Night of the Living Dead (1968): It Keeps Coming Back!

It seems all I've been posting about here lately has been zombie pictures, so I guess it's fitting that tonight I rewatched the one, the only, the original, "Night of the Living Dead".  I remember seeing it twice as a child; once was on television right when "Dawn of the Dead" was about to premiere in theaters, which would make me 8 years old at the time.  The other time was when my mom took me and a friend to see an outdoor movie in a local park, and it turned out to be this one.  I'm not sure which screening came first, but I do remember being transfixed by the film each time, specifically by how explicit the violence was, and the overall downbeat tone. 

Even though most of what happens in the movie occurs offscreen and we only see the aftermath, there was an aggressive edge to it.  You get the impression that Romero would have shown you everything if he'd been able to make it look effective. But "Night of the Living Dead" combined its early gore effects with a certain level of pseudo realism that was missing from the campy, color grossout films being made by Herschell Gordon Lewis, and an unflinching attitude that went beyond anything that was typical at the time. Ben, the hero, bashes in the heads of several ghouls in the beginning, using a tire iron. At one point, he embeds the sharp end in the skull of a zombie, and it falls back to the carpet after he pulls the tire iron back out.  Even though the penetration has occurred off screen, the illusion is very effective. It still looks upsetting today, as does the grossout scene where a group of zombies fight with each other on-screen over a pile of intestines.

Another thing I love is the way Romero was able to make the murder of Helen Cooper so compellingly surreal and brutal at the same time.  Her death is the one zombie attack in the film that never fails to freak me out, the nightmarish pinnacle of the film. You know the scene, it's when she goes back into the basement as a last resort and the little girl zombie kills her with a handy cement trowel. When I was a kid I used to always wonder why Helen never tried to defend herself with her hands, but as an adult it becomes a little more clear to me that she's in the moment; she's just seen her husband shot dead in front of her, scores of zombies are beginning to burst through the barricades, and she has now discovered her young daughter is not only dead, she's devouring what's left of her husband.  When the little girl advances on her, Helen just kind of collapses in shock and lays there, letting her own little girl slowly hack open her ribcage, an agonizing death, all the while emitting those unearthly death screams as it happens. It's a moment of true horror, a subversion of the family unit in a way that wasn't often seen with such chilling detail.  It happens with Barbara, too; of all the zombies that have inexplicably come to this rural farmhouse, the one that confronts Barbara is her own brother, Johnny, who drags her off into a crowd of ghouls to be devoured.  Barbara has remained disassociated throughout almost the entire film until that very moment; seeing Johnny seems to bring her out of her shock long enough to realize she's about to be killed, and she screams for Ben to help her, too late.  I always shudder at the way you can see her face for a split second right before they pull her all the way down and, presumably, rip her apart while she's still alive. These weren't strangers committing acts of random violence, these were the family members of their victims. Romero & Russo weren't only interested in showing a brutal murder, it was also a total mindfuck.

The cynical, downbeat quality of "Night of the Living Dead" breaks some serious ground for horror, as other filmmakers began to emulate such things as the explicit use of gore, the zombie subject matter itself, or the unapologetically gruesome tone.

Contrary to popular discourse, the movie does indeed offer an explanation of why the dead are returning to life. The talking heads we see on television reporting the phenomenon have made a link to a recently crashed space probe that carried high levels of "mysterious radiation". The film's 1978 sequel, "Dawn of the Dead", completely sidestepped this explanation, and this time Romero stated in interviews that there was no known reason for the reanimation of the dead, and that the radiation scenario from the original was not intended to be the definitive explanation. But Romero had also started referring to the work as a 'trilogy', and that it had always been intended as a trilogy, which is something he had never mentioned in print after the original film debuted...prior to his 1977 interview in Film Comment, he'd never even alluded to a potential sequel. In fact, two years after making the 'trilogy' comment, he told Cinema Spectrum that when he was making "Night", he never knew he would ever make another film like it. It seems odd that in a script like "Night of the Living Dead", the crash of a radioactive space probe and the subsequent emergence of zombies from that same area could have been intended as anything other than an explanation. Otherwise, what the hell was it, a strange coincidence?

Regardless of implicit intentions, the ending of "Night" closes on a scenario where the living now outnumber the living dead once more and are rounding them up to be thrown onto huge bonfires. The TV news reports that the level of the radiation is decreasing, and this is the ultimate tragedy of our small group of non-survivors: if they'd just managed to hold it together a little while longer, they'd have lived to see the end of the emergency.  Instead, they're all dead at the end.

The moment any movie's end credits begin is often the moment where people stop paying attention, but that's one of the most disturbing aspects of "Night of the Living Dead".  Hidden in plain sight during the end credit sequence is a series of horrifying still images of Ben's body being dragged away by possee members weilding meat hooks, to be thrown on a bonfire with other bodies and set ablaze.  Knowing that just moments before, he was the only survivor of the film, and a random act by an overly enthusiastic possee member leads to him being shot dead and viciously violated.  This wasn't done to him by zombies, but by ordinary, living human beings, with shotguns and meat hooks.  Now that's a scary concept.

Shock Waves: Tourists Shouldn't Play with Wet Dead Things

Ahhh, zombies.  I love em, and I know you probably do, too.  Back in the early 70s, before everything that could have been done WAS done, low budget movies were mixing it up left and right.  I envision it as a time of wild creativity in horror films, but it's probably closer to the truth to say that people were doing it in the name of exploitation, jumbling ideas around in an attempt to find a marketable, cheaply made product.  Still, it's always a pleasure to watch a movie that you think is gonna really suck, and then suddenly you find that it's gotten under your skin somehow.  Such is the case with "Shock Waves", a nifty little drive-in movie about a small group of tourists on a pleasure cruise who find themselves marooned on an island and stalked by a horde of zombies--in particular, undead gogglefaced Nazi soldiers intent on their swift execution.

In the grand 70s Doom tradition, "Shock Waves" opens with a flashback narration, similar to "Let's Scare Jessica to Death".  The heroine in this case is Rose, played by none other than one of my all-time genre heroines, Brooke Adams.  Rose is one of four tourists on a small chartered yacht, captained by none other than John Carradine.  There's also a groovy 70s first mate named Chuck, who's a perfect romantic interest for Rose.  Before anything much can happen though, the group experiences a strange solar phenomenon where everything turns orange.  Maybe it was that brown acid.  Chuck and the Captain lose control of their navigation devices, and they eventually have to admit that they're completely lost.  After the sun goes down, the yacht is sideswiped by a huge ship that comes out of nowhere in the darkness, and the yacht is stranded on a reef.

The next morning, the crew and passengers are forced to evacuate the yacht after they discover it's taking on water.  Taking the small lifeboat to a nearby island, they find the body of their captain in the water, presumably after drowning while checking the underside of the boat.  After exploring the island, they find an abandoned hotel, and quickly discover they're not alone.  Living on the island is a hermit (Peter Cushing) with a German accent (would this make him a Germit?), who is alarmed to hear of the appearance of the ship.  His concern is for a very good reason: the return of the wrecked ship means there are now a whole lot of zombies in the waters around the island.  He eventually confesses that he's a former SS Commander, marooned on the island since World War II.  He was in charge of a squadron of experimental zombies known as the Death Corps; soldiers not living and not dead, not needing to breathe or eat, and able to kill human beings with their bare hands.  When Germany lost the war, he sank the warship and quickly settled into his new role in life in exile. As a Germit.

The zombies converge on the island and begin their stalking.  The early victims get picked off when they're alone, but as the number of breathing people on the island dwindles, the zombies become more bold and chase down their prey.  Fans of cannibal zombies will be disappointed, as these dead guys aren't hungry, they only want to murder the hell out of you.  They're not Romero zombies at all, as they're clearly intelligent and have articulated movements.  Silent and creepy as hell, they're a truly frightening group with gray wrinkled skin and black goggles that give them an eyeless effect as well.  The zombies like to hide under the water until you pass nearby, then grab you and pull you under until the bubbles stop.

Peter Freakin' Cushing!!!

Released in 1977, "Shock Waves" was actually created and filmed in 1975, which has got to make it the first "Nazi zombie" movie ever.  The dreamlike atmosphere of the film is bolstered by the strange gaps in the narrative.  Where other movies want to talk you to death, "Shock Waves" is unusually quiet.  There are no conventional introductions to the characters, the story just starts as if we already know who these people are.  The orange solar phenomenon, which coincides with the reappearance of the German ship, remains bizarre and unexplained throughout the entire film.  It almost seems as if important character development or plot exposition was edited out of the film in post-production.  The director, Ken Wiederhorn, makes the most of the Florida setting, focusing on weird isolated locations to create a disorienting environment for the characters.  A lot of the action takes place in shallow tributaries and glassy pools of water surrounded by lush green vegetation, bizarre gray brush, and weird looking sea life.  The abandoned hotel is an amazing location too; I can't imagine a better place to live in exile.  Minus the zombies, of course. 

Nazi Zombie, or Backup Dancer for Lady Goggle?

"Shock Waves" also has a lot of the creativity that's often forced by a low budget.  In one of the movie's creepiest moments, just after the yacht has been stranded on a coral reef after nearly colliding with the ghost ship, the passengers all gather on the deck and peer out into the darkness, hoping to see what they could have wrecked into.  The Captain sends up a flare, and it momentarily illuminates the hulking German ship, now looking like nothing more than the skeletal remains of what was once a seafaring vessel.

John Carradine, doing that John Carradine eyebrow thing

The underwater shots of the dead soliders are very creepy.  The first time we see one, he's walking along the metal framework of the rusted ship, across the ocean floor. I felt uncomfortable watching it, mostly because one unbroken shot shows him walking through a strange underwater landscape of coral and vegetation, and I kept thinking "That actor has got to breathe sooner or later!"

Sometimes the shots of the zombies don't connect all that well with those of the actors reacting to them, as if the cast were not all together at the same time. There's some disorienting editing and meandering passages that seem to indicate padding, mostly with shots of the zombies appearing on screen, but I think it could have been an attempt to suggest many more zombies than were actually there. It creates a weird, hypnotic atmosphere to the film that goes well with the hazy sun-bleached cinematography. There aren't many movies where outdoor daytime photography with a lot of sunlight creates an atmosphere of dread, but this one comes to mind immediately.

The doomy synth score is a memorable aspect of "Shock Waves", too.  While it consists of only a few themes and riffs repeated through the movie, it contributes perfectly to the bleak atmosphere.  And also, could I geek out just a little bit over the fact that both John Carradine and PETER CUSHING are in this movie?  Their roles, especially Carradine's, are really nothing more than guest appearances, but it's enough to lend the movie some much-needed credibility that a totally anonymous cast might have had trouble with.  In the case of Cushing, it's amusing that "Shock Waves" appeared in theaters the same year he was also on screen in a movie called "Star Wars".



Nurse? Bring me my makeup....

Welcome to the Hotel Calishockwaves

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1973)

Everybody remembers those first few movies that ever really got under your skin.  At first it was vampires that scared me, and other Universal monsters, but then along came zombies.  "Night of the Living Dead" particularly, which properly warped my eight-year-old brain when they broadcast it on television to celebrate the upcoming theatrical premiere of "Dawn of the Dead".  Everything about that movie was different, although I was too young to realize it at the time.  Previously monsters stalked castles and deserted moors, but in that movie, the most realistic monsters ever--dead people--invaded the real world.  The protagonists even watched breaking news about the zombie crisis on TELEVISION, no less!  "NOTLD" was a game-changer, but not too long afterwards there was "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", a morbid little piece I caught when it made the rounds on late night television.  The two movies are very similar, both featuring a small group of people who are isolated by flesh-eating zombies and beseiged while they try to barricade themselves inside of a house.  But aside from that--oh, and I don't know, the fact that there's a freaked out girl who spouts gibberish, total infighting among the survivors, a failed escape attempt that results in cannibalism, and a nihilistic ending that finds everybody dead--they're two TOTALLY different movies.

Gather round, children, and I will tell you why you shouldn't play with dead things.  OK, so imagine it's 1972.  You're really worried about the unemployment rate, there's this thing about Vietnam that's been bummin you out, and you're an actor working for this stupid dandyman who wears striped trousers and spouts pseudo-Shakespearean gibberish in an attempt to constantly belittle you.  He's got you and a bunch of other fellow actors--apparently you all work for his small theater troupe--and he takes you to this small island off the mainland of what looks like Florida.  The island holds a decrepit graveyard, apparently there were a lot of unpleasant people buried there, like rapists, murderers, and members of the official Rebecca Black fan club.

Stop smiling.  You're about to be eaten alive by rotting corpses.

OK, so like, he takes you into this graveyard and tells you you're going to perform a Satanic necromantic ritual to raise the dead.  He makes you dig up a grave so you can use a body for the ritual, but his ritual doesn't work.  A snarky actress has her hand at it, and she does well enough to get a few thunderclaps, but even she can't make the dead rise.  So you all go back to the island cottage to party, and you take the corpse with you.  You continue to mock and defile the body, until finally the ritual seems to have worked: corpses start climbing out of their graves and converge on the cottage.  What do you do?

Well, you fight with each other and become zombie chow, that's what you do.  This is a movie from the early 70s, after all.  In case you didn't know, it was directed by Bob Clark, director of "Black Christmas", "Porky's", and yes, "A Christmas Story".  "Children", however, is a low budget freak out of the highest order.  It doesn't have the apocalyptic implications of "Night of the Living Dead", but it does add a few new features to Romero's blueprint, including a ghoulish color scheme that perfectly captures the look of EC horror comics.  It's also one of the earliest post-NOTLD zombie movies I can think of.  Let's face it, any movie that shows zombies eating people is an imitation of NOTLD, but "Children" does it really well.  It's not quite as graphic--this movie actually is rated PG!--but that doesn't really matter much to me. 

But there's a nasty, cruel edge to the human characters as well.  The leader of the morbid gang, Alan, bullies the rest of the people the entire time, belittling them and constantly threatening to fire them if they don't go along with his ridiculous whims. Apparently these people think nothing of kidnapping the cemetery's caretaker and tying him to a tree outside in the dead of night.  They also don't mind digging up a corpse and desecrating it.  At one point, Alan climbs in bed with "Orville" (the corpse) and insinuates that he's going to have sex with the body.  Later, after the zombie attack happens, Alan hurls his wife Anya into a crowd of ghouls to save his own ass.  Something tells me Alan would have made a fabulous politician, if Orville hadn't bitten him to death.

When people bitch about "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", it's usually because of the pacing.  Modern audiences will definitely have a hard time dealing with the movie's limited pace and action, as it takes quite a while to get cranking.  There's no real zombie action until the final third of the film, where big things start poppin' all over.  It goes from talky and spooky to relentless and vicious; when zombies invade the cottage at the film's conclusion, even one of the dead actors is attacked and (presumably) devoured.  The doomy aspects of the film really make this a favorite for me, with nobody getting out alive.  The final scene of the film shows the zombies, having now killed off all the interlopers, wandering onto the deserted boat, which drifts away from shore toward Miami, full of rotting corpses waiting to chow down on the living.  Perhaps this qualifies "Children" as an unofficial prequel to NOTLD!

Can you wait? I'm eating my lunch.

Clark uses a few camera tricks to fill in the blanks left by the lack of budget, including slow-motion during the more frightening moments. The lighting is undeniably creepy, as is the graveyard set. The scene where the zombies come out of their graves is one of the best of its type, with numerous zombies emerging all at once from holes in the ground. It's both cartoonish and nightmarish at the same time. There's a great scene where, during the resurrection of the ghouls, one of the human characters (who happens to be dressed as a ghoul himself) is confronted in a shadowy grove by a real zombie, and the way it's filmed is pure spooky movie nirvana. The cemetery's real caretaker, whom the nasty theater people have gagged & tied to a tree, finds himself surrounded by ghouls, and there's this great moment where one of them slowly notices him, turns, and starts lumbering at him followed by others. Bound and helpless, he's total zombie bait. The ghouls in "Children" have more in common with Lamberto Bava's "Demons", with garishly discolored faces and demonic features. One zombie girl in particular gives me nightmares every time I see her.

The soundtrack is full of bizarre synthesizer noises and riffs instead of proper scoring, and it helps set the film apart from others.  Although the synths are dated, actual scoring would have been even more dated (such as the library music in NOTLD).  The otherworldly noises go perfectly with the action, particularly the scene where the graveyard starts spitting out the ghouls.  The trilling synths add a claustrophobic element, with multiple sound effects and swirling audio patterns.  It's disorienting; it works especially well with the slow motion moments.  I think Bob and the crew must have been doing a little acid.  It WAS the 70s, after all!

Corpse Eaters (1974): Eat At Joe's

Behold, the one image from the film that doesn't give you the urge to squint.

We all have our movies that we keep coming back to, and one of the ones I like to revisit a lot is Bob Clark's 1972 film "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things". It's a humble but weirdly effective zombie film before zombie films were a huge thing, with lots of fantastic imagery. The performances were a little grating, but there was a humorous aspect to it took the edge off of that, as if it wasn't to be taken too seriously. Although the zombies don't arrive until far into the movie, once they do it's pretty awesome. Two years after its release came a Canadian film with a similar plot involving a small group of young people who decide to hold a Satanic mass inside a vault in a dark cemetery, provoking the rise of zombies who eat human beings. Produced by a Canadian drive-in owner as a moneymaking feature for his own drive-in, "Corpse Eaters" debuted at the Hiway 69 Drive-In, and... well that's about it. An obscure oddity was born.

It is the early 1970s. We can tell this because the sideburns are long and the clothing looks like it was made out of fabric cut from curtains and bedspreads. The location: the Happy Halo Funeral Home. A mortician named Bill is working on a fresh corpse, when his creepy boss comes into the lab to ask him to work late. The boss mortician looks more than a little bit like Angus Scrimm as "The Tall Man" from Phantasm. Phantasm was a much different movie, though, because you see, in Phantasm you could actually see what was going on. Corpse Eaters is much more coy; the filmmakers knew that to truly engage the audience, you must constantly obscure your film in darkness and tight closeups that rarely allow the film to familiarize the viewer with any visual information.

But I digress...Bill is working on a corpse when Creepy Mortician (he doesn't have a name) tells him that a new job is coming in that night; some guy who seems to have been mauled by a bear. Hmmmm. Creepy Mortician decides to get in his hearse and drive around while Bill does his thing, delivering a voiceover monologue about death before driving right back to the mortuary. Why was he driving around in the hearse think-talking to himself? Never mind. Together they put the finishing touches on the 'bear victim': cottonballs stuffed into the oral cavity. I once heard that artists never really know when the work of art is completed.

Immediately we are plunged into flashback. You will not know this just by watching the film, because there is no real communication going on between the director and the viewer. But take my word for it, you are watching a flashback, and think of it as a pre-Tarantino gesture in cutting edge filmmaking. We witness two frisky young Canadian couples on a day trip via motorboat. Richie and Julie are the "dirty" ones, while Alan and Lisa are the "other" ones. (HINT: Richie is the corpse in the coffin in the introduction--the 'bear mauling' victim!!!!) Together they jaunt out to an island, where they lay down on a blanket so Richie can take off Julie's top and spray a can of Canadian beer all over her Canadian boobs. Readers, I doubt that any of you boob-lovers are going to be turned on by Julie's boobs, but have at it if you are. You get to see them for a nice long time in a scene that goes nowhere; Julie and Richie roll around a little and when Alan doesn't get any action from Lisa, he tries to turn it into a three-way. Julie is having none of that, however, so instead they all go swimming. Naturally!

Afterwards, they plot their next adventure. Bored of "the rock concerts" (?), Richie comes up with the perfect evening: they'll spend the night in an abandoned graveyard and get high on some of his pot. Lisa, the spoilsport that she is, tries to talk everyone out of it, but she's dragged along by the rest of them. The graveyard spooks her out, and things go from bad to worse when they go into a vault that's been left standing open.

Richie, always the instigator, decides to perform a black mass, something he learned from his uncle, who was "always drawing circles". Lisa warns against it, seeing as the uncle "did disappear mysteriously enough". Off the top of his head, Richie's able to recite from memory some words he heard his uncle say. The words just happen to be a Satanic incantation to raise the dead, and before you can say "children shouldn't play with dead things", there are a few dead things wandering around the cemetery. Richie goes outside to investigate a noise, leaving us in awkward silence with some super-tight closeups of Lisa, Julie and Alan as they wait for him. You know how it is when nobody knows what to say. When Richie comes back inside, he's followed by a gang of the hungry dead, who lunge at our heroes. Alan wards off the zombies with a shovel and protects Lisa, but Richie is severely injured. It's curtains for Julie, proving once again that if you show your boobs in a horror movie, you're as good as dead.

Anyway....

Lisa and Alan drag Richie back to the car and speed off. "What about Julie??" Lisa begs, to which Alan replies "Forget her!" Meanwhile, back at the vault, there's some corpse eating going on as the zombies chow down on a bunch of cherry jelly that's suddenly all over Julie's body. Yum! As Alan speeds down the road, the film cuts back and forth endlessly: speeding car, zombies eating Julie, speeding car, zombies eating Julie, speeding car, zombies eating Julie. Do not try and suggest that the makers of Corpse Eaters didn't make every attempt to give you your money's worth, because to say that would be unfair.

When they take Richie to a conveniently nearby hospital, the doctors are at a loss to explain what attacked Richie. They also don't seem to understand the meaning of "emergency", taking their sweet time to get cleaned up and prepped for surgery. It's no surprise when they're unable to save Richie, partly because they are doofuses and largely because we already know Richie winds up as a corpse in a coffin at the Happy Halo Funeral Home. One doc breaks the news to Lisa and Alan, causing Lisa to collapse backwards onto a chair. "Lisa!" Alan shouts, to which the doctor says "Oh she's just in shock, that's all, she'll be alright." Just like it would happen in real life, they put Lisa to bed for the night in a nearby room, while a scary nurse (who resembles a transsexual Howard Johnson's waitress) gives her a sedative to help her sleep. Meanwhile Alan, who still hasn't bothered to remove his blood-soaked tank top, tries to explain to the doctors what happened. Needless to say, what doctor would believe that a group of crusty-faced zombies came along and ruined a perfectly good Black Mass?

"This is Nurse Bobbi....I borrowed your razor...."

In the tradition of all good horror movies, we have a spooky dream sequence as Lisa sleeps. She sees dead people, visits Richie in the funeral home, and sees him rise out of his coffin and kiss her full on the mouth. Did I mention that Richie is supposed to be Lisa's brother? Guess we know how it is in THAT family. Richie leaves blood all over Lisa's mouth, causing her to wake up and bite Alan's neck open. Then she attacks the tranny nurse and stabs her with scissors for about five minutes until she wakes up for real and realizes It Was Only A Dream.

Meanwhile, back at the funeral home, Creepy Mortician is drinking himself blind in his office. I honestly can't blame him, I'd be an alkie if dead people were my business, too. Especially if I looked like Angus Scrimm. So while he's up there getting plastered and falling asleep on his desk, shadowy figures are moving downstairs in the funeral home. Who could these strange visitors be? HINT: If you were a corpse eater, where would you go when you were hungry? A funeral parlor is like a fast food joint in that sense. That's right, Creepy Mortician stumbles down into the viewing rooms and finds our dusty, corpse eatin' zombies chowing down. Richie is also rising up out of the coffin, perhaps signifying that corpse eating is contagious and the graveyards of the world will no longer be safe.

This is where things get a little sketchy. The editing goes haywire here, and the zombies appear to pull out The Wannabe Tall Man's eyes. But then we see him being dragged into a barred room and put into a strait jacket, eyes mysteriously intact, babbling about how he's not insane. The end. What exactly just happened here? We don't want to believe it, but not only did Corpse Eaters pull off the "It Was All A Dream" trick, it also doubles back on itself and pulls the "It Was All In the Mind Of A Crazy Person" stunt!! How many films can you say that about?

Well, fortunately Corpse Eaters doesn't ask for too much of your time, as it only runs a little bit over an hour. It's nobody's idea of a "good" movie, although it could be a rather enjoyable one. The filmmakers don't take it too seriously, and they insert an amusing gimmick into the mix: at the beginning of the film, we see a respectably-dressed balding man sitting in the theater, minding his own business, until he sees something on the screen so horrible that he gags into his handkerchief. This is the signal, viewers, the signal that something terrible is going to happen. A voiceover that sounds suspiciously like a Canadian version of Jack from "Will & Grace" warns the audience that when they see the gagging man and hear the special ululating "buzzer", this is the time to look away from the screen to avoid seeing something that might upset your stomach. Because ya know, I can see how someone with a weak stomach might accidentally wander into a film titled Corpse Eaters.