Dennis Hopper 1936-2010

He was one of the most revered actors of our times, known to moviegoers for his iconic turns in such films as Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, True Romance and Hoosiers. And yet horror fans can also take pride that this respected figure in Hollywood, one of the most "legit" performers of the past 40 years, was also a part of two of the most beloved horror franchises of the past 40 years: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and George Romero's Living Dead series. Last Saturday, Hopper passed away after a quiet eight-year battle with prostate cancer, just 12 days past his 74th birthday.

Hopper was a key part of a very crucial, transformative period in American film making. After a career as a child actor on the stage, he burst on the scene in the 1950s, part of the early wave of post-World War II method actors that washed over Hollywood. Still a teen, he found early success in westerns on TV and the big screen, and fell in with James Dean's circle, appearing with the legendary, ill-fated actor in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant.

But even early on, Hopper was what we might politely call "eccentric", making scenes on-set and quickly gaining a rep for being difficult, culminating in being banned from the MGM lot by the lord of all movie moguls, Louis B. Mayer, after a very heated argument over the young actor's desire to play Shakespearean roles. By the '60s, the young man who had once been one of the last of Hollywood's traditional contract players began taking chances with edgier, independent cinema.

This meant working with grindhouse icon Roger Corman, and it also meant dabbling in horror. In 1961, he made his horror debut with Night Tide, a quirky picture about a guy who falls in love with a girl who turns out to be a killer mermaid. He starred in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "He's Alive", about Nazis operating in the United States. Three years later, he appeared alongside genre faves John Saxon and Basil Rathbone in the AIP alien vampire flick Queen of Blood.

During the '60s, Hopper went from potential teenage matinee idol to part of a burgeoning counterculture movement within Hollywood, which culminated in 1969 with Easy Rider, the film he directed, which literally altered the American film landscape overnight. Hopper, no doubt bitter over previous treatment, was one of those who eagerly danced on the grave of "old Hollywood," once famously declaring at a dinner party to Gone with the Wind co-director George Cukor, "We are going to bury you!"

But although Hopper was undoubtedly part of the movement that transitioned cinema into the "modern era", his own personal demons--including substance addiction--prevented him from following through on his early promise as well as he and others would've liked. He reinvigorated his career to a degree by the end of the '70s with an unforgettable supporting part in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, but his star had unquestionably fallen.

It might not have been what he most wanted to be doing, but as he attempted to piece his career back together on the comeback trail, Hopper wasn't above returning to his genre roots. He most notably did so in 1986 for Tobe Hooper's long-awaited Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, in which he played police lieutenant Lefty Enright, uncle of the original film's Sally and Franklin, out for vengeance against Leatherface and the gang. Despite Hopper citing the film as the worst he was ever in, it is his best-remembered horror role, and directly preceded the film that put the exclamation point on the Hopper comeback, David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

Into the 1990s and beyond, Dennis Hopper continued taking on the occasional genre role--often to his detriment in films like Super Mario Bros. and the infamous Waterworld. He starred in the 1994 HBO film Witch Hunt, in which he played a private detective named H. Phillip Lovecraft (!) operating in an alternate-reality 1950s in which everyone practices magic. Eight years later, he appeared with Lance Henriksen in the poorly received, low-budget thriller Unspeakable.

But Hopper would turn a lot of heads with his final horror appearance, in George Romero's 2005 big-budget return to the zombie genre, Land of the Dead. Despite his paradoxical real-life Republican affiliations, Hopper gleefully parodied George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld with the villainous part of Kaufman, unscrupulous owner of Fiddler's Green, a tiny enclave of humanity amidst a world overrun by the dead. Also featuring Simon Baker and John Leguizamo, the film was Romero's first studio-backed zombie film--the first to feature marquee actors--and Hopper's name on the bill undoubtedly helped raise the project's profile.

Dennis Lee Hopper was a true original and a Hollywood trailblazer who wasn't afraid to take chances (sometimes by necessity) and shake up the status quo. Along the way, this brilliant actor and filmmaker left his indelible mark on the history of cinema, from his mainstream dramatic performances, to the genre appearances horror fans will particularly cherish in their hearts.

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21st Century Terrors, Part 6: 2005

The first decade of the new century was half over, and right in the heart of it, horror hounds were being treated to arguably the greatest bumper crop of gruesome greatness since the heyday of the 1980s. There can be no doubt about it--a golden age was upon us. It was the year we got a new subgenre with a naughty sounding name, Rob Zombie got serious, some English broads went down a well, and even good old Uncle George had to get into the act. This was 2005.

The previous year had given some indications of where we were headed. For example, viewers who went to the movies to see Saw were given just a taste of the sickness and depravity that would come to full bloom this year, when Eli Roth, late of the offbeat horror comedy Cabin Fever, would turn out a film that would divide fans, start a new movement, and definitely get everyone talking.

Hostel was a film that literally pushed the boundary of what fans would consider to be entertainment. Revolving around a series of torture-filled set pieces, it drew the nickname of "torture porn"--a name derived from accusations that it sought primarily to titillate through the depiction of gratuitous scenes of methodical violence. Some would find it distasteful; others believed it gave the genre a much-needed visceral shot in the arm.

Whatever the case, Hostel was a touchstone, the kind of movie that sets the tone for much of what came after it. And we're still feeling the aftereffects of it to this day, for better or worse.

As much as the movies of the '70s and '80s pushed the envelope for violence in film, and the '90s reigned things in a bit, by this point in the new decade, the pendulum had swung completely back the other way. Thanks to Hostel and others, we were now seeing films arguably more graphic than just about anything we had witnessed before. Another filmmaker at the forefront of this movement was Rob Zombie.

If his previous House of 1,000 Corpses had caught some flak for being campy and cheesy, Mr. Zombie remedied the situation with a much bleaker, more serious sequel in The Devil's Rejects. The Firefly family, with Sid Haig's Capt. Spaulding at the lead, was more iconic than ever, and horror fans by and large embraced this film with open arms.

Zombie's grindhouse aesthetic and appreciation for the grittiness of '70s horror brought to the genre what guys like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were doing with more mainstream cinema. As a result, The Devil's Rejects would become one of the most popular horror films of the decade with actual horror fans, as opposed to the mainstream audience that was eating up confections of a very different variety.

Those confections consisted of the near-endless stream of remakes Hollywood was (and is) churning out with breakneck speed. This might very well have been the year we all stood back for a second and said to ourselves, "Damn, there sure are a lot of remakes coming out!" We got House of Wax, in which Vincent Price was replaced with Paris Hilton; The Amityville Horror, which proved just as mediocre as its originator; The Fog, starring Superboy...

And in case you were looking more for sequels rather than remakes, we also got the disappointing The Ring Two, and the vastly more disappointing back-to-back direct-to-SyFy Channel atrocities, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis, and Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. The less said, the better. Peter Coyote, how could you? To think, I trusted you in E.T.

But sequels weren't by definition a bad thing, and in fact, 2005 gave us two very interesting ones in particular, which continued two venerable horror franchises. One of these was Dominion: Prequel to Exorcist, the original Paul Schrader version of the film that had been released the previous year as The Exorcist: The Beginning (directed by Renny Harlin). The result was flawed yet provocative, and definitely more daring than the previous studio-approved version.

The other long-awaited sequel was something that had previously seemed as if it would never happen: George Romero got back in the saddle and made another zombie movie, his first in 20 years. With the zombie movie craze raging for a few years, everyone was wondering if the man who invented the whole movement would ever get his chance to do what he does best once more. And thanks to Universal, he did.

Land of the Dead was the most mainstream of Romero's efforts, with actual marketable movie stars (namely john Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper and an almost-famous Simon Baker); it was also the first to be released with an MPAA rating, and the first to use CGI effects. It was definitely a new era, but fans were delirious with joy that their hero would finally be getting the opportunity to pick up where he left off with Day of the Dead in 1985.

In the end, there were folks who thought Uncle George lost his touch a bit, and that the years had put some ring rust on the old master. Just as the original Return of the Living Dead, a zombie comedy, had overshadowed Day of the Dead, many felt that Shaun of the Dead had overshadowed Land of the Dead and made it feel a bit obsolete.

Nevertheless, I think history will look kindly on Land of the Dead, just as it did on Day of the Dead eventually. It was a welcome return for one of horror's most beloved directors, exploring the territory he first pioneered. And in a project that had been high on everyone's ultimate fantasy lists for many years.

But if original concepts were still what you craved, then English director Neil Marshall, who had previously turned heads in 2oo2 with Dog Soldiers, really gave you something to write home about with the film that many consider to be the finest horror film of the contemporary era--including the amalgamation of horror bloggers who voted it the number-one horror movie of the past 20 years, right here in The Vault of Horror. I'm talking about The Descent.

Whether or not it's the very best is, of course, open to debate, but there can be no question that The Descent is one of the most highly regarded horror films of the past decade. Original, powerful, and downright terrifying, it is a 21st century horror film that will undoubtedly be added to the "canon" of classics moving forward into the future. Not to mention the fact that it's all-female cast of protagonists in and of itself makes the film highly intriguing, and one-of-a-kind.

There's a reason why horror fans have generally preferred the past decade to the one which came before it, and a glance through the body of material released in 2005 helps crystallize that perception. Thanks to the likes of Marshall, Zombie, Roth, Romero and many others, it was a banner year for the genre.

Also from 2005:

• An American Haunting
• Boogeyman
• Constantine
• Dark Water
• The Exorcism of Emily Rose
• Feast
• The Gravedancers
• Santa's Slay
• The Skeleton Key
• 2001 Maniacs
• White Noise

Part 1: 2000
Part 2: 2001
Part 3: 2002
Part 4: 2003
Part 5: 2004

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Top 20 Romero Zombie Moments

In honor of The Vault of Horror's 1st birthday today, I'm revisiting one of my old favorite stomping grounds--a series that's near and dear to my heart, and probably more responsible than anything else for my being the died-in-the-wool horror fan I am today: George Romero's "Living Dead" films.

So let's cut through all the preliminary b.s., shall we? Join in The Vault's anniversary celebration, sit back and enjoy as I present to you the most memorable moments of all the Living Dead movies.

20. The Doctor Is Out (of His Mind)

Day of the Dead

Sarah's visit to Dr. Logan's grisly lab is one of Day's most unsettling scenes. When one of the good doctor's zombie experiments breaks free of its bonds, she looks on in disgust as the poor devil literally spills his rotting guts all over the lab floor.

19. The Dead Pool

Diary of the Dead

The most maligned of Romero's series nevertheless produced the bizarre and unforgettable image of a horde of ghouls wandering around the bottom of an indoor swimming pool completely filled with water. Right after eating, you'd think they'd be worried about cramps...

18. Down Goes Cooper!

Night of the Living Dead

Perhaps no other character in the history of cinema deserved a few good fist-pounds to the cranium like that ultimate tool, Mr. Cooper. After the cowardly wretch weasels out of letting Ben back into the house, our protagonist lets him have it, causing chocolate syr--er, blood--to flow from his nose.

17. And So It Begins

Diary of the Dead

For decades, fans wondered about what the very start of the zombie uprising was like, and in this year's fifth installment, we finally got to see it. Even more gratifying was the fact that it was a local news crew that was among the first victims.

16. Hell on Earth, Meet Hell on Wheels

Land of the Dead

The awesome Dead Reckoning was the visual centerpiece of Land of the Dead (in fact, it was also the original title). And the first time it really unloads on an unsuspecting village of undead pedestrians is quite a sight to see. Hopefully, the zombie marching band survived. I love those guys.

15. Amish Ass-Kicker

Diary of the Dead

Who knew that Mennonites could be so bad-ass? And a hearing-impaired one, at that. Simply put, Samuel rules. Such a shame he got wasted so soon.

14. I Talked with a Zombie

Day of the Dead

Recalling the epiphanic apes of Kubrick's 2001, Bub's poignant phone call to his Aunt Alicia is the first (and only) time a Romero zombie ever speaks.

13. Insert Lame Head Pun Here

Dawn of the Dead

Prior to 1978, you just didn't see people's skulls exploding in movies. But thanks to Dawn of the Dead, George Romero, and that crazy SWAT guy with the shotgun, cinematic history was made. Orson Welles, eat your heart out.

12. Suffer the Little Children

Dawn of the Dead

Ah yes, the infamous zombie kid massacre. Ken

Foree was quite reluctant to shoot the scene in which he mows down the undead tykes at the gas station, and it's undeniably one of the series most gut-wrenching moments. Worst of all, they were Tom Savini's niece and nephew!

11. Here's Johnny!

Night of the Living Dead

Barbara spends the majority of NOTLD whining for her lost brother Johnny, and in the climactic scene, she finally gets her wish. Too bad he isn't quite the way she remembered him. He's coming to get you, Barbara!

10. Duck, You Bloodsucker!

Dawn of the Dead

For all of Savini's makeup mastery, you knew something was up when this zombie shows up in the helicopter scene with a suspiciously flat head. And sure enough, the former human being walks right into the rotor blades, doing Roger's work for him.

9. Ain't No River Wide Enough...

Land of the Dead

Proving he still had it in him, Romero managed to produce this truly iconic image--one of the series' most indelible--of the flesh-eater army crossing into Fiddler's Green. Obviously, Big Daddy and his gang had seen Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2.

8. Urban Decay

Day of the Dead

Sarah and her crew descend on a seemingly abandoned Florida town in search of possible survivors, only to rile up a veritable zombie Thanksgiving Day parade. Fortunately, they managed to lift out of there before they wound up playing the part of the turkeys.

7. Karen Kills Her Mommy

Night of the Living Dead

A nightmarish scene that works for so many reasons. The ominous lighting. The repulsively realistic sound editing. The nifty nod to Hitchcock's Psycho. One of the moments that literally helped usher in the modern age of horror.

6. Family Food

Dawn of the Dead

Savini's first volley of graphic gore. When audiences first watched Dawn of the Dead, and within the initial ten minutes witnessed a husband explicitly chowing down on his screaming wife, they knew this was not their father's horror movie.

5. First Floor: Ladies' Underwear, Glassware, Undead Cannibals...

Who among us didn't cringe in terror as poor, hapless Flyboy tried his best to scramble out of that elevator, only to have it fill up with J.C. Penney's-browsing zombies? Watching Steven turn to the blue side makes for a very tough scene to get through.

4. The Music of the Night

Night of the Living Dead

Many might disagree with my ranking this moment so high, but the shot in which Barbara ponders the music box has been cited by many--including Romero himself--as one of the best in the movie. Remembered by anyone who sees it, it represents a single oasis of calm in a world gone completely insane.

3. Cold-Blooded Killer

Day of the Dead

You can keep Darth Vader destroying the Emperor--my top jump-up-and-cheer moment is this one right here. Bub becomes the first zombie hero by taking up arms to put down his evil air-breathing oppressor Cap. Rhodes. Who's a pile of walking pus now??

2. Another One for the Fire

Night of the Living Dead

In the ultimate bummer ending, Ben survives a harrowing night battling zombies, only to wake up the next morning and take one in the head from the local good ol' boy militia. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

And speaking of getting out of bed... here's your number-one Romero Zombie Moment:

1. Roger Rising

Dawn of the Dead

Roger tries not to come back, but not hard enough--giving new meaning to the film's title. This simple, yet awe-inspiring bit of film-making produces the single defining moment and image in George Romero's landmark series.

And there you have it, Vault Dwellers. I hope you've enjoyed the list, just as I hope you've enjoyed the past year of The Vault of Horror. I plan for it to be the first of many.

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Don't Say the Zed-Word: 40 Years of the Modern Zombie Movie, Part 4

It's been pointed out by many, including George Romero himself, that the contemporary renaissance in zombie movies was brought about not by anyone in the film industry, but rather by the video game industry. By the mid 1990s, the genre was all but nonexistent among horror pictures. But then, in 1996, Shinji Mikami of the Japanese company Capcom designed a game (originally for the PlayStation console) called Resident Evil. The zombie was about to be awakened from its grave.

Taking its cue from classics such as Dawn of the Dead and Lucio Fulci's Zombie, Resident Evil was a game intended to frighten players, something that hadn't really been tried yet. Known as Biohazard in its native Japan, the game was a massive hit, familiarizing an entirely new generation with the basic archetypes of the modern zombie movie. It was followed by other games, including House of the Dead and Silent Hill.

The influence would first be felt in Asia itself. Zombie movies hit their stride there like never before, leading to films like Bio-Zombie (1998), Junk (1999), Versus (2000) and Stacy (2001). Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the phenomenon spread to the United States, the birthplace of the modern zombie.

By 2001, with the game series a resounding success, Capcom had authorized a movie adaptation. Originally, Romero himself was tapped to script the project, then famously fired after his screenplay was deemed too heavy on gore and lacking the game's non-zombie monsters. Clearly, the filmmakers were looking for a more sanitized, mainstream-friendly take, and that's exactly what they got with Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil (2002). Starring Milla Jovovich, the picture plays more like a video game than a movie, and contains little to endear it to hardcore zombie lovers.

But what the flick did accomplish was to further reestablish the zombie subgenre, and pave the way for a veritable explosion of followers. That same year, acclaimed British director Danny Boyle would give us 28 Days Later, taking the phenom begun by Resident Evil to the next level.

We can debate whether or not Boyle's film is a true zombie movie till the cows come home. But while the movie's disease-crazed killers may not literally be ghouls, 28 Days Later is constructed with so much of the modern zombie template in mind, that in the end this debate becomes a tired exercise in semantics. The fact is that 28 Days Later is a zombie movie at heart, and by becoming the most critically praised film of its kind, it kicked open the floodgates once and for all.

Instantly, zombie flicks were being greenlit left and right, to a degree not seen in 20 years. But while back then, zombie movies were confined to the cult periphery of the horror scene, overshadowed by slashers and Satanism movies, this time around, the zombie was firmly fixed in the public eye, at the forefront of the horror rebirth.

Naturally, as with any other movement, they weren't all classics. Some, like the Australian effort Undead (2003), were decidedly mediocre affairs, while others, like the infamous Uwe Boll's game adaptation House of the Dead (2003), were downright awful.

Almost as unexpectedly as the fact that the genre was revived by video games, would be the fact that the best movie to come out of the decade's revival would not be a straight-up horror movie, but rather a horror comedy. More specifically, one of the funniest and most memorable horror comedies ever made.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) was the brainchild of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who had already proven their comic sensibilities on the small screen in their native U.K. Self-proclaimed worshippers at the altar of Romero, Wright and Pegg brought a genuine love for the entire zombie ouvre, and it shows.

Shaun of the Dead is a loving tribute to the classic zombie flicks of a generation earlier, most notably of course, Dawn of the Dead. It works equally as both a horror film and a romantic comedy, making the tropes of zombie cinema instantly hip in a way that no earnestly serious zombie movie ever has. Directed by Wright and starring Pegg in the title role, it is that rare spoof that actually manages to outdo what it's spoofing.

With all this attention being lavished on the living dead, it made sense that sooner or later specific attention would begin to paid to the work of Romero, and to the man himself. First came news of a remake of the director's 1978 masterpiece Dawn of the Dead, an announcement met with considerable disapproval by died-in-the-wool horror fanatics.

But what the filmmakers were counting on were not that marginal demographic, but rather the general 18-34 year-old movie-going public at large. And miraculously, Zack Snyder's 2004 film proved to be one rare example of a situation in which the studio was wise not to heed the hardcore fan base. In spite of the low expectations and downright ill will of most Romero boosters, the new Dawn of the Dead proved to be a well-made, fresh and generally effective take on a genre classic.

While predictably lacking in the original's social commentary and filmed to conform to the standards of an R rating, Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is a very good horror film, and no level of admiration for the original can nullify that. Perhaps more importantly, the film's success would prove more of a boon for Romero himself than he first expected.

After years of aborted plans and false starts, the sudden marketability of zombie cinema finally helped George Romero to secure the backing he needed to film the fabled fourth installment in his living dead series. None other than legendary monster factory Universal stepped in and gave the director his largest budget to date for the production of Land of the Dead (2005).

Much slicker and more "Hollywood" than any of its predecessors, and featuring name actors such as John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper, Land of the Dead was a significant departure. For the first time, Romero was dealing with a major studio. Compromises were made, including the decision to reign in the gore and keep the film within "R" standards. The picture was not the box office success the studio had hoped for, and it divided the fan base. Some enjoyed it, others felt the director had lost his touch. Most agreed it was a notch below his earlier efforts.

Yet Romero's tale of evolving zombies and humanity's desperate attempts to survive within a dystopian stronghold has already benefited from reappraisal in the three years since its release. It was to be expected that such a film could never live up to the expectations placed upon it, and it's likely that in years to come, much like its predecessor Day of the Dead (1985), future fans will look more kindly upon it.

Ironically, the modern zombie subgenre had grown to be much bigger than the man who invented it. Although his earlier films had defined the subgenre, Land of the Dead proved to be just a part of it, and so it continued to march on. Danny Boyle gave us 28 Weeks Later (2007), a sequel which in some ways surpassed the excellent original. Another franchise, Return of the Living Dead, was resurrected, albeit with nearly unwatchable fourth and fifth installments so weak they were introduced as Sci-Fi Channel movies.

Certainly, there were signs that the movement was running out of steam. The public's hunger for such fare may have been becoming satiated--plus, there is admittedly only so much one can do with any movie formula before a total reinvention is required. The sense of repetition was inevitable.

For that reason, the most memorable zombie films of the past couple of years have been the ones that tried something new. The sharply satirical Canadian horror comedy Fido (2006) gives us an alternate 1950s in which the living dead are subjugated by the living in a "Leave it to Beaver" suburban nightmare. Romero's fifth zombie chapter Diary of the Dead (2007), although met with further mixed reviews and derided by even more fans than Land was, was a solid attempt by the director to inject new life into his creation by going back to the beginning of his zombie outbreak and telling the story via a first-person, documentary style perspective.

Many have pointed out that Romero was outdone in this department by the stunning Spanish film [Rec] (2007), perhaps the most downright terrifying motion picture to come out of the entire zombie renaissance. More than anything, the movie is proof that, in the right hands, the genre still has life in it.

In the year 2008, forty years after George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, the future still looks good for the modern zombie movie. Romero himself is in talks to continue the story he began in Diary of the Dead; Danny Boyle is returning to his own series for 28 Months Later; [Rec] is getting a sequel of its own; and the American remake of the original, entitled Quarantine, is set to hit theaters this fall. Perhaps most promising of all is the script adaptation of Max Brooks' excellent novel World War Z, the epic tale of a global zombie uprising that is currently in pre-production with Brad Pitt as producer and star.

Even if the explosion of zombie cinema falls off within the next few years--which seems likely--it will only serve to give it a much-needed rest. Think of it as a period of dormancy--one of several throughout the subgenre's four-decade history. The zombie isn't going anywhere. Thanks to the efforts of Romero and his multitude of disciples, it has grown to become one of the classic horror movie monsters, alongside vampires, werewolves, masked maniacs and the rest. Much like the zombies themselves, zombie movies move forward, unstoppable. You may get away from them for awhile, but they'll be back.

And eventually, they'll get you.

Part 1: They're Coming to Get You

Part 2: No More Room in Hell

Part 3: Kicking Ass for the Lord

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