The Many Faces of George Romero's Zombies

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VAULTCAST! Conversations in the Dark: Pax Romano

He's one of horror's most political and outspoken filmmakers. Over the past 45 years, George Romero has given us a body of work unlike anyone else in the genre. Along the way, he's become a Hollywood outsider, doing things his way--or at least trying his best to.

To discuss Romero and his work, I brought on a blogger whom I've admired for some time now, the masked and mysterious Pax Romano of Billy Loves Stu. A fellow Romero fan and zombie lover, Pax was a whole lot of fun to have on Conversations along with me and my very own zombie companion, Captain Cruella. We get into everything from the Living Dead flicks to Martin, Creepshow and all points in between (not to mention a brief but entertaining non sequitur into the world of horror porn parodies...)

So listen in on the embedded player below, or proceed to the Vaultcast page and download for listening at your leisure!


Blog: http://billylovesstue.blogspot.com

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The Many Faces of Tom Savini

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TRAILER TRASH: George Romero Edition!

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Think You Have Every Dawn & Day DVD? Think Again!

Romero fans know there have been approximately 7,836 different video versions of the classic living dead trilogy films available over the years, including various directors' cuts, special edition releases and what have you. Most recently of all were the Blu-ray releases of both Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, which contained certain extras and other assorted goodies not seen before on any previous release. Pretty awesome, but of no use to troglodytes like myself who have yet to jump on board the fancy-pants Blu-ray express, choosing to stick with that quaint little relic known as the digital video disc.

Well, that's all changed now, thanks to UK video distributor Arrow Films. See, Arrow is the official UK distributor of a whole bunch of American genre titles, including, you guessed it, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. And on Monday, August 30, Arrow Films will be re-releasing both films on DVD, except this time adding on a host of special features previously included only on the Blu-ray releases. Yes, this is a UK distributor, meaning that both releases will be in PAL format, but most U.S. DVD players these days are all-region, and will support PAL. Just be sure before you buy these--don't come crying to me if they won't play, ya whiny Americans.

These are two of my favorite horror films of all time, and I approve of any excuse to check them out one more time. For more info on the Dawn and Day releases, as well as more very cool titles, check out the official Arrow Films website, as well as Arrow's official forum site, Cult Laboratories.

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VAULTCAST: Conversations in the Dark... w/Chuck Conry

Survival of the Dead is a film which has polarized the horror masses. I've already stated how much I enjoyed it, and one of the folks who called me out on that from the word go was someone who didn't particularly enjoy George Romero's newest zombie opus, Mr. Chuck Conry of Zombies DON'T Run. What to do? Why, invite him on the Vaultcast to discuss the film, of course!

So listen in on the North-meets-South debate as Chuck and myself talk about Survival, and the Romero oeuvre in general. As usual, you can check it out in the embedded player, take a listen at the actual Vaultcast page, or download the sucker right here...

Conversations in the Dark: Chuck Conry

The Vaultcast!

Zombies DON'T Run: http://www.zombiesdontrun.net
Twitter: http://twitter.com/chuckconry

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Survival of the Dead: Romero's Best Zombie Film in Three Decades

I find myself at odds with much of the critical community at the moment, and I'm certainly part of a distinct minority amongst horror fans. Because I happen to have enjoyed George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead. Very much. So much so, in fact, that I've come to the conclusion that it's his finest zombie effort since the original Dawn of the Dead.

This is the first time since Romero's original "trilogy" that he's been basically unencumbered by studio involvement and allowed to do things the closest to the way he used to do them. No Universal, no Weinsteins. And it shows. This is a much purer vision, a richly textured film with well-drawn characters, that works on you in a subtle, thoughtful way that few horror flicks do these days--and that Romero's pictures were once known for doing.

If I am to put my cards on the table, I should probably inform you that I liked Land of the Dead, and Diary of the Dead even more. I'm also aware that I'm in the minority on this, as well. But I can't help but think of how Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead were all fairly maligned in their own day to some extent, and wonder if we're not seeing the same phenomenon in recent years with his last three installments.

For the first time since Dawn of the Dead, we have some very likable, charismatic characters. Who also happen to be interesting and engaging, and like the great Romero characters of days gone by, complicated. The actors playing them are quite possibly the most talented I've ever seen in any Romero dead movies, discounting Land of the Dead, which was the only one featuring marquee "Hollywood" players. This is the only Romero zombie film featuring a cast or relative unknowns that I feel boasts a level of acting worthy of any mainstream studio production.

Romero is not known as an actor's director, and as a result, many of his films do suffer from subpar acting which we often forgive as merely B-movie kitschiness. But in Survival of the Dead, there's nothing to forgive. Picking up his role from Diary of the Dead, Alan Van Sprang is quite strong in the lead role. Canadian thespian Kenneth Welsh steals the picture as the inscrutable yet charming Patrick O'Flynn, one of the truly classic Romero characters. Richard Fitzpatrick is effective as a heavy that is suitably hateable without being two-dimensional. In fact, he ultimately might have been in the right all along (spoiler to come later). Perhaps the only thing that's never explained is what all these Irish guys are doing living on an island off the coast of Delaware...

To be clear, yes I am saying this is a better film than Day of the Dead. Much better structured (and I know the notorious budget pitfalls of Day have something to do with this), far better acted (with the exception of Howard Sherman as Bub), and with real, believable characters speaking real, believable dialogue. Also, I was never a fan of the more monstrous zombie makeup of Day. Believe it or not, I prefer my zombies looking more human, as this better drives home the point: These things are not monsters--they are merely dead human beings. The makeup in Survival, from Greg Nicotero and his excellent crew, is some of the very best of the entire series--subtle, restrained and most importantly, human.

That said, this brings me to what was one of the major problems I did have with the film, a problem that has been discussed ad nauseum. CGI blood and CGI effect shots in general are the bane of the horror movie genre, and it's sad to see even George Romero succumbing to their siren-like allure. Particularly, there is a head-shot in the opening of the film, and a gag later on involving a fire extinguisher, which are so poorly executed as to take you out of the film. Given the legendary work Nicotero has done on this series, and even more so Tom Savini before him, it's kind of a shame to see mid-level video game quality computer effects substituting where practical stuff would have been so much better. Nevertheless, the CGI is kept to a relative minimum, and there is actually a fine level of Romero-worthy gore peppered throughout.

Romero lovers like myself will find a few clever tips of the hat to Night, Dawn and Day, which was very nice to see. It was also very clever to tangentially connect the film to the events of Diary in a way which was very unexpected (the military gang chronicled here are the same bunch who hijacked the kids' vehicle in the last movie.)

I do need to talk about the ending, which was also a bit problematic for me. However, I know how up-in-arms you internet types get about your spoilers, so I'm going to go the old-school Ain't It Cool News route and cloak the next three paragraphs in "inviso-text". Highlight it if you choose to read...

For one thing, the climax of the film just felt a little off-kilter, as if it had been sort of thrown together. But then again, quite honestly, so did the endings of Dawn and Day. But more than that, I had a problem from a plot point-of-view with what happens with the zombies on the island. Our antagonist, Seamus Muldoon, has been refusing to put down the undead, instead hoping to teach them to eat animal flesh instead of human. The problem is that in the end, he seems to have succeeded.

As a Romero "purist" (whatever that means), it bothered me to have zombies being conditioned so quickly--after all, this is merely a week or two into the epidemic, I'm assuming. It messes with the accepted canon a bit, as we originally did not see zombies beginning to "learn" until many months after the outbreak began. By the end of this movie, we have a bunch of zombies chowing down on a horse in an admittedly brutal scene that I nevertheless found slightly silly, maybe because I've been conditioned to the Romero "rules" all these years, one of which states that zombies have no interest in animals. Nevertheless, the man made the rules, he can break them, right? Anyway, it's no more silly than the entire concept of dead people returning to life as cannibals, after all...

Another issue with the ending, from a logic standpoint, was the way in which Crocket and his team simply leave Plum Island. After all, they've just pretty much nullified the island's zombie problem, and taken out the bad guy. It seems like it would be the perfect place to hunker down during a zombie apocalypse, yet they leave. Oh, well.

Although it may lose a step or two at the end, as other Romero zombie movies do, Survival of the Dead is nevertheless a very effective and enjoyable horror movie. Romero does it a bit differently here, choosing to explore general social/cultural issues regarding human nature itself, rather than the more specifically political/topical commentary of some previous installments. I found this worked very well, as the politicized approach was getting a bit stale to me.

Uncle George came back strong with this one, and I found myself very pleasantly surprised. The result of diminished expectations? I suppose it's possible in part; after all, many people were talking about this flick like it was a completely abominable waste of time, and I was simply baffled trying to reconcile those opinions with the movie that was unfolding in front of me. This is an intelligent horror film which manages to provoke thought without being pretentious. This is the film that, more than Land or Diary, demonstrates what made me fall in love with Romero's earlier films in the first place.

So I'll stick to my decidedly minority opinion. Survival of the Dead will be a movie I cherish and re-watch along with my beloved original trilogy. It's a breath of fresh air from one of horror's true masters, amidst a sea of mediocre remakes, brain-dead teenybopper flicks and sadistic nihilism that represents much of the genre today.

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Dissecting the New Green Band Trailer for Romero's Survival of the Dead

By Paige MacGregor

Ever wonder what happened after the events of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007)? Chances are you didn’t, but on the off-chance that you did, you’re in luck, because the master of zombie horror is releasing a follow-up to Diary of the Dead, aptly titled Survival of the Dead. The final green band trailer for Survival of the Dead was released by Magnet this week, and we have the only “in-depth” analysis of the trailer that you’ll find on the interwebs.



As you can see from the trailer, Survival of the Dead features a number of zombie movie stereotypes and clichés, including small groups of seemingly overconfident military personnel (first seen at the 0:12 mark), the zombie that comes back to life from under a sheet on the examining table (around the 0:21 mark), individuals attempting to “cure” zombies because they cannot bear to part with undead loved ones (1:07), heavily armed backwoods civilians (first seen at 0:34 and again throughout the trailer), the quintessential man crying as he shoots a gun (1:36), and, of course, the zombie hand poking through a doorway as the door is forced shut (somewhere between the 1:38 and 1:41 mark).

What Survival of the Dead appears to have that other zombie films haven’t featured (to my knowledge, at least) includes a zombie riding horseback (at the 1:31 mark), a “safe” island haven inhabited by feuding families (discussed at 0:48), some pretty serious Apple product placement (also at 0:48), and a zombie with an axe (0:38), among other things. The story is intriguing and the more I watch the trailer the more interested I am in seeing the film—maybe even enough to see it in theaters when it’s released the end of next month (May 28th).

The green band trailer for Survival of the Dead hints at the gore and mayhem that Romero fans have come to expect, but what intrigues me most about this film isn’t necessarily the violence or blood. Instead, it is the storyline—a rather unusual draw for a genre that has little variation (outside of films that take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the zombie genre, like Zombie Strippers). Obviously, the film revolves around a group of military personnel who find out about an island—Plum Island, to be exact—off the coast of Delaware that residents claim to be safe from the zombie hoards. Without any other options, our group of protagonists heads for Plum Island, only to find themselves in the middle of a seemingly endless feud between two families over the fate of the island and its inhabitants.

Whether Romero intended to parallel the ongoing religious feud in Ireland by plopping two heavily accented families—the O’Flynns and the Muldoons—on a small island and having them square off against one another is a mystery, but the parallel can be drawn just from the green band trailer. In my opinion, it will be interesting to see such a blood feud play out when zombies are thrown into the mix—I would imagine that the military outsiders would be floored, to say the least, by the emphasis placed on maintaining separation between the O’Flynn and Muldoon camps even in the face of the living dead.

Although it won’t be released in theaters until May 28, Survival of the Dead will be available on VOD, Xbox Live, Playstation and Amazon this Friday (April 30th). For more information on Survival of the Dead, head over to the film’s official website where you can also see the bloody red band trailer.

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Retro Review: Day of the Dead (1985)

In honor of the birthday of the zombie maestro himself, George Romero, this week's Retro Review focuses on the original Day of the Dead--the most troubled and somewhat unfairly maligned of the director's classic Living Dead trilogy.

Day of the Dead was a movie that really tanked when it first came out, even getting beaten out critically and financially by Dan O'Bannon's zombie spoof The Return of the Living Dead (and rightfully so, since it is a superior movie). Yet there was a lot of reconsidering that went on in later years, and I think later generations of horror fans were in part responsible for the film's reputation being raised.

I enjoy it very much, and always have. I don't consider it to be the horror gem that Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are, but I always found it to be a very strong, disturbing and intelligent horror flick nonetheless. I think a big part of why later fans embraced it, however, is the fact that it has the most vivid, realistic and plentiful gore of any of Romero's films. And while I don't think this should be the end-all and be-all of a horror movie, it should be noted that Tom Savini probably did the best work of his career for this one.

Romero movies have never been acclaimed for their dramatic performances, and Day of the Dead is probably the nadir of that trend. Lori Cardille, Joe Pilato and the rest of the gang stand around screaming obscenities at each other is almost akin to bad drama class exercises. But let's face it--we forgive Romero that. OK, the guy may not be the best dramatic director, or maybe he never had the clout to draw the finest actors. No matter. The film has much more to recommend it.

For one thing, there is the one truly remarkable performance of the picture--the finest in any Romero picture, if you ask me. I'm talking, of course, about Bub. Howard Sherman crafts the single most memorable zombie of all time, and one of the most striking movie monsters ever put to the screen with his powerful, nuanced work in the role of the first zombie who becomes sentient. Every scene he's in is magic, particularly his interactions with Dr. Logan in the lab. Combine that with the single greatest individual makeup Savini ever created, and you have a character worth cherishing.

Pilato, though hammy as all hell, also does a very good job of getting us to hate his guts. And its those same guts which get graphically torn from his body in the film's climactic orgy of cannibalistic violence. Back in those days, Romero was able to totally circumvent the ratings board, and boy does it ever pay off here. As much as I do enjoy his latter-day zombie flicks, I do miss the outrageous eviscerations, I will admit.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with not playing ball is that funding is also hard to come by. For that reason, Romero infamously had to scale back on the ambitious vision he had for Day of the Dead, and the finished product is highly truncated from what the original script called for. It's a claustrophic little flick, that actually has more in common in that regard with Night than it does with its more recent predecessor Dawn. And in this way, it works. Romero manages to deftly spin his tale of the final breakdown of humanity in this little bunker. It really feels like the final progression in the downfall of the human race that has been going on up to this point (although the much later Land of the Dead would somewhat negate that).

Some find Romero's social statements to be pretentious or tired, but I say you have to put it in perspective. Yes, it may be a bit tired for Romero to still be hitting same notes some 25 years later, but his messages were bold and much-needed when he first made them in the late '60s to mid '80s. In an era when filmmakers' handcuffs were finally removed completely, he was among the first to use the horror genre to make real statements about our own world and society--something the science fiction genre had been doing for decades.

And with Day of the Dead, he really drives the hopelessness home. This is a far more depressing film than the sometimes tongue-in-cheek Dawn of the Dead. There is very little, if any, black humor here. Humanity has royally screwed itself, and Romero seems to be mourning the end of the race (a far cry from his more cynical opinion of 20 years later, when he seems to make the case that the zombies deserve the Earth more than we do).

In short, I'm glad that Day of the Dead has been reappraised since 1985, but I do think this has caused it to swing a bit too far in the other direction. No matter what the gorehounds say, I will never consider it Romero's best zombie film. It is, however, a damn good zombie movie that should be viewed by anyone who wants to see a passionate, intelligent horror director do his thing. And Bub, the modern-day Frankenstein Monster, will always have a special place in my heart.

Happy Birthday, George!

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VAULTCAST: Conversations in the Dark... w/Katiebabs

Welcome to another episode of the Vaultcast, currently among the top 10 horror podcasts featured on PodOmatic.com! Tonight I bring you a special Zombie Edition of Conversations in the Dark, in which I'm joined by preeminent book blogger Katiebabs of Babbling About Books...and More. Listen in as we take a break from the zombie apocalypse to discuss all thing ghoulish. From the infamous slow vs. fast dilemma, to our real-life zombie nightmares, to the cutting edge of zombie fiction, we chat it up as the hordes of the undead fight to get inside...

Check it out in the player below, or on the Vaultcast page, or download the podcast directly right here.

Conversations in the Dark: Katiebabs

The Vaultcast!

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21st Century Terrors, Part 1: 2000

Welcome to The Vault of Horror's year-by-year breakdown of the decade that was--a look back at horror in the aughts, if you will.

The first decade of the new century is basically over, and so it's time to assess what that ten-year stretch meant for the genre we adore. Time to begin at the beginning, the year that brought us into a new millennium, the year that had so many idiots thinking the world was going to end (until they bumped that back another 12 years). We start with the year 2000.

Interestingly, a study of 2000 in horror reveals that much of the horror drought of the 1990s, as well as other trends of that decade, were still continuing. It is not a particularly impressive year for horror, certainly not for those fans who are spoiled by everything that's been out there for the past few years.

In addition to the relative dearth of quality horror films that some would call a residual effect of the preceding decade, we also find that some of the franchises that defined the 1990s were still gasping their last. For example, Scream had its final sequel to date, Scream 3, which miraculously featured Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette all somehow surviving again. There would also be the second Urban Legends film (Final Cut), as well as the disastrous Blair Witch sequel, Book of Shadows, which effectively buried the legacy of what may have been the 1990s most important horror flick.

And yet a brand new horror franchise would be kicked off right here at the start of the decade. One which still continues today, and may be second only to Saw as the decade's most popular. Final Destination hinges on a rather simple premise: A group of characters cheat death thanks to a premonition glimpsed by one of them. And one by one, death comes calling for them all in gruesome ways. While no classic by any stretch of the imagination, it's guilty pleasure viewing at its finest, and hasn't seem to have lost any steam, as the fourth film in the series opened at number one at the box office just last month.

Classic monsters from horror's past proved that they could still survive even the change of a century--despite the fact that for the most part, we may have wished they hadn't. Of course, I'm thinking mainly here about the forgettable Dracula 2000, whose only merit was seeing Star Trek: Voyager's Seven of Nine fall victim to a vampire; as well as the banal Kevin Bacon clunker Hollow Man, yet another riff on the old Invisible Man concept.

Yet the classic horror theme struck paydirt at last with Shadow of the Vampire, a witty and clever film all about the 1922 making of F.W. Murnau's German masterpiece, Nosferatu. The film posits the question: What if Max Schreck really were a vampire? Willem Dafoe's performance in the role earned him an Oscar nomination, and John Malkovich is suitably masterful as Murnau.

Although it may have been a somewhat weak year, 2000 gave us a handful of unforgettable gems in addition to Shadow of the Vampire. For instance, the character of Patrick Bateman became a titanic figure on the horror landscape thanks to the instant cult classic that was Mary Harron's adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis' sinister indictment of yuppy culture, American Psycho.

Quite possibly the finest horror film of the year, American Psycho proved that the novel, once thought unfilmable thanks to its heinous imagery, could actually be transferred to the screen without losing its power. And along the way, former child star Christian Bale became legitimately established as an actor to contend with, playing the lead role with inspired lunacy.

We also got Robert Zemeckis' only straight-up horror film to date, the underrated ghost flick What Lies Beneath--starring Michelle Pfeifer and Harrison Ford in a rare turn as the heavy. And the Canadians gave us Ginger Snaps, the ingeniously fresh take on the werewolf mythos that approaches the material from a post-modern, feminist point of view, tieing lycanthrope in with puberty.

And finally, 2000 was the year that George Romero attempted to break back on to the horror scene with Bruiser, one of the most unfortunate misfires of recent years. The horror/thriller failed to connect with audiences, and Romero would have to wait a few more years before his old undead pals would return him once again to the spotlight.

Although a somewhat inauspicious start to the decade, 2000 would give us a few glimmers of the good stuff that was to come. The genre was shaking off the doldrums of the 1990s, and it wouldn't be long before things would be getting much, much better.

Also from 2000:

• Pitch Black
• The Cell
• The Gift
• Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV
• Ju-on 2
• The Little Vampire

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