For two decades after Day of the Dead, George Romero didn't do any new movies with zombies. I'm not sure if that was because Day of the Dead didn't get great initial reviews or if he was just burned out on zombies. Maybe it was a combination of both. But when it was announced that Romero would be doing a new zombie movie called Land of the Dead (2005), I was very excited. By that point, I knew the first three films very well. Being able to finally see one in theaters meant a lot to me back then and it still does.With a cast made up of people like Dennis Hopper (Blue Velvet), John Leguizamo (Summer of Sam), Asia Argento (Demons 2), and Robert Joy (The Dark Half), Land of the Dead is a welcome entry to the Dead series. Set apart from the others by many years, it still manages to bring some of that charm that the first three movies contained inside a modern environment. Was it as impressive as the first three movies, especially Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead? Not quite, even with a big company name like Universal behind it. But it wasn't bad either, coming from a guy who hadn't touched zombie movies for twenty years.
So quit picking your nose and join me for another... Reviews with Ballz!
While Night of the Living Dead is the beginning of the zombie problem, Dawn of the Dead is a few weeks in, and Day of the Dead is at least several months in, Land of the Dead takes place several years into the zombie apocalypse. By now, people have learned a new way of living, or at least a way of "pretending to be alive", as Riley Denbo (Simon Baker) says in the very beginning of the movie. A crew with a weapon-rigged vehicle called Dead Reckoning raids abandoned towns for supplies all while trying to avoid being chomped on by the still very active living dead, Riley and Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) working with the crew, acting sort of as the leaders, though right away, the two are shown to not really see eye to eye. Of course, the supplies aren't really just for them, but they're for everyone inside of the secured city that they operate out of, especially the rich fuckers who live in the fancy tower called Fiddler's Green.
Instead of the scientists versus military scenario presented in Day of the Dead, this has more of a the poor versus the rich scenario. The poor are people like Riley and Cholo who live in a rather dirty, rundown environment outside of Fiddler's Green, though it has some areas of entertainment, like shooting paintball guns at zombies, while the rich are people like Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), who is pretty much the head of Fiddler's Green. The poor versus the rich isn't exactly an original concept, but it's pretty interesting when you throw it into a zombie apocalypse, showing how the future could possibly work if a zombie apocalypse ever really did occur. And the zombies do play a large role here, showing how they've also learned in their own way.
This movie had the biggest budget of any of the six Dead films so far, at $15 million, but a bigger budget doesn't automatically equal a better film. While the first three movies had very memorable soundtracks, this one has the generic, forgettable soundtrack issue that all newer movies seem to have. It's nothing bad, but it just doesn't stand out at all. Most of the characters also don't feel as polished as they could be. Cholo and Kaufman are easily the the best two characters and part of that is definitely because of the actors who play them, as well as Riley's sidekick, Charlie (Robert Joy). The gore is merely okay. There are a couple standout moments of gore throughout the movie though. Overall, where the previous films all felt like upgrades in those areas, the only real upgrade here is the plot, which was really just the next logical step.
And there's really not a whole lot else to say about this movie other than that Tom Savini makes a cameo as his character from Dawn of the Dead. First time a character carried over in one of the Dead movies. Unfortunately, he wasn't behind the movie's special effects. This movie does have quite a few flaws, but I still enjoy the hell out of it and it blows Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead out of the water. Maybe George Romero will wait another decade or so and then try again, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Especially since he's now got some comic book series called Empire of the Dead that involves some shit with zombies and vampires. I've never looked at it and from what I've heard, it's probably best to continue avoiding it.If you've seen and enjoy the first three movies, then you might as well see Land of the Dead too. You'll probably appreciate some of what it has to offer. I don't know. Maybe I'm a little biased since it was the first and, so far, only George Romero movie I've been able to see in theaters, but I think it's fun enough for what it is and I always watch it too after I've watched the first three together. There's a theatrical cut and a director's cut. Might as well go for the director's cut. It has a small extra scene and some extra shots of gore. And that concludes this four-part review series! If you've been keeping up with these, thanks for reading.
My Rating: 4/5
#Review #ReviewsWithBallz #Sequel #Zombie
If Dawn of the Dead was an upgrade of Night of the Living Dead, then George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985) was an upgrade to zombie genre as a whole. Even better make-up for the zombies and better gore effects? Check. A polished score by John Harrison that never feels out of place? Check. A great cast of characters who all grow on you in one way or another (yes, that includes this movie's main and, well, only living female character, unlike those two before...)? Check. This movie has it all and that's despite having its budget chopped in half, forcing Romero to change much of his original script to fit the lower budget, keeping only some of the characters and the basic ideas of the original script.
As void of life Dawn of the Dead might have seemed, especially towards the end of the movie, Day of the Dead starts right off with showing just how fucked up things have become as we see shots of a lifeless city, the only activity seen coming from alligators who have wandered into the city and the undead. Sarah (Lori Cardille), Miguel (Antonè DiLeo), John (Terry Alexander), and McDermott (Jarlath Conroy) land their helicopter in this city, the former two getting out to try to find anyone who might still be alive, only to quickly discover what we already know: there's no one. Getting the hell out of there, we then soon see that they operate out of an underground bunker built in a system of caves and learn that they've been searching for other survivors for a while now.
The underground bunker is inhabited by both scientists and the military, the military outnumbering the scientists by quite a few, which causes a lot of tension between the two groups. The scientists trying to study the zombies don't help with the tensions either as the military would much rather just "shoot the mothers in the head". John and McDermott live on their own in the caves, away from the two groups and their tension. It leads to some great drama though, making it feel more like a drama movie with zombies in the background at times. The arguments between Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) are especially entertaining. That's not to say Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead don't have great moments of drama, but with Day of the Dead, it's an almost constant thing.
The budget this time around was $3.5 million, which is significantly larger than what the previous two Dead films had, but as I said before, it was originally twice as big. Supposedly the reason for the budget cut is because George Romero wanted it to be released unrated. The original script still involved an underground bunker and several other elements present in the movie, such as the scientists and military both living there, but there were more characters and some of them were quite different. Sarah, for example, came to the bunker from the outside with Miguel while in the movie, she's already a scientist there and he's already part of the military. It's not hard to find online and is a pretty interesting read if you're ever curious about it. It definitely would have been interesting to see actually filmed, but at the same time, maybe it's for the best that things went the way they did.
Tom Savini returned to do the special effects in Day of the Dead. I don't know if it's the bigger budget or if he just learned a lot in the seven years between this and Dawn of the Dead, but zombie make-up in particular is easily the best I've seen in any zombie movie or TV show. And then there's John Harrison's score. It has a very 1980's sound to it and it works perfectly, always helping set the mood for whatever scene it's used in. These two things combined with the plot and characters give it what I would call a slight edge over the great Dawn of the Dead. And speaking of the characters, I already mentioned how even Sarah grows on you in this movie, but it still must be said. After useless Barbra and almost just as useless Fran, Romero finally wrote a female character that could hold her own quite well. I don't know if this is because he was trying to show some kind of evolution of females in world of zombies or if he got criticism on his other two movies, but for this, Sarah is easily my favorite female character of the series.
George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was released exactly ten years after his first zombie masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead. In many ways, it's an upgrade of the first movie. It's in color, there's a lot more violence, the locations are grander, and the music is now a combination of stock music and music recorded by Italian progressive rock band Goblin, who were brought in by the movie's producer, Italian horror director Dario Argento. When I first saw Dawn of the Dead around 2000 or so, I didn't even realize that it was a sequel to anything, but I knew from the first moments of the movie inside of the television studio that I was watching a movie that was going to be nothing like anything I'd ever seen before. The music alone told me that. And it only got even better from there.
While Night of the Living Dead is the beginning of world's zombie problem, Dawn of the Dead begins a few weeks in. People are still in the cities, TV stations are still on air, and the police are still trying to battle crime, but right away, you can tell that there's an overall feeling of hopelessness. People are shown to be easily agitated and acting illogical. As I said before, the movie starts in a television studio, where Fran (Gaylen Ross) works and it's quite hectic, between the interview they're trying to air with a doctor to provide information to the public and people walking out on their jobs after having enough of the chaos in the studio. Eventually, her boyfriend, Stephen (David Emge), shows up to tell her his plan to escape with her. With them, they bring their cop friend, Roger (Scott Reiniger), and his new friend, Peter (Ken Foree).
Escaping from the city together isn't the end of their troubles though and exhausted from everything that's occurred, they eventually discover a shopping mall. Deeming a part of it to be safe enough, they decide to rest up there. After all, any place that's away from the living dead is a good place, right? Of course, there are strings attached to this little hiding spot they find, such as the fact that the rest of the mall is full of zombies and from how things have played out up to this point, it doesn't look like anyone will be coming to help them out anytime soon. I think the fact that it's just the four of them alone for most of the movie adds to the overall hopelessness of the situation.
With a budget a little higher than Night of the Living Dead, this time at $650,000, George Romero really does go all-out with Dawn of the Dead. In a way, it's hard to even compare it to the first movie, because while it sort of works as a companion piece as far as the style of the two movies go, with the low budget, great use of library music, and again setting the bar for zombie movies, it's also very much its own beast. You can really tell that Romero put as much heart into this as Night of the Living Dead, if not more considering the fact that he ended up with a script filled with specific details that caused it to be way more pages than the movie's length was actually intended to be.
Now, I mentioned in my Night of the Living Dead review how useless Barbra was and how George Romero almost did the same exact thing with this movie. Well, here, the problem is with Fran. She's almost just as fucking useless as Barbra! Again, I get that she might be in shock. But what she's gone through compared to what Barbra went through seems like nothing. When Stephen is trying to fight off a zombie and tells her to run, but she neither runs nor tries to help is just one of many instances when I feel like they would have been better off leaving her ass behind at the television studio. I do say Romero almost did the same thing for a reason though, because unlike Barbra, Fran does prove to be useful a few times in the movie.
In wanting to do something special on Trash Epics for October, I've decided to write a four-part series of reviews, which will cover the first four movies of George Romero's Dead series: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), and Land of the Dead (2005). I'm skipping Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009), both because they kind of reboot the series and because no one cares much about them anyway. And I'm not going to beat around the bush here: I love this series. It's easily my favorite horror series and these reviews will most certainly reflect that.
Night of the Living Dead starts off with brother and sister, Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbra (Judith O'Dea), headed down an isolated road to a cemetery to visit their father's grave. Ominous music plays in the background, taken from a stock music library like all other music in the movie, and it's a simple but very effective scene, perfectly setting up the terror that's about to unfold. As Johnny parks the car in the cemetery, the announcer on the radio comes on, talking about how they're back after some technical difficulties. Nothing to be alarmed about, Johnny shrugs it off and joins Barbra in finding their father's grave.
They aren't in the cemetery for long at all before Johnny decides to start fucking around by teasing Barbra and trying to scare her. This is when he says one of the famous lines of horror cinema history: "They're coming to get you, Barbra!" The perfect line to start George Romero's multi-movie zombie nightmare. Eventually, we move on to a nearby farmhouse, where we meet Ben (Duane Jones), Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), and several others. While the other actors all do a fine job with their roles, it's Jones and Hardman who really steal the show. Every scene they're in together is just great.
Night of the Living Dead isn't my favorite of the Dead series, but as I said before, I love it. Everything in it just works really well. The plot, the settings, the music, the actors, the minimal effects. It's impressive what can be done with just $114,000. Sure, that kind of budget wouldn't get you far now, but I feel like low budget then and low budget now have two very different meanings or they at least have two very different mindsets behind them. The movie isn't very gory, especially when compared to the later movies in the Dead series. You aren't thinking about that when you're watching this however because of how great everything else is, though since Tom Savini was originally supposed to do the effects in this as he did for the next two movies, it does make you wonder what he might have been able to do with the budget they had to work with.
My only real complaint about this movie is the character of Barbra. It wasn't the actress who was the problem, but the character herself and how she was written. I get that she's in shock over everything, but it gets old fast. It's like when there's an annoying, useless kid in a serious movie. Realistic? Maybe. Fun to watch though? Not at all. At least Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead improves upon her character, giving her some actual purpose instead of having her just sit around talking crazy. And what really pisses me off is that Romero damn near pulls this same exact shit again in Dawn of the Dead! But more on that issue in that review.
In honor of autumn, I figured it would be fitting to do some seasonal content. For most of us, seasonal content means horror movies. I spent the past few weeks trying to come up with a list of the best Halloween films... but I couldn't. I'm terrible at making lists, which is why I took another approach...
When most horror fans think of cannibal movies, they probably think of the ones that came out of Italy during the 1970's and 1980's, particularly those by Ruggero Deodato. But Antonia Bird's Ravenous (1999) has nothing to do with Italy and their cannibal movies, besides the fact that it's also a cannibal movie. I wouldn't even call it inspired by those. It's nowhere near as gory, though it's still quite bloody.
John Boyd (Guy Pearce) is a soldier in the Mexican-American War and is promptly promoted from Second Lieutenant to Captain when he returns from war for kicking some major ass. However, it is quickly revealed that the ass kicking he delivered wasn't all that it was cracked up to be and as punishment, he's sent off to a snowy hellhole called Fort Spencer to get him far away from anyone else except for the few other soldiers stationed at the fort.
Once at the fort, Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones) gives Boyd a quick introduction to everyone else there and lets Boyd get settled in. It's not long however before a man named F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) shows up out of the wilderness to tell them about how he and several others were traveling by wagon only to become lost. The soldiers at the fort decide to go look for other survivors and so most of them, including Boyd, set off into the wilderness themselves.
There's quite a few things going on in this movie that make me like it as much as I do, besides the cannibalism. For one, the fact that it's a period piece adds a certain edge to the movie I think. That's not always the case since some movies want to go that route and proceed to feature almost nothing from the selected period, making you wonder why the hell they just didn't set it in modern times, but with Ravenous, I think they did a good job with portraying that time in the 1800's. And that leads me to the music they use in the movie, which fits in very well. One track that they use a few times has almost an upbeat tone to it, but even with that, it just works for where it's used.
There's also the violence in the movie. It gets quite violent with lots of blood being thrown around, which pleases the fuck out of someone like me. Now, I don't think this is the bloodiest movie I've ever seen, but something kind of funny is that supposedly, they ran out of fake blood in the middle of filming. To me, that's something everyone involved with the movie should be proud of. So if you haven't seen this movie before, I say check it out ASAP.
When I was a kid, I remember seeing a few short parts of George McCowan's Frogs (1972) on TV. Of course, since I was a giant pussy about horror movies as a kid, I never sat down to watch it in full. But I recently noticed that it's on Netflix and decided to finally see this movie in its entirety, despite the somewhat low rating it seems to generally receive.
Right away, Frogs lets you know that it's intended to be an eco-horror movie as we watch Pickett Smith (Sam Elliot) make his way through a swamp in a canoe, taking pictures first of the various wildlife in the swamp and then of things like litter and sewer water that have made their way into the swamp. Now I'm not someone who goes out of their way to protect the environment (don't get me wrong, I'm not some fucking litterbug either), but this is a pretty grim opening.
Eventually, Pickett meets up with the Crockett family, who live in a mansion in the area and as you eventually find out, have gathered for a celebration. One of the first things they talk about to Pickett is how much they dislike the frogs in the area because they can't sleep at night from the noise. So Pickett decides to stick around, both to try finding a solution to their frog problem that doesn't result in wiping out the area's wildlife and to also enjoy the celebration that the Crocketts have planned.
It's not long however before the bodies start piling up, each death caused by the wildlife in one way or another. Frogs, snakes, alligators, and even birds take part in teaching the humans a lesson for fucking up the swampland and surrounding area. As I watched, I couldn't help thinking of Skinny Puppy's song, Nature's Revenge, though that's about weather, not animals. Because that's exactly what this movie was: nature's revenge. And that concept worked rather well in providing a pretty entertaining, cheesy, horror movie.
I really ended up liking this movie a lot by the end. The isolation of it all and the idea of something overthrowing humans are two things that have always appealed to me in horror movies. There's little blood, but that's not surprising considering when it was made. But what blood is there is used effectively. There was also a pretty nasty shot of a corpse that I thought was done rather well for a movie like this.
Here's an interesting little film. Why it's apart of the Troma catalogue is beyond me, as it would be a better fit on a Something Weird Video double feature with some William Grefe' snooze-fest. An interesting film nonetheless. Written by none other than Larry Cohen of all people. But something about this film annoys me. Several things, actually. First off, the main character, Janet. This disagreeable ice queen comes off like a snooty, self important little bitch. Fancying herself all deep and intellectual. The look on her face tells me she's constipated. And I sincerely hope that's the case.
Which is fine, cuz Scotty is a tool. Apparently intended as some sort of comedy relief for this piece of shit, but failing miserable at every attempt. Then, there's Marika. She's okay.
A unusual obscurity this movie is. The characters do a terrible job at acting like a group of friends who know eachother and stuff. And the last 1/3 of the movie feels very out of place, as if it's an entirely diffrent movie. Not really much of an ending, as it just kind of ends out of nowhere. As dumb and pointless as Scream Baby Scream is, I do find obscure little oddities like this quite interesting. Movies where the cast members would go on to do little to nothing else.Not alot of info on this one. No extras like interviews or commentary, as it can only be found on one of the Toxie's Triple Terror sets along with Fertilize The Blaspheming Bombshell and Stuff Stephanie In The Incinerator. Not surprisingly, Scream Baby Scream is by far the high point of that triple feature. But the point is, no extras sheding any light on how things went down with this movie. I'll bet Something Weird Video would have provided something for us Scream Baby Scream fans. All Troma gives us is a trailer they threw together, featuring sound effects from Redneck Zombies. Talk about out of place.
