Return of the Living Dead 4 at Chernobyl

[Kirkendall]

I know some of you will get a kick out of this especially movie-buff Chris...

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Hollywood Reporter) - You might have thought that Chernobyl was off-limits, closed to the outside world behind a rigidly patrolled exclusion zone since reactor No. 4 went into catastrophic meltdown April 26, 1986, spewing radiation to the four winds.

Not a bit of it. The reactor's deadly core was buried in a concrete and steel sarcophagus, but the adjoining reactors carried on producing electricity until they were finally decommissioned a couple of years ago.

A rotating staff of some 6,000 specialists and technicians still work at Chernobyl's scientific center. Hundreds of journalists, diplomats and tourists have been here in the past six years since the place was opened up to paying visitors, once safe areas away from the isolated and still highly radioactive "hot" zones were identified.

Some 40 documentaries have been shot within the vast controlled zone that rings Chernobyl and the nearby town of Pripyat.

Now, for the first time, a Hollywood feature film -- the zombie movie "Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis" -- has gained access to the infamous site.

Ukrainian-born producer Anatoly Fradis is proud -- despite the obstacles and the cost. "Up to a couple of days before we began shooting, it was touch-and-go whether they would let us in, and I had to pay more than I had budgeted to secure the permission," Fradis says, standing inside Chernobyl's first checkpoint inside the zone.

He's anxious to get started on two days of shooting on-location with director Ellory Elkayem and special effects zombie expert John Vulich of Optic Nerve Studios.

For a zombie movie, there's an odd lack of gore-covered extras with vacant stares. A 1960s open-top, Russian-made Chaika limousine serves as a rock-steady rolling camera bed for 11 scheduled shots here.

Most of "Necropolis" -- the fourth in a five-part series shooting back-to-back -- is shooting at the Bucharest, Romania studios where "Cold Mountain" was made.

The zombie-free Chernobyl scenes are for the opening, in which a rogue ex-CIA agent is seen stealing the world's last five canisters of Trioxyn gas, the lifeblood of the living dead.

"Chernobyl is very spooky and serves our purpose -- we are shooting in all these abandoned towns and villages, with rusting equipment lying around everywhere," Fradis says.

The sense of a post-apocalyptic world dawns as we follow the Chaika around the Chernobyl district.

Grass and shrubs sprout from holes in the sides of crumbling cottages. A graveyard for helicopters, fire trucks and other equipment used in the cleanup operation in 1986 stretches beside a road. In Pripyat, the deserted town that once housed the reactor's work force and their families, children's toys still litter the rubbish-strewn kindergarten, and fading Soviet slogans adorn the sides of gaunt concrete apartment blocks.

It's an unsettling experience that should translate into a chilling opening sequence, perfect for a movie titled "Necropolis."

[kevnz]

Man I loved Night of the living dead....Return of the living dead got way dumb after part 2.....I love zombie movies....

[chrishcovga]

Ok , as a movie Buff, I'm not a Zombie guy... It's so been there and done that it isn't fun anymore. What is entertaining though is watching those really dumb " B " rated zombie movies from the late 70's and 80's with acting so terrible it couldn't be scripted.

example : " oh no - the zombies are coming , run a way , aah aah - priceless...lol

But for some really entertaing B rated movies , find stupid movies like

1. Night of the Hare - it's a movie based on the premise that rabbits become the size of Mac- trucks but can be killed with shot guns ... - small fake toy towns and the likes make this a good 90 minutes worth of chugging down orange soda, cheesy poofs and turkey samijes ( spelled correctly ) !

2. Night of the CRAB - it's a movie based on the premise that somehow a crab becomes the size of a house, but you only see his one big claw... -Time after time, you'll bust a gut laughing trying to figure out how this one claw from a crab the size of a house keeps sneeking up on people... - I mean, c'mon.. A crab the size of a House should at least make the hollywood cliche " twig -snap " sound...

* ON a sad note, a heartened prayer goes out to the 600 or more workers that were sent to pour that concrete over the reactor . Everyone that was sent there for the cleanup died from the radiation.