Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
High Zombedy
That’s Carrie-Anne Moss (doing her best June Cleaver) dancing with Scottish stand-up comic, John Cleese-lookalike, and zombie Billy Connolly (warning, profanity in that YouTube vid), in Canadian zombie comedy (yes, zombedy) Fido (2006), our latest NetFlix rental. Fido takes place in an alternative universe where the earth has passed through a radioactive cloud which has caused the dead to walk, and hunger for tacos cerebros. Folks live in towns surrounded by high fences, and they live a sort-of normal life until they die, at which point they become zombies. The well-to-do prepay for funerals in which the head is buried in its own little casket separate from the body, elementary school kids practice target-shooting with rifles, old people are suspect, lawbreakers get tossed outside the fence.
And, oh, zombies with control collars fill the role of the permanent underclass — as gardeners, butlers, and even concubines.
Relative newcomer Kesun Loder plays Timmy, Carrie-Ann Moss’s son, and he brings to mind a young Macaulay Culkin moreso than Beaver Cleaver. But the movie’s creative minds have Leave it to Beaver on the brain, or perhaps Father Knows Best, with zombies. (Certainly no stranger than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.) Moss plays the typical perfect housewife, Dylan Baker her tight-sphinctered husband Bill. Fido (Connolly) proves to be a better father than Bill, but when he accidentally dines on a neighbor, chaos follows.
I’ve probably already told you too much. This movie was a delight. Ever since George Romero invented the modern zombie flick, these films have served as vehicles for social satire, often in a heavy-handed way. And while I can’t accuse Fido of subtlety, the satire didn’t lack for personality or cleverness. Rent it.
D.
Never heard of it! You’d think Billy would be a big seller in the UK but alas no. I may seek this one out and dare the nightmares.
Don’t worry . . . this one shouldn’t cause nightmares. Relatively little dismemberment and limb-chewing.