Zombie and the Ghost Train

Introduction

The title invokes images of a bizarre horror film, but this is just about as far from a horror film as you can get without watching a Disney cartoon! Zombie and the Ghost Train (Zombie ja Kummitusjuna) is a rather depressing black comedy by Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki about Antti Autiomaa (Silu Seppälä), also known as Zombie, who drinks and plays bass.

After deserting from the army, he is caught by the authorities in Istanbul and sent back, where he gets out of National Service by putting turpentine in the officers' soup, so he is discharged on mental health grounds, for the good of himself and the army.

His friend Harri (Matti Pellonpää) hires him as a roadie for his band Harry and the Mulefukkers, for whom Zombie seems destined to play bass, but his self-destructive lifestyle continually holds him back.

Video

A very nice picture, showing the Finnish winter wasteland and low-light interiors equally well. All the costumes are perfect, especially Seppälä's trousers, which emphasise his implausibly thin legs.

Audio

A clear Dolby Digital Stereo soundtrack, which is well subtitled in English and the Scandinavian languages.

Extra Features

Theatrical Trailers
About Zombie And The Ghost Train Interview - a very interesting and revealing chat with Mika Kaurismäki.
Biography - an 8-page manually navigated overview of Mika Kaurismäki's life and career.

Conclusion

If I didn't know this was by Mika Kaurismäki, I would have assumed, because of the bleak settings and quirky, dark humour, that it was his brother Aki who made Zombie and The Ghost Train.

Silu Seppälä, in the title role, looks positively ghoulish, almost a cross between Tim Burton and Robert Smith, giving a suitably naturalistic performance as an alcoholic, based on a friend of his.

The Kaurismäki brothers seem to revel in finding black humour in the most depressing of circumstances, even if it is a man tripping whilst trying to retrieve the kettle's whistle and then falling, putting his head through the window and straddling the hot kettle. In itself, this is a fairly depressing premise, that of a man with self-destructive behaviour, drinking himself to death, but with the realistic acting and quirky humour, I really enjoyed this. If you like films by either Kaurismäki brother, so will you.