One of the most satisfying zombie movies I’ve ever seen isn’t a movie at all, but the British TV series Dead Set, a five-episode wonder. You know how everyone talked about how awesome AMC’s The Walking Dead show was upon its debut in Halloween 2010? Well, Dead Set did the undead far better two years earlier, and makes our Yank efforts look like Sesame Street by comparison.

Don’t get me wrong: I liked The Walking Dead. But I didn’t love it, because every episode seemed to stretch half an hour’s worth of story into twice the time. There’s no such problem with Dead Set. With the exception of the extended first ep, each one is just a hair above 20 minutes; all are packed with survivor interaction and zombie action.

What sets it apart immediately is its concept, in that the housemates of UK’s Big Brother reality show are blissfully unaware of the zombie uprising outside their studio, until said uprising extends indoors. Suddenly, that week’s eviction ceremony is the least of the contestants’ worries.

Dead Set gets away with a lot that the U.S. tube wouldn’t allow. Remember Walking Dead‘s buzzed-about scene in which a couple of characters bathed themselves in zombie blood and entrails to go undercover? That’s tame compared to the Big Brother producer (Andy Nyman) personally stripping an expired player of skin and meat, right down to the bone.

Watch all five back-to-back for a bloody good 141-minute feature experience. —Rod Lott

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In 1994, writer/director George Huang turned his experience working as an executive assistant in Hollywood into the excellent dark comedy Swimming With Sharks, and it seemed like he was well on his way to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, his teen comedy follow-up, Trojan War, went straight to video, and it was all he could do to get a gig remaking a 1958 AIP flick for Showtime’s short-lived Creature Features film series.

Assigned with How to Make a Monster, he completely jettisoned the original’s plot, instead telling the tale of a group of video game programmers who end up being stalked by their own virtual monster.

Deliberately cartoony, the movie makes no attempt at all to depict the authentic realities of game production, which wouldn’t be a problem if Huang hadn’t decided to rip himself off and use the film to re-tell the same story he told in his first and much, much, much better picture. By the time Monster ends with a newly jaded Clea DuVall (in the Frank Whaley role) schooling a new intern in the cold, cruel realities of the world, it becomes agonizingly clear that by his third film, Huang had already shot his entire creative wad, leaving him with nothing else to say.

That said, the movie isn’t a complete waste of time, assuming you’re a fan of B-movie bombshell Julie Strain, who gifts the picture with a completely gratuitous nude scene (that you can probably find somewhere online). —Allan Mott

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Wow. Just wow.

Set in contemporary Hong Kong, Dumplings is the story of Mrs. Li, a former TV star who is married to a man 15 years her senior. She’s 35 and he lost interest long ago in favor of his 20-something secretary/bimbo.

To regain her youth, Mrs. Li begins a regimen of eating dumplings — bite-sized, meat-filled, dough-covered — cooked by Aunt Mei, who appears to be in her early 30s. The dumplings are reputed to restore one’s youth, vigor and sexual attractiveness. Mrs. Li is at first repulsed by the lumps of dumps floating in broth, and we become so as well as hints begin to drop as to just what the meat in the concoction is. Aunt Mei — who, we discover, was 20 in 1960 — is a former nurse with a straight line to mainland China, where abortions are still performed in the thousands.

Written by Pik Wah Li (under the name Lillian Lee), who wrote the novel on which Farewell My Concubine was based, and directed by Fruit Chan, the film is — on the surface — about a power struggle between two women. Under the surface, it’s a biting revelation of how the rich, beautiful and powerful use the poor, pitiful and helpless. As Marie Antoinette said, “Let ‘em eat jiaozi.”

This one is as disturbing as any movie you’re likely to see unless you go so far underground even we won’t follow you. —Doug Bentin

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Before the title even appears in the opening credits, The Hills Run Red lets you know exactly what it’s aiming for, as a young man calmly cuts the skin off his face with scissors. The film is about a film, a 1982 slasher by director Wilson Wyler Concannon (William Sadler), who never was heard from again, and whose movie — also called The Hills Run Red — never saw release. No prints exist; all that remains is a trailer and some still photos.

Obsessive and pretentious film-geek blogger (is that all redundant?) Tyler (Tad Hilgenbrinck, in a terribly amateur performance) eschews his girlfriend’s offer of sex — fiction! — and goes in search of the missing movie for a documentary project. His first stop is Concannon’s daughter, a smack-addict stripper named Alexa (Sophie Monk and her boobs). With his bland girlfriend (Janet Montgomery) and über-annoying best pal (Alex Wyndham) in tow, Tyler takes Alexa into the woods where the film was shot.

If you think they’ll discover the film’s villain of the doll-masked Babyface there, you’ve seen more than one horror movie! These Hills aren’t exactly original — in fact, they’re downright predictable — but that has to be all part of the plan, paying homage to down-and-dirty conventions of the slasher genre in its heyday, while bringing it into the present with an unrated amount of gore, much of it made possible by the creative use of barbed wire.

Director Dave Parker delivers a sick, slick package, which is a miracle considering he wrote House of the Dead, one of the worst movies I’ve ever had the displeasure of paying to see in a theater. From his prose work, David J. Schow seems like a smarter screenwriter than to craft dialogue like “Fuck me sideways!” and “C’mon, fucker!,” but he’ll give you what you want in the senseless-slaughter and demented-daddy departments. The Hills Run Red — that, they do. —Rod Lott

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Admittedly, it’s tough to compete with crucifix masturbation, but the made-for-TV chiller The Possessed tries its — dare I say it? — damnedest to ride The Exorcist‘s demonic coattails to the tube. Ol’ Scratch shows up at an all-girls’ school, where the most dastardly thing going on is spraying whipped cream and spermicidal foam in someone’s bed as a prank.

It all begins when a piece of paper in a typewriter catches fire. AAAAAIIIIIEEEEE!!! Next, some curtains flare up. AAAAAIIIIIEEEEE!!! Then, a girl’s graduation gown spontaneously combusts. AAAAAIIIIIEEEEE!!!

Investigating these matters are former minister/current alcoholic James Farentino and aging cop Eugene Roche. Suspicion falls on the male biology teacher (a pre-fame Harrison Ford, basically creating the role he’d later do for E.T.) until he goes up in smoke, too. He kind of deserves it, because he’s boinking one of the students. Then again, she is the super-cute Ann Dusenberry. I’d hit that.

Anyhoo, the person Satan possesses spits nails and vomits weak cherry Kool-Aid at Farentino while the girls watch, all in a tidy yet tired 74 minutes. It looks not so much like a possessed entity and more like this one woman I know who’s a sister of a friend of mine. She ugly. Did this really scare anyone? Ever? —Rod Lott

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