living dead reviews
"They're coming to get you, Barbra!"
The masterful terror and gory images of George A. Romero's apocalyptic Living Dead trilogy are in
turns brilliant, terrifying and sickening, and rarely boring or predictable. The gradual worldwide
spread of mysteriously resurrected zombies, the unburied dead, is chronicled from NIGHT, to
DAWN, to DAY. Could there be a DUSK OF THE DEAD in the works? One can only hope.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD Starring Duane Jones, Judith
O'Dea, Russel Streiner, Karl Hardman and Keith Wayne. Written and directed by George A.
Romero. 1968
The landmark horror film of the century, Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is a
downright terrifying and unnerving chiller, where the rural Pittsburgh countryside is taken under seige
by a legion of zombies.
No one knows quite how or why, but the unburied dead are coming back to life to feed on the
living. A small group of poor souls barracade themselves inside an isolated farmhouse, and must
figure out how to defend themselves against the persistant (and hungry) undead.
It's a disturbing vision, amplified by the grainy black-and-white photography and low low budget. In
a side note, due to these characteristics the film barely got released originally. It eventually wound
up playing -- unrated (there was no MPAA yet) -- during afternoon matinee showings to young
children, who fled the theatres crying.
There will never be a film like this again, a bleak and unrelenting voyage that practically invented the
idea of zombies. Don't watch this alone. Horror, frightening scenes, brutal violence, brief nudity.
MPAA: NR
Theatre Branch, Ontario: R
CVR: R
DAWN OF THE DEAD Starring David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H.
Reiniger, Gaylen Ross and Tom Savini. Written and directed by George A. Romero. 1978
After a decade of rest, the series returned in 1978 flooded with stomach-churning technicolor gore
(by FX master Savini)
The film explores consumerism in its barest sense -- in shopping, and cannibalism.
The nightmarish plague of emotionless zombies continues, and all of mankind struggles to survive.
The living are being rounded up by the National Guard, and private residency is no longer allowed.
One opening scene shows a ghetto apartment's dwellers getting shot to pieces for storing zombies.
Why? "Because they still believed there's respect in dying."
Four survivors flee the city in a helicopter, and touch-down on an abandoned shopping mall
inhabited only by the living dead. They set up a home, and try to conquer the hungry forms
surrounding them.
However, this set-up is the weakest part of the movie. When the desperate humans finally claim the
mall as theirs, then undergo their own zombie-like breakdown into conformity and materialism,
DAWN OF THE DEAD becomes an outstanding masterpiece until the end credits roll. Once you
get past the first half hour, you're in for a classic.
Most viewers will not get this far, unfortunately, because it's a harrowing, grotesque, and violent
vision. It runs around 130 minutes, but the terrific Director's Cut (the original European version)
adds on about eleven mi
MPAA: Unrated
Theatre Branch, Ontario: R
CVR: R
DAY OF THE DEAD Starring Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato,
Jarlath Conroy and Richard Liberty. Written and directed by George A. Romero. 1985
Undeniably the weakest of the Living Dead trilogy, DAY OF THE DEAD takes place in a
not-so-distant future, where the dead now cover most of the earth. A group of scientists and military
men live in a subterranian base where they experiment on the zombies, to test possible domesticity.
The film opens with a frightening scene, where hundreds of grasping zombie arms tear through a wall
at the heroine. It goes downhill from there, until a satisfying collage of gruesome bloodletting at the
finale. (The best? One guy's skin is peeled back off his face, and another is torn in half.)
It's talky, and impressively bad in some small, rare cases. It's the kind of film that demands a
follow-up, to correct the errors. Brutal violence, horror, frightening scenes, coarse language.
MPAA: Unrated
Theatre Branch, Ontario: R
CVR: R
Email: oziass@angelfire.com
