After entering the abandoned farmhouse, Barbra discovers...
...a horribly mutilated dead body upstairs.
Ben later drags the body into a back bedroom. But who plays the corpse?
Answer: it's Kyra Schon, who's also Harry and Helen Cooper's ailing daughter, Karen.
Later, a female ghoul plucks an insect from a tree and eats it.
She's played by Marilyn Eastman, who is also...
...Karen's mother, Helen Cooper.
Those Coopers really get around, don't they?
Originally posted on 12/3/18
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Originally posted on 4/28/09
In case your TV has been living under a rock for the last couple of decades, there used to be this show on the Sci-Fi Channel called "Mystery Science Theater 3000", in which a human and two robots were forced to watch bad movies which they heckled mercilessly. It was a wonderful idea that generated many memorable episodes and lasted for eleven years, until it finally ran out of steam and got cancelled. Either that, or the show simply didn't get the appreciation it deserved from the Sci-Fi Channel, which is now known as "SyFy" because the people running it these days don't know their wormholes from their asteroids.
Anyway, when the show folded, Mike Nelson took the "making-fun-of-bad-movies" concept, shaved off all the sci-fi elements, characters, and the movies themselves, and started making downloadable "riffs" for people to play while watching their own DVDs. This has now evolved into Legend Films' new series of ten "RiffTrax" DVDs with which viewers may now watch the film with or without commentary by Nelson and former MST3K co-stars Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. I recently got to watch their take on George Romero's 1968 horror classic, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and found it to be alternately hilarious, mildly amusing, and boring--much like the original MST3K.
If you're a serious fan of the film, the DVD gives you a nice-looking copy to look at even when you aren't in a laughing mood. The thing about NOTLD is that, for me, it's still so engrossing that I get caught up watching it and the riffers start sounding like those drunk high school guys who won't shut up in a movie theater. The parts of the movie that are still powerful, of which there are many, don't take that well to riffing, and often the guys are clearly looking for something to make fun of when there isn't anything.
Originally posted on 7/25/12
With NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, George Romero created a zombie mythology that just won't die. Filmmakers are still adding their own chapters to the story and exploring various nooks and crannies of the scenario Romero set into motion over forty years ago. The characters and settings may change, the timeframe may be updated, and the zombies may move a little faster sometimes, but we know that it all stems from that one night when a guy named Johnny taunted his jittery little sister in a gloomy cemetery with the words, "They're coming to get you, Barbara..."
DEAD SEASON (2012) is director Adam Deyoe's contribution to this sub-genre, and, like many of the others before it, it assumes we know the drill and need little or no exposition to get the ball rolling. Thus, we join a former paramedic named Elvis (Scott Peat) already dodging "walkers" (the script, we learn from the commentary, was written before HBO's "The Walking Dead" popularized the term) in his search for food and shelter, and trying to hook up with a woman who calls herself Tweeter (Marissa Merrill) whom he's met over the airwaves.
After a wild and woolly escape from over a hundred extras in some pretty passable zombie makeup, Elvis and Tweeter sail to an island off the coast of Florida (actually Puerto Rico) that they think is "walker-free." It isn't. The living inhabitants are a paramilitary bunch led by hard-ass Kurt Conrad (James C. Burns) whose philosophy is that if they don't "strip themselves down to the wires" they aren't going to make it. This means being ruthless and totally unsentimental, and it also means that Elvis and Tweeter must make themselves useful to the group if they expect to eat or, in fact, live.
As in the better zombie movies, the constant menace of the living dead serves as a backdrop for intense interplay between the human characters, with Conrad's increasingly domineering behavior alarming the two reluctant newbies even as they try to fit in. Elvis' medical skills are put to good use, especially in the treatment of Conrad's listless daughter Rachel (Corsica Wilson), the last link to his more human side. Meanwhile, Tweeter joins the search and destroy team and gets to kill zombies which have overrun the island ever since a Dutch cruise ship sank nearby (which I thought was a pretty cool touch).
DEAD SEASON brings lots of good ideas to the table and keeps things interesting most of the time, making up for occasional lulls by offering some surprising and sometimes shocking twists along the way. While directing and editing aren't always slick, the low-budget film boasts several furious action sequences that are often grippingly suspenseful, in addition to some extremely dramatic exchanges such as the one in which Conrad springs his darkest and most dreadful secret on a stunned Elvis.
Performances by the leads are exceptionally good, with James C. Burns playing good-guy/bad-guy Conrad to a tee and making us sympathize with his intentions even when his methods seem repellent. Peat and Merrill are a great team as Elvis and Tweeter--even their brief lovemaking scene manages to convey a sense of erotic desperation rather than being merely obligatory.
The unglamorous yet tomboy-attractive Merrill in particular shines as a female character who can handle herself impressively in action situations without simply being the stereotypical "strong woman." Peat, on the other hand, is adept at letting his emotional side show through even when he's smashing zombie skulls with a sledge hammer.
The DVD from Image Entertainment is in 1.78:1 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. No subtitles, though closed-captioning is available. Extras include a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, outtakes, and a trailer. The cast and crew commentary track is fun while being casual almost to a fault--in fact, it sounds as though someone's absent-mindedly kicking the microphone during the whole thing.
As you might expect, the human characters' fragile veneer of civilization begins to fall apart at the seams during the final act as their compound is overrun by zombies and all hell breaks loose. Nods to Romero abound--some of the grisly gore setups are an obvious reprise of familiar horrors from DAWN OF THE DEAD--but the action-packed, richly character-driven DEAD SEASON stands on its own as a modest but worthwhile entry in the zombie mythos.
Originally posted on 6/14/10
Executive producer George Romero's 2010 remake of his 1973 classic THE CRAZIES is tinged with the usual political undertones that he's known for, but that stuff doesn't really mean all that much to me. (The government sometimes does secret bad things? Get outta here. DAWN OF THE DEAD is a wicked jab at consumerism? Jeepers.) What interests me is the fact that, in addition to being an effective horror movie with lots of cool makeup FX and gore, THE CRAZIES redux is also a cracking good action-suspense flick.
In an opening that's almost as picture-perfect as the first minutes of BLUE VELVET, we see the idyllic small town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa on the opening day of the high school baseball season. As young sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, HITMAN) and his lanky deputy Russell (Joe Anderson) enjoy the game, they notice something amiss--a rumpled, dazed-looking man with a shotgun has just wandered onto the field. It's an old acquaintance, Rory Hamill, but it seems he isn't himself today. And when he levels the shotgun at them, David has to put him down like a dog right there on the pitcher's mound.
Elsewhere in town, in a scene right out of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, David's wife Dr. Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell, PITCH BLACK, SILENT HILL) is examining a man whose worried wife claims he "isn't himself." Later that night he'll prove it by burning down their house with her and their son Nicholas in it. David and Russell investigate the growing epidemic of savage homicides and discover a crashed airplane in a lake that supplies the town's drinking water, surmising that its cargo must've contained some kind of mind-altering chemicals.
Originally posted on 9/15/10
As one of the shocked and terrified viewers who sat in the dark watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) during its first run, I found the concept of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: REANIMATED-- that is, the entire film reinterpreted piecemeal by a variety of graphic artists, along with the original soundtrack--to be irresistibly intriguing. My initial viewing of this disjointed and sometimes off-puttingly crude curio was, unfortunately, a disappointment.
However, once I realized that the film is intended as a sort of kinetic art gallery rather than a cohesive narrative, and that it's more of a fan-contributor project (by organizer-curator Mike Schneider) than the polished work of professional artists and animators, I was able to relax my expectations and begin to appreciate some of the various artistic renderings of all those familiar images. One thing's for sure, though--a scene-by-scene knowledge of the original film is necessary to make sense of this collaborative reimagining. Try to watch it first, and you'll probably have no idea what the hell's going on.
The term "reanimated" is a bit misleading, since much of the film consists of still images. Some resemble comic book panels, some hastily-drawn storyboards, and some merely sketches and scribbles. Occasionally you get some pretty nice work, much of which is done in the style of the old underground comics of the 60s and 70s or the earlier EC horror comics. There's a nice series of portraits of Barbra which are amateurish-looking but expressive, as she relates to Ben the story of what happened to her and Johnny in the cemetary. Her discovery of the music box brings another interesting series of images.
Animating the Reanimated Turns Up Dead
By Joe Bob Briggs
NEW YORK—Well, it sounded like a cute idea.
I heard that somebody put together an animated version of George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead.
This had to be an obsessed fan in Youngstown doing stop-motion in his attic, right?
Or maybe it was a low-level inker at Marvel who went home every night to her walk-up apartment in Queens and painstakingly drew digital versions of Barbara, Ben, Johnny, Harry Cooper and the rest of the cast, saving the zombies for last because they would be the most fun.
Maybe it was a “reimagining” of the story originally written by John Russo for Romero. Something like Tom Savini did with his 1990 remake—lovingly faithful to the characters, but with unique twists that catch us off guard.
Whatever it was, it had to be a passion project, right? Nobody puts that much time and effort into a homage unless they worship the film and worship Romero.
Wrong.
Backed by big-studio money, directed by an acclaimed animator who does million-dollar commercials, staffed with A-list voice talent including Katharine Isabelle of Ginger Snaps fame, with so many people working on it that the credits go on for seven minutes, Night of the Animated Dead has the soul of Saran Wrap on a three-day-old cookie. It’s basically a paint-by-numbers Xerox that added color to the identical shots in the original movie—including all kinds of massive blood spewing whenever a zombie gets wasted—but forgot to add color to the story itself.
Jason Axinn, the director, had a highly praised first feature called To Your Last Death two years ago at London’s Frightfest, but that film was noted more for its blood-soaked gore than its emotional impact. The same is true here. In Night of the Animated Dead, Romero’s characters become specimens instead of the flawed but sympathetic victims of the original. This is especially true in the case of the Harry Cooper character. Karl Hardman played it straight down the middle in 1968 so that you were able to see that his hard-headedness derived from his desire to protect his wife and daughter. As voiced by Josh Duhamel in the animated version, he’s just a selfish prick. (It’s not Duhamel’s fault. It’s drawn and written that way. Cooper’s face is feckless and sinister.) The Barbara character, too, becomes one-dimensional as she just babbles incoherently or stares straight ahead in a catatonic state, so you don’t get the Judith O’Dea tenderness. (Barbara is voiced by Katharine Isabelle, but again, it’s not her fault that the animation gives her nowhere to go.)
The reason for the lack of character depth seems to derive from the choice of animation style. The characters move in that herky-jerky mode characteristic of shorts normally seen at the Festival of East European Animation with titles like Reflection or Random Labyrinth or Hedgehog in Caligari’s Court. In other words, they don’t bother to sculpt the bodies so that we start to feel they are more than just symbols of people. We’ve already seen the real people in the real movie, so it seems like this would just be basic, but we have far too many moments of Ben being a cardboard bad-ass (voiced by Dule Hill), Harry being a cardboard coward, and Tom and Judy being a pair of cardboard lovebirds making bad decisions.
Far from being a fan-based love letter to the zombie classic, Night of the Animated Dead seems to be created by a bunch of suits in a conference room.
AND SEE JOE BOB IN PERSON AT THESE EVENTS!
* 10/9 How Rednecks Saved Hollywood, Columbus, OH. Tickets
* 10/22-10/24 Monster-Mania, Oaks, PA. Tickets
* 10/30 Scarefaire, Victorville, CA. Tickets
*11/13 How Rednecks Saved Hollywood, Atlanta, GA. Tickets
* 11/19-11/21 Preserve Halloween Festival, Irving, TX. Tickets
"TWO EVIL EYES"
George Romero and Dario Argento's classic tale of horror and suspense gets the royal restoration treatment courtesy of Blue Underground
Two Disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray Set Coming August 24th
"Absolutely not for the squeamish… Romero and Argento fans are not likely to be disappointed by these tales of the supernatural!” – Los Angeles Times
A Double Dose of Terror from the Directors of DAWN OF THE DEAD and SUSPIRIA
The Masters of Modern Horror -George Romero and Dario Argento - bring you an unprecedented pair of shockers inspired by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
In Romero's The Facts In The Case Of Mr. Valdemar, a conniving wife (Adrienne Barbeau of THE FOG) and her lover use a hypnotic trance to embezzle a fortune from her dying husband, only to receive some chilling surprises from beyond the grave.
Then in Argento's The Black Cat, a deranged crime scene photographer (Harvey Keitelof FROM DUSK TILL DAWN) is driven to brutal acts of madness and murder by his girlfriend's new pet. But will this cunning feline deliver a final sickening twist of its own?
Martin Balsam (PSYCHO), E.G. Marshall (CREEPSHOW), John Amos (THE BEASTMASTER) and Tom Atkins (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS) co-star in this wild horror hit that also features grisly makeup effects by Tom Savini (MANIAC). Blue Underground's acclaimed restoration of TWO EVIL EYES, scanned in 4K 16-bit from the original camera negative, is now presented with Dolby Vision HDR and a new Dolby Atmos audio mix, packed with hours of Extras!
NOTE: Publicity stills are NOT screenshots from the 4K master
Bonus Features:
Ultra HD Blu-ray (2160p) Widescreen 1.85:1 feature presentation and Bonus Extras Blu-ray
Audio: Dolby Atmos (English); 2.0 DTS-HD (English); 1.0 DTS-HD (French)
Subtitles: English SDH, Francais, Espanol
Audio Commentary with Troy Howarth, Author of 'Murder By Design: The Unsane Cinema of Dario Argento'
Theatrical Trailer
Poster & Still Gallery
Two Masters' Eyes - Interviews with Directors Dario Argento & George Romero, Special Make-Up Effects Supervisor Tom Savini, Executive Producer Claudio Argento, and Asia Argento
Savini's EFX - A Behind-the-Scenes look at the film's Special Make-Up Effects
At Home With Tom Savini - A personal tour of Tom Savini's home
Adrienne Barbeau on George Romero
Before I Wake - Interview with Star Ramy Zada
Behind The Wall - Interview with Star Madeleine Potter
One Maestro And Two Masters - Interview with Composer Pino Donaggio
Rewriting Poe - Interview with Co-Writer Franco Ferrini
The Cat Who Wouldn't Die - Interview with Assistant Director Luigi Cozzi
Two Evil Brothers - Interview with Special Make-Up Assistant Everett Burrell
Working With George - Interview with Costume Designer Barbara Anderson
WATCH THE TRAILER: