Undead

I'm not entirely sure I understand the point of making cheap zombie movies, aside from the fact that there is probably a decent niche market of fans who like this kind of thing. Although evidently easy to parody, my only real exposure to the genre is via Simon Pegg's terrific spoof Shaun of the Dead and not a lot more. Frankly, the idea of watching people threatened very slowly by the undead doesn't appeal to me much, the same unnerving effect of being surrounded by zombies can be achieved by walking through St Helier late at night (a Channel Island joke there, at no added cost). Undead follows in the great tradition of Peter Jackson. No, it's not an epic zombie version of Lord of the Rings, but a zero budget antipodean effort following in the footsteps of his 'classic' Brain Dead.
This kind of production doesn't leave much room for a fine orchestral score, but Cliff Bradley doesn't do a bad job on his home computer synth setup and a handful of live musicians. While the opening March of the Undead isn't (unsurprisingly) a patch on its Elfman namesake, it is at least tuneful and suitably menacing, yet rather grandiose and infinitely preferable to the stream of worthless zombie scores pouring out of Hollywood. As the generous liner notes by directors Michael and Peter Spierig indicate, they were after a 50's B-movie quality to the music, so more James Bernard than Marco Beltrami. The score contains a handful of other modest themes, which Bradley thoughtfully lists in the liner notes so it's easy to pick them out. From the Jaws-esque Welcome to Berkeley (although pleasingly, the Tourists on the Menu portion - pardon the pun - and not the shark theme) to the bluesy melody for Marion and a more sombre melody for Rene.

It's gratifying to note that Bradley has taken so much care with the score and that it actually equates to something worth hearing. The action cues are deftly handled and don't simply rely on the rhythm section to keep them exciting. Bradley makes fine use of that old Goldsmith standby, the low end piano, which is a good move since synthetic pianos are pretty realistic and add convincing urgency. One very deft inclusion is a real choir, introduced in Ghostly Figures which adds a whole new dimension to the synthetic sound world. It's a shame space couldn't have been found for it to appear more than a handful of times. The choral addition is reminiscent of, but predates, Murray Gold's scores for the newly regenerated Dr Who in his encounters with the Daleks. The (hopefully intentionally) cheesy rock song performed by the cheekily named Buttkrak Little Green Men ends the album.

The score's biggest handicap is that the synth patches are a bit variable in quality and despite Bradley's sterling effort, the cheapness of the imitation instruments is occasionally, but genuinely disappointing. What is rather curious is that some sound extremely realistic - the overblown sounding brass chords are great (not something I imagined would be easily recreated on computer), but the synthetic horn is awful, while the string sound is variable. Every time you can almost convince yourself it's realistic, one of the less convincing patches intrudes and it once again sounds, to be blunt, cheap. Still, technical limitations aside, there is some genuine craft in Bradley's music and one could imagine that if performed by a real orchestra, it would happily stand alongside (and probably supersede) quite a few contemporary horror scores.