Some of Those Responsible: George A Romero

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Amusement Park

This is the strangest film from George A. Romero that I’ve seen. Perhaps O.J. Simpson: Juice on the Loose has more absurdist kitsch, but I’ll never know.

Originally from 1973, thought lost, then rediscovered in 2017, The Amusement Park was some work for hire from Romero in between making Season of the Witch and The Crazies. Commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania, the aim of the film was to show the struggles of the aged, and society’s disregard for their plight, through the allegory of the world’s worst amusement park. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Amusement Park”

October Horrorshow: Creepshow

I’m about to write something that will call into question my credibility as a reviewer of horror films. I believe Creepshow is the best film George Romero directed. Blasphemy! What has led me to such low depths; to such sacrilege against Romero’s groundbreaking classic, Night of the Living Dead? How could I possibly elevate Creepshow not just above the incredible Night, but also above Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead? It might have something to do with the writing. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Creepshow”

October Horrorshow: The Crazies (1973)

Is George Romero paranoid? It’s a possibility. At the very least, I would say he is mistrusting of authority. Night of the Living Dead, his seminal work, and all its follow-ups, showcase a horde of the undead rendering civilization waste. But it’s worth remembering that Romero’s zombies are not supernatural in origin. Rather, they are the result of government experiments gone wrong. Ergo, it’s not the zombies that are the greatest threat to civilization in Romero’s universe. It is the people who take our taxes. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Crazies (1973)”

October Horrorshow: Diary of the Dead

Diary of the DeadThe October Horrorshow rolls on here at Missile Test, when we devote the entire month of October to watching and reviewing horror films. The good, the bad, and the putrid all have a viewing. With this review we wrap up the run of zombie films made by George A. Romero. Sure, we’ve been reviewing them out of order, but it doesn’t really matter.

Diary of the Dead, from 2007, is Romero’s followup to Land of the Dead. For whatever reason, Romero regressed when it came to his budget with this film. Land of the Dead wasn’t exactly a blockbuster production, but it did recoup its $15 million budget three times over, yet Diary of the Dead was made with the paltry amount of $2 million. A cut in resources like this isn’t normally made by choice, but Romero did decide to make this an experimental film of sorts, so maybe it was on purpose.

Anyway, Diary of the Dead takes place on the eve of the zombie outbreak that began during Romero’s first zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead. With each of his Dead films, Romero has played fast and loose with the real world timeline when it comes to the zombie apocalypse, which is why the outbreak in his films occurs in the 1960s, ’70s, and 2000s. In that way, his story of the outbreak is timeless. Despite the intervening years between releases, all films take place within the same continuity. That’s only a flaw if one lets it be so. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Diary of the Dead”

October Horrorshow: Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead movie posterThe zombie hordes have once again invaded the October Horrorshow here on Missile Test. After a short interlude that featured an amorphous blob, a ghostly pedophile, and a village full of children with psychic abilities, we return to the realm of the undead with George A. Romero’s second sequel to his groundbreaking film Night of the Living Dead, 1985’s Day of the Dead.

In this film, the survivors of the zombie apocalypse portrayed in the first two Romero films have been whittled down to a small handful of government scientists and soldiers living in an underground laboratory. Their remaining purposes in life have been reduced to scavenging the surface for supplies, searching in vain for other survivors, and researching the zombie condition, in an attempt to find a cure. The new order of things is open to interpretation among the group, as only the scientists have any interest in continuing the experiments. Their juvenile military protectors don’t seem to find any useful purpose in the scientists’ work, and increasingly assert their control over their egghead compatriots with threats and intimidations. Romero establishes the hostile attitudes these two groups hold for each other early on, and the viewer can be assured that this conflict can be even more dangerous than that presented by the undead. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Day of the Dead”

October Horrorshow: Dawn of the Dead

It’s October once again. The leaves are changing, the humidity is low, and the air is full of the smell of blood. That’s right, October is the month of Halloween, and also when film buffs the world over celebrate the greatest genre of film — horror. Missile Test has joined in the celebration, dedicating the entire month of October to watching and reviewing horror films. The good. The bad. The putrid. There’s no rhyme or reason here. If it bleeds, it leads. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Dawn of the Dead”

October Horrorshow: Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living DeadOctober has arrived. The leaves are changing, the air is cool and crisp after a brutal summer, and blood is in the air. October is the best time of the year to watch horror films, for obvious reasons. With that in mind, it is time, once again, for the October Horrorshow, when Missile Test devotes the entire month to watching and reviewing horror films. The good, the bad, the putrid, it doesn’t matter. Missile Test never met a movie it wouldn’t watch, for at least fifteen minutes, anyway. But that’s not a problem today, for today’s review is of the horror classic Night of the Living Dead, from iconic filmmaker George Romero.

Before watching for this review, I hadn’t seen Night of the Living Dead since I was a teenager, possibly even as long as twenty years ago. It didn’t scare me then, and it doesn’t scare me now, but that doesn’t mean Night of the Living Dead is a bland horror film. It just means that it came from a different era. It is only after being long inured to anything less than mercilessly graphic horror that old horror films lose some punch. Luckily for the viewer, Night of the Living Dead isn’t all scares. It’s a well-crafted film, still very taut throughout, and well worth the watch. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Night of the Living Dead”

October Horrorshow: Land of the Dead

Cracked.com recently featured an article about surviving a zombie apocalypse. It concluded that all we know and all we’ve learned about surviving from zombie horror films is wrong. Tactics such as raiding the local gun store and fleeing from cities have become so imprinted on our psyches, Cracked argues, that everyone will have the same ideas, and those ideas will serve to create nothing but the world’s largest smorgasbord for the undead. They have a point. Well, they would, if the danger of a zombie apocalypse were real. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Land of the Dead”