Brokeback of the Dead...

Because it gets damn lonely in that underground bunker...



* Thanks to Erin Rose Tollefsen of Little Shop of Zombies.

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.

The Lucky 13: Week Eleven: Zombies!

It says a lot about the popularity of this week's sub-genre, that this time out we've got more contributors than ever before. Zombies are arguably the dominant monster of modern horror, and certainly have been on a proverbial tear for much of the past decade especially. Today's horror fan is almost inevitably a hardcore zombie fan--we just can't seem to get enough of those mindless, flesh-eating, undead meatheads.

It always says a lot about the breadth and quality of the sub-genre, that with so many contributors this week, nevertheless not one of them selected the same movie. We've got a pretty impressive selection here, if I do say so myself, hope you enjoy...

B-Sol on Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Surprisingly to me as I look back, I haven't really said all that much about George Romero's Dawn of the Dead here in the Vault over the years, despite the fact that it is not only my personal favorite zombie movie, but my personal favorite horror movie, period. Maybe I've been intimidated by what a towering presence this movie is for me, how it affected me like no other horror film has before or since.

Romero certainly knocked it out of the park with Night of the Living Dead, but here he truly brings his bleak vision of America to full fruition, and gives us the absolute prototype of the modern zombie film. The waking nightmare he creates as the setting for this film is so convincing to me, so authentic, despite whatever you may say about dated makeup effects. When I watch this movie, I am transported wholly to a world in which the dead have risen and society is crumbling. The aura of doom hangs heavy, and even the humorous bits are tinged with rueful regret.

Zombies have terrified me more than any other movie monster, and this film is to blame. I am a purist when it comes to Romero zombies, and this whole idea of relentless, creeping corpses coming to eat your flesh, ignoring all boundaries of friendship and family, beyond all reason or escape, really struck a chord with me, and filled me with genuine dread. That's powerful film-making, and that's what modern zombie cinema is all about.



Flowers of Flesh and Blood's Keri O'Shea on Cemetery Man

One of my favourite zombie films --no, scrub that, one of my favourite films ever--Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) is a quirky little masterpiece, a film which takes the idea of the living dead in a sublime new direction. Francis Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is the Buffalore Cemetery caretaker or, as one of his imminent inmates calls it, the ‘engineer’, but this is a cemetery with a difference. Sometimes the dead rise from their graves, and together with assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) Dellamorte must re-dispatch them. It’s a troubled, lonely existence, and both men are looking for an indeterminate something--maybe even love--beyond the cemetery walls. When a beautiful widow (Anna Falchi) arrives to mourn her husband, Dellamorte cannot resist her charms, and is soon drawn into a chain of events which leads him to reconsider love, life, the universe and everything…

I first saw the film at a Halloween showing and, apart from vaguely being aware that it was a zombie flick, I knew nothing about it. If I was expecting hordes of potentially politically-relevant flesheaters, instead I got a striking small-town setting, a taphophile’s dream of graves, burials and mourning, and of course vivid atmosphere in spades (pun intended). A charismatic performance by Everett really underpins this film, and he deadpans through an often bizarre array of scenes and dialogue with an inimitably brooding gravitas. The original choice for this role, Matt Dillon, simply could not have done it better. It adds a pleasing circularity to the project that Everett was the inspiration behind the Dylan Dog comics, which in turn inspired the screenplay: Dellamorte Dellamore is as inescapable for Everett as Buffalore is for Francis Dellamorte, it seems…

The cast all work nicely together, balancing pathos alongside slick dark comedy, with the beautiful Anna Falchi perhaps deserving a special mention for her performance as the unnamed ‘she’ of the film. Although she appears in three different incarnations, she is most memorable in her first, that of The Widow--changing from vulnerable mourner into an insatiable Returner, a zombie you wouldn’t mind being bitten by. But then, as the film progresses, the undead aren’t the problem in and of themselves. They become symbolic of the inescapability of Dellamorte’s life and his growing identity crisis. It would be pushing it to say that this film is a philosophical work, I know, but it definitely uses horror in order to feel around some unusually existentialist themes. Dellamorte holds forth on the problems of love, the meaning of life, and self-knowledge, so the film’s original title (translating as ‘of Death, of Love’) really holds some meaning here. Unique, hypnotic and cool, Dellamorte Dellamore has a special place in my heart.



From Midnight With Love's The Mike on Night of the Living Dead (1968)

There's not much to be said about Night of the Living Dead that hasn't already been spoken. But when it came time to choose a favorite zombie film, I couldn't find myself considering anything other than it or its sequel, Dawn of the Dead. That's a choice I've waffled on many times, but today I'm sold on Night of the Living Dead as my final answer.

Night of the Living Dead is more than a movie, it's an institution. It's literally the most accessible horror film of the past 50 years--thanks to its slip into the public domain--and it's become something of a “starter” film for anyone who wants to experience what horror movies are all about. As horror was peaking in pop culture during the 1970s, it was Night of the Living Dead that became the syndicated TV hit that every late night horror host was showing to impressionable youth. When home video, and later DVD, became popular, any distributor that could find it released their own copy of the film. At least 40 different versions of the film exist between these two types of home media today, and the first Blu-Ray versions of the film are rolling out as we speak.

But to me, this is more than just one of those films that should be lauded because of how beloved it has become. One could also argue that Night of the Living Dead was a turning point for the horror genre, as it was one of the first films to turn everyday people--in this case dead people--into monsters, and then bring these monsters into modern America. And, without ever using the “zed word”, George Romero's approach to creating horror set the stage for an entire sub-genre and a new movement in independent horror film-making.

I could ramble about the significance, in culture and to the film community, of Night of the Living Dead all night long. And when I account for the film's effect on the viewer--in this case, a guy that's still creeped out by the uncertainty the characters face and the impending sense of doom that haunts the film--and the fact that the black-and-white film just feels like what I'd look for from any late night horror viewing, there's no topping Romero's first triumph in my book.



Big Daddy Horror Review's Brandon Sites on Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is one of those films that I can revisit over and over and over again, and then one more time for good measure. While most people wouldn't think of this as an outright zombie film due to its blending of several genre elements, the finale does involve a zombie ripping through the torso of a recently shot victim in order to massacre the senior class on prom night.

The film has an ability to cleverly recycle staples from genre classics into one cohesive, seamless whole. It borrows elements from George A. Romero's zombie films and from Carrie, contains a dream sequence that recalls A Nightmare on Elm Street with a dash of German Impressionism set in a high school cafeteria and features a kooky take on possession themes, all set against the backdrop of a teen comedy/horror film.

As if that wasn't enough, you have genre regular Michael Ironside in the cast, and some inventive--not to mention mean-spirited--death sequences. One victim informs her best friend that she is pregnant, only to be hanged to death by the film's title villain, who makes it appear as a suicide. There is also a sequence in which another victim is smashed to death by her high school gym lockers, and yet another involving death by computer. To top it all off, it also boasts some well-timed one liners and some memorable dialogue. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is a film that I never get tired of despite repeat viewings. It also ranks in my top 10 horror films of the '80s.



Vault dweller Angela Howeth on The Return of the Living Dead

I had to go back to my own childhood on this one. Of course I completely love and adore the originals such as Night of the Living Dead, and the not-so-original such as Zombi 2, but honestly I had to go here. I remember going to a sleep over when I was in the 4th grade and watching this movie for the first time. While my girlfriends where all busy talking about boys, and New Kids on the Block, I was completely enamored with this movie. I thought to myself, “Oh this is completely utterly disgustingly perfect.” It had everything--punk rock, a dysfunctional and irresponsible government, and of course terrifying gruesome zombies.

I think the cross between the movie soundtrack and the actual sound of the zombies was creepy enough. Am I the only one who thought some of the zombies sounded like pigs being slaughtered as they were being reborn from their graves? For me sound has a ton to do with it, and these zombies where not meek at all. Not only did they do their normal zombie moan from hell, but they also spoke of the pain of WANTING AND NEEDING BRAINS!!!! This ties directly to that scene in the morgue with the half woman tied down on the gurney. This scene terrified me; it was human in the sense of something that needed substance in order to feel good to live. But yet she wasn’t living, she was dead, and still she yearned so greatly for our soft spongy brains--with no legs, no skin, no organs left besides half her spinal column, her eyes and her brain. It is stuff that nightmares are truly made of.

Another favorite scene in the movie is the one in which Linnea Quigley's Trash character gets mauled by the zombies. Imagine yourself being naked in nuclear rain; and getting caught in a mosh pit of zombies; yeah, no good. That and she kind of resembles Ronald McDonald's step-sister. This movie just holds a happy place in my childhood, as odd as it sounds, I will never get the picture out of my head of the zombie popping out of the grave: “Do you want to party!” Return of the Living Dead is one of those movies that I can watch and keep finding more stuff to laugh or be terrified about.



Cinema Suicide's Bryan White on Day of the Dead (1985)

My love affair with zombies started out a lot like everyone else's, I suspect. It was a double feature sleep over with Evil Dead 2 and Dawn of the Dead that kicked the whole thing off. Dawn of the Dead gave license to my imagination to run wild in a world overrun with the dead where the only responsibility was survival, which in a world of abundant shopping mall resources, guns and ammo included, looked like an awful lot of fun, even when the bikers raid the place. This was a fantasy dreamed up when I was a kid. I'm an adult now and the rational adult mind tends to over think things, so the fantasy is a lot less fun these days because I have the context of maturity to compare the horror of the apocalypse to. Naturally, the care-free fantasy of Dawn of the Dead became something much more pessimistic and opened the door for Day of the Dead to make its way into my consciousness and take the number one spot for favorite zombie movie.

It's a well explored notion that Romero's classic zombie movies reflect the era of their production so it's no surprise that Day of the Dead is one giant metaphor for America in the '80s. That's not exactly why I like it, though. Day of the Dead was the culmination of Romero's efforts. The original script, which is available for reading online, is a much bigger movie that Romero has since incorporated into other movies, but what we got still comes off like the culmination of all of Romero's previous efforts. Day's scope, though actually very small, feels huge!

The whole thing takes place in this cavernous missile base with a large cast of cackling evil military guys and the scientists that they're supposed to protect. Heading it up is Joe Pilato as the maniacal Captain Rhodes, constantly sporting a sheen of nervous sweat, ranting and raving, pointing his gun at anyone who questions his authority. He has some of the best lines and gives the best deliveries of any Romero zombie survivor. On the other end is Richard Liberty as the insane Dr. Logan, conditioning his zombie, Bub (Logan and Bub are references to Wolverine of the X-Men) and dissecting captive zombies down to their component pieces. It's a colorful cast of wild, shouting characters working with one of Romero's slowest, yet most frantic zombie scripts. Sure, there's a lot of talking--the usual point of criticism leveled at this flick--but they're great streaks of Rhodes' wild freak-outs!

Characters aside, Day was the ultimate experiment in special effects for the time. They're completely disgusting. Tom Savini's express makeup for large groups was coupled with the high detail and realism of Greg Nicotero's techniques to create some of the nastiest zombies ever put on film. To this day, it remains unchallenged, even by further explorations of zombies by Romero himself.

Day may not be a taut thriller with constant action, but for my money, it's the most sophisticated of all of Romero's movies, with the best special effects, most colorful characters and most morbid, oppressive tone that expertly communicates the hopelessness of possibly being the last living humans on Earth. I revisit this one far more than any other in the canon.



Cannibal Hollywood's Stonecypher on Colin

I’ve always found answering the question ‘what’s your favourite zombie film?’ both difficult and easy. Difficult, in that I’ve not actually seen that many zombie films, in comparison to your average horror fan, anyway; and easy, in that I’ve got fewer films to pick from! Zombies are not my favourite sub-genre, and yet, they’re everywhere. They seem to be the horror film-maker’s choice for getting a point across, particularly when it comes to making a comment on the homogeneity of society. My choice of film, then, stands out, in that it has nothing at all to do with the homogeneity of society, and everything to do with the individual.

My favourite zombie film is Colin. The film is famous for being made on a shoe-string budget of roughly £45 ($70), and yet it’s reached world-wide audiences and critical acclaim. Directed by Marc Price, the film follows the titular zombie, from his brief moments before being bitten, to his slow, arduous transformation into one of the mass of living dead shuffling through London’s streets. Coming at the tail-end of a rash of fast zombies (if they’re zombies at all!), Colin is a wonderful breath of fresh air, a film which, for all of its impressively realised gore and action, is an emotional, human journey.

Part of that success belongs to Alistair Kirton, who plays Colin as both lost child and cornered animal to great effect. Some of the film’s most memorable scenes take place in complete silence, not in the abandoned streets of the city or in the middle of a zombie horde, but in the heart of the home--the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom. No £45 film is going to perfect, but with Colin, Marc Price has made a damn impressive try of it.

The film’s greatest success, for me, is that it’s a zombie film that made me care about its protagonist. I don’t often find myself all that bothered about what happens to characters in zombie films, but I do care for Colin. Marc Price successfully made a zombie film, with a zombie protagonist, which tells a simple, human story. Not very horrific, I know, but it certainly makes the film stand out from a very crowded sub-genre. Besides, that bit with the spine? Definitely gross.



From Beyond Depraved's Joe Monster on Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror

At times it seems like everything in the horror genre has become a cliché, a trope that has finally burned out all potential of ingenuity. No sub-genre seems to be filled with more mediocre drivel than that of the zombie. Particularly in recent years, we have seen the walking dead in just about every scenario that man (or monkeys) can conceive of. What’s a lover of the reanimated to do when half of the cinematic output concerning our beloved deadheads is as thrilling as roadkill? Allow me to direct your attention to the Italian splatterpiece Burial Ground, or as the subtitle more forebodingly calls it… The Nights of Terror.

Italy was by no means a stranger to the walking dead. With rejuvenated stiffs committing such foul acts as shoving splinters in pupils and attacking people as they performed top-hat dance routines, Italian filmmakers were squeezing the genre dry of every last putrefied drop. So what, you may ask, makes Burial Ground so different from the rest of the flesh-hungry pack? I believe my appreciation for this film might have stemmed from my complete surprise on its initial viewing, as I think it would with most. Up until the point I saw Andrea Bianchi’s mini-epic, I smugly thought that I had just about seen everything zombies had to offer. Little did I realize all the wonderful surprises that were in store for me, whether they were subtle contrasts or bits of in-your-face grandness.

The look of the zombies in Burial Ground was one of the very first elements to register with me. Never before, not even with Fulci’s conquistador throat-munchers, did I see zombies who were actually terrifying to look at. The majority of them here have deaths-head type visages, their skeletal teeth and empty sockets seeming to sneer at you as they greedily reach for your skin. They’re a true army of the dead, fully capable of wielding weapons (!) in order to get at the food they crave so madly. A particularly spectacular sequence occurs when one zombie, with Bullseye-like precision, throws a nail across a garden and pins a maid’s hand to the wall just as she’s going to close a window! His cohorts then use a deliciously symbolic scythe to painfully saw the screaming wench’s head off and then eagerly scuttle around as the cranium comes a-tumblin’ down! That scene alone was enough for me to realize that this one was not the typical zombie fare.

The entire movie is filled with a very real sense of dread. The psychotropic score constantly has you at unease as the dead stiffly stalk around the house of survivors. This is the type of feeling every zombie film should have, that of ultimate doom and utter defeat at the claws of the souls we thought we held dominion over. As silly as it may seem, as I watched the movie, eyes open wide inside the cozy den of my home, I almost felt as if this is what the Apocalypse would truly look like. The dead returned to consume the living, never stopping or ceasing their motions. Terrifying stuff. Add to that the oddly surreal bits that are sprinkled throughout the film and you have one unique viewing experience. Case in point: Peter Bark, a twenty something man who plays the part of a ten-year-old child. One of the most awkward-glances-all-around moments in film history occurs when Peter passionately begs his mother for a very personal type of night cap. You haven’t seen it all until you’ve seen that.

Burial Ground is likely to be passed over by most fans as another in a long, long line of zombie flicks to be released from Italy during the first living dead boom in cinema. But if you look closely enough and if you’re appetite is whetted enough for some different and grueling zombie action, you’ll find that this cloth does not just smell of death… it smells of awesomeness.



Day of the Woman's BJ-C on Shaun of the Dead

Shaun may be a little irresponsible, a slacker, and own some embarrassing vinyl albums... but who would think of a cricket bat to defend yourself in the zombie apocalypse? The rest of his crew took typical items like golf clubs, axes, shovels, baseball bats, you know... phallic objects. It may be an English thing, but the cricket bat is probably the coolest undead destroying instrument since the boomstick.

Think of it this way, Shaun is like every Average Joe you meet on the street. He's just like you! It's always a nice thought that you don't need to be this rough and tumble guy to survive. All you need is some passion and a good weapon. The reason Shaun of the Dead is such an appealing film to all audiences, is because the zombie outbreak closely resembles what the outbreak would most likely really be like. In a world of chaos and rotting corpses, Shaun and his friends decide to stick it out and survive while still maintaining their personalities. All too often in zombie films, people lose who they really are once the outbreak begins. It's about survival yes, but it's also about not losing who you are.

The true heart of the entire film is centered on Shaun. Shaun is a great zombie killer because he's not only thinking about himself. It's very easy to become selfish in a time of crisis and only care about keeping yourself alive. While this is a nice plan for an individual, its a disastrous plan for those who actually have a heart. Shaun had been completely neglecting those who care the most about him, but when put in the situation where he's almost expected and allowed to be selfish... he's not. He works to keep not just himself afloat, but his mother, ex-girlfriend, her flatmates, his best friend, and for a while even his hated step-father. He risked his life traveling from his house to his mother's house, and then even climbed up a building to save his ex-girlfriend and her flatmates. That's the true act of a hero if you're asking me.

So basically, he's not some uber badass who knows exactly what to do, he's just someone who's probably grown up watching the uber badasses who know exactly what to do. He's thrust into this situation, and while he's hesitant at first, he almost comes to terms with it and realizes what needs to be done to try and survive. So off he goes to secure his loved ones and hold down in the safest place he can think of. It may not all work out, but he at least does something instead of sit and panic. Shaun of the Dead is a perfect of example of how middle America would handle the zombie crisis.



* * * * * * * * * *

Now head over to Brutal as Hell to see what Marc Patterson and his crew have come up with. And if you're interested in taking part in the last two installments, just give Marc or myself a holler.

Week 1: Grindhouse & Exploitation
Week 2: Creature Features & Monster Movies
Week 3: Demons, Witches & The Devil
Week 4: Gore!
Week 5: Horror Comedies
Week 6: Vampires
Week 7: Psychological Horror
Week 8: Werewolves
Week 9: Serial Killers
Week 10: Ghosts, Haunted Houses and Psychic Phenomena

Join us next week for the second-to-last edition of The Lucky 13, wherein we get all brainy and stuff, with science-fiction horror!

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!

The Tuesday Top 10: Favorite Horror Movie Characters

I was recently tagged by D.J. Heinlein (if that isn't your real name, it should be) over at Matte Havoc as part of his "Ten Favorite Movie Characters" blog meme. So I figured I'd tweak it just a bit for The Vault, and use it as an excuse to unveil my new weekly feature, the Tuesday Top 10 (sorry, BJ-C, not trying to steal your Tuesday thunder--it's all about the alliteration, kid.)

And so, without further ado, I give you my Top 10 Favorite Horror Movie Characters:

10. Capt. Spaulding
"Why don't you just take your momma home some chicken, and then I won't have to stuff my boot all up in your ass!"
Nearly as entertaining as the Groucho Marx character from which he takes his name, Sid Haig's character in Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects is a joy to behold. You can keep Freddy Krueger, Hannibal Lecter and Patrick Bateman--for my money, the good captain is horror's most charismatic psychopath.

9. Dr. Pretorius
"To a new world of gods and monsters!"
It takes a special kind of man to out-crazy Dr. Frankenstein. And by gum, Pretorius is that man. His bizarre experiments with tiny "homunculi", and unholy desire to continue Frankenstein's work on the reanimation of dead tissue even have ol' Henry himself calling for a time-out. And you have to love any guy who can sit down to a chicken dinner inside of a crypt.

8. Delbert Grady
"Perhaps they need a good talking-to, if you don't mind my saying so. Perhaps a bit more."
Is he a figment of Jack Torrance's warped imagination, or an honest-to-goodness phantasm? It's tough to know for sure--although the infamous food locker scene leans me toward the latter--but whatever he may be, ol' Grady is one hell of a riveting co-creation of King and Kubrick. And if you don't agree with that, I might just have to... correct you.

7. The Hitchhiker
"My family's always been in meat."
This backwoods wackjob did for roadside hitchers what Jaws did for sharks and Fatal Attraction did for side poon. Leatherface may hog all the glory when it comes to the TCM family, but I'll take this hand-slicing, weird facial birthmark-having, photo-burning fruitcake any day of the week. Too bad he was the only family member who didn't survive to make it to the sequel.

6. Eli
"Please Oskar... be me, for a little while."
Just for the record, if I was a 12-year-old boy and she moved next door to me, I would happily run off with her and become her pint-sized Renfield. Without looking back. Sorry, Mom and Dad... Thanks to an enigmatic and chill-inducing performance by remarkable child actress Lina Leandersson, Eli is the most fascinating movie vampire since Bela walked down those castle steps.

5. Tarman
"More brainsss!!"
By now, my unconditional love for all things Return of the Living Dead is a well-known fact (expect a big announcement pertaining to this soon). And hands down, the coolest thing in the whole movie (aside from Trash's graveyard dance) is this walking-and-talking gelatinous cadaver. The only thing that pissed me off is how easily Bert disposes of the big guy. Batter up!

4. Renfield (as played by Dwight Frye)
"I'm loyal to you Master, I'm your slave, I didn't betray you! Oh no, don't! Don't kill me! Let me live, please! Punish me, torture me, but let me live!"
One of the most criminally underrated character actors of the 1930s, Dwight Frye turns a minor character in Stoker's novel into arguably the character who steals the whole damn movie. You can live for a hundred years, but if you've seen Tod Browning's Dracula, you will never forget the image of Frye grinning from the below the deck of the Demeter, emitting that iconic laugh...

3. Bub
"Hello, Aunt Alicia."
Speaking as a connoisseur of all things Romero, I can say with confidence that this was the maestro's finest zombie creation. Ditto goes for makeup wizard Tom Savini. Day of the Dead has its problems as a movie, and may not quite be in the class of its two predecessors, but Howard Sherman's character makes it a must-watch, it's as simple as that.

2. Ashley J. Williams
"Gimme some sugar, baby."
Alright, so it's always cool to namedrop Ash for horror street cred, but you know what? There's a reason for that. The guy is legitimately the single greatest bad-ass in the history of fright flicks. I love him and his boom stick in Army of Darkness. I love him fighting his own hand in Dead By Dawn. Hell, I'll even take the more timid, boyish Ash of the first Evil Dead. That's how much I love him.

1. Count Orlock
"Blood! Your precious blood!"
It's been said before, but it may still very well be that F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic is the finest Dracula adaptation of them all. Yet, Max Schreck's Orlock is an entity all on his own, with a distinct persona and look that virtually transcends horror cinema, if not cinema as a whole. The rising out of the casket, the unforgettable shadow-walk up those stairs. This, readers, is the stuff of cinematic horror immortality. It gets no better.

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.

CONTEST: BLACK SHEEP OF THE DEAD

Summer is over! It's back to school and back to the grind. It's got to make us all feel a little like zombies so why not give away some zombie movies while the mood is in effect. Back in 1978, zombie master, George A. Romero unleashed DAWN OF THE DEAD on an unsuspecting public. The film's success led to three other installments in the thirty years that followed. Now, it has lead to a remake of the second installment, DAY OF THE DEAD. The new film, starring Ving Rhames, Mena Suvari and Nick Cannon was directed by Steve Miner.

As of late, Miner directs a good deal of television but this wasn't always so. His first feature film was actually pretty high profile. Tell me the name of his first film and you can win one of five copies of his new film, DAY OF THE DEAD (courtesy of the good folks at Peace Arch Home Entertainment). Send replies to joseph@blacksheepreviews.com

The contest will close Sunday, September 14 at midnight with winners announced on Monday. Good luck!

CONTEST CLOSED ... AND THE WINNERS ARE:

Jesse Gainer
Andrea Pietzykowski
Jane Zilberberg
Eric Hatch
and
Amy Minsky

Congratulations! You will all be contacted about how to collect your prize.
The answer, by the way, is FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2.

No More Room in Hell: 40 Years of the Modern Zombie Movie, Part 2

George Romero's 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead is rightfully credited with inventing the modern zombie genre. Yet it was the sequel to that film--released a full decade later--that effectively branded that genre into the collective consciousness of popular culture, ensuring that it was no fly-by-night niche but a category that was here to stay, much like vampires, werewolves and mummies before it.

Dawn of the Dead led to a veritable explosion of zombie movies, thanks to the ways in which it took the elements introduced in Night to a level virtually unseen in horror up to that point. In the 1970s, horror was all about the explicit, rather than the implied. And Dawn delivered explicit in buckets--audiences witnessed the flesh of victims being bitten; the heads of ghouls blown apart by shotgun fire; bodies being torn to pieces by hordes of the undead. And all in brightly lit full-color.

The picture was also a major evolutionary step forward both stylistically and thematically. Romero was able to create an overwhelming sense of impending dread and realism--this was a vision of the entire world literally falling apart. At the same time, he was able to deal with issues of race, gender and consumerism in bolder, more direct ways. Add a dose of black humor, and you have the ultimate horror epic.

Although released without the all-important MPAA rating, Dawn of the Dead managed to become a cult underground sensation. And its success opened the floodgates for a seemingly limitless flow of horror movies that dealt with the walking dead.

The craze first took hold in Italy, and the result was the infamous "Italian cycle" of zombie films. As had been seen with the earlier cannibal subgenre in Italian horror cinema, Italian filmmakers were not exactly squeamish when it came to delivering the bloody goods. And they took to the new subgenre almost as ravenously as the creatures that would populate their films.

Among the first was Lucio Fulci, whose dubiously titled Zombi 2 (1979) was unofficially marketed as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead (known in Europe as Zombi). Set on a Carribean island, the film harkens back in some respects to the more traditional voodoo-style of much earlier zombie films. Yet it is also decidedly a product of the Romero renaissance, focusing as it does on graphic depictions of rotting corpses and their flesh-eating frenzies. Yet there is something even more sinister at work in Fulci's flick--with no trace of humor in sight, it's a straight-ahead gorefest of unprecedented proportions. Unrelenting in its horror, the film seems to seek mainly to revolt the viewer as much as possible.

Fulci's later zombie trilogy continued his explorations into the utter bleakness of zombie horror. Hailed by some for being stylistically and technically superior to Zombi 2, City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981) and House by the Cemetery (1981) were also less directly influenced by Romero. Here, Fulci struck out on more of an original path, tieing the zombie mythos to that of H.P. Lovecraft, and intertwining the zombie apocalypse with the apocalypse presented in the New Testament Book of Revelations.

Outside Fulci, the Italian zombie subgenre contained a relentless multitude of other entries--some good, some bad, all uncompromisingly brutal. For example, films like Nightmare City, The Nights of Terror, Zombie Creeping Flesh, and Zombie Holocaust were all released in 1980 alone.

The violence depicted in these movies was of a type never before seen in the history of cinema. Many have pointed to Italy's pervasive Roman Catholicism as the source for this zombie obsession. Specifically, in the Italian mindset, the living dead represent the ultimate horror, the most unspeakable blasphemy, because their existence refutes the sanctity of the human soul and is a perversion of the fundamental Christian belief in the resurrection of the body.

But Italy wasn't the only place where cinematic ghouls were flourishing. Some of George Romero's American compatriots were paying attention, as well. This was evidenced by films like John Carpenter's The Fog, released a year after Dawn of the Dead. Building on Romero's notions of social commentary, The Fog reinforced the idea that these movies could contain messages beyond the depiction of gore.

Unfortunately, however, Carpenter's work was an exception to the rule in America, where most zombie flicks could be included in the growing morass of junk that threatened to envelope the entire horror genre as a reaction to the voracious demand of the new home video market. Highlights include admitted cult favorite Night of the Creeps (1986) and Redneck Zombies (1987). If nothing else, the zombie deluge in America succeeded in cementing the subgenre in the annals of popular culture, a fact that can be attested to by Michael Jackson's classic Thriller video of 1983. The undead had arrived.

One of the ways in which zombie films managed to survive the 1980s despite the oversaturation was by adding healthy doses of what helped the entire horror genre survive the decade as well: comedy. Perhaps in no other era was the horror comedy so prevalent, and within this particular niche it earned an especially memorable name: splatstick.

Going in the complete opposite direction as the Italian cycle, splatstick flicks reveled in the absurdity of the zombie premise, serving up heaping helpings of irony and ridiculously over-the-top cartoon gore. Films like Bad Taste (1987), by newcomer Peter Jackson, were able to provoke both laughter and revulsion simultaneously. Despite being more about demonic possession than zombies, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Evil Dead II often get lumped into this category as well, particularly the sequel. The two most revered splatstick entries would have to be Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator and Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead, which came out within weeks of each other in 1985.

Almost an instant classic, Re-Animator was based on the work of Lovecraft, and the satirical manner in which it dealt with the subject matter of bringing life to corpses made it the "anti-Frankenstein". Although its undead were not of the flesh-eating variety, Re-Animator was a more than worthy addition to the genre.

Return of the Living Dead's zombies were not of the flesh-eating variety either--no, they preferred brains. In fact, it was this film which directly led to the inextricable link between zombies and brain-eating that continues to persist in pop culture to this day. Originally envisioned as an unofficial sequel to Night of the Living Dead, O'Bannon chose instead, out of deference to the master, to take the proceedings in a more humorous direction. The result was a film which is regarded as one of the finest horror comedies ever made.

Ironically, ROTLD would go head-to-head with the long-awaited third chapter in Romero's series, 1985's Day of the Dead. Panned at the time by critics and rejected by fans, the film failed at the box office, its serious tone and depressing social message no match for the frivolity and punk rock mentality of O'Bannon's film. Also, budgetary constraints and creative disputes had caused the film to be significantly less than what Romero had originally intended it to be.

Nevertheless, Day of the Dead featured perhaps the most astonishing make-up work yet seen in a zombie picture (courtesy of Romero's right-hand man Tom Savini), and the most shocking violence this side of the Atlantic. It also gave us the sympathetic zombie Bub, one of the all-time great horror characters and another conceptual evolution in the subgenre. Over time, Day of the Dead would be reconsidered by fans and critics alike, and rightfully take its place alongside its two predecessors.

Once again, Romero had managed to reinvent the cinematic category he invented. But after Day of the Dead, several issues would cause the director to walk away from the world of the living dead. The genre would be forced to go on without him--and during a time when horror films in general would be suffering their lowest nadir in decades.

To Be Continued...

Part 1: They're Coming to Get You

It's Official: Zombies Have Jumped the Shark

Now just to clarify, I'm not talking about Lucio Fulci's masterpiece, in which a zombie fought a shark. That was spectacular. No, I'm thinking more about Fonzie on waterskis here. Because it seems to me that zombie movies have finally hit the wall, and the culprit is Steve Miner's direct-to-DVD remake of Day of the Dead, set to come out next month.

To be fair, I should begin by saying it's not as god-awful as I was led to believe by all the preliminary reactions. Actually, I've seen far worse, especially in the direct-to-DVD category. I would even submit that if you forget that it's called Day of the Dead, and put George Romero's films completely out of your mind as if they never existed, it might be possible to derive a small amount of fleeting enjoyment from the picture.

Of course, that begs the question: Why did they bother calling it Day of the Dead? Especially when it bears almost no resemblance to the 1985 original, besides having some characters who happen to have the same names. Certainly, the fan backlash would have been minimized had they just dropped the pretense of remaking Day of the Dead. Well, the reason is simple: the name Day of the Dead is a draw, it gets people to watch the movie based on the reputation of the original. That was definitely the case with me, so I'd have to say that to a certain degree, the strategy worked.

If fast-moving zombies send you into paroxysms of rage, then avoid this movie at all costs. Because these zombies are good enough to join Cirque du Soliel. But again, as I said before, if you put these kind of pre-expectations out of your mind, you might be able to get through it. A scene in which Suvari flees for her life in a ventilation shaft is the film's suspense-filled highlight. And I will say that the gore is some of the most intense I've seen in just about any zombie film made this decade, almost a throwback to the original wave 30 years ago.

Mena Suvari stars as Sarah, and although she's a competent actress, she isn't really given much to do--it's a one-note performance. The overrated Ving Rhames is Capt. Rhodes in name only, and his appearance in the movie is short and forgettable. Nick Cannon as Salazar is a joke--when are studios going to realize that these types of stereotypical "black" roles are almost as bad as the Steppinfetchits of old? And then there's Stark Sands as Bud--that's right, it's not Bub, it's Bud. He starts out human, then becomes a zombie later, but other than his being one of the "good guys", there is almost none of what made that character such an icon. I should mention, however, the one moment which seemed to me to be the movie's most effective tribute to the original, in which Bud, a soldier in life, still responds appropriately to military commands, in a very Bub-like fashion.

Steve Miner, director of Friday the 13th Parts II & III as well as Halloween: H20, does a passable job of putting together a by-the-numbers zombie movie here, but all in all, it's a pretty disposable affair. I'd recommend it for hardcore zombie-lovers only, and maybe those who get a kick out of schlocky direct-to-video releases. But I have to stress--put Romero out of your mind completely. That's the only way to watch this without kicking in your TV screen. This remake is a clear example of how this subgenre has devolved since Uncle George pioneered it all those decades ago. And I, for one, think it's time to give it a rest.