Sidenote: Reel Time ran late this week due to the holidays. I apologize for the delay. Rob



Reel Advice, by Steve Anderson

Hide and Creep
****
DVD

Directed by
Chuck Hartsell
Chance Shirley

Written by
Chance Shirley

Cast
Barry Austin
Melissa Bush
Chris Garrison
Chris Hartsell
Chuck Hartsell
Kyle Holman
Michael Shelton
John Walker

R
85 mins


Okay, so we all knew this had to happen eventually.

What Southerners have been ranting about ever since they got their collective ass handed to them back in the mid-1800s has finally come to pass.

The South...Has Risen Again.

And it's hungry for people meat.

So what we have here is that, indeed, the South is rising again, at least in the town of Thorsby, Alabama. And it's what you expect--the zombies are hungry for human flesh, and attacking the living to get it. So now the town's video store clerk, a recently fired (for gross incompetence) deputy, a Homeland Defense agent, and a naked guy, must now rise up to defend the town.

I'm not kidding about that naked guy.

Indeed, the beleaguered video store clerk, God bless the video store guys of America and abroad, thank you all to pieces, is pretty much right. There ARE only three truly good American zombie movies, and George Romero made every one.

The rest are a collection of Romero ripoffs--some of which are better than others--and stuff too baffling to try and discuss even in THIS column, which every week confronts and rants about the most baffling parts of the video store shelves.

But at any rate, I've got to applaud "Hide and Creep" for being one of if not the first (that I can remember, anyway) to make a video store guy a major hero.

No, I'm not counting "Clerks." Though Randal is the ideological hero of the video store guy profession, he does not count as a hero, even as an antihero, because he doesn't actually do anything. He's a convenient foil for whatsisname at the Quick-Stop. You know, whiny Mr. "I'm-Not-Even-Supposed-To-Be-Here-Today".

But anyway, back to "Hide and Creep."

I could go through, and list every single crack-up moment that's in "Hide and Creep," but I'd need a two-part column just to do the job properly. Everything from our video store guy explaining the plot ("So what we've been hearing on talk radio about a conspiracy of aliens or the military to produce a race of flesh-eating ghouls to feed on the living is true, and people are renting zombie movies to learn how to defend themselves? Yeah...I can't rent to you any more.) to the unpleasant sight of a man waking up in the woods without pants or girlfriend ("Gail? Where's my car? ...where's my PANTS?) all in the first three minutes makes "Hide and Creep," without question, the single funniest full-length zombie movie I've ever seen.

The single funniest short zombie movie I've ever seen goes to "Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day," which I hear is making the film festival routes.

But anyway! Focus, dammit!

I can't believe it, but Harry Knowles actually got one RIGHT for a change. He said this was good stuff. But then again, with the crew at Film Threat backing his play, and even Kevin Smith's outlet nodding its assent, it's hard not to get it right.

"Hide and Creep" is unbearably good stuff. It's funny, it's bloody, it's violent, it's even a bit of social commentary, it's pretty much everything you could want in a zombie movie.

The ending is pretty much like the rest of the movie. Good, and funny, and pretty much what you could hope for. The one problem with indeed all zombie movies is that they stop, but they don't really end. The nature of the movie is that the problem is never really over--it goes on until all the participants are dead. But the movie has to stop somewhere.

That and I don't know HOW zombies suddenly got to be afraid of the dark....

Plus, there's a couple of absolutely fantastic twists to the ending that'll just amaze you. I'm not kidding.

The special features include audio options, feature commentary, a behind the scenes featurette, and a short film, "Birthday Call. that comes with some interesting pre-show commentary in the form of text. It's also surprisingly good for a three minute black and white film that doubles as a Coke endorsement. Product placement, anyone?

Plus, we get trailers for "War of the Worlds," "Frankenstein," "Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove," "Hide and Creep," and "Lethal Eviction."

All in all, "Hide and Creep" is a terrific addition to the American zombie film landscape, joining Romero among the greats

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Lost in the middle of nowhere

(From Anywhere But Here. Click on image to see full-sized image.)

Have you ever read a book that you've really enjoyed and then realized "I don't know what's going on here..."? Maybe the characters suddenly slipped into a flashback without warning, or the point of view of the novel changed, or something... but all at once you're just not sure of what's going on? It's kind of embarrassing. You skip back a few pages and see if you can figure out what happened. Maybe you missed a pertinent chapter, or two pages stuck together, but somewhere along the way you got lost.

Well, I'm lost as well. I honestly don't know why our hero is going away for the summer. I mean, we have one strip which mentions it in passing, but up until then we didn't know what was going on. And the whole bit with Chris promptly overshadowed that.

(I also have to wonder about Jason Siebel... I mean, he's going to kill himself if he keeps up with these 20-panel comics every other Friday! *grin*)

And then there's this. One thing that has been verified by Jason is that the dark-haired lady wasn't Chris. But... we've not seen a glimpse of anything like this before now. I mean, I can theorize about it... the dark-haired girl is the personification of everything he's dreamed of in a girl, everything he wants to find... his soul-mate that he just knows is out there somewhere. She's not real. But he wants her to be real.

Of course, who knows? Maybe she is real and this is foreshadowing. Though I feel bad for Chris if that's the case... I mean, I get the feeling she doesn't think too highly of herself. If this girl, this personification of everything her new boyfriend wants should show up, I can just imagine how Chris would feel.

But that's getting off track. Apparently we're going back home for the summer, which came as a big surprise to me. I mean, nary a word about this until a phone call that was easily ignored in the larger drama around us. What's more, we're not even going home but instead to an uncle whom we had no idea even existed up 'til now, and we're not bringing two of the characters with us (the "cute talking animal" (if you can call a sardonic self-centered iguana "cute") and the Banana Jr. 6000 wannabe (well, I call it that, but to be honest I like Jason's walking talking Mac, even if it is ripped out of the pages of Bloom County)). However, Chris may very well be dropping by for a visit or two. I mean, it's only 200 miles from her. (And I think she'd love to get out of that town. Seriously.)

Meanwhile, at the same time that Jason is writing up this story about Chris, our nameless hero, a pair of misplaced devils, Death, taxes (okay, taxes hasn't showed up yet. But I'm sure it will! *grin*) and more, he's also writing the beginning of the comic, which takes place a year or so before the current timeline and apparently sets down some important foundations which will help explain things currently happening and appearing in the future. (The first comics are set for June of 2003...)

And we've learned a bit. The biggie is that his parents have huge noses too! Oh wait, that's not it... ah, here it is. He was going to go to Berkley (in Massachusetts) but because his parents misplaced his scholarship papers, he had to go to North Dakota instead. It explains a bit of his attitude and maybe even why he is distant toward Chris. He doesn't want to be there.

Haven't we all felt like that from time to time?

Well, outside of some confusion about where our sardonic protagonist was spending his summer (which could have been solved with one strip talking with friends about where they were going for the summer - but again, maybe that strip was planned for the first summer vacation (I have the impression he's a sophomore) which, if read through normally, would let us know he goes home for the holidays), the strip is moving along. Unfortunately, the prequel strips are moving along better than the other strips. Hopefully it's just a hiccup caused by some confusion about what's going on, and soon ABH will be back on track.

Just remember, kids, it's all fun and games to sit in the middle of railroad tracks until the train runs you down....

Robert A. Howard
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