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This Friday the 26th sees the release of the new Kevin Smith film, Cop Out, and yet another in a never-ending stream of zombie flicks, The Crazies. This week we’ll be squaring the two off against each other, just based solely on the trailer, stills, cast, and every other detail we cared enough to dig up on the films.

COP OUT: Not only is the funniest thing about this film its former title (A Couple of Dicks), but if that’s not convincing enough:

Do you ever look back in moments of desperation on a piece of crap you wasted $10+ and two hours of your life you can’t get back on and think: ‘at least the trailer was good’? There’s a load of gems we’ve seen, so many that it’s impossible to choose the best one. Is it when Willis shouts  “That is what I’m talkin about!” while Warners slips him another $30 million paycheck? And that last clip with Sean William Scott in the back seat of the car had me wishing for another Pulp Fiction exploding head scene. As for Morgan, he’s unstoppable on 30 Rock but when given room to ad-lib here seems more panicked than anything else. But enough about Morgan. With Willis’ announcement of a Die Hard 5 to begin filming soon, and recently getting the Die Hard 1-3 box set, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at Bruce Willis’ head. Inevitably, I’ve begun to wonder what it would look like if the head were just to be floating in the air. Which gets me sort of sentimental, which makes me think we’re overdue for an evolutionary chart of some sort:

That last one is the latest, and perhaps where things went awry. Or could it have been earlier…

The hopeful: At least it isn’t rated PG-13, like other Bruce Willis films. No, we still can’t forgive a PG-13 Die Hard 4.

The doubtful: Everything else.

There’s The Crazies, another zombie film about a small hick town rightly infected by some bad Kool-Aid which has gotten into their water supply.

The hopeful: See above.

The doubtful: George Romero seeing much royalty money even though he made the original back in ’73.

It looks like The Crazies is the winner this time around. Less witty repartee =  more zombies = higher body count. There’s a couple of cute girls, too, so then there’s always the potential for gratuitous sex scenes. And a lot of stuff getting blowed up real good. And that pitchfork scene at the end, which actually seemed pretty intense. Currently director Breck Eisner is set to direct the remake of David Cronenberg’s The Brood, and horror aficionados will have his head on a stake if he screws it up. Based on this trailer though, he seems like a good candidate.

Words by Jeff Nau