where I celebrate zombie movies that only I consider to be zombie movies. There are just so many generic zombie films out there with your standard range of infected rage zombies or slow, shambling Romero zombies that you don’t need another person spotlighting them. In keeping with that trend, the zombies from this week’s movie are less of your standard issue undead and something more like the bizarre hybrid children of Re-Animator, The Fog, and Shutter Island.

It’s also notable as being from the writing team behind Alien…sort of.  Ronald Shusett, who’s credited with creating Alien’s story, while Alien’s actual author Dan O’Bannon has repeatedly distanced himself from the film, wrote the main script.  It’s a bizarre mash-up of zombie flick, seaside terror tale, retro throwback and atmospheric horror. Let’s talk about Dead & Buried.

Movie Monthly - Leviathan (1989)

For some reason in 1989 the world just decided it was obsessed with deep sea diving and exploration.  This was the year that gave us The Abyss, DeepStar Six, The Evil Below, Lords of the Deep, The Rift, and today’s topic Leviathan.  Now for most folks that list probably seems pretty obscure aside from James Cameron’s The Abyss but chances are if you grew up in the era of video rental stores chances are you know quite a few of those entries by sight if not by name.  Almost all of these deep-sea base films had a very unique and similar box art design, which is actually how I stumbled on Leviathan as a choice for this review.  That was just nature of rental video in the days before the immediate reward and no risk structure of streaming.  This also means that even when you’re talking about low-rent video rental scifi horror like Leviathan you can count on it to at least look good and be bonkers in all the right places.