Undead Ted (2009)

Director	Daniel Knight
Writers	Daniel Knight
Starring	Daniel Knight, Cassie Dart
Genre	Zombie
Run Time (minutes)	7.00
Country

Talk us through it

Undead Ted is a mockumentary in which Interviewer Tilly Braxton talks to deceased person, Edward Grey, about the trials and tribulations of being an undead person. So if you ever wanted to know, but couldn't be bothered asking, how a zombie starts his/her day, the problems with prejudice from the living part of society, and how rigour mortis affects an undead person's sex life then you have come to the right place.

Tilly Braxton takes us into the world of the undead and discovers they have feelings as well, or would do if their nerve ends hadn't rotted away.

Ready to enter the world of the dead, they might serve brains later!

Review

For no apparent reason I got a real Fido buzz from Daniel Knight's Undead Ted, the movies are polar opposites in what they are setting out to do but for some reason I get the feeling the respective movie makers approached their movie with exactly the same feeling toward what they were trying to achieve. Guess it might be due to the Canadian feature length and the Aussie short both attempting to tell the story from the other side as it were, no pun intended, and present what it might feel like to be a zombie.

As an aside I must at some stage have a yarn to Daniel Knight and see if his character naming wasn't a wink at the audience. "Braxton" is the name of a U.S Indie studio probably best known for Ghostbusters vs Freddy while "Grey" would be the colour of a reanimated corpse. Could be a coincidence but when you're a horror anorak wearer these things are of vital importance.

Director/Writer Knight frames his movie like one of those interest pieces you see on the news every now and again when no one has blown anything up on a particular day or the scare value out of the latest flu outbreak is no longer gaining audience share. Luckily in NSW we are spared the vast majority of these as there's always a league player up on some sort of charge for behaviour unbecoming. The whole movie is basically an unseen interviewer, Tilly, asking some pretty probing questions to Ted, about his life and problems as a zombie. Sets are pretty minimum, a local playground, a water course, a commuter train, and a public bathroom, but there's certainly a sort of morbid delight in some of Ted's answers.

Zombies, or at least Ted, brush their teeth in the morning, though you probably don't face the inherent dangers of things falling off due to decay that Ted does. He also wears contact lenses so that people can see his eyes and hence aren't as intimidated. Sorry Ted you're dead, people are likely to be slightly standoffish at the best of times. Apparently stitching bits and pieces back on that have fallen off doesn't work as well as stabling them back on. Something to keep in mind if you ever discover you are a zombie and your arm has just dropped off.

While getting to most questions the audience may have about life as a zombie, Tilly didn't breach the bathroom. It might be just me but that has always been intriguing for some reason

We discover that Ted hasn't had a girlfriend in quite sometime, which turns out somewhat unfortunate as he has discovered a natural viagra, rigour mortis. Okay I'll leave the whole subject of zombie wood to people like William Castle or Chuck McKenzie.

As you have probably come to suspect already Undead Ted is a tongue in cheek look at the whole zombie situation. Ted may not be winning friends and influencing people currently due to the possibility that he could eat their brains at any moment, but he didn't have any friends when he was alive either. You could say Ted has more time to contemplate life, in between stabling the odd leg or arm back onto his body. Director/Writer Daniel Knight might have at stages thought about going for the odd bit of pathos but end of day he's firmly heading things toward the next joke or punch line. The movie is pretty much humour in the English vogue, rather than the more raw body style jokes we would expect from an Aussie outing. I was waiting on Ted to let off a ripper, you would think there would be a lot of gas being generated what with rot etc, followed by him exclaiming his bum had just fallen off. A zombie trying to stable his arse back on isn't something you expect to see everyday folks.

About the only issue I had with Undead Ted, and it's a minor gripe really, is that our zombie of the moment seemed a tad too coherent to make a believable dead, uhmm undead, person. I would have liked to see Ted slur the odd word or forget how to say something.

Nightshade FX did wonders with the zombie makeup, Ted is looking as good as anything out of a Romero flick. Adding open sores was a master stroke in my opinion.

For those wondering the featured instrumental at the start of the movie is Joi Veer's "Inward Journey".

I had some fun with Undead Ted, was grooving to the humour, and thought Director Daniel Knight pretty much got it spot on. Knight tosses us something slightly off beat in zombie movies and I took a huge bite out of.

Okay assuming I've got this figure out, just below is the movie ready to go. Now how simply is that, worth a look folks.

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