Creepshow 2

 Year of Release:  1987

Director:  Michael Gornick

Screenplay:  George A. Romero, based on stories by Stephen King

Starring:  Lois Chiles, George Kennedy, Dorothy Lamour, Tom Savini

Running Time:  92 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Young Billy (Domenick John) cannot wait to get his hands on the latest issue of his favourite comic book Creepshow.  The comic's mysterious host, The Creep (Savini, voiced by Joe Silver), introduces three stories:  The murderers of two beloved elderly people are pursued by a vengeful "cigar store Indian" statue; Four pot-smoking, partying teens swim out to a raft in the middle of a large lake for some fun but find themselves preyed upon by a carnivorous oil slick; A hit and run driver (Chiles) is pursued by the vengeful spirit of the hitchhiker she killed.

The original Creepshow (1982) was written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero.  Here Romero takes on scripting duties, with King providing the source material.  One of the stories, "The Raft", had previously been published, and can be found in King's 1985 Skeleton Crew collection, the other were original to the film.  As with the previous film this serves as a tribute to the EC horror comics of the 1950s such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror.  However this lacks the style of the first film.  The whole thing looks very low-budget and ropey, despite some good make up effects in the first segment.  The man-eating oil slick in the second segment basically looks like a plastic sheet with some gunk on top of it.  The best of the bunch is the third story, mainly thanks to a very strong performance from Lois Chiles.  The three tales are linked by an animated framing story, that really looks like a very cheap children's cartoon.  The film's director, Michael Gornick, worked as Director of Photography on the first film and gets some interesting visuals.  There are some problematic elements with it's depiction of native Americans.  In keeping with it's inspiration,  the film has a strongly old-fashioned morality, where if you don't follow the rules exactly very bad things will happen to you.  This is not as good as the original film, but it's brainless old-fashioned nonsense and is fun if your in the right mood for it.  Stephen King appears in a cameo as a truck driver.

The Creep (Tom Savini) makes a delivery in Creepshow 2

     

The Crazies

Year:  1973
Director:  George A. Romero
Screenplay:  George A. Romero, original script by Paul McCollough
Starring:  Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, Lloyd Hollar, Lynn Lowry, Richard Liberty
Running Time:  103 minutes
Genre:  Science fiction, horror

When a virus, created by the U. S. Military as a biological weapon, is accidentally released into the water supply of a small Pennsylvania town the residents begin to fall victim to a disease which creates a kind of homicidal mania in it's victims.  The Army quickly move in and violently impose martial law to contain the virus and prevent any adverse publicity.  As the military and civic authorities try and decide how to deal with the situation, and scientists frantically race to find a cure, a said group of survivors desperately try and escape from the virus, the infected, and the Army.

Director George A. Romero is probably best know for the groundbreaking horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968), and it's sequels, and while this is not part of the Living Dead series, it definitely shares the same DNA, and feels almost like a dry run for the more lavish Dawn of the Dead (1979).  The film is very ambitious, but obviously hampered by a low budget.  Technically it is very rough, with harsh colours, choppy editing and acting from a largely unknown cast that could be politely described as uneven.  However some of the action scenes are very well made, and at times this is a very exciting film.  It is also intensely bleak, and gritty, with some really shocking scenes, including a very disturbing sequence involving a sexual assault.  As was frequently the case with Romero, there is a strong subtext of social commentary, this is a product of the early 70s and the Vietnam War, and it has a very strong anti-military and anti-authoritarian message.  The Army, disturbingly faceless in the allover white bio-hazard suits and gas masks, casually gun down civilians in the streets, or burn them with flamethrowers and loot the bodies, and the efforts to find a cure, or even settle on a strategy are constantly hampered by bureaucratic incompetence, and the Government officials chomp down on sandwiches and take-out while they casually debate dropping  a nuclear bomb on the town,  while the increasingly small group of increasingly paranoid survivors begin to turn on each other.  It's not a great film, but it is a good one, although it may be too bleak for some.  A remake was released in 2010.

The military hunt for The Crazies     

Night of the Living Dead

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  George A. Romero
Screenplay:  John Russo and George A. Romero
Starring:  Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon
Running Time:  96 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Barbara (O'Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner) drive out to rural Pennsylvania to lay a wreath on their father's grave.  At the cemetery they are attacked, seemingly at random, by a strange man who kills Johnny and chases Barbara.  Barbara flees to an apparently abandoned farmhouse, where she encounters Ben (Jones), who barricades the doors and windows.  They also meet an angry married couple: Harry (Hardman) and Helen (Eastman) and their injured eleven year old daughter Karen (Schon), and teenagers Tom (Wayne) and Judy (Ridley), who are all hiding in the cellar.  All of them have heard about or experienced strange, random attacks. As the farmhouse comes under siege, it soon turns out that their attackers are the recently deceased who have been returning from the dead and attacking and eating the living, who quickly become "ghouls" themselves.

The "zombie apocalypse" subgenre has become almost ubiquitous in the last fifteen years or so, although it seems to have fallen out of favour somewhat in recent years (despite The Walking Dead (2010 - current) TV series still shuffling on, seemingly forever) there are still plenty of these movies being made and almost every horror movie festival is bound to throw up more than one new example.  But this is really where it all started.  Despite being inspired by the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, Night of the Living Dead is probably the first proper zombie apocalypse film, and it is surprising how much was there right from the start:  The small group of survivors being besieged by hordes of the Living Dead, yet having more to fear from each other than from the hungry ghouls.  It also created the modern idea of the zombie, originally a creature in Haitian folklore, as a shuffling, undead cannibal (although the word "zombie" is never mentioned once in the film, where the creatures are termed "ghouls").  The film was made on a very low budget with facilities from his production company, which made TV commercials and industrial films.  It's set in the present day, using mostly found locations, most of it takes place in the house; there are no recognisable faces in the cast, and special effects are kept to a minimum.  The film has definitely dated, and some of the acting isn't great, but it is still powerful, and the grainy, low-budget black-and-white gives it a rawness that still packs a punch.  The fact that Duane Jones, an African-American actor, is the hero of the film, would probably still be remarked on if it was made today, let alone in 1968. 
The film's downbeat conclusion packs just as much of a punch now as it did over fifty years ago. 

They're coming to get you:  Ghouls on the rampage in Night of the Living Dead   

   

Land of the Dead

Year: 2005
Director: George A. Romero
Screenplay: George A. Romero
Starring: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy, Eugene Clark
Running Time: 93 minutes
Genre: Horror, action, survival

Summary: The dead have risen up and are attacking and eating the living. Anyone who dies becomes one of them, and anyone left alive after being botten by one will also shortly become one of them. The only way to destroy them is by destroying the brain, usually by shooting or stabbing in the head. The Earth has been pretty much completely overrun by these zombies. However, a community of survivors exist in a fortified enclve in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The community is ruled by the vicious and corrupt Kaufman (Hopper) who lives, along with the rest of the wealthy and elite in a luxurious high-rise apartment complex, while the rest of the people live in abject poverty, kept docile by the many vices that Kaufman lays on for the purpose. Frequently a team led by Riley Denbo (Baker) make forays into the outside world in a heavily equipped armoured vehicle known as "Dead Reckoning" in order to get urgently needed food and medical supplies. However, Riley is determined that this will be his last run. However, shortly after they return from their most recent expedition, Riley and his sidekick Charlie (Joy) are arrested after they break up an event involving two zombies fighting over a woman, Slack (Argento). Meanwhile Riley's second in command, Cholo DeMora (Leguizamo), whose dreams have been shattered when Kaufman denied him a place in the Fiddler's Green complex, has stolen Dead Reckoning and is threatening to open fire on the comples. However, in the city outside, one of the zombies (Clark) is beginning to show signs of regaining some of his human intelligence and is starting to organise the others.

Opinions: This film is the fourth in writer-director George A. Romero's Dead series and was preceded by Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1986), and it has so far been followed by Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2010). It's fair to say that Romero's films have pretty much created the popular image of the movie zombie: a shambling mindless walking corpse forever chomping on the flesh of the living, which has now become one of the most popular horror movie tropes. The film, which was produced on a higher budget than any of the other Romero zombie films, is a fast-moving, action packed affair full of impressive special effects and well-designed action scenes. It is also full of gruesome set-pieces and the zombie make-up is suitably gross. However, as with the others in the series this movie is also quite satirical and full of quite savage social commentary, in particular the community's division between rich and poor, with the wealthy living in luxury more or less as if nothing has changed, while the poor live scrabbling for existence by any means necessary. In fact, the question could be who is worse: The zombies who are just acting on instincts and their own need for survival or the likes of Kaufman who casually exploit and destroy people for profit. The acting is good, with Dennis Hopper being particularly effective as the evil, but soft-spoken, Kaufman and Eugene Clark giving an affecting performance as the lead zombie. The movie's female lead is well played by Italian actress Asia Argento, whose father, legendary horror director Dario Argento, helped finance Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Despite the amount of gore and violence in the film, there is a strong vein of playfulness and humour running through it, and there are a number of in-jokes and references. Watch out for a cameo appearance by actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, whose Shaun of the Dead (2004) was heavily influenced by the Romero series.



Eugene Clark (centre) and friends in Land of the Dead