Zombie Room

Zombie Room brings you the most anticipated fight of the year – the Nazi Massacre Championships 2009! This year, competing for this whopping prize are two directors: “Quentin Tarantino of Norway”, Tommy Wirkola, and “Quentin Tarantino of USA”, Quentin Tarantino himself!

Both of these heavyweight champions have placed their latest films in to the ring: in the icy blue corner, from Tommy Wirkola, we have Dead Snow, a Norwegian Nazi Zombie comedy – and in the red hot corner, we have Tarantino’s upcoming Inglorious Basterds, a WWII War Comedy! It’s going to be a bloody fight, so hold on tight!

Before we hit the cong, let’s have a quick look at rules. The fight is divided in three parts: Promotion, Trailer and the Film. Each section has 3 categories on where the fight takes place, and the winner of each category gets one point. In the end, the film that has more points, wins three free Internets!

And now… get ready…

FIGHT!

1. PROMOTION

PROMOTIONAL POSTERS

Both of these films have really pushed for the promotional posters, knowing the fact that a picture is the easiest media to travel the Internet. Both promotional poster campaigns are surprisingly similar, focusing much more to striking images than the faces of the actors. A good decision, I would say! It’s also good to notice that Dead Snow‘s teaser posters popped to the Internet almost over a year ago, so it actually might be that Inglorious Basterd‘s poster artists have ripped been inspired by them! Here’s a comparative chart of the posters – enjoy!

(Ps. Sorry for the fucked-up aspect ratio, WordPress seems to do something and I have no idea how to fix it…)

TAGLINE

When creating a tagline for a film, it’s important to keep it short, keep it clear, make it fit the tone of the film and if possible, have a little twist to it. Let’s see what the contestants have to offer:

FACEBOOK FANS

Determining the Internet Love for a film is quite hard, so let’s just stick to Facebook fans. That’s the most scientific method anyway…

So far, looking good for the cod-eaters! Norway’s Nazi Zombies leading 2-1. But next, let’s go to the more relevant stuff – the trailer!

2. TRAILER

This it how it really starts – it’s always up to the trailer to really attract the attention of the audience. In this category, I give 0-3 points for a trailer, added with a short description on why I ended to this decision. Take it away, boyz!

And the results are:

DEAD SNOW – Teens, chainsaw, nazi zombies, red blood on pure white snow, motorsleds, Bach… 2/3!

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS – Brad Pitt doing Brad Pitt, kewl graphix, Hitler going nuts… 1/3

So far, the land of Black Metal and disconcertingly expensive beer is holding steadily to the pole position: 4-2 for Dead Snow!

3. THE FILM

But in the end, it all comes down to the film itself. No good marketing campaign could ever save a bad film from failing miserably. Dead Snow is already out but Inglorious Basterds isn’t, so we can’t really compare these two, now can we?

DIRECTOR
Ok, now this is not a fair fight. Quentin Tarantino started his career with Reservoir Dogs, continued with Pulp Fiction and following it’s success with films like Kill Bill 1 & 2, and the rest is history. So far, Tommy only has two films – Kill Buljo, a Norwegian Kill Bill -parody, and – of course – Dead Snow. So, no offense to anybody, but as for now, this point goes over to Mr Tarantino.

CAST

Another quite unfair fight – on the other side, we have a no-name never-heard cast from Norway, speaking Norwegian, and on the other side, an all-star cast featuring Brad Pitt, Maggie Cheung, Samuel L. Jackson, Til Schweiger and Mike Myers, to mention few… Having said this, I think the Norwegians do a great, great job in the film, so no complaints there…

THE FILM

As said, it’s quite hard to compare two films by their qualities as complete films, because the other isn’t out yet. But, let’s just say that in Tarantino’s film we have a bunch of Jews killing Nazis in French, and the other is ABOUT NAZI ZOMBIES KILLING TEENS IN THE FJORDS! The competition is over, this point goes over to Dead Snow. End of discussion.

THE CONCLUSION

This has been quite a bloody battle, but looking at the points given by the highly respected jury – that being me, and only me – it seems that DEAD SNOW sweeps the floor with Inglorious Basterds 5-4! But don’t take my word for it, see it yourself! Always, when in doubt, use Google to find the Real Answer.

Ready.. FIGHT!

- Timo