The Rolling Road Show Of The Living Dead 7/24-25/04
“They are us.”
Even though he didn’t invent the zombie movie (look back to White Zombie in 1932 for that…or, if you want to get technical, Bram Stoker’s greatest creation), George A. Romero will always be considered the father of the zombie. When people think of zombies, they think of Mr. Romero. Why is that? People have made lots of zombie movies even since his last one (Day Of The Dead in 1985). The zombie has been transformed since then. It’s not the same monster it was when he started making the movies back in 1968. Hell, even if he had never made another film after that year’s Night Of The Living Dead, he probably would have been remembered as the best zombie director ever.
But still, why is that? Is it because of the gore effects? Well, that might have something to do with it, but not everything. For every film he upped the ante on the violence and gore. Night seems pretty tame by today’s standards, but back in 1968 it was pretty frightening. Dawn is still a little cringe enducing, but a lot of it looks a little fake. Day is one of the goriest films ever made and still makes me a little squeamish. But people have made extremely gory films and have been forgotten with time. (Your normal, everyday person doesn’t know people like Lucio Fulci, whose Zombie is one of the best of the genre not directed by Romero.)
Is it the characters and dialogue? No, not really. Most of them are pretty forgettable. They are pretty much all played by non-actors who just kind of walk through the parts. They’re better than average for the genre, but still not all that great. And the dialogue isn’t necessarily much better. There are good, quotable lines (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”), but they aren’t really very good lines.
The reason that I think George has stayed so popular is because almost all of his films actually have some sort of theme and social commentary, which is something that you just don’t find in many zombie movie. Certainly films like The Evil Dead and Zombie don’t have much to say. They’re just a lot of fun to watch. (Well, ok, The Evil Dead is fun to watch. Zombie is almost disturbing to watch.)
Let’s start at the beginning of the evening that the Alamo Drafthouse was nice enough to provide us with.
THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)
Directed by: George A Romero
Written by: George A Romero/John A Russo
Mr. Romero did a Q&A before the films started and told us a little bit about this film. First off, he really didn’t think that he was making a lasting film. He and his friends just got together and made a movie. That’s all any of his movies have been, really. The only movie he’s ever made with any kind of studio backing was The Dark Half in 1993. It was an experience that he never wanted to have again. In 1968 they had no idea what they were doing. The reason there have been so many different versions of Night is their fault. It fell into the public domain for a long, long time and anyone could do anything with it that they wanted to.
How?! you scream. How could the first modern zombie movie fall into the hands of people like you and me to do as we would? Well, it turns out that, when it was called Night Of The Flesh Eaters, George and his producing/writing buddy, John Russo, put their little copyright bug on the title card at the beginning of the film. That’s supposed to go at the end saying that everything up to this point is copyrighted by the filmmakers. When the title was changed the title card came off and, unfortunately for George and John, so did the copyright.
Time went by and the two lost lots of money on the film. They did everything trying to get the rights back including authorizing a colorized version and doing a re-make in 1990. (Gore-effects master and Sex Machine Tom Savini directed that one. Not so good. They fucked up the ending.) Nothing worked, but they finally got the rights back just recently. (Cheer!)
But back to 1968. No one knew what to do with zombies. No one had made a serious zombie film probably since White Zombie. So George and his buddies decided that it was time for the dead to come back.
In order to do that and make the film serious and timely, they stuck a message into it. Racial tensions were high. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. It was time to make the zombies into political activists.
Barbara (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner, who co-wrote Return Of The Living Dead in 1985 and co-produced the remake of Night in 1990) are on their way to the cemetery to put some flowers on their father’s grave for their mother. Unfortunately for them, the cemetery is crawling with dead folks. Literally.
Barbara is attacked, Johnny rescues her and is most likely killed. Barbara runs to a nearby house and finds Ben (Duane Jones), a young black man who immediately takes over the situation. After they’ve boarded up the whole house (well, really Ben does all the work. Barbara is too distraught to do much), they discover more people in the basement. Why didn’t these folks run up to help Ben and Barb out? Because Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) didn’t want to take the chance of letting any ghouls (they’re never called zombies) into his safe zone. Even though he heard a woman screaming and a lot of hammering, he wouldn’t allow anyone else to come up to help.
While the zombies are the main enemy, Harry is the real asshole of the film. He is every older, white man in America who will not come to the aid of the younger generation. Even his wife, Helen (Marilyn Eastman who later married Karl), seems to be against him. He feels that the safest thing to do is hole everyone up in the basement. But there is no way out if the ghouls get in there. But the Coopers’ daughter, Karen (Kyra Schon, Karl’s daughter), was bitten and she can’t be moved. So they’ll stay down there. Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley who later married Russell) aren’t so sure. They’re a young couple who happened to find the Coopers on their way to safety.
That’s the plot. Kinda thin, but there’s a lot going on in the subtext. Ben is in control (a running theme in Romero’s films: the black man in control) and Harry is scared and cowardly as shit. But he thinks he’s in control.
The zombies look pretty good for a 1968 black and white film. The gore was shocking at the time, but is more tame than most tv shows these days. And, as cheap and unprofessional as the film was, it looks great! The black and white photography, probably shot because B&W was cheaper, is perfect. It’s grainy, documentary feel makes the film all the harder to watch.
If you have not seen this film, go out and rent it now. It’s one of the best horror films of all time and is, strangely, a great film besides that. Yeah, the acting is a little shaky as is the dialogue, but sometimes those things don’t matter too much. And the ending will stay with you for days. (And don’t forget, George LOVES to show kids eating dead bodies.)
Besides, where else will you hear a cop say, “Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”
By the way, be careful of which version of this you get. In 1998 Anchor Bay and John Russo released a re-cut version with 15 minutes cut out and 15 minutes of new footage added. Why? Who knows? George thought it was a pretty stupid idea, too. But luckily I hear that they have the original cut on that DVD, you just have to search for it.
Directed by: George A Romero
Written by: George A. Romero/Paul McCollough
The next film we watched was from the next decade of George’s career. It was only his third movie and it does show.
The Crazies is about a small town that accidentally gets doused with a dangerous bit of chemical warfare that our lovely government is thinking about inflicting on people from other countries. It either kills them after a short sickness or it drives them insane. The movie opens with two kids running around their house, finding their mother dead and their father setting the house on fire. Later, the little girl dies of her burns and the boy goes insane. That’s how dark this movie is.
Judy (Lane Carroll) is a nurse in this town. She’s called away to help with the kids from the first scene and her boyfriend, David (Will MacMillan) is called to the fire. Since she’s pregnant her boss sends her away from all of the military folks coming in telling them that the place is under quarantine. He gives her some of the anti-biotic that they’re giving to people and sends her to leave with David. This sends the two of them on a long chase sequence with David’s Vietnam buddy, Klank (Harold Wayne Jones) and a father-daughter team, Artie (Richard Liberty) and Kathy (Lynn Lowry) who may already be infected.
The military doesn’t even really seem to know what the hell is going on. Col. Pekham (Lloyd Hollar) is the man seemingly in charge (yes, he’s black), but he’s not getting the back up that he needs from his superiors. They send him a doctor who is on the Trixie team (that’s the code name for the chemical), but not the doctor’s tools. They only give him as much information as they think he needs to know. And all of the kids they are sending him are trigger happy, so lots and lots of civilians are dying just because they’re sick. Which, of course, brings more civilians to the war and lots of military kids are dying.
So, yes, the underlying theme of this movie is Vietnam and the protesters who died because of military screwups. (Kent State is even mentioned.) Klank is screwed up not just because of the chemical, but because of the war. He’s already a little high strung, but add to that chemical warfare and he’s uncontrollable.
As interesting as the movie is, it’s just not very good. The acting is pretty terrible by everyone and the dialogue is sometimes worse. There are moments where things happen, but you really don’t understand why. There aren’t really any characters that we can latch onto, although they try to make Judy and David the protagonists. But they’re a little annoying, really.
I almost got bored with all of the shooting. I understand, violence for no real reason and escalations of violence in order to bring peace. That’s the whole point of the movie. (That and the stupidity of the military: see Day Of The Dead) But it could have been done in a much more interesting way. Someone should re-make this one.
In fact, they almost did. 28 Days Later… owes a big debt to this film. And that’s a much better film, really.
Next decade.
Directed by: George A Romero
Written by: Stephen King
Based (in part) on stories by: Stephen King
I saw this movie for the first time when I was probably about 9 or 10. It scared the living bejesus out of me. Yeah, it’s more of a fun horror flick than the other two movies that nearly killed me (Poltergeist and The Exorcist), but for some reason this one really got me back then. I think it was the Cryptkeeper, er, the skeletal guy who ran the whole show.
This was Romero’s first collaboration with Stephen King (not counting a small role Steve had in the previous year’s Knightriders) and it is definitely their best finished product. (George also directed a pretty bad film of Steve’s The Dark Half and they were going to do The Stand together. Too bad that didn’t pan out.) It’s an anthology movie that revolves around a horror comic book (based on the old EC comic books from the 50s) that gets thrown away by a pissed off dad. (The kid, Billy, is played by Steve’s son, Joe. He’s about as good of an actor as his dad.) The comic book then comes to life as we watch the events unfold.
The first story, Father’s Day, is about a family with a dark past. Their aunt killed her father on the titular day when he was being a bastard asking for his Father’s Day cake. Every year she gets the whole family together to celebrate the day she was rescued from his tyranny. But the grave can’t stop him from getting revenge. Not even a young Ed Harris (who does some pretty heavy disco dancing!) is safe from his bloody trail.
Next up is The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill. King himself stars as a lonely farm boy who sees lots of money in his future when a strange meteor lands in his back yard. What he fails to notice in that future is a different kind of green.
Something To Tide You Over is a creepy little tale about a man (Leslie Nielson) who gets revenge on his wife and her lover (Ted Danson before he was poster-worthy). But sometimes people just don’t stay dead.
The Crate starts off with Hal Holbrook and his wife, Billie (scream queen Adrienne Barbeau) at a party. Billie is a horrible woman who can’t keep her mouth shut. Hal’s colleagues know it, but he’s too meek to do anything about it. Until one of his professor friends calls him in to look in the crate. “Just tell it to call you Billie!”
The final segment, They’re Creeping Up On You, stars EG Marshall as a germophobic business man. He never leaves his supposedly germ free home, but he still finds ways to ruin peoples’ lives. When a woman calls to tell him that he just caused her husband (one of his employees) to kill himself, he just laughs at her. But even if germs can’t get in, roaches can.
This is one of the few Romero movies to not have any kind of social commentary. It’s just a fun horror movie that is told in such a comic book-ish way that it’s hard to not fall for it. The shots are all set up like comic book frames and there is some pretty cool use of lighting. (Everytime someone dies the background dissolves and goes completely red, sometimes with some “fright lines” drawn in behind their heads.) It’s pretty much pure cheese, but it’s really fucking fun cheese. I’ve never seen the sequel, but I hear it’s not nearly as good. George said that he really wants to make a third one. Maybe he’ll direct it this time. His absence is probably why the second one was so unmemorable.
This movie was not part of the original lineup. Martin (1977) was supposed to be the third film, but the print that the Alamo got ahold of sucked. That’s too bad, because that’s Mr. Romero’s favorite film of his and I hear it’s probably his best. If it’s better than the Dead Trilogy then I HAVE to see it.
There’s even an interesting reason why we weren’t seeing Dawn Of The Dead. I heard some folks talking about the guy who now owns the rights to that film, the best of the Trilogy. He apparently had all of the other prints destroyed so that he has the only copy. His master is the one that they have to go back to in order to do new DVD transfers. (And those come out about once every six months. Damn them. Hopefully the new 4-disc set will the the end of that.) He’s an incredible prick about it, too. No one gets his master. That’s too bad. I would have loved to have seen that on the big screen.
Instead we saw:
Directed by: George A Romero
Written by: George A Romero
For almost 20 years, Day Of The Dead was the last we heard from the zombies of Romeroland. And, unfortunately, it’s always been considered the worst of the Trilogy.
And, well, it is, actually. But it’s not a bad movie by any means.
This time out he’s critiquing the military and their views on science. Their shoot first, think about it never attitude has worn on him for long enough and it was time for a zombie skewering.
Sarah (Lori Cardille) is the head of a scientific team trying to figure out why the zombies have taken over. Humans are in the minority now and maybe, if we can figure out what brings them back to life, we can kill them faster than we have been. Unfortunately she’s trapped in an underground base with a bunch of military dudes led by Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato–Tarantino fans, unite! He was Dean Martin at Jack Rabbit Slim’s.), who is the most tyrannical character in all of the Romero films I’ve ever seen. (Granted, that’s not many, but he’s pretty fuckin’ evil.) He even threatens to kill one of his own men if he doesn’t kill Sarah. Just because she won’t sit down.
One of her team, Dr. Logan, aka Frankenstein (Richard Liberty again), has possibly gone a little crazy. But don’t we all go a little crazy sometimes? He is trying to figure out a way to control the zombies. He has actually gotten one of them to do what he wants and not be a thankless killer. Bub (Sherman Howard) is the zombie with a heart of gold. Or, at least a heart of flesh. He’s the one zombie in the whole Trilogy that we actually feel sorry for and possibly the most human character in this film.
The other most human characters are John (Terry Alexander) and McDermott (Jarlath Conroy). They are the helicopter team who really have no love for either side, but they do their jobs in order to survive. John (again, the black man in charge) is the cool-headed Jamaican who has an answer for everything. He knows that Rhodes won’t kill him because he’s the only one who can fly the helicopter and get anyone out of this hellhole. McDermott isn’t quite so safe, but he’s John’s friend, so he has a little bit of cushion. They’re sympathetic and become the heroes of the film.
Other than that, though, there’s not a likable character in the whole movie. The humans are all self-serving, whiny bastards. Even Sarah is kind of a bitch with no sense of humor. She smiles once in the whole movie. She’s supposedly sleeping with one of the military guys, Miguel (Anthony Dileo, Jr.), but I don’t see any real affection for him.
And really that’s what kills this movie: there’s NO ONE to latch onto except for Bub. And he’s a freakin’ zombie!
Other than that the commentary is great and the action is better. The gore is some of the best and grossest I’ve seen in a long time. Probably the most over the top in any American film. Even if it’s the weakest of the Dead Trilogy, it’s still a pretty damn good flick. But make sure your stomach is strong.
And thus endeth our night with George Romero. He’s a really nice guy who happened to make some really kick ass flicks. I can’t wait to see Land Of The Dead, his fourth zombie movie. It’s supposed to be a post-9/11 type of paranoid movie about a group of people who use part of Pittsburgh that’s between two rivers as a strong hold against zombies, who symbolize terrorism. The people probably go insane.
And, just to make you happy, Tom Savini will be involved. But, alas, not as the special effects guy. He’s hopefully going to act in it. George hasn’t approached him yet, but he’s got a part for him and Tom does anything George says.
