George Romero

Dawn of the Dead

Creepshow

Greetings, my ghouls! Can you believe we’re already at the end of October?? I would say I’m surprised but my favorite month of the year always flies by too fast, leaving me very little time or energy to get through all of the things I want to do—and all of the movies I want to watch. The good thing is that time is fake, and the confines of the Halloween season could never dictate when I start and stop watching horror movies so while this may be the last double horror feature for awhile, I guarantee you it will not be the last. I wanted to close out spooky season (which, again, never ends in my book) with some films from a pro and pioneer of the horror genre, the Father of the Zombie Film: George A. Romero. This is not Romero’s first appearance on Double Feature Thursday, the last time I explored this director’s horror-imbued resume was with his iconic arthouse vampire flick Martin—which was, to me, his most frightening film. But Romero is best-known for his contribution to, and innovation of, the zombie film, which he revolutionized with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. This film kickstarted an entire subgenre and forever became associated with the image of the zombie, no matter how depictions of the undead may exist now, there is no denying Romero’s influence upon reanimated corpses and their aesthetic, behavior, etc. Night of the Living Dead was guerrilla filmmaking, and with a tiny budget and limited resources, Romero was still able to direct a compelling horror narrative with unknown actors and Bosco Chocolate for blood. The unprecedented success of this film allowed Romero to continue directing, writing, and crafting even more creative and genre-defining horror like The Crazies and Martin, but eventually he returned to his Living Dead series with Dawn of the Dead in 1978. While Dawn of the Dead is not connected to Night of the Living Dead’s story, it does expand upon the ideas and scenarios Romero depicted in his first film, showing the effects of a zombie apocalypse on a much larger scale (with a much larger budget.) Dawn of the Dead begins in immediate chaos, as we’re shown a television station and its workers frantically working and shuffling around. Fran, a higher up at this station, is desperately trying to hold her team together, as a horrendous plague that brings the dead back to violent life inexplicably takes over the country. This network is currently airing an interview between health specialists, discussing the fact that the dead are returning to life to kill, but several other networks have lost their signal, and the urban areas of the country are especially falling apart. Fran’s boyfriend Stephen pops up out of nowhere and suggests they steal the station’s helicopter to escape, as tensions and paranoia and an army of the dead begin to rise. Across town, a SWAT team is investigating an apartment building that is seemingly infested with this plague, but a trigger-happy, racist cop (redundant, maybe) is killing basically anyone in sight. I didn’t think this film could get more frenzied, but these scenes in the apartment building had my mouth agape in utter disbelief of the (mostly needless) carnage. Romero always has a way of capturing the ugliest sides of humanity, and Dawn of the Dead may be the greatest example of this. Long before you ever see a zombie there is so much violence, so much death, so much terror, which kept me firmly glued to the screen. Oddly enough, when the zombies finally did show up, that’s exactly when I started to lose a bit of interest, and I’m not entirely sure why. Eventually, Fran and Stephen meet up with two of the surviving SWAT bros, Roger and Peter, and they all helicopter away from the rapidly-decaying city limits. In their bird’s eye view, they witness the slow and swift devastation of humanity—some communities are completely empty, other, more lucky folks in rural areas seem to be having an easier time with their surplus of guns and wide, open space. Our group of protagonists eventually find themselves at a massive, seemingly calm shopping mall, where they decide to set up camp. In theory, the mall is the perfect place to hide out in the apocalypse—especially this mall, which has a grocery store, plenty of clothes stores, an arcade, an ice skating rink, and most conveniently, a gun shop. What’s so chilling about this setting is not just the plethora of spaces a zombie could be a hiding in, not just the creepy mannequins that they use for target practice, but the fact that it gives these humans time to think and plan and reflect on what may become of their lives. Part of the intrigue of this film is its meandering use of these four human beings and all of their anxieties, which really convey the level of insanity and isolation one can reach at the end of the world. Even still, Fran and Stephen have each other, as do Roger and Peter. What I never predicted about Dawn of the Dead is that it would be centered around a queer love story, but Romero wrote these two SWAT bros their own tragic rom com amidst the destruction of humanity, and I think that’s beautiful. Sure, no romance is ever explicitly spoken about, but so much of this film is spent displaying the growing, eye-gazing bond between these two men of the law, who no longer have a job other than survival and the protection of their little pocket of peace they’ve found at the mall. But, as I suspected, their blissful life at the mall becomes threatened—and not just by zombies. I overall did enjoy Dawn of the Dead, and I didn’t mind the jarring vacillation between sincere grimness and goofy humor (like when a biker gang pies a bunch of zombies in the face or the multiple scenes where several humans are very chipper and cocky during this apocalypse), but I did find myself losing interest at times. I’m used to the pale, slow-moving Romero zombies, and here they were equipped with much freakier effects (and more realistic-looking blood), but what I don’t care for are slow-moving humans. Maybe I’m just too distracted lately, maybe my attention span has never been great, but I found myself unfortunately bored during some of the more extended scenes of conversation. Last week, I noted the slowness of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and how it, at times, made me lose focus, but Dawn of the Dead really tested my patience. Not since I watched The Last of Us have I begged fictional characters to not be so stupid around zombies, and not since watching Showgirls have I desired fictional conversations on screen to make sense—but Dawn of the Dead placed me into both of these mindsets. I was fine with the absurdity of its premise and the silly-looking zombies, I really was, but the humanity of it all began to grate on me. Call me a sicko, but I guess I was more intrigued by the carnage and the flesh being ripped apart from people’s bodies than I was by the interpersonal drama of this foursome. When I planned these Romero features I knew I’d be watching at least one zombie film—it’s practically required and also hard to avoid—but I had no idea where to go next. This freaky filmmaker had such an impressive and innovative career in film, from his low-budget indies to his well-known cult-classics, I could’ve taken this night in many directions. And while I still have many more Romero films sitting on my watchlist, I had to round out October with a film that satisfies my appetite for the spooky and the goofy: his 1982 film Creepshow. Creepshow features a series of five frightening vignettes directed by Romero, and written by Stephen King, in his screenwriting debut. As is often the case with anthology horrors, some segments were better than others, but overall Creepshow was a wacky and entertaining collection that offered several different flavors of fear, and a star-studded cast (Ed Harris, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall and more.) The film begins with a young boy (played by Stephen King’s son, Joe) being reprimanded by his father for reading a horror comic. The mean dad throws the comic in the trash, and when his wife tries to speak up, he says “That’s why god made fathers”, which is one of the creepier moments of this creepshow. In the trashcan, the pages of the 50s-style comic flutter in the wind, revealing pages upon pages of stories, each one acted out for our viewing pleasure. From a young, twinky Ed Harris running away from the dead to Stephen King himself playing a simple-minded farmer who’s faced with a meteor on his land, to Ted Danson and a sadistic Leslie Nielsen fighting on the beach to stuffy college professors discovering a mysterious crate from the 1800s, I thoroughly enjoyed Creepshow’s showcase of scares—no matter how goofy or gutless some were. Each vignette was tied together in a visual-comic style, where we’d see entire scenes take place within colorful panels. This made for some truly incredible editing and insane visual effects that only made Creepshow more of a cartoonish, but still thrilling ride. I can’t say that I was particularly scared until the final vignette, which pictures E.G. Marshall as a Howard Hughes-type figure surrounded by the most terrifying thing I can personally imagine: cockroaches. I won’t spoil anymore of this actually creepy Creepshow, but I do encourage you to watch it if you’re looking for a not-so-scary but still-classic horror movie to visit next Tuesday. That’s all the horror I have for now, but don’t you worry, you know a spooky lil bitch like me can’t avoid this genre for too long. So until next time, dear reader, creep it real!