Review: 'The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue' Blu-ray

After a woman (Christina Galbó) runs over a motorcycle at a petrol station outside Manchester, the antique-dealing biker (Ray Lovelock) bullies her into giving him a ride to his friend's house in the country. She's a touch anxious because she's on her way to deliver her smack-addicted sister (Jeannine Mestre) away from a creepy husband (José Lifante), who takes exploitative photos of his wife while she's high, and to rehab. Quite a feast of human drama right there, but there's more, because high-tech exterminators are performing some rather environmentally unfriendly pest control on farmland in the country. Turns out the radiation they're using doesn't just turn bug against bug until they cannibalize each other into non-existence. Let's just say the exterminators' methods make the human dead and buried quite a bit less dead and a whole lot less buried.

Farewell, George Romero

Without him, zombies would still be toiling on sugar plantations instead of swarming urban areas. George A. Romero reinvented the zombie in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead even though the "Z" world is never even whispered in its taut 96 minutes. Romero followed up on his pioneering big-screen-E.C. comic with such sequels as Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, solidifying his legacy as King of the Zombies, but his achievements hardly end with droves of flesh-eating undead. Romero also made vampires human and sympathetic with Martin, horror comics move and breathe with Creepshow, and killer monkeys campy fun with Monkey Shines. He was also the producer of the classic small-screen anthology series Tales from the Darkside and a charming, politically-sharp presence in such documentaries as Midnight Movies. Having died of lung cancer at the age of 77, George Romero's charming personality will be missed but his nerve-wracking film work--much like his favorite monsters-- won't stay dead.

Review: 'Zombies: A Cultural History'

I wonder how many people who join in on hip zombie walks or watch “The Walking Dead” obsessively or waste hours blasting zombies in the face while playing “Resident Evil” really know or care about the origins of their favorite creature? Do they know that origin is not traced to atomic radiation or rage virus outbreaks? Serious horror fans do not need to be schooled about the back story of the modern zombie, about how the thing once known as zombi was not a radiation-tainted brain muncher that tended to go with the crowd, but rather a voodoo-enchanted victim of slave labor. Even such serious horror fans will learn a thing or two about these overused, overworked monsters in Roger Luckhurst’s Zombies: A Cultural History, even though some of these revelations shouldn’t be too surprising.

As used in Caribbean culture, zombi seemed an elusive term, sort of a catchall phrase for all things monstrous or weird—an unusually tall dog or a three-legged horse that has no trouble walking, for example. Only when the term passed into the lexicons of anthropologists with a yen for the strange did the zombie begin to come into focus as a colonialist’s overheated metaphor for all that is “bizarre,” “superstitious,” and “savage” about non-white cultures. Luckhurst spends a great deal of his book discussing the racist implications of the zombie that have largely been lost since it became an easy metaphor for anything run out of control in the twenty-first century. Luckhurst points out that the original racist implications are still apparent in such contemporary works as World War Z, but his book is interesting because it is so largely concentrated on the creature’s pre-George Romero breed. Luckhurst  not only discusses the zombie’s historical background—and he shows how it is always lurking around history’s worst atrocities from slavery to the holocaust to the dawn of WMDs— but its depiction in film (unlike other zombie books I’ve read, this one spends as much time dissecting White Zombie as Night of the Living Dead), pulp literature, comics, cocktails, and so on. In doing so, the author has made today’s most overly familiar monster seem fresh again.

The writer’s tendency to lean on academic clichés makes the tale-telling a little less fresh (everything is liminal), but the narrative is always readable and accessible. Luckhurst is highly critical of most of the works he discusses, but he usually makes his case well. I only took issue with his main criticism of Dawn of the Dead, which the author believes is “smug” for implying that its audience is exceptional for being in on the joke and not falling into the mindless consumerism of the film’s monsters. I think the film has a more constructive purpose in exposing the destructiveness of such consumerism, that Romero is attempting to give his audience something to aspire to by inspiring them to reject the behavior they see on screen, behavior they’ve probably indulged in many times before. Zombies: A Cultural History can serve a similarly constructive function by getting zombie fans to start thinking more critically about the creatures they’ve watched kill and be killed so many times before. 

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 4

The Date: October 4

The Movie: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

What Is It?: The beginning of a new age in zombie movies, and the finest serious film in the swarming-dead genre. The newsreel aesthetic lends this cheapy a powerful sense of realism, as does Duane Jones's performance and the finale, which hits as hard as a punch in the teeth.

Why Today?: On this day in 1957, actress Kyra Schon, who plays the sweet little girl who eats her mom, is born.

Review: 'The Zombie Book: The Encyclopedia of the Living Dead'

As much as I love monsters, I’m pretty burnt out on the whole zombie craze that really needs a pickaxe through the brain at this point. So I cracked open Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger’s The Zombie Book: The Encyclopedia of the Living Dead without a load of enthusiasm. I was relieved to learn it’s basically mistitled, though I’m not sure what would have been a better name for an eclectic encyclopedia that gathers together plenty of zombie-related entries (films such as Night of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead, alleged real-life voodoo practitioners such as Papa Jaxmano and the Chickenman, “zombifying” diseases like Mad Cow, etc.) and a lot of stuff that really doesn’t have much to do with its ostensible topic. True blue-skinned zombie devotees might get frustrated with entries covering monsters (space aliens and Texan gargoyles) that don’t have much in common with zombies. They may question the inclusions of AIDS, human cannibals like the Donner Party, and the Apocalypse, or wonder where genuinely zombie-related items like “Tales from the Crypt” and The Song of Ice and Fire/“Game of Thrones” (with its zombie “wights”) are. They may also get exasperated with an entry on Armageddon that not only has nothing to do with zombies but has nothing to do with Armageddon either (it’s about the U.S. Marine Corps’ detestable practice of having biblical quotes inscribed on rifle sites at great expense to taxpayers). As a reader who wasn’t really looking forward to immersing himself in an endless orgy of zombienalia, I really enjoyed the off-topic facts, myths, and rumors and the lively, often humorous way Redfern and Steiger share them.

Review: The Criterion edition of Rosemary’s Baby

Along with Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary’s Baby was one of the crucial American horror films of the 1960s. A deeply unsettling and incredibly entertaining film, Roman Polanski’s parental horror is also significant for its attitude about supernatural fear films. It envelops the viewer in sincere terror only to pull back at the last minute to chuckle at all this demonic nonsense from the corner of its fanged maw. Living Dead would become the midnight movie phenomenon in the seventies, but Rosemary’s Baby better established the ironic tone of cult films.

Widely regarded as one of the very best of its genre, Rosemary’s Baby has simply been dying for proper treatment on DVD. Having already produced luxurious discs of Polanski’s Knife in the Water, Repulsion, and Cul-de-sac, Criterion was the natural choice to give Rosemary’s Baby a rebirth. When the company asked Facebook users for suggestions for future releases last year, I voted for Rosemary’s Baby. So naturally, I’m thrilled by Criterion’s new reissue of the film.

Criterion consistently delivers the finest remastering and packaging a film could receive, and Rosemary’s Baby is no different. It sounds and looks pristine while still retaining the earth-toned haze that makes it the perfect late-sixties time capsule. A bonus disc offers a 1997 radio interview with Rosemary’s Baby novelist Ira Levin, a feature-length documentary about jazz artist and soundtrack composer Krzysztof Komeda (featuring Polanski), and most appealing to fans, a 47-minute documentary on the making of the film. New interviews with Polanski, Mia Farrow, and producer Robert Evans carry the doc, which is also interspersed with enticing behind-the-scenes footage of Mia Farrow doing some hippie-ish clowning on set and producer (and thwarted director) William Castle’s cameo. According to Polanski, the original cut of the film was four hours, so it’s too bad deleted scenes weren’t available for this release. But my only real gripe is that the discs do not come out of the case easily. Every time I pulled one out, I was shocked I didn’t snap it in half! That would have been a terrible shame considering how fine these disc are.

Farewell, Bill Hinzman

That name may not ring a bell, but his face sure will. When Bill Hinzman appears swaggering through a graveyard just minutes into Night of the Living Dead, we are aware that a) George Romero has no intention of easing us into the hot water and b) the zombie rule book has just been rewritten. Night of the Living Dead was the very first film to reimagine zombies not as voodoo pawns but as a concentrated team of brain-dead brain eaters, and Bill Hinzman played the very first of that new brand of zombie. On the strength of that dialogue-less yet iconic role, Hinzman was cast in horror movies on a semi-regular basis throughout his career, including Romero's own The Crazies, Santa Claws, and the delightfully-titled direct-to-video The Drunken Dead Guy (in which Hinzman played, appropriately enough, "The Experienced Zombie"). Hinzman also directed a couple of schlockers of his own called FleshEater and The Majorettes. According to Dread Central.com, Bill Hinzman died of cancer at the age of 75 on February 5th. Insert tasteless joke about his return from the grave.

Review: ‘More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead’

George Romero revolutionized the zombie flick with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. While transplanting zombies from Caribbean voodoo rituals to Middle America and transforming them from the brain-dead pawns of some nefarious witch doctor into a relentless mob of cannibals, Romero’s film also helped build the Midnight Movie phenomenon of the ‘70s. With 1978’s Dawn of the Dead he sharpened the political implications of his first film, almost making the zombie movie a respectable form of social satire. By the time he made the righteously anti-military Day of the Dead in 1985, finger waving threatened to devour the essential purpose of all zombie movies: a fun, scary time watching zombies eat people.

Psychobabble’s 200 Essential Horror Movies Part 5: The 1960s

In this feature, Psychobabble creeps through 100 years of horror cinema to assemble a highly personal list of the genre’s 200 most monstrous works, decade by decade.

(Updated in September 2021)

60. Eyes Without a Face (1960- dir. Georges Franju)

Psychobabble recommends 'Confessions of a Scream Queen'

The “scream queen” label is as seemingly limited as women’s roles in horror films. It brings to mind some torndress-clad victim shrieking for her life as she’s about to be carried into a boggy lair or hacked to death by a psycho killer. Too often this is the case, but the queens may also be the ones eliciting the screams. Thankfully, Matt Beckoff’s interview anthology Confessions of a Scream Queen doesn’t define the term rigidly. His discussions range from Carla Laemmle, who danced in Lon Chaney’s silent Phantom of the Opera and spoke the first words in Dracula, Universal’s debut talky horror, to Adrienne Barbeau, who played the hero (Stevie Wayne in The Fog) just as well as the victim (Wilma Northrup in Creepshow). In between are talks with 13 other actresses, including Lupita Tovar (the Spanish language Dracula), Judith O’Dea (Night of the Living Dead), Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror), Ingrid Pitt (Countess Dracula, The Wicker Man), Marilyn Burns (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and P.J. Soles (Carrie, Halloween).

Beckoff tends to tread lightly with his questions, so the success of each interview often hinges on how much the subject is willing to dig into her own experiences. Some of the older actresses are too polite to compel. Others, like Jessica Harper (Suspiria), come off as a little short on time and interest. But interviews with Burns, who goes deep into the horrendous hardships she suffered while making Texas Chainsaw…, Dee Wallace Stone (The Howling), who isn’t afraid to get her claws out, and Black, a great eccentric who insists she’s never been in a horror film (!), make the book worth reading.

May 26, 2010: 20 Things You May Not Have Known About George Romero

This Friday, George A. Romero unleashes Survival of the Dead, the sixth installment in his beloved “Living Dead” film series. Romero not only spearheaded the zombie craze that continues to rage but also made the greatest films in the genre (save one priceless exception by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg) with his original trilogy of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. Of course, there’s a lot more to Romero than reanimated corpses that snack on entrails. Here are 20 Things You May Not Know About George Romero…

1. While making one of his first eight-millimeter films, The Man from the Meteor, 14-year-old George Romero was arrested for tossing a flaming dummy off a roof. His parents bailed him out… then sent him off to a Connecticut prep school where he continued to make low-budget movies.

2. Before he had even turned 20, Romero took a less-than prestigious position as a grip on a tremendously prestigious film: Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

3. The first commercial film George Romero made was the short “Mr. Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy” for the children’s program “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”. Romero has jokingly called it “possibly the scariest movie I’ve ever made.”

4. Judy O’Dea was not Romero’s first choice to play the starring part of Barbara in Night of the Living Dead. Betty Aberlin—Lady Aberlin of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”—was Romero’s original selection, but Rogers would not allow one his own cast members to act in a horror film!

5. George Romero originally targeted his friend Tom Savini to do make-up on Night of the Living Dead, but the budding effects wiz was shipped off to Vietnam to serve as a combat photographer instead. Savini’s gruesome experiences in Vietnam, including the time he almost stepped on a disembodied human arm, influenced his work heavily on Dawn of the Dead a decade later.

6. Romero shot the siege that concludes Night of the Living Dead with a shaky, handheld camera to mimic evening news reports from violence-ridden locales like Vietnam and Watts.

7. While Romero can take credit for much of what makes Night of the Living Dead the most memorable zombie movie ever made—having directed, co-written, edited, and shot the film—there is one thing for which he was not responsible: the oft-quoted line “They’re dead; they’re all messed up” was ad-libbed by actor George Kosana.

8. Following a screening of Night of the Living Dead for possible distribution by American International Pictures (AIP), execs from the famed purveyor of B-movies told Romero they’d pick up the film if he shot a new “upbeat” ending. Wisely, Romero refused.

9. In his introduction to John Russo’s novelization of Night of the Living Dead, Romero explained that the film’s campy dialogue was consciously patterned after the clichéd ghastly gasps common in E.C. horror comics such as Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear. Romero paid even more explicit homage to E.C. with his later film, Creepshow.

10. Having established himself as a horror heavy hitter with Night of the Living Dead and The Crazies, Romero branched out to direct a TV documentary about football star O.J. Simpson called “Juice is on the Loose” in 1974. Of course, the underlying horrific nature of this ostensible sports doc would not be apparent until two decades later…

11. Romero edited his cult-favorite vampire flick Martin down to 95 minutes from an original cut lasting close to three hours. While he says a print of the three-hour version did exist, it has long since been lost. The novelization by Romero and Susanna Sparrow covers the excised material from the film.

12. Romero’s original cut of Dawn of the Dead had Peter and Fran, the two characters who ultimately survived the released version, committing suicide right before the closing credits. Fran was to kill herself with the helicopter propeller-blade, much like the most famous zombie death in the film.

13. While Day of the Dead, the third installment of Romero’s original “Living Dead” trilogy is not as acclaimed as its two predecessors, the filmmaker has said that the film has become his favorite in the series. His favorite film in his overall body of work is Martin.

14. Romero has worked in connection with horror giant Stephen King on several occasions, including his adaptation of King’s novel The Dark Half and Creepshow, which was scripted by and co-starred King. However, a couple of King-related projects never made it past the drawing board, including Romero-helmed versions of King’s novels Salem’s Lot and The Stand. Both projects were eventually born as TV miniseries by other directors.

15. Romero is notoriously critical of his own work, even going so far as to say his 2000 revenge-flick Bruiser was the first on which he “really knew what [he] was doing,” according to an interview with Home Page of the Dead.

16. Romero wrote his first draft of Land of the Dead prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Following the attacks, he made some alterations to his script, revising the Fiddler’s Green building to resemble the Twin Towers and adding topical lines like “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

17. Mayor Tom Murphy, of Romero’s hometown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, named June 22, 2005, the day Land of the Dead was first previewed, “George Romero Day.”

18. While Romero has generally been indifferent regarding the mass of zombie films that followed in the wake of his groundbreaking work, he has been quite vocal regarding his love of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s hilarious Shaun of the Dead. He was so taken with the film that he cast Wright and Pegg in zombie cameos in Land of the Dead. Pegg also performed uncredited voice work as a newsreader in Diary of the Dead.

19. In 2008, Romero listed his ten favorite films for the British Film Institute. They are Richard Brooks’s The Brothers Karamazov, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon, Compton Bennet’s King Solomon’s Mines, Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, John Ford’s The Quiet Man, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Aside from Repulsion, not a single horror movie in the bunch.

20. Despite his massive success, Romero professes to live a largely simple lifestyle. His one extravagance is his love of travel.