ARMY OF THE DEAD THE MAKING OF THE FILM
Alpha Bite City
RELEASED OUT NOW! 192 pages | Hardback
Author Peter Aperlo Publisher Titan Books
This coffee table-friendly glimpse behind the scenes on Zack Snyder’s Las Vegas-based zombie flick is a game of two halves.
For the opening 99 pages, it’s something of a slog. Interviews with actors where they explain their characters are all well and good before you’ve seen a film, but feel redundant afterwards, and the first half is crammed with them.
At page 100 it finally starts to get interesting, as the book explores the zombies, before moving on to detail particular sequences and sets. There’s some glorious concept art here, especially when it comes to “Alpha zombie” leader Zeus, his Queen and his undead horse.
There’s also a smattering of interesting insights. For example: translucent shrimp were one reference for the Alphas’ look; very early on they toyed with making the Queen a real life celebrity who might be performing in Vegas; the piles of desiccated zombies were made by spray-glueing nylon onto Halloween skeletons.
The book’s attractively laid out too, scattered with tattoo designs, zombified cast portraits, and colourised stills which lend it a pop art feel. Just don’t expect any talk of the “time loop” theories with which the internet is now a-buzz. The nearest we get to a plot revelation is a fleeting Snyder reference to Zeus being mutated by “an alien sickness”. Ian Berriman
The “high roller suite” scene was shot at New Jersey’s Atlantic Club, in a room Frank Sinatra used to entertain guests.