CNN.com - Zombie movie filming at Chernobyl - Aug 10, 2004

Some places are gated communities but don't need to be. Then there are the places that aren't gated, but should be. Exhibit A: Chernobyl, soon to be the set for "Return of the Living Dead IV--Necropolis." Let's take a vote on whether "Necropolis" is a good or bad name for a gated community.





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.
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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.
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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.

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Yes, I'll just be there are lots of abandoned towns and villages around Chernobyl. What, I wonder, is the going rate for acting in a movie being filmed at the location of a major nuclear accident? How desperate for work can you get?