Movies
AFM ’11: First Details on ‘Gangsters, Guns & Zombies’
From Imagination Worldwide comes Matt Mitchell’s indie Gangsters, Guns & Zombies, which stars Vincent Jerome, Huggy Leaver, and Fabrizio Santino. No AFM art is available, but they have released the following whooper of a synopsis…
“The whole “zombie thing” has been hyped up so much that everyone thinks it’s the end of the world!
Of course, where one man sees the dead rising from the grave, another sees opportunity. Q had a plan: drive the robbery getaway van, deliver everyone to the safe house and get paid – a nice, simple, plan.
Unfortunately, life is never really that simple, and to top it all off, this is the first time Q has been a getaway driver….…He’s coping pretty well though, considering; TONY (the guy who is ‘in charge’ of the job) is a murderous nut case, DANNY was shot and is now bleeding all over the money in the back of the van, the Sat-Nav has a mind of its own, there’s a guy in the back living up to his name “CRAZY STEVE”, the safe-house already has police at it, and this whole “zombie thing” seems to be quickly becoming more of a “zombie apocalypse thing”.
Luckily, TONY knows of another Safe House on the coast. Not so luckily, DANNY dies of natural-ish causes and then rises from the grave. Q and the others have to deal with a recently zombie-fied medieval re-enactment group, a football team that seem hell bent on eating their brains and the van running out of fuel.
In their search for refuge and some diesel, TONY spots – of all things – a fortified windmill and the group awkwardly team up with a lovely young woman called CASSIE and her insane, but well armed GRANDMA. As TONY descends into deeper and deeper psychosis, he forces a last stand against a zombie horde, dies horribly and takes GRANDMA with him. Not bad for a night’s work.
Some men are born into shit-storms, some achieve shit-storms, and some have shit-storms thrust upon them. Q is up to his neck in this one and must now take charge of the group in order to save his own skin – not to mention the much more attractive skin of CASSIE.
Finally reaching the coast, the new group must figure out a way off this crazy island – lack of sailing know-how and the walking dead notwithstanding. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, one of them suffers an accident and lands Q with a dilemma. In the one hand he holds his own life and in the other the lives of the group. Who does he choose? Watch GANGSTERS, GUNS AND ZOMBIES to find out!“
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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