Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh. Since its October we have decided to dedicate the month to horror movies. We start our month this week with Romero zombie movies. George A. Romero was the first person to put Zombies to film, and he is the best in my opinion. He is a champion of practical effects as well. All of the movies we watched had spectacular effects which makes it far more viscerally disturbing when a horde of zombies rip a dude apart while he yells "choke on it!" then when you can tell a guy is just CGI'd into a scene. Anyway, to the list!

1: Night of the Living Dead
This is the first zombie movie ever made. Almost all of the zombie tropes you are used to seeing came from this movie. Romero's zombies aren't as brainless as one would see in a lot of other zombie movies. In all of the Romero directed movies his zombies use tools to try to get into tasty human hiding spots, which actually comes up in our last movie of this week. This movie focuses on a small group of survivors hiding in a farm house after a zombies begin to roam the land. The effects in this movie are pretty minimal, though well done. Bosco Chocolate syrup was used for the blood, and it works well. This is a low budget movie shot in black and white so ham being used for fake flesh and syrup being used for blood looks real enough to be disturbing. All of the characters are good, even the shitty people. They all represent how people would respond to this type of situation. Barbra has a complete breakdown after seeing her brother killed, Ben stays clam and tries to do what he can to stay alive. Mr. Cooper is an asshole who feels like he needs to be in control to remain safe, and assumes that all of the other characters are going to get him killed if they get a say. I love the camera work in this movie, shots are often done at strange angles to emphasize how fucked up a situation is (either because of zombie hordes or people acting selfishly) and it adds to the overall tension of the film. This movie is good, and should be watched by any fan of the zombie genre.

Eshi: Zombies are a weird thing for me. On one hand a well done zombie movie, like these ones, is a fucking joy. On the other hand we need to fucking stop it. Not everything needs to have zombies attached. That said, fuck yeah Night of the Living Dead. The birth pang of the Zombie Horror genre is the perfect mix of campy, disturbing and balls out. Its not the best movie, but it is one of the most complete descriptors of the genre.  

2: Dawn of the Dead
I want to get this out of the way: the 1978 version of this movie (my favorite of all of Romero's films) was not available for us to watch so we watched the remake. That being said for a remake it does some good stuff. A much more action oriented film, its about a group of survivors holed up in a shopping mall. The actors are decent (Ving Rhames is the fucking man) and there are a couple surprisingly funny moments. The action is tense and well shot. DotD focuses less on the zombies and more on how people go about dealing with the end of the world in a stable-ish environment. All of the bad shit that happens stems from a breakdown in a system because of the character flaws of certain individuals. As with so many apocalypse stories cowardice and control issues are a bigger threat then shambling corpses. Shows like the Walking Dead try to focus on this stuff as well but because it is a series they need to stretch all of the drama out for entire seasons which just makes the show tiring. In this, all of the drama is solved relatively quickly (usually by bad-ass, zombie related deaths) and then people move on. Its a good movie, I still prefer the original but as I said, its my favorite.

Eshi: I think this is the best all-around movie this week. Good action, strong characters (if a little fucking cliche), and some really cathartic violence. Having heard Brian talk about it I'm kinda pissed that we couldn't find the '78 version. I mean, not much, this one was really good, but still. Andy kicks all the ass and Ving Rhames is, indeed, the fucking man. Watch this one and let us know if you find some where to watch the original.

3: Day of the Dead
I found out after watching this movie that there was also a remake of it, but I have not seen it. This is the 1985 version. This movie, like Dawn, deals with people dealing with the end of the world, but has a larger focus on examining the zombie itself. The group this time isn't a bunch of random people in a mall, but a bunch of scientists and military types in a bunker trying to find a cure. One scientist in particular is studying the behavior of the zombies, and through this finds out that they have some ability to remember things from life, especially narratively relevant things. The military personnel, angry with how slow progress is and how many lives the research has cost, decide to bully the civilians. Of course shit goes tits up when they start this, and then begins the breakdown of the system. All of these movies deal with this kind of entropic breakdown of systems. In this movie (and a lot of zombie movies in general) humans are fucked up because they make the choice to be evil, while zombies aren't really evil because they act on instinct (which is changeable with training). The acting was ok, overacting was a big problem, but this movie also represents some of the best practical special effects I have seen in a long time. Its a good movie, watch it.

Eshi: Oh my fucking god, practical effects in the 80's. Day of the Dead revels in all the horrible 80's movie tropes and does so spectacularly. Half the fucking cast is just straight up crazy, as is 80's thriller tradition, and the casual racism grants just the kind of highly nuanced social commentary you'd expect. And I'll just say again, fuck yeah practical effects in the 80's.