The Crazies

Okay I'm back and yes we are finally on an outbreak movie. I just thought it was in poor taste to have done such last month. So as we are under quarantine we may as well get on with this so I went with a master of horror, George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Season of the Witch, Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Creepshow, Day of the Dead and Monkey Shines) and naturally as this is one of his earlier films, we are back to Pennsylvania. This is The Crazies a.k.a. The Mad People and Code Name: Trixie

Virus can't touch you in flavor country.

Evans City has a crisis on its hands with a military plane downed in the mountains and its cargo leaks into the city's main water supply. DUN DUN DUN!!!! Oh you know the score here. Plausible deniability, military attempting to get a handle on it and it's gone completely pear shaped or tits up if you prefer. Naturally we discover our virulent affliction is man made, code name of Trixie. Nothing good with come of Trixie. Keep that in mind.

Firefighters David (Will MacMillan of The Enforcer Salvador, Bad Girls, NYPD Blue, Las Vegas, The West Wing, Raising the Bar and Jada) and Clank (Harold Wayne Jones of The Crazies, Knightriders, The Paper Chase, Fantasy Island, Hunter and Provoked) get the call to a blazing inferno formally a house as the husband/father killed his wife and set his house alight! Meanwhile, David's pregnant girlfriend Judy (Lane Carroll of Hercules in New York and The Crazies) is assisting Dr. Brookmyre (Will Disney of The Crazies) to the children of said arsonist. Shockingly enough, they suffered from some burns.

Clarice Starling?

A massive military police action with soldiers donning gas masks and hazmat suits are blocking the town. The obvious joke er um named officer in charge, Major Ryder (Harry Spillman of Dirtymouth,The Crazies, Born Again, All My Children, The Sex O' Clock and Comfortably Numb) uses the hospital as base command and they're here to help with the virus. They claim the virus either outright kills them or drives the subject completely bonkers.

Ryder's higher-up Colonel Peckem (Lloyd Hollar of The Crazies, Good Times, Siege, Lou Grant, The Jeffersons, Boardwalk, Rage of Angels and Kiss of Death) and his pet scientist Dr. Watts (Richard France of There's Always Vanilla, The Crazies, Dawn of the Dead, Vortex, Dreams Come True, The Sorrows of Dolores and Graveyard Shift) have an experimental cure they can unleash. I had to rewind to that scene because Dr. Watts is the same man that plan the scientists calling officials and journalists dummies in Dawn of the Dead. So yeah I missed that whole exposition plot dump due to laughing.

Dammit, left the coffee pot on.

With quarantine being issued about the town, the soldiers are doing house to house searches trying to help folk and have to shoot the loonies. It's part of the Midwest, how will you know the difference?

As a box office bomb, this film hit cult status with the VHS generation and well because the director is George A Romero.

Some fun film facts now!

Most of the bit characters including the white hazmat soldiers were paid local high school students.

The massive house fire was actually the local fire department destroying an abandoned house, so Romero and crew set up cameras and was allowed to film the whole event, creating a great effect on a ridiculously low budget.

Most of the screams, gunfire, soldier and townsfolk dialogue and sound effects had to be added in post-production ADR in Romero's basement of the Latent Image Studio.

It's eerie, relevant and frankly will ennerve the right folk like it was intended to do. Romero's concern about the control the government has over the country worried him constantly.

Because of its cult status, in 2010 a remake was released shot primarily in Lennox, Springwood Lake and Panorama Iowa. Thanks to TubiTV, I got to watch this and several other older horror films. A quick update for parents. The big spoiler is kids do get shot in this flick. I myself have no children but I am an uncle and it creeped me out.   So yes I give this spoiler out due to its disturbing aspect of the film.

And yes today's film has titty in it.  Sorry lady readers, the man children were going to ask me anyway.

Premarital sex?  Heavens!

Rotten Reelz Reviews Audio Review #41: George Romero's Land of the Dead

Hey gang!  I screwed up again and forgot to put the review on here.   My apologies.

As always, the link is up and sorry again about that.   Stay tuned!  I will be posting a review on Vampire Journals as well.

Zombies for Halloween: Day of the Dead

Zombies for Halloween brings us another helping of flesh devouring monsters as Romero strikes again with a cornucopia of undead so grab a melee weapon, some MREs, water and hope for the best. This is Day of the Dead.

When the wave gets violent.

In continuation from Dawn of the Dead, we follow another group of survivors consisting of scientists, military and civilians struggling through the days, losing hope in ever defeating the onslaught of the undead. Happy pills anyone? Our story revolves around Sarah, (Lori Cardille of Ryan’s Hope, The Equalizer, Tales from the Darkside, Dead and Alive: The Race for Gus Farace and No Pets) an anthropologist assigned by the remnants of the remaining government to solve the zombie epidemic. Along with an electrician McDermott (Jarlath Conroy of The Elephant Man, Joe, Law& Order and Kinsey) a horrendous Jamaican accented pilot John (Terry Alexander of Flashpoint, The Horror Show, Hurricane and Conspiracy Theory) combing southern Florida attempting to find any signs of human life. Sarah’s fellow scientists working around the clock with different fields of expertise work with substandard equipment in a desperate attempt to combat the ongoing plague. Dr. Logan dubbed Frankenstein (Richard Liberty of The Crazies, Love Child, Miami Vice, Flight of the Navigator and Vengeance: The Story of Tony Cimo) is experimenting with zombie’s lower brain functions in the anticipation the undead can be taught a few tricks. Roll over, fetch and not eat my leg I guess are the primary ones. 

Damn, my nose is itchy.  Hey, where is my nose??!!!

The commanding officer of the base sent them on recon to failure; as they return from the wasted trip they find he died in the middle of the night and is replaced by next in line of command Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato of Effects, Knightriders, Spenser: For Hire, Gung Ho and Alienator) a man barely holding his unit together (no penis jokes please) and his own sanity when all he wants to do cut bait and get the Hell out of dodge. The biggest issue is going where? How many dead versus living are there? Is food and ammunition plentiful? What of civilization and heck is little Timmy stuck in the well?

The clock is ticking for our scientists and Rhode is less stable than nitroglycerin in a paint shaker, will there be salvation or damnation?

This is the part we like to call fun facts. Working diligently on the set of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, the founding members of KNB EFX Gregory Nicotero, Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman (Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, Creepshow 2 Phantasm II, Monkey Shines, The Horror and Halloween 5)cut their teeth under George Romero’s third zombie movie, made victims as Greg had an animatronics head made after he is squibbed (rigged with a light ignition charge with fake blood packs), Howard get a head shot squib and twirls to the ground while Robert safely ducked out of acting in this film but got stuck handing out the contacts for zombie extras.

Pace of the story is drawn out but for image impact to establish the futility of the struggle and the lack of humanity as the hearts harden in order to carry on. Romero brings us hope and despair in this movie. So your gore nuts will be happy with the patented work of Tom Savini and the creation of what will be KNB EFX. For the zombie nuts well hey there be plenty o dead roaming about.

Beats doing a flick with Ross Hagen I guess.

Zombies for Halloween: Land of the Dead

We begin with Day 1 of Zombies for Halloween. Sounds like a protest poster held up by a dead man. This time around we go back to the Godfather of zombies himself, George Romero. Now for those unfamiliar with this name...for crying out loud go on IMDB.com and take a gander. Only been making horror films since 1968, people. Anywho, we follow the story of one of the surviving cities of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh surrounded on two sides by the rivers and the last entry covered by an electrified fence. The former rich and powerful still live in luxury as the working class still in squalor. This is Land of the Dead.

Digital dead!!!  FLEE!!!!

Also referred as George Romero's Land of the Dead, a small army search for supplies, food and medical as well additional ammo. With a handful of cash, debating and influence the city's headman Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper of Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Hoosiers, Blood Red, True Romance and Speed) put up the funds to build Dead Reckoning, a heavy armored vehicle loaded with rockets, HMG (Heavy Machine Guns) and a decent missile rack. Armed with fireworks as a distraction for zombies, an armed team with bikes and cars swoop in taking down the nearest dead in the way while the team gets medicine and food. The team led by Riley Denbo (Simon Baker of Ride with the Devil, Red Planet, The Guardian, Smith, The Devil Wears Prada, Not Forgotten and The Mentalist), electronic expert, designer of Dead Reckoning, man of the people and all around decent guy. Denbo notices the zombies exhibiting intelligence and possible memory.

This rug is itchy, man.

This is his last mission as he has enough funds to get a car, fuel and leave Pittsburgh forever...until a low ranking slinger of booze and hookers pimp name of Chihuahua (Phil Fondacaro of Willow, Phantasm II, Ghoulies II, Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, Bordello of Blood, The Creeps and Hercules). Unofficially Chihuahua works for Kaufman as does the rest of the town and those under the luxury condos in Fiddler's Green. Kaufman has more than a few henchmen to take out his "trash". Unfortunately Kaufman has a lackey with delusions of grandeur, Cholo (John Leguizamo of Miami Vice, Die Hard 2, Carlito's Way, Executive Decision, Spawn, Ice Age and Assault on Precinct 13) has aspirations of joining Fiddler's Green given the amount of money he has will afford him not only a place at the Green but to live off the dividends.

Denbo and his buddy sharpshooter Charlie (Robert Joy of Mds, The Lazarus Child, The Hills Have Eyes, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem and CSI: NY) get tossed in jail saving a girl Slack (Asia Argento of XXX, The Keeper, Land of the Dead, Last Days, Marie Antoinette, Mother of Tears, Drifters and Dracula 3D) from pit zombies. All three are in deep kimchi until Cholo convinces the rest of the Dead Reckoning crew to swipe the badass tank and threaten to blow it up until they get cash for it. Say wasn't this a zombie film?

After the last town the crew raided, the remaining zombies led by a zombie/former gas station attendant known as Big Daddy (Eugene Clark of Night Heat, 3 Men and a Baby, TekWar: The Series, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, Robocop: Prime Directives and The L.A. Complex) and even learn to cross the waters as there was no fear for drowning. Will the Pitt survive the incoming undead onslaught?? Will classes ever get along?? What the f**k is cash good for in the land of the dead??

A few bits of trivia now. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright make a guest appearance as photo-booth zombies thanks to Shaun of the Dead being the hit that it was. Practical SFX wizard/stuntman/actor/director and producer Tom Savini reprised his biker character from Dawn of the Dead but as a zombie. This was the first "Living Dead" series that had digital effects in it.

Fiddler's Green is actually old maritime folklore for pirates and sailors who have served at least 50 some odd years at sea. An afterlife of legend full of music, dancing and debauchery.   With a $19 million dollar budget pulled in $45 million so not a bad turn of profit. 

Huh, figured there would be more zombies.

George A. Romero Week: Knightriders

Hey kids welcome back to Day 3 of George A. Romero Week. Quick question, what do you get when you combine Arthurian legends, the SCA and bikers?? Well it does sound like Sidehackers: Medieval Times but in fact it is not. Written and directed by our zombie master himself, George A. Romero pens a tale of camaraderie, love and hurdles to overcome. This is Knightriders.

'Sup?

Billy: I had another dream.

Merilin: That right?

Black spoiler again. Same black bird.

Merlin: Way you get knocked around, you're bound to have some weird dreams, Billy.

Billy Davis (Ed Harris of The Abyss, State of Grace, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Firm, Milk Money, Just Cause, Apollo 13 and The Rock) leads a traveling troupe of renaissance faire folk into jousting on motorcycles. A mash-up of the rebels of the road meets chivalry. He bestows his people with the Arthurian ideals of Camelot in that on the road they are equal one and all, in spite of what society and the norms may say. Untold number of injuries, the pressure for repair and living money as well as this dream of a black bird haunt Billy as he tries to keep the spirits of the crew. A promoter Bomtempi (Martin Ferrero of Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, Jurassic Park, Get Shorty and Heat) want to represent the troupe and get them the big time gigs, make a bit of money on his end and present them to the world over. Billy thinks it would be selling out and says no.

My petticoat is caught in the chain!!!

Later he is bashed up and down by a corrupt cop demanding a shakedown and gets tossed in the clink for the night. Making his way to the fairground where the gang are supposed to perform next and is appalled that some of the members want to join the promoter. Adhering the wisdom of Merlin (Brother Blue of Knightriders) Billy starts wondering if he can pull the troupe back together or should he step aside and let them go their own way.

Another cycle troupe lead by Morgan (Tom Savini of Dawn of the Dead, Maniac, Creepshow, Creepshow 2, Innocent Blood and From Dusk Til Dawn) tells the gang this is easy money, your name will be recognized and you can show everyone what you are made of and so on. The crew is divided on the potential for fame and fortune and the love and loyalty to Billy.

A few words now about the movie.

Stephen King and his wife play spectators at the fair because he was working on the script for Creepshow with Romero. Filmed in 90 days and rounding out to 146 minutes, there was mild and brief nudity but deemed enough vulgar language to knock down the film's TV edited version to 115 minutes. Gotta keep the whipper snappers from learning those gosh darn dirty words and fleshy bits.

This armor chaffes!!

George A. Romero Week: Martin

Greetings Romero fans and welcome back to Day 2 of George A. Romero Week. Well I thought initially like so many that Romero was unable to get away from his zombie comfort zone and could not provide us any terror aside from the shambling dead that rot. I was, in fact wrong and discovered a disturbed character haunted by visions of vampiric seduction, impeding torch and pitchfork wielding mobs and the inability to tell if they are real or simply imagined. This is Martin.

Hmm?  Yes, Satan?

Martin Madahas: Things only seem to be spoilers. There is no real magic. There's no real magic ever.

Our movie opens on an overnight train with a young man (John Amplas of Dawn of the Dead, Bloodeaters, Knightriders, Creepshow, Midnight, Day of the Dead and No Pets) Martin after he is sedated a young women with a syringe filled with God knows what, slices open her arm with a razor blade and proceeds to drink her blood. A tad kooky, perhaps but maybe he is just misunderstood. That next morning he gets on another train to Braddock Pennsylvania with a man garbed in white (Lincoln Maazel of NET Playhouse and Martin). The man is actually Martin's great uncle Cuda, a strict Lithuanian Catholic that has no time for fantasies and absurd behavior and is highly suspicious that Martin's immediate family had died in Indianapolis while he was untouched.

Santa after Jenny Craig.

He takes Martin in his home but informs him there are rules and obligations to be met and will be met for anyone under his roof. His cousin Cristina (Christine Forrest of Three Stops to Murder, Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Creepshow, Monkey Shines and The Dark Half) is forbidden to interact with Martin at all which.. would make dinner time tough. Treating his grandnephew like an outcast the boy is frustrated and asks why, Cuda responds if anyone in Braddock is murdered he will drive a stake right through Martin's heart.

Working in Cuda's butcher shop Martin makes deliveries to several of the local women in town and zeroes in on Mrs. Santini (Elyane Nadeau of Martin) whose husband is out of town so often she tries to snare the lad for herself but it unnerves him the first few times as she is clearly grand uncle's best customers and must curb the beast. He catches a ride to Pittsburgh and targets a woman that looks lonely but he is unsure now of his predatory instincts. Will Martin be found and staked? Will grand uncle lighten up and put on a kicky beret?

Now a few words about our film.

To escape the dreaded "X" rating of the razor blade opening up someone's arm, Romero trimmed the shot down by several seconds because the MPAA found it to be vulgar, violent and unnecessary... yet every vampire movie has protruding fangs driven in a neck or around a collar bone.

Tom Savini did all the stunts, played Arthur, Christina's boyfriend as well as FX makeup for the movie as this was the first time collaborating with Romero but certainly not the last. The Latin exorcism passages read by the priest during Martin's flashback sequences are authentic so get those recorders, tablets and laptops at the ready to translate it just in case you have a distant relative that seems a bit hinky.

Narrowed down to 95 minutes Romero feels the additional 160 minutes that was removed really allows the viewers inside Martin's mind and psychosis to with Cuda talks to the boys the vampire lore, how the art of seduction could seem enticing but how they must never stray from the path of the lord. Deep stuff in my opinion.

So wait... you're not Shaun Cassidy?  Get out of my car!

George A. Romero Week: Night of the Living Dead

Good day all and welcome to Day 1 of George A. Romero Week and what better way to start the week off right than with his original work? I have seen this film no less than 75 times because it has been made fun of, marveled after and even used as a project viewing for film students. From the grainy texture of the black & white 35mm Spherical, to the wooden acting of summer stock folk to the desolate farm house that has clearly been abandoned and second hand furniture has been brought in, this movie put the audience on edge about a group of strangers all hiding from the same threat and forced to work together to fend them off. This is Night of the Living Dead.

I'll set the table, you coat yourself in barbecue sauce for the zombies.

Field Reporter: Chief, do you think that we will be able to defeat these spoilers?

Sheriff McClelland: Well, we killed nineteen of them today right in this area. The last three, we caught them trying to claw their way into an abandoned shed. They must have thought someone was in there, but there wasn't though. We heard them making all kinds of noises so we came over, beat 'em off and blasted them down.

Johnny (Russell Streiner of Night of the Living Dead, There's Always Vanilla, The Majorettes and Night of the Living Dead 1990) and his sister Barbara (Judith O' Dea of Night of the Living Dead, The Pirate, Claustrophobia, October Moon and Women's Studies) have trekked out deep into rural Pennsylvania to a yearly visit to their father's grave. Barbara does not seem comfortable around gravestones as Johnny teases her prior to be attacked by a strange man with tattered clothes. No, it is not a zealous hobo but in fact a reanimated body that wrestles with Johnny before bashing his head into a gravestone. Barbara lunges for the car after performing the flattering ankle twist and hurling herself in the dirt which most feminists are probably irate at this point, dives in the car and manages to wreck a slow moving car be simply not steering worth a tinker's damn. Now in her defense she just saw her brother murdered and a shambling weirdo chase her.

Jimmy Carter: the hidden drunken years.

She flees across the countryside spotting a farmhouse and scurries into it. A quick discovery around the house she finds a mangled corpse of a woman and prepares to flee yet again when a truck arrives with a man dressed in a neat cardigan flogs a couple of zombies allowing him to get into the house and slam the door shut. Barbara mentally checks out for a good chunk of the film as Ben (Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead, Ganja & Hess, Losing Ground, Beat Street, Vampires and To Die For) proceeds to drown Barbara in a vat of exposition to kill time while he does his Bob Villa impression and fortifies the house... with a few nails and boards. So instead of taking spare doors off of rooms and barricading the windows and believe you me there are a lot of windows in this place, we find there are more people hiding out in the fruit cellar. Can we all get along in this time of crisis or will we all be zombie chow in no time flat?

A few interesting facts of the film now. 200 extras were cast to be the townsfolk as well as zombies back to back and given how dimly lit our movie is and the makeup work did obscure more than a handful of our extras.

The ground breaking aspects to this film are one of the first movies to graphically depict violent murders on screen, first film shot in Pittsburgh and the first truly successful independent films ever made. Casting a black man (Duane Jones) as lead role having to slap sense into a woman, being violent and judgmental to the rest of his cast in the late sixties is considered an edgy choice by many but Romero didn't look at this with racist glasses as viewed it as shooting a flick with a friend.

Due to the lack of knowledge of distribution, Romero did not see a fraction of the money the distributors might as well just sauntered by him with the gross takings.

George A. Romero co-wrote this with John A. Russo who later went on to pen for The Return of the Living Dead film in 1985 with writer/director Dan O' Bannon.

One step closer and your crotches are toast!