As promised, folks, today we’re tackling the predecessor to Daybreakers, Undead, from the Spherig Brothers, or the movie that actually made me nervous about watching Daybreakers in the first place.

In Undead, the first outing from the Spherigs, it’s a pretty normal day around the tiny Australian farming town of Berkeley.  Everyone’s going about their lives as best they know how, at least until a series of meteors appear in the daylight sky that converts the recently deceased populace into a horde of walking dead.  Thus, a handful of folks are left to try and survive.

Considering that the first decapitation of the film will come within the first nine minutes, and the first dismemberment within the first eight, it’s clear that the Spherig Brothers meant business.  It only gets weirder from there–trust me on that score.  If you’ve ever wondered what it might look like to see a man get cut in half by a Club (yeah, THE Club, the driving wheel lock thing) or wonder what the quad shotgun from the Phantasm series looks like in Australia (it only has THREE barrels there) then Undead is absolutely the movie for you.

Of course, it’s not all exploding heads and lollipops here, they’ve also got a story, which is a bit confused really, and many elements of same are woefully underexplained, at least as far as I could tell.  In fact, where most of the movie is a fairly standard if a little odd sort of zombie tale, the last fifteen, twenty minutes or so just goes completely off the rails into some kind of strange alien story.

But still, there’s no doubt that Undead is entertaining enough for what it is, and it made a very clear case for the Spherigs being able to do some big things with film.  Even if their stuff seems a little too influenced by early B-movies, it’ll still be pretty fun to watch.  And the twist ending is also plenty of fun.

The Screenhead Ten Scale appreciates fun, and thus hands over a seven out of ten for being a solid example of filmcraft, but not necessarily without some relatively minor flaws.