GeorgeRomero Tagged Articles at Cinematical

With today's announcement that the graphic novel Zombies of Mass Destruction would be making the leap to the silver screen, it got Erik Davis thinking. And, as is often the case when Erik starts thinking about horror films, he turned to me and said "What's the next step for zombie movies?" So we started talking about it and he said "Aha, I tricked you! I don't want to have a conversation about it! I want you to write a Discuss post on the topic!" He then cackled like a cartoon villain and logged off. He's really crafty, I'm telling you.

But while all us gorehounds have been arguing about "slow vs. fast" for a few years now, it seems that the zombie sub-genre has been sprouting fresh legs and finding new ways to devour screaming humans. Just this morning, the amazingly undead Elisabeth Rappe told us that the shuffling man-eaters were about to get the Jane Austen treatment! (Yes, really!) So between fast and slow, funny or serious, semi-sentient or entirely brain-dead, which are your favorite zombies? And, more amusingly, what is the sub-genre going to give us next? I know that Nazi Zombies are making a comeback in Dead Snow, but those have been done before. Pirate zombies? Alien zombies? Zombie politicians? (Insert your own witty commentary here.) As always, let us thank George Romero for the ability to even discuss such wonderful things.

Despite having previously established my feelings about this weekend's Quarantine, I must confess a new willingness to give it a fair shot later tonight. Regardless, this week's Cinematical Seven is all about first-person horror movies, with a couple of oh-so-subjective stipulations:

• We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.
• Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.
• The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.

Now, on with the list...

He's almost 70 years old, but genre great George A. Romero still has a few zombie stories up his sleeve. According to Variety, the hard-working horror-maker has already started production on an as-yet-untitled horror film. Oh, and get this: It's a zombie movie! (Like most fans, I really dig films like Martin and The Crazies, but I suppose I dig George's zombie tales the most.) Shooting has already begun in Ontario, and it sure looks like Romero is going the indie route again. No word yet on who'll be distributing this one (once it's finished) but the folks at Cinetic Media will be handling those duties.

The flick will be about some folks on "an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead to eat their kin. The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure." So to those who wondered how George could keep the armageddon going after Night, Dawn, Day, Land and Diary, now you know: Island of the Dead. Works for me. Here's hoping Romero introduces a really goofy Gilligan-style character -- and has him devoured in the first ten minutes.

In case you weren't sure, Zombie Strippers is exactly what it sounds like: a horror comedy about zombified strippers. And like most zombie movies, it has political subtext, though you don't have to worry about it being headier than something titled Zombie Strippers should be. Sure, it claims to be based loosely on Eugène Ionesco's classic absurdist play Rhinoceros and, sure, it features allusions to a number of philosophers, including Camus and Sartre, but really it's dumb and silly and a heck of a good time. Particularly if you're anything but sober. And if you're just looking for a grindhouse sort of guilty pleasure to pass the time.

Zombie Strippers opens with a montage that sets the scene: it's sometime in the near future, and Bush has just been reelected to his fourth term. Already, we know this movie will be a complete farce, but the ludicrous exposition continues, explaining that government scientists have developed a virus that allows soldiers in Iraq to continue fighting after they're killed. Yes, these super soldiers are zombies, a minor twist on Joe Dante's anti-Bush short Homecoming, which was one of the more critically celebrated episodes of the cable series Masters of Horror, and which featured Iraq War casualties rising from the dead in order to cast their vote against Bush's reelection.

I could have sworn I did a little piece on the planned remake of George Romero's The Crazies, but the Cinematical search function seems to believe otherwise. But a while back it was mentioned that director Brad Anderson and screenwriter Scott Kosar (who once collaborated to give us The Machinist) very well might be getting back together for a remake of Romero's 1973 infection thriller ... and then we heard nothing.

Odds are that Mr. Anderson has moved on to other projects, but according to gory sources, the remake is not nearly dead. Seems that producers Dean Georgaris and Michael Aguilar have tapped a second writer (Ray Wright) to help the project along. We'll let Mr. Wright's debut (the wretched Pulse remake) slide and look forward to his Case 39, which stars Renee Zellweger and opens on August 22.

When the producers decided to finally ash-can this remake because nobody aside from hardcore horror fans even remember The Crazies (which means the title isn't nearly as marketable as Halloween, Chainsaw or Prom Night), we'll be sure to let you know.

If you're any kind of horror afficionado, you've probably either heard about or even read the script for George Romero's Diamond Dead -- it's one of those projects that's been around for so long no one even talks about it anymore. The film is a horror-comedy about a rock band called Diamond Dead whose members are all zombies and whose hot babe manager tries to use her media wiles to take them to the top despite their rather unappealing habits, like eating brains and stuff. It takes swipes at the media, Christian fundamentalists who hate the band, and various other Romero-style targets. In a forthcoming interview with Suicide Girls, Romero surprises by excitedly announcing to me that in the last week, Diamond Dead has raced back to the forefront of his upcoming projects slate. "I got a phone call two days ago, before I came here, from the producer saying 'We're back!'" he says, noting that he was more surprised than anyone because he worked for years on the project and "it looked dead." Since the financing has apparently just kicked in as this is going to press, no further details are available.

Romero also notes that he's very eager to get going on a sequel to his new film, Diary of the Dead, saying "I wish I could have gone further with it. If there is a possibility of a sequel, I'd actually love to do it, cause there's a hell of a lot more. I'd love to go further with that theme." At the same time, fans of Romero's previous and much larger film, 2005's Land of the Dead, should most certainly not expect a sequel to that any time soon. Romero expressed guarded admiration for that film, but called his experience with big-budget filmmaking "grueling" and said "it was just too hard." He also feels that Land "lost touch with its roots" and he has no idea how a sequel could even happen, if he were inclined to make one.

To the nine of you who actually recognize the title Deadtime Stories, I'll go ahead and disappoint you right now. This news story has nothing to do with the cheeseball 1986 anthology flick of the same name. Actually, that's a good thing. So let's move on.

According to Bloody-Disgusting.com, zombie lord George Romero will be "presenting" the new Deadtime Stories, but the writer/director is actually a guy named Jeff Monahan. (He's an actor turned director who appeared in Romero's Two Evil Eyes, The Dark Half and Bruiser, actually.) Apparently two of the three mini-movies are already finished, and the third one is set to shoot in February. BD.com tells us that one is a college-set ghost story called On Sabbath Hill and the other is a story about dangerous Mars soil called Dust. Obviously as a big fan of both anthology films and (almost) anything with George Romero's name on it, I'll be keeping an eye on this project.

You know, sometimes it's like the universe wants to prove you wrong. No sooner did I make one little offhand comment that Zack Snyder had probably abandoned his follow-up to Dawn of The Dead when his wife and producing partner, Deborah Snyder, tells Shock Till You Drop that Army of the Dead is alive and well (sorry, I couldn't resist). The script was written by Snyder and Awake's Joby Harold. Deborah Snyder summed up the story to Shock as follows: "Basically, something happened in Vegas and there was this huge outbreak of these zombies that were killing people...So to contain it they basically contain Vegas. The city is this wasteland with walls around it and all of these zombies are inside" -- and it could just be me, but that sounds awfully similar to Resident Evil: Extinction.

As we all know, Zack Snyder is hard at work on his big-screen version of Watchmen, and he will only produce the 'sequel' to his 2004 remake of George Romero's zombie classic. Deborah Snyder tells Shock that they are currently on the hunt for a director for the project, but that it is "...a little hard [to do] because we're here [on set] and every day is killer. We want the right person for it. The script has been turned in to the studio and they're really happy with it, with pretty minimal notes back, so they said, 'Hey, let's get a director.'" As soon as they do find their director, we'll be here to let you know who it is. Any ideas?

[via Justpressplay.net]

I'm no horror buff, but I do love the zombies. Well, I love the idea of zombies. I'm not really that interested in watching all the low-budget zombie movies, all the Italian zombie movies, or all the non-Romero Living Dead movies. But it's funny, I was looking over Ryan's recent Cinematical Seven of reasons he doesn't care for zombie movies, and it dually serves as my own list of reasons I like zombie movies. Or at least those zombie movies that apply. Primarily, I like zombie movies for the first reason: the symbolism.

Shaun of the Dead may be a comedic zombie movie, and it may not have any political undertones or serious social commentary, as do Romero's films and other prominent examples of the genre, but it does permit a scholarly subtext reading nonetheless. And because I'm a scholarly sort of gent (or maybe really I just like to over-analyze everything), I'm going to take this opportunity to look at this deeper level of the movie. Sure, I could just write about why I think the movie is one of the most hilarious I've ever seen, but that would be boring; plus, I respect that some people don't have the same sense of humor as me.

Shaun's symbolism comes in the form of the romantic story. The movie, often referred to as a "rom zom com" (romantic zombie comedy), actually serves as a sort of cinematic relationship guide, comically instructing us about dealing with commitment issues. Look at the order in which the members of Shaun's party are killed (killed dead, not undead): #1: his stepfather (Bill Nighy); #2: his mum (Penelope Wilton); #3: the other guy who loves his girl (the underrated Dylan Moran, who must be seen in Run Fatboy Run); #4: his roommate (Peter Serafinowicz); and finally, #5: his immature best friend (Nick Frost). These are the people that have to die in order for Shaun (Simon Pegg) to devote his full attention to Liz (Kate Ashfield). In real, non-lethal terms, they are the people Shaun has to let go of before he can fully connect in a relationship.

There's too much symbolism

I realize that this problem can largely be laid at the feet of George Romero, and I'll accept that, but every time I watch a Romero movie I feel like I'm being smashed in the face with the symbolism bat. It's not that he's an unskilled filmmaker -- although some have argued as much after seeing Diary of the Dead -- it's just that he's all-too-eager to use his zombies to advance whatever cause he wants to flog at the moment. Zombie movies are about ... racism. No, wait, zombie movies are about ... consumerism. No, no, the threat of nuclear war. Actually, go back to the first one -- they're about racism. Diary of the Dead, which I haven't seen, apparently uses zombies to set up the argument that there's too much reality TV. Has it come to that? I realize that zombies make a good catch-all, unlike, say, vampires, but there's a point where enough is enough. No more zombie message movies.

There's no growth in concept

No growth whatsoever, going back even before Bela Lugosi in 1932's White Zombie. One of the few interesting things about Resident Evil: Extinction was that it featured a subplot wherein the evil scientists try to reverse the zombie status of a zombie. They try to make him learn and regain some the cognition of a normal human -- but even this has been done before. Hell, the notion of zombies emerging from the fog of zombiedom has even been done by George Romero. What else have you got? The 28 Days Later films make zombies run fast and take care to not call them zombies, but that's hardly groundbreaking stuff either. Maybe the most innovative zombie movie I've seen in the last few years, Joe Dante's Homecoming, did something a little intriguing -- it gave the zombies a political motivation and had them intent on going to the voting booth. But even this is campy, and brushes up against my problems in point number one.