They're Coming To Get You, Barbara!

Year: 1968

Director: George A. Romero

Cast: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

For some strange unfathomable reason, my horror professor has taken to screening films that are tentpoles of the horror genre, so I'd feel absolutely blasphemous just sticking them into a Splatter University series of mini-reviews. Fortunately for you, this means you get my valued opinion on a variety of the most important horror movies of all time in full review format!

I have admitted before that I am less fond of George Romero's output than most, but it's impossible to deny that the world as we know it could not exist without Night of the Living Dead. It's hard to imagine a society that doesn't live under the constant threat of undead revenants what with the massive popularity of The Walking Dead and the rise of what I like to call "zombie chic."

But before 1968, the zombie as we know it was nothing more than a collection of electrical charges in the imagination banks of Romero's delicious delicious brain. The word "zombie" had been slung around for some time, but always in reference to the undead voodoo slaves of the tropical islands. Which were exactly as boring as they sounded, as evidenced by Val Lewton's dire I Walked With a Zombie.

The entire concept of the flesh-eating, disease-spreading, undead-shuffling zombies was introduced in a fairly innocuous low budget B-movie monster flick that nobody really expected to succeed. But the film captivated audiences with its unprecedented gore, unique reimagining of a classic (and pretty dull, even for the time) movie monster, and unrelenting pace. The film opens with a girl (Barbara, played by Judith O'Dea) being chased through a cemetery by a bizarre old man and doesn't quit until the credits roll.

Pictured: Barbara

Now, the pace has slowed down somewhat in the wake of Dawn of the Dead, The Evil Dead, and the 907 million zombie flicks that have come and gone in the succeeding years, but at the time, man. At the time.

Unfortunately for NotLD, this is 2013 and we do have access to at least 12 better movies about zombies just on the first page of Netflix. But it's important to remember this film's contributions to the genre (ie. the entire fact that it exists at all) and it's still a fairly solid movie on it's own.

Filmed in black and white to keep the chocolate syrup gore as realistic as possible (and because it's cheaper - it's not all artistry up in here), Night of the Living Dead is a clever monster movie that twists the tropes of the genre in order to provide keen social commentary. 

No, not the racism thing. That's bunk and everybody needs to get over themselves. The protagonist is black because he was a good actor and happened to be black, there's no huge statement about race relations. What there is is a flawed hero, a villain who kind of has a point, and a crafty heroine who completely falls to pieces within about 3.5 seconds.

TBH Barbara is the worst. Screw trope reversal.

Night of the Living Dead takes place in a small Pennsylvania farm town. When Barbara and her brother Johnny (an uncredited Russell Streiner) are visiting their father's grave, they are attacked by an ugly old man in a cemetery. The man takes Johnny down and runs after Barbara (Yes. Runs. These original zombies aren't quite the cliché that developed over the years. They also notably use tools to smash out car lights and to break down a door), who ends up pulling the emergency brake on their stalled car, rolling down the hill, and taking refuge in a remote farmhouse along the side of the road.

That's about it for Barbara. Apparently having worn herself out from her adventure, she proceeds into a state of vapid catatonia that lasts for the rest of the film. Some praise Barbara for accurately reflecting the realities of post traumatic shock, but who wants that in their zombie movie? Having the main female protagonist lay there muttering for 80 minutes isn't exactly my idea of a party. Bring on the chainsaws!

Barbara mopes around like Lana Del Rey until Ben (Duane Jones) comes barging in, taking refuge after being chased by a horde of those "ghouls." Against the background of Barb's pathetic whimpers, Ben gets proactive and barricades the doors and windows, right before smashing the skull of a zombie that Barbara failed to notice had gotten inside. I'm sorry, but when sobbing into a chair is higher up on your To Do list than keeping an eye out for lethal monsters, I have no sympathy for you.

Barbara's the worst.

Luckily, it turns out that there's more people in the house, who had been hiding in the basement this whole time. There's Harry (Karl Hardman), a rude middle-aged man, and his wife Helen (Marilyn Eastman), who's pretty and kind and why are they married again? They're holed up in there with their daughter Karen (Kyra Schon), who was bitten by one of those... things and is languishing on a makeshift bed. Remember, this was before this sort of thing had any meaning in the genre. It would soon gain it.

Accompanying them is a young All-American couple, Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley) whose presence more than anything cements in the tropes of the B-monster genre even further.

Or boarded them in. That works too.

The whole thing is marred by jumpy editing that took a while to figure out was actually done on purpose. At first it seemed like a fluke, but it solidified as time goes on, so I can say with some authority that the unsettling effect it has is absolutely intentional. Go filmmakers!

So back to the trope reversal thing. First of all, making the characters all equally flawed was evidence of George Romero sharpening his teeth on standard character archetypes, allowing him to explore for the first time that favorite platitude of his: "people are the real monsters." And by putting his film into the basic framework of a movie audiences expected to see, he put them in exactly the right mindset to be utterly shocked and terrified by the unprecedented amount of gore he put onscreen.

Again, the Chocolate Syrup Massacre can't compare to the movie (or even TV) gore of today, but in 1968 this was quite literally breathtaking.

And occasionally heartbreaking.

Although his keen eye for satire and commentary wouldn't be developed fully until Dawn of the Dead in 1978, this movie planted the seeds for everything the sequel does right. Although in a different way than most people would have it.

I won't give away the ending here, but I've stated before that many people see this whole film as a treatise on the way society treated black people in the 60's. This is absolute garbage and anybody who has seen the entire film knows it. What people don't notice is the satirical eye aims itself toward redneck culture (the enthusiastic bloodlust of the farm natives) and a TV-run society (characters decide to abandon their refuge because "the TV said it was the right thing to do.").

There may also be some symbolism in the idea of the two groups splitting up between the upper and lower floors but I don't think it's fair to read that far into a movie that includes a voluptuous naked lady zombie just cuz.

Not pictured. Sorry.

Night of the Living Dead was a stroke of low budget brilliance, but much like any Adam Sandler film, it simply doesn't manage to be as entertaining when viewed in 2013. That doesn't mean that it was never a pinnacle of the genre and a great film, but the relatively slow pacing, the less than outrageous gore effects, and the unbelievably irritating heroine mean it's not a movie I'd jump to recommend to a beginner zombie fan.

So shuffle along, sweet chariot, there's so much greatness down the road.

TL;DR: Night of the Living Dead is certainly a well-made and sharply satirical film, but ended up buried under the weight of the genre it single-handedly created.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1378

Undead Again

On that fateful day in May 2012, Cassidy and I sat down to watch this Spanish movie called [REC]. We were both profoundly affected by the experience and that summer we pretty much exclusively watched zombie films, trying to sate our desires for more bloody mayhem.

We tore through Land of the Dead, Zombie Diaries, [REC] 2 and countless others, both good (Dead Snow) and bad (Zombie Diaries 2: World of the Dead). Despite our voracious appetites, we barely skimmed the surface of the fertile fields of zombie cinema and when second semester ended, we set out to plow through even more.

Summer of the Living Dead: 2013

Dawn of the Dead

Year: 1978
Director: George A. Romero
Cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: X

A group of zombie outbreak survivors holes up in a Pennsylvania Mall.

We waited a long time for this one, having unsuccessfully tried to watch it in late August and again in October. So naturally we opted to open our summer with Dawn of the Dead - only the most critically acclaimed zombie film of all time, at the top of every list and carrying a solid 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. We excitedly popped in the DVD and found it... underwhelming.

Now, I can definitely see why this movie made a splash in the 70's. Tom Savini's gore effects (which later landed him on a little slasher film called Friday the 13th) are decades ahead of their time and the score by Dario Argento's frequent collaborators, the band Goblin, is delightfully weird and off-putting (I thought it worked, but Cassidy found it hilarious).

The satire of American consumerism provides a level of depth uncommon to most undead pictures (and let's face it, the lauded anti-racist undertones of Night of the Living Dead are mostly accidental). It is a good, well-made film in terms of the art of cinema but it features a slate of thoroughly unlikable characters (especially its pregnant heroine) and does not do quite enough to earn its punishing run time. These factors don't totally diminish the film's historical power, but in today's world where we have access to hundreds of other movies like this one, I'd much rather shoot for a film that's less well-made but more fun.

Rating: 7/10


Re-Animator

Year: 1985

Director: Stuart Gordon

Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

An ambitious medical student creates a serum that can bring the dead back to life.

About as related to H.P. Lovecraft as a McDonald's hamburger, Re-Animator is nevertheless a loose adaptation of his short story "Herbert West - Reanimator." It is a barrel of campy fun that critics have somehow mistaken for a good movie. Holding a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, this makes Re-Animator rated higher than Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, and The Texas Chain Saw Masssacre. There is no world that exists in any of our manifold alternate universes in which this is true.

Re-Animator is a bad movie. But it is so gleefully, irrepressibly bad that it's a blast to watch. Barbara Crampton (who's featured in my go-to movie of the summer, You're Next) gives a hilariously uneven performance in a hilariously uneven sweater opposite Bruce Abbott's "only hot in the 80's" heartthrob performance and Jeffrey Combs's hammy mad scientist deadpan.

Featuring my first experience with a post-coital Spring-Loaded Cat scare, a German physician named Hans Gruber (3 years before Die Hard, so let's not call it a rip-off), a secretly pretty great severed head performing cunninglingus, a man being strangled with a large intestine, and a doctor's office full of battered silver trophies, I have no doubt why this film became a cult classic.

Top it off with music cues that rip pages directly from Psycho's songbook and an evil doctor that looks exactly like John Kerry whose "acting voice" is so affected that he sounds like Siri, and you've got an A+ B movie on your hands. Gory, silly, and effortlessly cheesy, this is one to treasure.

Champion Dialogue: "He's got a secret folder filled with napkins and hair!"

Rating: 8/10

Diary of the Dead

Year: 2007

Director: George A. Romero

Cast: Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn Roberts

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Film students capture an account of the zombie apocalypse on tape.

Ah, Diary of the Dead, the much maligned black sheep of Romero's Living Dead franchise. Being found footage, it didn't find a lot of friends in the horror community at large. However, it is frequently ignored that in the beginning, Diary solves a lot of problems of the shopworn found footage genre. It is made very clear that the footage is edited (by one of the characters, at that) and that she added in some music at crucial moments.

This is not cheating.

Many films like The Last Exorcism, The Zombie Diaries, and portions of the V/H/S anthologies have used multiple camera angles and background score without ever once addressing that the very presence of such things flies directly in the face of the nature of the genre. Romero took that flaw and made it a strength - at least in the relative authenticity of the film itself. Unfortunately this also creates a lot of problems that certainly would not and could not be present otherwise.

The editing is episodic, and after each episode we get a bit of pointless narration to accompany some pointless recapping of previous footage. This sucks, except for in the final moments of the film. If I wanted to listen to a deadpan film student pontificate about what makes us human ("It's us against them... Except... They are us), I'd have taken that summer course.

Also, being film students, most of the characters are supremely unlikable to the point where I actively wished for their throats to be chomped out by hordes of the undead. The main character, Deb (Morgan) has such an acidic personality that she treats even her boyfriend, whom she at least nominally loves like a piece of gum on the bottom of her shoe.

People wander off into the woods, open the doors to strange men, and generally behave like lobotomized toddlers, and I swear if the movie were only this, it would be a dreary mess.

But when it's good, it's good, babydoll.

To start, there's some fabulous gore here including a zombie child stuck to a wall with an arrow, a horde of zombie shot through a hole in another zombie's head, a man stabbing himself in the head with a scythe to get to a zombie who's biting his neck, and a zombie head dissolving in hydrochloric acid.

Huzzah! All we need is the red red krovvy and Romero delivers.

The very best parts of Diary of the Dead are often the weirdest, but that's probably because it is so divorced from any other zombie film or even any of the director's previous work. 

Here's my two absolute favorite parts of the film:

1) When a dude in a mummy costume is driven crazy alone in a house full of zombies. It is unexpectedly sweet and truly hilarious, like Stu Macher's scene at the end of the first Scream.

2) A deaf Amish guy (I know, right) throws a stick of dynamite at a horde of zombies (I know, right?) and then... this.

Precious.

And the obligatory social satire - this time of the tendency of our generation to mindlessly record events and post them online without considering their real impact - is solid. Honestly, I found this to be one of Romero's most well-developed satires thematically. Unlike some of his other movies, where it comes in fits and starts, it actually feels like a deeply considered thought process.

Champion Dialogue: "He's a state trooper."

"How do you know?"

"His hat is a stupid looking hat."

Rating: 8/10

Now, because Cassidy and I got distracted by unimportant things like work and major life events like Prom Night, we actually didn't get around to as much zombie mayhem as we were hoping. My final review is going to be of a classic, one that we watched ages ago but that I recently revisited with my friend Henri.

Dead Snow (Død Snø)

Year: 2009

Director: Tommy Wirkola

Cast: Vegar Hoel, Charlotte Frogner, Jeppe Beck Laursen

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A group of young med students decides to spend their break at a secluded cabin in the mountains, but unfortunately a clan of Nazi zombies has the same idea.

Norway, man. Those American-fed lunatics are at it again with a gory romp through the alpine heights, think Cold Prey but instead of the mountain man it's an army of undead Nazis. Due to Norway's seemingly intense fascination with slasher films, we get a fairly straightforward Meet the Meat section when we're introduced to our characters.

The characters are virtually indistinguishable, but as far as I can figure, there's Martin (Hoel), a med student who's scared of blood and thinks smothering his girlfriend with a pillow makes for a fun Saturday night; Hanna (Frogner), his dread-sporting girlfriend; Erlend (Laursen), a movie buff; Chris (Jenny Skavlan), Hanna's cousin who apparently thinks it's appropriate to bang dudes while they're sitting in an outhouse; Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen), the horniest man in Norway; Liv (Evy Kasseth Røsten), who is blonde and nothing else; Vegard (Lasse Valdal), the only reasonably attractive member of the group; and his girlfriend Sara (Ane Dahl Torp), who has the brilliant idea of skiing to the cabin alone. Needless to say, she doesn't make it.

The first act good-naturedly stabs at some meta humor with Erlend pointing out what a common trope a group of teens going to a cabin in the woods is. Unfortunately, the ensuing conversation about movies with that plot prove how very few there actually are. This is only a minor nitpick, but April Fool's Day? That's in a mansion on an island. Friday the 13th? A campground. Maybe their translations are off.

Anyway, it turns out when World War II ended, a squadron of Nazi officers was driven out of a nearby town, left to freeze to death in this very mountain range. And who should come a-knockin' but Colonel Herzog himself, looking for his long lost Nazi gold?

What the film might lack in technical prowess (the lighting is a little flat, some equipment can be spotted along the edge of a couple frames, and those zombies have some awfully healthy pink skin if you peek between the folds of their jackets), it more than makes up for in pure ambition as the second half picks up and transforms the peaceful cabin into a whirling dervish of bloody hilarity.

Heads are pulled in two, a man is separated from his limbs like a starfish, and Vegard hangs off a cliff, using a zombie's intestines as a rope. It's gross, it's fun, and it's a thrill ride that doesn't let up, all accompanied by typically bizarre Norwegian death metal.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1863

Comic Relief

Year: 1982

Director: George A. Romero

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: R

A five part horror anthology series based on the old EC comics like Tales From the Crypt directed by George Romero, written by Stephen King, and made up by Tom Savini, Creepshow is a classic horror fan's wet dream.

EC horror comics used to be all the rage in the 1950s, but declined in popularity due to a moral panic (gee, where have I head that one before?). Naturally, fans were outraged and Creepshow is at heart an enormous middle finger to the people who hoped those tales would never see the light of day again. These five stories and their overarching connecting story are all original stories (well, two of them were adapted from previously published shorts by Stephen King), but not a one of them would be out of place in the popular issues of yore.

Even more direct of a callback than the stories is the format itself. The editing, acting, framing, color design, opening titles, and even the poster are all deliberate homages to that lost style of storytelling. Think what Scott Pilgrim vs. the World did for classic video games, but twenty years earlier.

But let's let this clever, campy, and imaginative film speak for itself as we dive on into the individual stories.

"Prologue/Epilogue"

Cast: Joe Hill, Tom Atkins, Tom Savini

In this brief setup story, Billy, a young boy (Hill, Stephen King's son), is harangued by his father (Atkins) for reading filth like those daggum horror comics. He tosses his son's beloved entertainment in the trash, but a nighttime visit from The Creep allows Billy (and us) to revisit his favorite stories, and when his mail order voodoo doll comes in the mail, he puts it to good use.

As if the entire nature of the film wasn't enough, this segment fully drives in the "screw you, comics-haters" vibe.

"Father's Day"

Cast: Carrie Nye, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Harris

A fairly straightforward piece, this segment details the story of a murdered man returning from the grave on the anniversary of his death to wreak havoc on a party thrown in his honor by his killer and the family members that benefitted from his will. This sequence is the most similar to the slasher craze that had begun but two years before.

"Father's Day" features some of the loopiest comic strip sequences, especially during the flashback to the father's murder in which a car zooms in and out of two panels and images slash across the screen diagonally while framed by vibrant colors. In addition, the night is lit by a sheer blue glow that is reminiscent of the overwhelmingly technicolor masterpiece Suspiria.

The zombie makeup is pretty cheesy, as should be expected of a movie from this time period, but Savini is not one to mess around and details like the gooey tendrils holding the monster's skeletal jaws together are masterful.

"The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"

Cast: Stephen King, Bingo O'Malley

Verrill (King), a young hermit who presumably lives in the Deep South, discovers a meteor that has crashed into his back field and accidentally cracks it open, getting himself covered in a milky secretion. When he imagines the possible outcomes of his discovery, his wacky fantasy life is reminiscent of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 

Unfortunately, the goo appears to have the adverse effect of turning him into a living plant and he is driven to madness by his transformation and the reappearance of his late father. King proves himself to be a strangely reliable actor, hamming it up in a role that reminds one of Jim Carrey in his prime.

Not to be outdone, this segment is also awash in bright technicolor light, this time green to represent, you know, the plants.

"Something to Tide You Over"

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, Gaylen Ross

Whereas "Father's Day" was more of a slasher riff and "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" had a determinedly sci-fi bent, "Something To Tide You Over" definitely feels more like a precursor to psycho trap movies like Cube, Nine Dead, or the Saw franchise.

This segment is easily the most star-studded with Nielsen (Airplane!, Prom Night, The Naked Gun) playing a madman torturing his cheating wife (Gaylen Ross, who appeared four years earlier in Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead) and her young lover, played by Ted Danson (Cheers, Bored to Death) by burying them up to their necks in the sand and letting the tide wash in.

Naturally, the story doesn't end there as things take a turn for the supernatural, mostly lit in a vivid shade of aquamarine.

"The Crate"

Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Hal Holbrook, Fritz Weaver

A janitor discovers an old crate sealed with chains tucked beneath an old staircase at the university. Its label would imply that it's over 170 years old and may contain artifacts from the Arctic Expedition. When he and a stuffy old professor open it and release the beast inside, his friend Henry (Holbrook) catches wind and must decided whether to detain the beast or utilize its frenzy to get rid of his overbearing wife (Barbeau).

This segment with it's "monster from the arctic" theme would seem to be an homage to John Carpenter's The Thing, released earlier that same year. This idea is cemented in by the crate's label - "via Julia Carpenter" - and the presence of Adrienne Barbeau who had previously worked with the director on 1980's The Fog, 1981's Escape From New York, even appearing The Thing itself in a small cameo.

This segment is the most thematically resonant, with the monster representing Henry's internal desires and rage, augmented by the garish red light that accompanies his dark fantasies and the monster's evil doings.

Tom Savini gets his best work in this segment with a fabulous clawing of a young student's face.

"They're Creeping Up on You!"

Cast: E. G Marshall, David Early

Wow, they really saved all their F-bombs for this one. E. G. Marshall (12 Angry Men) plays a callous businessman whose latest buyout led a rival to suicide. Not at all haunted by this, he is rather more worried about the vermin problem in his pristine penthouse apartment.

Cockroaches appears in larger and larger numbers as he does all he can to squash and spray in between shouting matches with his super. After a citywide blackout, the bugs swarm and overwhelm him in what is, at least to me, the most truly terrifying moment in the film.

Absolutely skin crawling.

Some of Creepshow's segments are more complex than others, but they all maintain the relative simplicity common to comics narratives as they parade a variety of horrors, blaring colors, and talented actors eating it up in supremely over the top campy roles.

Creepshow is horror distilled, perfectly capturing the essence of the childlike wonder of experiencing those EC spooky stories for the first time. The true definition of a cult classic, it's just a whole lot of fun, and the people working on this project were the best and brightest the genre had to offer at the time.

Segment Ranking:

#5 "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill"

#4 "Father's Day"

#3 "They're Creeping Up on You!"

#2 "Something to Tide You Over"

#1 "The Crate"

TL;DR: Creepshow is a living comic book and a rowdy and campy horror classic.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1236