It seems a bit odd that my three main objections to a graphic TV series about flesh-eating zombies is that it lacks realism, that its characters are hackneyed, and that it has too few flesh-eating zombies.  After all, it’s hardly a genre most folks associate with realism or complex characters and not having zombies seems to miss the point.  Our hopes were so high, but AMC’s The Walking Dead sadly does lack realism, falling into the usual horror film trap of forcing its characters to do stupid things for no better reason that it is necessary to propel the plot.  If stupid were money, these characters would be George Soros. 

—–

And the characters themselves are – in the classic critique offered by a thousand screenwriting teachers – less characters than caricatures.  The first real redneck we meet is a racist loudmouth.  As is the second.  And the third is, so far at least, just a wife beater, though I expect he’ll end up hating black people too.  This is no surprise.  To people who write for the entertainment industry, if you live east of I-5 and south of the Mason-Dixon, you’ve got a sheet and a flammable cross in the back of your pick-up and you could someday grow up to be a revered Democratic senator.

Oh, and there’s not enough zombie action.  Instead of flesh-eating terror, we get scenes of budding survival suffragettes complaining about having to do the laundry.  Seriously.  The little band of refugees can’t be bothered to set up the most basic security for the undefendable position they’ve chosen to occupy, but these walking, talking clichés have plenty of time to bicker about gender roles while scrubbing Dockers. (more…)

When you’re lucky enough to meet one of your lifelong icons sometimes you’re really not lucky at all. Damn these people for being human. Like a first date, I was more than a little nervous at the prospect of sitting for a media roundtable interview with one of my movie gods, George A. Romero, and the prayer went something like this: “Please don’t let him be a dick.”

Thankfully my prayer was answered…and then some.    

Romero, all 6’ 5” of him, wearing his trademark vest and ponytail, walked in the room a little early, pleasantly shook everyone’s hand and then announced he would be back at the appointed time but first had to take care of a nagging cough. Then, like a mischievous kid, the Horror Icon gave us a quick flash of his cough medicine:  a pack of Marlboro Reds stashed in his vest pocket.

A 70 year-old man smoking Marlboro Reds right in the heart of Health-Nazi Land?

Oh, yeah, George Romero was everything I had hoped for.

Before The Mighty George Romero came along film-goers had already been introduced to zombies and even what would famously become known as the Zombie Apocalypse. Before George Romero came along, there were horror films, even those that made you cover your eyes and afraid to look under the bed. Then, in 1968, a black and white, $114,000, indie shot-across-Hollywood’s bow changed everything. Audiences who had become accustomed to the delightfully creepy atmospherics of such Hollywood offerings as Universal’s famous Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolf Man franchise certainly knew what it was like to be scared. But it would be “Night of the Living Dead” that for the first time introduced them to pure, unrelenting terror.

And ever since, no one’s looked back. (more…)

What is horror?

The word comes down to us from the Old Roman, horrere, which means literally “to stand on end” (as in hair) or “to shiver,” whether from fear or cold – Ovid refers to the “chill-bearing breath” of the North Wind (Metamorphosis, I.65).

Halloween is a unique holiday, marked for the celebration of the chill bearing, when demons and witches are allowed to come out to play and scare the bejezzus out of us – or at least, that’s how it used to be.

Over the last decade or so, Halloween has become less about creep and more about camp; Dracula and Frankenstein costumes replaced by Octomom and Obama masks (OK, those are more scary). What I want to do here is help those who would like go old school this year, and have a truly frightful All Hallows’ Eve.

(First suggestion – avoid bars. Like St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s, Halloween brings out the amateur drinkers, a more loathsome species than any undead thing you may encounter. No, Halloween is best spent alone with someone special to snack on in the dark, with something scary to read, listen to, or watch.) (more…)

Filmmaker George Romero has had exactly one good idea in his life: the original, 1968 zombie film Night of the Living Dead. Since then, he has been coasting on a reputation as a maker of smarter than average horror films. Although he has made some good movies since Night of the Living Dead, few of his films have above par for the horror genre, and the average quality of horror films in the decades since his breakthrough movie is a very low bar to surpass. 

In particular, Romero has revisited the zombie film in quite a few movies over the years, usually providing the press with some serious intellectual/social/political commentary his latest film is supposed to make. So it is once again with his new film, the Venice Film Festival entry Survival of the Dead. Reuters reports that Romero, age 69, said his new film deals with questions about when it’s right to go to war:  (more…)