Evil Dead

That is a very impractical way to wield a chainsaw. Just saying.

Ah, Evil Dead. Not generally considered a zombie movie as this series is more about demonic possesion, but awesome nonetheless.

Made on the cheap by a group of now-very-famous friends in 1981, the imprint and influence of this film can be felt on scores of cheap and low budget horror movies on a scale that probably rivals Night of the Living Dead.

You know the plot- 5 friends go to a cabin in the woods, mistakenly read an ancient book that summons forth demons from hell, and one by one get possessed and killed in all sorts of terrifying ways. That setup may have already been dated when this film first debuted, but Evil Dead has a lot going for it.

For one, it was directed by the thoroughly creative and inimitable, if somewhat quircky, Sam Raimi, now probably known better for the Spiderman movies.

It stars cult movie ICON Bruce Campbell, now worshiped by every fanboy and fangirl the world over, in his first major role. It was definetly the this movies sequels that made him, and Raimi, what they are today, but this was the first fledgling step.

It's bloody, weird, and it goes all out. Mock-ups of bodies disintegrate in stop motion. Eyes are gouged. A woman is raped by a tree. This film was so intense for it's time it couldn't even get a American company to release it, though I bet they kicked themselves for that- it became quite popular.

Evil Dead is a cornerstone of horror movie history- even if it's been eclipsed by the fame of it's sequel/remake, the more comedic and polished Evil Dead II. But Evil Dead has that manic energy all its own, that many of these early, first-wave sort of Horror movies have. Instead of rehashing old tropes and delivering what's been done, they were creating the genre in their own image.

If you haven't seen it, this film comes highly recommended if...

• You want to have some sort of horror movie cultural literacy.
• You want to make movies- there are a lot of pretty transparent and inspiring techniques used in here, and if you get a version with commentary/special features you can learn a lot about low-budget film making.
• You like Bruce Campbell- it's worth watching just to see him trying to act whilst obviously constantly getting the shit really kicked out of him.
• You've seen the other Evil Dead films, but somehow missed this one.
• You like good horror movies. Let's face it, you're probably not reading this if this movie isn't your cup of tea.

That said, it is a bit rough. It falls prey to the same trap that most early low budget horror films do- occasional bad pacing, some sketchy editing, frequent boredom. It's the sequel that give this franchise it's massive cult appeal- but it's this film that made it all possible, and it's got enough tricks up it's sleeve to be worth watching.

The Evil Dead (Also 'The Book of the Dead' or 'The Evil Dead, the Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror') - 1981

Directed by Sam Raimi

Written by Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi

Starring Bruce Campbell, Besty Baker, Ellen Sandwiess

Dead Girl

Something terrible is probably in that room.

Dead Girl bills itself as a 'new horror classic' and a 'genre-busting experience' and while that sounds a bit arrogant, it is in some ways true. It's a solid movie, it's easily one of the better and more innovative horror films of the last few years, and it manages to make the well-worn coming-of-age plot seem fresh and relevant without beating you over the head with it, most of the time. 

It starts a little rough. The two main characters, a fast talking asshole named JT and his moody, young-Johhny-Depp-channeling sidekick Rickie, spend the intro lounging around at the high school making the 'duck face' at girls and looking like complete douche bags. However, once they decide to skip class to wander around abandoned buildings and throw 40oz's at walls, the film switches gears and they become either more relateable, or more tolerable. Either way, the intro may contain a few missteps, but this film picks up in a few minutes and doesn't let go.

By and large, this is a movie about growing up. We see Rickie have issues with girls, with his parents, with, as the plot progresses, his friends. The only things that make these stale themes interesting in this film is the way they tie in to the titular 'Dead Girl.'

I'm just going to say this, and it really isn't a spoiler. Anyone who'se seen the box and read the tagline -'You never forget your first time' - knows what this movie is about. It's about people having sex with a female zombie. It's not particularly graphic in terms of what it shows during the necrophiliac lovemaking, but it's not a movie you'd want to watch with your grandparents, or anyone you ever want to have sex with.

The film uses the Dead Girl for all sorts of explorations into the nature of relationships, of sex, of crazy teenage hormones and the mess they can make. To it's credit, it doesn't beat you over the head with much, choosing instead to imply and throw together a few quirky events that tie together well. 

Luckily, people are starting to realize that, at this point, we've seen zombie movies before. We're tired of watching zombies attack people taking shelter in a house. This is one of the first sort of new zombie movies to take that idea to heart- to create a film about something in which zombies happen to be in, instead of a film where the mere presence of zombies is supposed to be enough. 



Dead Girl (2009)

Directed by Gadi Harel, Marcel Sarmiento.

Written by Trent Haaga.

Starring Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Segan, Jenny Spain, Michael Bowen, Candice Accola.

Dawn of the Dead (Original)

George Romero's  Dawn of the Dead is another one of those movies that, if you want to style yourself a zombie movie buff, you'll need to watch, and probably want to own.

Though not quite as influential as Night of the Living Dead, as it brought little new to Romero's zombie formula other than MORE ZOMBIES!!! and COLOUR!!!, Dawn of the Dead is actually quite critically regarded as an excellent satire and one of the better horror movies to come out of the 80's.

The film follows four people who, in the midst of a massive zombie outbreak and general worldwide apocalypse, flee to a helicopter and decide to camp out in a shopping mall.

They manage to chase the zombies out and eek out a more or less normal existence, surrounded by the trappings of a modern world that has long since ceased to function. But will their base desire for material possessions prove their downfall? Will the most dangerous thing, apart from the flesh-hungry undead disco dancers, prove to be other human beings?

All kidding aside, Romero's zombie films, the good ones anyway, have always been able to transcend the genre because they're films about something, that just happen to have zombies in them. Far too many films simply use a 'hey! we've got zombies!' outlook and then spend 60 minutes making heads explode. Not that I'm complaining, there is a time and place for everything, but Dawn of the Dead deserves it's high reputation, and rewards multiple viewings.

This is the DVD that I have currently; it's awesome if you're into this movie, Romero, or behind-the-scenes footage and film-making. It has multiple cuts of the film, multiple commentaries with the actual filmmakers and cast full of interesting tidbits and memories, and a sweet documentary about the making of the film, among other things.

Dawn of the Dead
Directed by George Romero
Written By George Romero
Starring David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gayleen Ross
Effects by Tom Savini

I Am Legend: The tragic story of the book that Hollywood hates.

I Am Legend is an awesome book. It's probably better in memory then in actuality, but I don't really care. I loved that book as a kid, and again as a slightly older kid, and then as whatever the hell I am now.

It's both an excellent horror novel, an engaging portrait of extreme loneliness, and a thrilling adventure. It's author, Richard Matheson, really sort of pioneered the concept of an apocalyptic and inhospitable world populated by things that want to eat you- things created by science, things that could be explained by logic. It's the mixture of science and terror, emotion and gore, that really sell I Am Legend, and cement its place as one of the rather prolific authors best stories.

The book follows Robert Neville, who is, as far as he knows, the only survivor of a worldwide disaster/plague of some sort that turns everyone else into flesh eating, night walking monsters. By day, he ventures into the world, gathering supplies, being depressed and moody, visiting the shrine to his dead family, and methodically searching for, and killing the then comatose monsters.

By night, he retreats to his house/fortress, drinks, and deals with their attempted reprisals. If this sounds simplistic, it isn't- there is a lot to spoil, and the story touches on so many things that it still remains fresh after all these years, despite, at this point, this sort of set-up seeming rather old hat.

Though the books creatures are more akin to vampires then literal zombies, and most snooty 'zombie elitists' (yes, they exist) will sneer at this distinction, most of them behave much more like the zombies that have come to dominate popular culture- and the novel inspired countless zombie movies and tales that came after, especially the granddaddy of them all, Night of the Living Dead.

However, all is not well with this books legacy. It has inspired three different film versions, and all of them are utterly terrible.

The first attempt, 1964's 'The Last Man On Earth', was a joke. It stayed impressively close to the book, but starred Vincent Price as the main character.
With his creepy mannerisms and unsettling voice, he's a perfect villain- but as a hero he just came off like a perverted survivalist nut who was constantly fondling things and impossible to take seriously.

It didn't help that the 'creatures' were made up of what seems to be the least enthusastic extras of any film ever- they're repeated cries for blood sound like some sort of retarded choir practicing selling peanuts.

It also doesn't help that the more 'advanced' zombie vampires, that come out towards the end, look like some weird militant beatnik dance cult. We've seen the future, and it is wearing a beret.

It gets points for being faithful, but loses all of them for being executed so amazingly terribly it makes the whole thing seem silly. I would recommend watching this film, after reading the book, only if you can completely divorce the memory of it from the novel itself.

Here's the trailer:

Next came 'The Omega Man', which is god awful on so many levels- but, at the same time, relentlessly entertaining because of it's sheer cheese factor. You will see many worse movies, but you will never see one quite like this.

It stars Charleston Heston as a man named Robert Neville, which is about the only similarity with the novel. It's got a sassy black girl with a afro, a bunch of shirtless boys on motorcycles, a soundtrack that is so dated and ill-fitting it comes off like some sort of modern art sound clash, and probably the most nonsensical plot that could be dredged up.

Probably the 'best' part of the film are the creatures- instead of the shuffling, animalistic zombies of the novel, Heston is up against some sort of wierd order of albino monks, who run around in robes and wear sunglasses and all appear to have been dipped in flour.

Their weird reliance on medieval weapons and stilted speech patterns totally baffle the mind, as do the scripts constant insistence that Charleton Heston was one of the best scientists of all time, despite him mostly parading around with his shirt off and shooting things at random.

Here's the trailer.

Now of course, we have the recent 'I Am Legend', which pretty much went right everywhere it stayed with the book, and wrong everywhere it didn't. I'm no idealist- I know that to film a novel you have to make concessions for the difference in the medium, to fit everything in- but they changed and bastardized so many things, so needlessly, to make the movie, it's a shame they even share a name.

But lets forget about these three absolute travesties of cinema, and I'm talking mostly to you, Omega Man, though that movie is perfect for a get-drunk-and-watch-terrible-things-and-laugh-uncontrollably-until-someone-chokes-to-death kind of night.

I Am Legend remains an extremely influential, and gripping, novel, that, despite being written in 1954 and dealing extensively with what is now some rather well-treaded post-apocalyptic ground, still feels new and exciting.

Night of the Living Dead

You pretty much have to have seen this movie if you're going to pretend to be even remotely into zombies. This might not be the first zombie movie, but it's certainly the movie that launched the idea of slow moving, feet shuffling, awkward groaning, flesh eating dead people unrelentingly swarming a tiny band of survivors whose tensions and lack of trust ultimately tear them apart...both figuratively, and literally.

Released in 1968, funded and produced independently and haphazardly by George Romero, the so called 'grandfather of the zombie', this film broke all sorts of boundaries. According to wiki, it was the first major film which starred a Black Actor in a non-racial role. It also featured mindless townsfolk eating each other, uptight white men being assholes, and probably one of the most uncomfortable stabbing scenes in the history of cinema.

 
That scene always makes me hold my stomach and shout "OH MY GOD" repeatedly, anyway.

What once was a scoffed at as a depraved and disgusting shlock fest has now entered the Library Of Congress, inspired countless films, movies, games, and low budget musicals, and allowed Romero to make an endless stream of slowly diminishing 'Something OF THE DEAD' films. Seriously, there are like 30 of them at this point. And you'll probably want to watch most of them.

Night of the Living Dead has a lot going for it. It's faux-documentary style and low budget really work in its favour, creating a sort of plausibility that most horror films lack. The acting may range all over the place, but even when it's silly, it rarely detracts from the film itself, it just sort of comes off cute. Even though it's not particularly violent by the standards of today...it still manages to be creepy, gross, and unsettling.

It's got something about it, something lucky. It simply works, both as a horror film, as social commentary, and as a piece of art in general.

One thing it doesn't have anymore, however, is copyright. Apparently, when the decision was made to change the title from "Night of the Flesh Eaters" to "Night of the Living Dead," some poor bloke forgot to add in the copyright information. So, this is film is actually public domain. You can download it, screen it anywhere, hell, you could actually distribute it, if you wanted to. People have- there are a ridiculous number of DVD releases, and some of them ABSOLUTELY MANGLE THE MOVIE.

People have seen fit to re-dub the sound, to colorize the film, to add in their own scenes or cut up existing ones. When buying this film, you have to be careful to buy a version that doesn't suck. Read the reviews, use your google-fu, and ask around. I have included a link below to the best version I've seen. Yes, it's an ad...but I have to eat too!

Night of the Living Dead is one of the corner stones of the zombie machine, and not in the way that, for example, 'Dracula' is to the current vampire craze, or fondling is to genital herpes. This movie pretty much set down the blueprint for these type of films that people are still following to this day, and will probably continue to do in the future.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Directed by George Romero.
Written by John Russo and George Romero.
Starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, and Marilyn Eastman.
Makeup/Effects by Tom Savini.