SXSW07–All The Boys Love Mandy Lane/American Zombie/Undead Or Alive: A Zombedy

ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE

What happens when one girl has the entire male population of a high school wrapped around her virginic finger? Apparently, horrible, chaotic murder.

Mandy (Amber Heard) is just such a girl. She has a strange power over every guy in her school. So much so that a guy jumped off of a roof for her at the suggestion of her best friend, Emmet (Michael Welch). After disowning Emmet, she starts to give a little bit more attention to everyone else. She gets invited to Red’s (Aaron Himelstein) ranch for a weekend with some friends. Three guys, three girls and lots of libido. Only Mandy is uninterested in sex.

Until, of course, she meets the ranch hand, Garth (Anson Mount). She falls in lust at first sight with Garth, but her awkward flirting has no effect on him. Not enough to make him rob the cradle, anyway.

Then the kids start dying. And we have a slasher flick that works pretty well. Actually, the whole movie works pretty well. The high school relationships are dead on and the horror aspects are close enough to be completely effective. Hell, the movie was even a metaphor for unrequited teen love! So that made it even MORE realistic.

Great horror flick that will probably get ignored when it comes out later this year. Check it out.

AMERICAN ZOMBIE

A few years ago, Grace Lee decided to look for everyone in the world with the same name as her. I haven’t seen that documentary, but I’ve heard that it’s very good.

Now she’s training her eye on the zombies who are living among us. They’re shit on. They’re ignored. They’re dead. They can be highly functioning and important members of our community. But are they dangerous?

Of course, this is a mockumentary. It’s very funny and well made and well worth seeking out. It’s a bit overlong, but it comes back for the last 15 minutes or so.

Here’s something I just found out: Ed Helms from “The Daily Show” did a short mockumentary called Zombie-American that was basically the same thing. That kind of worries me, but this one is very good. Hopefully they’re different enough that no one calls them on it and sues them or something stupid like that.

This is the first of a LOT of zombie movies this year. (Mulberry Street is a Near-Zombie movie. I count it. Others don’t.) What’s with all the zombie flick at the festival this year? It’s like the South By Of The Dead. I love it!!

UNDEAD OR ALIVE: A ZOMBEDY

One of my friends is on the committee who helps choose films and he loved this one. He is one of the people who got it in the festival and he introduced it and, despite the fact that it has Chris Kattan in it, I took his word for it.

I don’t completely hate him for it, but I did hit him in the arm afterwards. Not so happy.

Elmer (James Denton) and Luke (Kattan) are thrown together when they break out of the small jail and get their money back from the uber-corrupt sheriff of the town that they’re stuck in. But Geronimo’s Curse is about to take the town over. As the boys ride out of town, they meet up with Sue (Navi Rawat from Feast and “Numb3rs”), Geronimo’s neice. She remembers a little bit about the curse. She tends to remember things just as they become not so useful.

The movie has its moments, but not enough of them to maintain even its 89 minutes. And Chris Kattan is still annoying. Overall, even a mix of Western and comic-horror didn’t make me love this movie like I thought I would.

Oh well. You can’t win ‘em all.