Mocking Halloween: Night of the Living Dead

I know what you are thinking, how dare I make fun of this movie considering its status as being one of the greatest horror movies of all time and seen as one of the most successful indie films too. That won’t stop me because after watching it again, there was something about it that disturbed me… no, not the zombies eating but something else. Let me first start off by saying that I am always a fan of the slow lumbering zombie rather than the 28 Days Later running zombie. I’ve always stated Night of the Living Dead as an example of a good slow moving zombie movie… but that has been compromised.

It may seem like a trivial thing and I’m not quite sure why anybody hasn’t noticed this but when the cemetery zombie attacks Barbara, she runs towards her car… and the zombie RUNS after her. Yes! There is a running zombie in a Romero movie. The zombie then picks up a rock and tries to smash open her window, while acting like a spaz. I was sort of surprised to see this and I guess it would have been fine if the rest of the zombies didn’t act like lumbering drones. So my question is, why was the cemetery zombie the only one to run and use a blunt object to attack with while the rest of the zombies walks slow and grab?

The other thing that I noticed was Barbara herself. I’ve already elaborated on this before (Click here) but it’s sort of misleading. I wanted to see Barbara as this strong woman who tries to pull herself together and help Ben and the rest fight off the zombies but she doesn’t. Throughout most of the movie she looks like she is high and tripping balls. Perhaps that’s the way it was meant but… it would have been nice to see her act a little better.

Random Thought on Night of the Living Dead

This was something that came to mind as I watched Night of the Living Dead for the 30-something-time and it’s just me thinking out loud. Also, I want to remind everybody that I love Night of the Living Dead and in no way am I bashing it but if you watch a movie, especially one that you love, you begin to notice things and you sometimes begin to have a little fun at the films expense. I love The Blob ’88 but if you pay attention to one of the ending scenes when the blog is attacking the town, somebody in the crowd ties their shoes before they run away.

Well, as I watched Night I understand that Barbara is severely traumatized but after a while in the movie it seemed as though she went from trauma to just being really stoned or tripping. Specifically, I am talking about the scene in which Barbara starts to lay down on the couch and caress the lace on the couch arm. I never really thought about it until now but it does seem as though she is drugged out of her mind, and I am sure there is a reason for this but to the casual viewer… she looks hopped up on happy pills.

Come to think of it, I should really vent out my random thoughts more often. Also this post was inspired by a post that was originally on The Horror Digest.

One of the Best Zombie Rises

Tonight’s post is more of a reflection than anything analytical, although I am sure that it will inevitably go that route but still. As many of you know I saw Zombie (aka Zombi 2) at the Music Box during a zombie film festival and I really enjoyed it. There were two aspects of the film that I enjoyed and they were the way things were executed and shot, and the brilliant score by Fabio Frizzi. Personally I think there is one scene, or sequences, that takes these two elements and throws them together flawlessly… and that scene was the rise of the zombies. It was so haunting and yet so epic, for lack of a better term.

Please watch the clip:

I guess what I love about these scenes is that the zombies rise out of the ground in the typical zombie nature: stiff, eyes closed, slow and drone-like but what I also like is the POV of the zombie rising out of the ground. I feel that it adds to the mysteriousness I guess. The close ups also a well done since it puts your right there and exposes you to the dirty grittiness of the film. The shot where the zombies are walking through the abandoned town gave me chills because it was so reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead but it had a touch of Western to it. It just felt right.

I don’t know, I think I am just rambling about nothing but I would argue that this is one of the best ‘zombies coming out of the ground’ scenes ever. I’m also sure that Carpenter was inspired by this when he filmed Vampires, when Valek and his minions rise from the ground.

Note: The clip was taken from YouTube so that's why the quality is so bad.

Terror in the Aisles 4: Undead By Dawn

This past Friday, Portage Theater hosted another Terror in the Aisles but this time it was aimed towards the zombie subculture, so naturally I had to tag along. This time around they were going to show Night of the Living Dead and Fulci’s Zombie on 35mm print and then they presented to us REC 2, the Midwest premiere. In between each break there would be ‘trailer trash’ and independent short zombie films. It’s also good to note that I finally realized who actually started the Terror in the Aisles film festival and it was none other than Chicago’s own… Rusty Nails.

The evening started off with 20 minutes of trailer trash that was somehow consolidated into 3 trailers. The first trailer was for the brilliant film Mean Streets. The second trailer was for the gorefest that is Dead Alive and the last trailer was for Gobstopper, which I have to talk about.

Gobstopper

I’ll admit, when I saw the trailer for this I let out an expression of slight disgust because I thought the concept for it was really tacky and stupid. However, I warmed up to the idea of a Willie Wonka going bat-shit insane and using real people to make his candy. I found it hysterical that Christopher Lloyd agreed to play the part of the crazed chocolatier. Slugworth is racked up in chains and on the verge of death, the Oompa Loompas have bloody handprints on their shirts; it all looks like great fun and I would love to see it.

Official site.

Afterwards the showed us a brief 20 minute clip for One for the Fire: The Legacy of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and I was a little bored by the clip, but than again… it was only half of the movie so I would want to see the full film eventually.

And now for the films:

Night of the Living Dead

This was shown on a 35mm print and it was nice to see this in the theater as opposed to watching it late night on TV. I forgot how character driven the film was and how the arcs molded out throughout the film. I also forgot how Barbra looked completely stoned out of her mind the whole time, specifically when she is touching the lace on the couch. It’s also nice to note that the zombies in these films are significantly more brutal than the latter Romero zombies because they pick up rocks and bash in windows.

There was a Q&A with Bill Heinzman afterwards and he was the man who started it all, the very first zombie to ever appear in Night of the Living Dead and the first modern zombie. He was a fun guy and he did his zombie walk for all of us.

Bill recalling his time working for George.

Bill doing his zombie walk for the audience.
And the crowd goes wild!

Me and Bill.
I know, I’m a fan boy.

REC 2

I did not see REC but I did see Quarantine and from what I know, Quarantine is a direct, almost word-for-word remake of REC so I did understand what was going on in REC 2. All I can say is that I really enjoyed this film and I enjoyed the perspective of having 3 different cameras. Even the twist, which is in the beginning, is great and why these people are suddenly going crazy. I’ve come to the conclusion that these found-footage films are always creepy because they really utilized the silence in the movie.

They also held a zombie contest for who is the most sexy looking zombie, who is the funniest zombie and how is the most disgusting looking zombie. Needless to say, it was no Zombie Pageant

Zombie (aka Zombie 2)

Where can I begin with this movie; it’s campy, it’s corny, it’s really good, it’s epic and the score is hypnotic. This was the first time I saw this film and I have to say… after the zombie vs. shark scene I knew it would get better. I love the idea of having zombies, as part of some voodoo, terrorize an island and it was executed perfectly. The gore was fantastic but sadly that can’t be said for the acting.

I’ll have a full review of Zombie on Buy Zombie.

The sexy zombies.

Shockingly, I did not see Kitty Zombie at all during this event. Overall, it was a fun time at the Portage and as I always like to state during these event treatments, it was really nice to see all these films on the big screen.

Night of the Living... Spiders

For the first time in my life I saw Kingdom of the Spiders and I did so because a lot of people recommended the movie to me so I finally caved in. On the surface, and to most people, the movie is a classic example of a cheesy movie with really hammy acting. However for people like me, who are afraid of spiders, this movie was actually quite frightening and uneasy. Yeah, like Arachnophobia this movie really got to me and I think I pinpointed why, out of all the spider movies that I have seen, this movie is scarier from the rest. I think the same thing goes for Arachnophobia but that movie had humor to lighten up the mood, this movie did not.

As I watched this movie I noticed that like Arachnophobia the spiders in this movie are your generic tarantula, they are not mutated or genetically enhanced and they are not oversized so it makes it feel more real. By making the spiders’ generic, it makes the audience think that this could happen because the science and the logic is there. There are several types of spiders that hunt in colonies and when food is deprived, they go apeshit. However, it does seem a little far-fetched that they would wrap the entire town in spider webs. I guess it’s the idea that it could happen, getting covered in spiders and eventually getting killed by them, is what scares me.

The other thing that I noticed is that the film is a lot more morbid than most killer spider movies. The movies that have giant killer spiders are gorier and more violent and it’s a given that they are going to have giant webs to go with their giant bodies. In this film, the small spiders somehow found a way to wrap their entire web around other people. There is a montage where we see several townsfolk cocooned in spider webs with spiders crawling all over their bodies. It’s actually pretty frightening and a little more morbid than most. There is hardly in gore in this movie except for one scene when one of the police men gets into a car crash and he falls out dead and bloodied up… and then the spiders crawl all over him.

You’ll also notice that they kill people in the most random and seemingly safest places. Take for example: there is a scene when an airplane pilot is flying his plane in the sky and then out of the clear blue, spiders engulf his body and kill them. Because of that scene, it makes it seem like there is no escaping the spiders. They are everywhere. See, the spiders in this movie have the persona and the walking dead and that brings me to my main point about Kingdom of Spiders.

Yes, this movie bears a lot of resemblance to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Think about it, the spiders kill in groups and they surround their victims as they bite them and probably eat them… just like zombies. A small group of people barricade themselves in a restaurant as the spiders attack the town just like in Night of the Living Dead when the group in the house fends off the zombies. I read somewhere that somebody compared Kingdom of the Spiders to The Birds and although that might be true, I really think it owes a little more Night of the Living Dead than anything else. Both movies have slow and harmless-looking creatures attack people.

In my opinion, this may be a cheesy film but because of my fear of spiders it was more than just a cheesy film… it was a pretty frightening film. I had the same reaction to Arachnophobia because even with the humor aside, it’s still unnerving to see the spiders coat the entire house. Hell, both Kingdom of Spiders and Arachnophobia have custom songs to them so you can say that Arachnophobia owes a lot to Kingdom of Spiders. Everybody borrows from everybody.