Thursday, May 10, 2012

In short: Outpost: Black Sun (2012)

Now, having read my less than amused ranting about Nazis at the Center of the Earth you may believe me completely opposed to the use of Nazis as pulp movie bad guy fodder. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just think you should do so without pretending concentration camps are funny (while Hitler, obviously, is a very good object to make fun of).

Steve Barker's sequel to his own pulp-y Nazi zombie movie Outpost (alas lacking Ray Stevenson for obvious reasons) does most everything right when it comes to the treatment of his pulp Nazi zombies. We are in classic B-movie territory here, so expect the Nazi zombies to be just like Nazis zombies always are, doing Nazi zombie things for decrepit old Nazi war criminals, while a couple of civilians - one the mandatory plucky young woman (Catherine Steadman) who proves her pluckiness by being responsible for the death of an octogenarian war criminal in his rest home, the other the just as mandatory guy of dubious moral standing (Richard Coyle) and an incompetent (they never met a perimeter they wanted to secure) British special forces unit try to destroy the mysterious Nazi zombie making machine before the military nukes the place from orbit (it's the only way to be sure, or so I've heard). The whole thing doesn't go too well, of course.

Disappointingly, Outpost BS is filmed in the usual colour-drained way every horror movie in this decade is bound by law to use, so expect your colourful comic book action horror nonsense to happen in sickly green, grey, and brown, and me to be a bit bored by that particular aesthetic dead end.

However, it at least is colourful action horror nonsense, with a plot that begins halfway believable - I'm talking believable for the realm of the Nazi zombie movie here - but gets crazier and ever more pulpy fast. I wish somebody would give Barker a bit more money for one of his next projects, so that he could really let his highly entertaining imagination loose. As it stands, Outpost BS is still a film full of Nazi zombies, an evil Nazi plan that seems to consist of "make Nazi zombies, hope they'll take over the world before elderly Nazi boss dies of old age", a tortured scientist who talks like Gollum and shoots electricity while hanging over the Nazi zombie making machine (which really could use a snazzy name like "The Nazi-Zombificator™), a Nazi zombie knife fight, and the Nazi zombie sister of Left For Dead's witch. Even with all the green and grey, that's more than enough to keep any sane viewer entertained.

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