Martin

“Things only seem to be magic. There is no real magic. There’s no real magic ever.” – Martin

Filmmaker George A. Romero is most well-known for his popular and highly influential zombie films. Their impact and legacy has been well-documented. It is the films he made between them that are also worth examining in particular a prolific period between 1971 and 1974 when he made four films exploring various genres, from the romantic comedy with There’s Always Vanilla (1971) to witches with Season of the Witch (1973) to the lethal outbreak film with The Crazies (1973). Martin (1978) was his low-key and incredibly compelling take on the vampire genre by creating a portrait of a young man who may or may to be a bloodsucker. The important thing to keep in mind is that he believes he’s a vampire.

We first meet Martin (John Amplas) boarding a train for Pittsburgh. He spots a beautiful woman (Fran Middleton) getting on and stalks her. Right from the start we are unsure of his motives. He goes into a bathroom and takes out a syringe and fills it with something. Is he a junkie? He breaks into the woman’s compartment and tries to surprise her. She sees him and they struggle as he injects the syringe in her. The nature of the attack and his undressing her once subdued suggests he plans to rape her. Instead, he takes out a razor blade, cuts her arm and drinks her blood. It comes as something of a shock as nothing leading up to this point has prepared us for this act. Despite his initial bumbling, Martin is careful. He cleans up the compartment after the attack. In a sly touch, now that it is day, Romero has the young man put on a pair of sunglasses.

Believing he is cursed with the affliction of being a vampire, Martin enlists the help of Tateh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), his grand-uncle who takes him in after the death of the young man’s immediate family. Cuda is an old school Lithuanian Catholic who believes Martin is ancient vampire, constantly referring to him as “Nosferatu.” He even tells him at one point, “First, I will save your soul. Then, I will destroy you.” It is at this point that there are serious doubts that Martin is a vampire. Sunlight doesn’t burn him. He can bite into garlic. He can see his reflection. This begs the question, what is wrong with Martin? This is the mystery that the rest of the film explores.

Martin has a rich fantasy life that Romero occasionally shows via black and white footage reminiscent of a vintage Universal monster movie right down to the torch-wielding villagers. In these moments, he is much more capable and even a dashing vampire adored by his willing victims than what he is in real life, which is awkward and messy, like when he stalks a potential victim and upon moving in to attack accidentally interrupts her having sex with a lover, forcing the young man to improvise. As with his other films, Romero shows how the best laid plans can go awry as life is like that. People make mistakes, like in Night of the Living Dead (1968) when Judy is unable to free herself as she and her boyfriend try to get a truck and gas it up only to be engulfed in flames, or in Dawn of the Dead (1978) when Roger gets too cocky and is bitten by a zombie when he and Peter are fortifying the mall.

John Amplas is excellent as the disturbed Martin, a serial rapist/killer with his own specific methodology that ties into his delusion of being a vampire. It is a wonderfully nuanced performance as in some scenes he’s sullen and withdrawn (usually around men) and in others playfully enigmatic (usually with women). Romero doesn’t provide us with much of a backstory for Martin which forces us to figure him out based on what he does in the present.

Christine Forrest is also quite good as a sympathetic ear for Martin and a voice of reason in her father’s home. In a superbly acted scene, she finally confronts the old man on his delusional beliefs that Martin is Nosferatu and tells him that she is leaving to live with her boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini). Lincoln Maazel delivers a solid performance as shop owner cum vampire hunter, convinced that Martin is a vampire. Cuda is just delusional if not more worse than Martin, prattling on like a low-rent Van Helsing, which only further confuses the young man. The veteran theatrical actor delivers a grounded performance for a role where the temptation would be to chew the scenery.

After making Night of the Living Dead, Romero made several documentaries to pay the bills. He was eventually offered $100,000 to make a low budget horror film. He remembered, “It was one of those middle-of-the-night ideas, which I first saw as something funny – basically, a vampire would have a hard time today! Nobody would pay him a lot of attention or get particularly shook up.” The filmmaker researched a series of actual vampiric murders committed by a Los Angeles-based slasher drinking his victims’ blood from goblets he brought with him. Romero also looked at vampiric lore, including an account of a clan of highway thieves in 14th century Scotland that lived in a cave, eating their victims’ remains.

He did so much research that he couldn’t decide which direction to take with the film. “I didn’t know whether I wanted my character to be a vampire or just think he was a vampire.” Romero got a better idea of what he wanted to do when he saw actor John Amplas in Philemon, a play about the persecution of a Christian disciple by the Romans at the Pittsburgh playhouse, which impressed him greatly. So much so that he wrote the titular character with the actor in mind. In addition to his leading man, Martin also saw the debuts of regular collaborators cinematographer Michael Gornick and Tom Savini who did double duty as special effects artist and appearing on screen as Christina’s boyfriend.

During filming Romero had a small crew of only 5-8 people on the set on a given day working 18-hour days. They were bolstered by the on-going romance between the director and Christine Forrest, an actress who moved back to Pittsburgh from New York City. They had met while making Season of the Witch and would end up eventually getting married in 1980.

Romero’s original cut of Martin came in at two hours and 45 minutes. He had originally envisioned it in black and white but unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to strike a negative of this version and had to cut it down to a more theater-friendly running time. Of the footage that was excised, Romero said, “little incidental characters became more important,” and “there was more stuff about the town and the decay.”

Martin opened in July of 1978. Newsweek’s Jack Kroll said, “Romero has become a dazzling stylist…his balance of wit and horror is the best since Hitchcock.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “Despite the usual amounts of gore, this is a surprisingly tender, ambiguous, and sexy film in which Romero’s penchant for social satire is for once restricted to local and modest proportions.”

At one point, Martin says to someone, “Things only seem to be magic. There is no real magic. There’s no real magic ever.” This could be the central thesis for Romero’s early films as they are grounded in realism. Even the fantastical elements – the dead coming back to life – are treated matter-of-factly and juxtaposed with actors that look like and portray everyday people, inhabiting recognizable settings, like a farmhouse, a mall or the suburbs. As he did with Season of the Witch, the filmmaker shows his characters doing mundane things, like making dinner or going grocery shopping so that when something extraordinary happens, like someone dying, it has an extra punch to it.

Martin was a modest success but its legacy as one of Romero’s best films is firmly in place. It gave birth to two notable vampire films that couldn’t be further apart in tone – Vampire’s Kiss (1988) and Habit (1997). The former stars Nicolas Cage in an outrageous tour-de-force performance that takes Martin’s notion of a man who thinks he’s a vampire and runs with it to the extreme. The latter is Larry Fessenden’s gritty take set in New York City and examines a man who gets involved with a mysterious woman who may or may not be a vampire. Both films owe a huge debt to Romero’s film.

Late in the film Martin says, “If the magic part was real and you could make them do whatever you wanted them to do, then that would be different. In real life…in real life, you can’t get people to do what you want them to do.” Romero’s film is a melancholic portrait of a young man adrift in life with very little to anchor him to the real world, which may explain why he clings to the belief that he is a vampire. It gives his life some meaning and purpose in an otherwise meaningless existence.

SOURCES

Gagne, Paul R. The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh. Dodd, Mead & Company. 1987.

Dawn of the Dead

I’ve seen George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) enough times that when I watch it, I pay more attention to things that go on in the background or margins of scenes because I’ve always been fascinated with the world he created in the Dead films. Unlike the many imitators and wannabes, he took the time to develop the protagonists, giving them flaws and vulnerabilities so that we care about what happens to these characters while still delivering the goods in the gore department. The end result is a smart, exciting and horrifying masterpiece that has more on its mind than killing zombies.

Taking place years after the events of Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn begins with Francine Parker (Gaylen Ross) waking up from a nightmare into a living one. She works at a Philadelphia television station embroiled in chaos, trying desperately to stay on the air. In recent viewings I’ve paid closer attention to what is being said in the background as Romero gives us tantalizing hints to this world whose order is rapidly disintegrating thanks to the zombie epidemic.

Two pundits argue about whether people are actually coming back to life and eating the living. As the opening credits continue to appear, Romero shows people behind the scenes continuing to argue among themselves. Right from the get-go Fran has a forceful personality as she’s willing to stand-up to her boss when she goes against his orders and removes non-existent rescue stations from being broadcast. In a nice touch Romero uses one of the T.V. pundits to give us the low-down on the zombie rules in Dawn for those who might not have seen his other films. We learn that the President of the United States has implemented martial law in the country and people are no longer allowed to stay in their homes.

Fran’s boyfriend Stephen Andrews (David Emge), a helicopter pilot, urges her to take off with him. She hesitates, a last vestige of loyalty to her job perhaps, until a co-worker tells her, “We’re off the air by midnight anyway. The emergency networks are taking over. Our responsibility is finished.” The way he says that last line – in a resigned way – has always affected me and strikes a slightly ominous tone. Later on, our heroes find a television and Romero treats us to snippets of news from the outside world. One pundit suggests that the zombie outbreak might be a viral disease. We are never given the full picture, but in a way that is a smart move on his part as he realized that whatever we think up, filling the gaps with our own imagination would be better than anything he could come up with and so, in a way, we become a part of the creative process.

As if to illustrate the martial law orders for people to leave their homes, Romero cuts to a SWAT team carrying out a raid on a tenement building. We meet Roger DeMarco (Scott Reiniger), a smart and able man who tries his best to avoid a racist member (James Baffico) of his team as they enter the building to find a mix of people and the living dead. The racist cop is a continuation of the men that shot Ben at the end of Night of the Living Dead only he takes pleasure in killing African-Americans, living or dead. His actions give us a first real taste of Tom Savini’s groundbreaking make-up effects as he blows off some hapless civilian’s head off with a shotgun blast.

Fortunately, this renegade cop is taken out by one his own, Peter Washington (Ken Foree). Interestingly, the raid on the apartment building devolves into chaos just like at the T.V. station, minus the zombies, of course. I like how the sight of the living dead affects these cops. One man is so traumatized that he takes his own life. Roger is also affected and we see the shock play out on his face. Peter isn’t the cold killing machine he initially appears to be. When he and Roger clear the basement of zombies, a tear runs down his face as he tries to keep his emotions in check, but it must be difficult having to kill his fellow man. For me, the scariest part of Dawn of the Dead is the apartment building bloodbath because the protagonists don't know what atrocities are lurking behind every door and the terror and confusion in such an enclosed space is unsettling.

Peter and Roger team up and the latter knows Stephen so they hook up with Fran and escape in the helicopter. As they make their way across Pennsylvania, Romero cuts to a group of redneck hunters who’ve teamed up with the military and are treating the whole thing like a hunting party complete with beer and music. This echoes a similar scene in Night of the Living Dead only with more a satirical vibe as the country music and the laidback attitude of the hunters creates a bizarrely festive mood, punctuating the pervasive feeling of dread that has permeated Dawn of the Dead up to this point.

Our heroes discover a shopping mall and decide that it is just too good of an opportunity to pass up. As they systematically take control of the place, Dawn of the Dead becomes a fascinating treatise on the pros and cons of materialism as over time our heroes get complacent and over-confident that they’ve rid the place of zombies. As is often the case in Romero’s films, humans are just as big a threat if not more so to the protagonists than the living dead. This comes in the form of a gang of marauding bikers that threaten our heroes’ peaceful existence. It’s good in a way because the bikers wake them up, reigniting their survival instincts and reminding them that no place is safe and that the best strategy is to keep moving.

I’ve always felt that Dawn of the Dead has never gotten enough praise for its excellent screenplay that presents realistic characters thrown into extraordinary circumstances. For example, there’s a good exchange in the helicopter as everyone debates how they’re going to get more fuel and Peter lays it out for them, cutting through the bullshit: “Wake up, sucker. We’re thieves and we’re bad guys, that’s exactly what we are.” He makes a good point – societal order has gone out the window and it is everyone for themselves. There’s another nice bit when our heroes discover the rather large shopping mall and decide to check it out. As they observe the living dead shambling by stores Fran wonders, “What are they doing? Why do they come here?” to which Stephen says, “Some kind of instinct, memory, what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”

I like that Romero isn’t afraid to have flawed protagonists. It’s more realistic and makes them more relatable. For example, Stephen isn’t as adept at killing zombies as are the well-trained Peter and Roger. His first run-in with the living dead is awkward as he clumsily tries to protect Fran. He’s also a lousy shot, unable to kill a zombie after three shots from his rife and then he almost shoots Peter while trying to nail another one. Roger is a little too cocky and over-confident when it comes to dealing with zombies. Interestingly, it is the characters with the least amount of flaws – Peter and Fran – that survive. Romero doesn’t pass judgment on any of these characters, but instead simply presents them warts and all and leaves it up to the audience to decide.

Romero’s script develops complex relationships among our heroes by introducing Fran’s pregnancy early on. While Roger, Peter and Stephen debate whether Fran should have an abortion or not, she sits in another room visibly upset at decisions being made without her two cents. Gaylen Ross handles this scene brilliantly and you really feel for Fran. I like that she speaks up, isn’t afraid to stand up for herself and lets it be known that she is not going to cater to their needs, that she wants to know what’s going on and be treated as an equal. She also demands to be taught how to fly the helicopter in case something happens to Stephen.

Scott Reiniger does a nice job of playing Roger’s transformation from empathetic cop to someone who takes too many chances and loses his objectivity with fatal results. I like how dealing with and killing zombies changes Roger. He covers up the trauma of it through false bravado. His gradual transformation into a zombie is a chilling one, not just because of Savini’s subtle make-up effects, but also how Reiniger conveys the change via his demeanor and the way he carries himself.

Ken Foree’s Peter is the calming influence on the group and he’s the natural leader if you can say it has one. He’s the first to support Fran’s demand to be treated as an equal, but with one caveat – she can’t go out with them until she learns how to use a gun. He also offers up chilling pearls of wisdom like the iconic line, “When there’s no more room in hell the dead will walk the earth.”

While Night of the Living Dead is rightly regarded as a landmark film, Dawn of the Dead is a more ambitious one. It is also better written with more fully developed protagonists dealing more with just survival, but things like pregnancy and a false sense of security. Like Night, Dawn is very much a film of its time as it offers up harsh critiques on capitalism and materialism, using the zombies as metaphors for mindless consumers. It also deliver the goods for horror fans courtesy of Savini’s impressive make-up effects, culminating in the biker’s siege of the mall, that stands the test of time and still looks better than the CGI effects of its noisier, flashier remake that dumped the socio-political commentary for stylish slam-bam action.

The image of the living dead wandering mindlessly through the mall while goofy-sounding muzak plays over the soundtrack is still one of the most potent images in any film of its kind because it speaks directly to our consumer culture. The living in Dawn of the Dead consume material items while the zombies consume them. Peter and Fran survive because they don’t need all their material items to exist. The mall being overrun by bikers and zombies forces them to leave all those useless creature comforts behind and take only what they need. It is implied that they don’t have much fuel left in the helicopter, which leaves their future uncertain, but they’re alive and for right now that’s enough.

Creepshow

Anticipation was high among horror fans when it was announced that three giants of the genre were going to collaborate together on a film. Author Stephen King, director George Romero and makeup effects wizard Tom Savini decided to pay tribute to the classic EC horror comic books from the 1950s with an anthology film called Creepshow (1982). Coming off the personally fulfilling, but commercial failure of Knightriders (1981), I’m sure Romero was eager to move on to something else and hooking up with King made sense. The two men had originally met over the possibility of collaborating on an adaptation of the author’s novel Salem’s Lot, but when the film rights were sold off to television, Romero moved on.

Making a horror anthology was a bit of a risky gamble at the time. They were all the rage in the 1970s with Hammer and Amicus cranking out films like The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Tales from the Crypt (1972), and From Beyond the Grave (1973), but by the end of the decade they had fallen out of favor. King and Romero wanted to bring these kinds of films back while also celebrating the horror comic books, like House of Mystery and The Vault of Horror that they grew up enjoying as kids. The project was given a decent budget and populated with a mix of up-and-coming movie stars and veteran character actors. While receiving only mixed reviews, it was a sleeper hit.

Creepshow is bookended by a boy (Joe King) being chastised by 1980s horror movie mainstay Tom Atkins for reading horror comic books. The overbearing patriarch throws his son’s issue of Creepshow in the trash and the rest of the film depicts various stories from its pages.

The first story is “Father’s Day” that sees a family of wealthy snobs waiting for their Aunt Bedelia Grantham (Viveca Lindfors), the rich matriarch who is rumored to have murdered her father, Nathan (Jon Lormer) on, what else, Father’s Day. Nathan was a real piece of work, angrily demanding his cake over and over until, out of frustration, Bedelia brains him with an ashtray. It’s Father’s Day again and Nathan (John Amplas) rises from the grave demanding his cake once more. The undead patriarch, of course, evokes Romero’s zombie films, but Tom Savini’s makeup isn’t a rehash of Dawn of the Dead (1979). The look of undead Nathan is in keeping with the exaggerated style of the old EC comic books.

Romero hits us right up front with all kinds of attention-grabbing style: skewed camera angles, garish Giallo lighting (saturating shots in red or blue lighting) and employing split-screen action like the panels in a comic book. He even evokes Night of the Living Dead (1968) ever so slightly when we see Bedelia visit her father’s grave; the cemetery initially bathed in warm, late afternoon light, soon becomes ominously atmospheric.

There is a nice mix of comedy and dread with the former coming from a fantastic moment where we get to see “serious actor” Ed Harris grooving out to some cheesy music with his wife (Elizabeth Regan). I can’t get enough of seeing him dancing so awesomely badly to a cheesy ‘80s song. With the exception of Harris, the rest of the Grantham clan are a bunch of vain, selfish, obnoxious bluebloods that deserve what’s coming to them, which makes their comeuppance at the hands of Nathan all the more satisfying.

“The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” is easily the weakest story in Creepshow as Stephen King, in an act of unfortunate hubris, casts himself as the eponymous Jordy, a stereotypical dumb yokel who foolishly touches a fallen meteorite and begins sprouting a strange, green moss-like substance that mutates into wild vegetation all over his body. Before you can say Swamp Thing, Jordy and his place are overwhelmed with lush green vegetation. Where the other segments achieve the right mix of horror and humor, this one goes too far over to the comedy side and comes across as too cartoonish.

King’s “acting” is straight out of an Ed Wood movie – strictly amateur hour and not in a it’s-so-bad-it’s-good kind of way. This segment is essentially a one-man show and King just isn’t talented enough to pull it off. Romero does the best he can to keep things interesting visually (Jordy’s place is a marvel of set design), and Savini’s make-up job on King makes you wish that he had done the effects work on Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing (1982).

Fortunately, Creepshow bounces back with “Something to Tide You Over” as funnymen Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen are cast against type as two men at odds with each other. Harry (Danson) has been sleeping with Richard’s (Nielsen) wife Becky (Gaylen Ross). Richard confronts Harry and takes him out to his privately owned beach and proceeds to bury him up to his head, waiting for the tide to come in, much like he did to his wife. It’s a pretty unorthodox kind of revenge as is the plot twist where we see what happens to Harry and Becky after Richard leaves them to die.

Again, Romero comes up with some fantastic imagery, chief among them the shot of an irate Harry submerged in water, which evokes the watery demise of Shelley Winters’ character in The Night of the Hunter (1955). Once Richard returns home, Romero ratchets up the tension as we soon realize that Harry and Becky are back for some vengeance of their own. Savini’s makeup effects on the waterlogged couple are quite extraordinary and their distorted, watery voices are unsettling. It’s great to see Leslie Nielsen shed all of his comedic shtick to play a fairly sadistic son-of-a-bitch and he seems to relish the change of pace. Few remember that he started off his career playing dramatic roles because he’s so closely identified to his iconic character in the Naked Gun movies.

For me, the best story in Creepshow is “The Crate,” which focuses on Henry Northup (Hal Holbrook), a reserved college professor, and his friend and colleague Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver). Henry is married to Wilma “Billie” Northup (Adrienne Barbeau), a boozy, overbearing shrew of a wife, who shows up to a faculty party drunk and belligerent. Dexter is called away when a janitor (Don Keefer) shows him a crate from an Arctic expedition dating back to 1834. It was stored away under a staircase in the bowels of a building.

Naturally, Dexter and the janitor decide to open the crate and they unleash a ferocious creature that kills the hapless custodian in gruesome fashion (although, restrained for Savini). Pretty soon, Henry and Billie run afoul of the nasty beast as Savini gets a chance to flex his impressive makeup muscles. I can still recall seeing pictures of the crate monster in Fangoria around the time Creepshow came out and being scared by it. At a young, impressionable age, it took me awhile to see the film all the way through, but at least I read the comic book adaptation.

What really sells the horror in this segment is the absolutely sweaty, wild-eyed terrified reactions of Dexter to the two deaths he witnesses. Fritz Weaver does a great job as Dexter, never amping up his character’s anxiety too much and knowing just when to reel things in. Holbrook is also very good at showing Henry’s transformation from mild-mannered professor to calculating husband who plots the demise of his domineering wife. Adrienne Barbeau is a hoot as Henry’s obnoxious wife and looks like she’s having a blast bouncing off of Holbrook’s doormat of a husband. It’s a juicy role that lets the veteran actress vamp it up as only she can.

Finally, the story “They’re Creeping Up On You!” features E.G. Marshall as Upson Pratt (perfect name for his character), an anal-retentive neat freak businessman who lives in a sterile apartment. He’s obsessed with eradicating his place of bugs. It’s an amusing spin on the equally reclusive and germ-obsessed Howard Hughes fused with Ebenezer Scrooge. All Pratt cares about is money and clearing up his “bug problem,” but soon enough the omnipresent cockroaches have their day in a rather fitting finale to this film.

Marshall is excellent as the curmudgeonly germaphobe sealed up in how sterile fortress. He’s a prisoner of his own obsessions. This segment shows what a truly skilled actor can do when he has to carry a segment on his own, unlike King in his story. For anyone creeped out by bugs this segment is particularly disconcerting.

George Romero first met Stephen King when he was approached by Warner Bros. to direct an adaptation of Salem’s Lot, a novel about a small town in Maine that is terrorized by vampires. The two men met in Maine for several days and even though the project fell through, they kept in touch. King and Romero wanted to work together on an adaptation of the author’s epic novel The Stand, but realized that it would require major Hollywood studio funding to get made. In order to retain full artistic control, they decided to make another inexpensive film first that would make enough money to give Romero more clout with the studios.

In the summer of 1979, Romero and his business partner and producer Richard Rubinstein met with King in Maine to come up with ideas for an original film because it would be cheaper to make. One idea was a series of horror “blackouts,” short sketches leading to a major scare. Romero wanted to create five stories in five completely different styles: one in black and white, one in color, one in 3D, and so on. However, they decided that this approach was too experimental.

It was King that came up with the comic book idea and the “Creepshow” title. He wrote and completed the 142-page screenplay in October 1979. The first story, “Father’s Day,” was described as a “deliberate EC pastiche,” according to King. “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” was an adaptation of “Weeds,” a short story King published in the May 1976 issue of Cavalier. In fact, “Weeds” was originally written as the first chapter of a novel, but as the story started to spread beyond Verrill’s world, King could not find any more to say. For the film, he decided to change the tragic tone to a more comedic one.

“Something to Tide You Over” was inspired by King’s memories of being buried up to his neck in sand as a child and also from a film about Bluebeard the pirate being left to die below the high tide line. “The Crate” was adapted from a short story published in the July 1979 issue of Gallery magazine. The story was inspired by a real crate found under the stairs in the chemistry building at the University of Maine. What stuck in King’s mind was that the crate had been under the stairs for a hundred years and he imagined “something really sinister in there.” The creature in the crate was inspired by the Looney Tunes cartoon character, the Tasmanian Devil. For the last story, King originally had a mixture of spiders, cockroaches, beetles, and bugs that did not even exist. However, budgetary constraints forced him to use cockroaches exclusively.

Initially, King was not interested in a framing story to link the five stories because he felt that ones in past horror film anthologies were “silly and contrived.” Romero suggested a comic book as the framing device and King agreed. The Spectre, featured in the prologue and linking segments, was a reworking of the “Old Witch”, “The Cryptkeeper” and other narrators from the EC comic books. Romero used King’s first draft, making some changes with the author’s approval and input during principal photography, which often involved rewriting dialogue.

With King’s script, a rough budget and poster art created by EC comic book veteran artist Jack Kamen, the filmmakers shopped the project around Hollywood. Money wasn’t an issue with studio executives, but rather the content. They wanted creative input, which King and Romero balked at. So, they went back to United Film Distributing, a subsidiary of the United Artists Theater Circuit, who had backed Knightriders. They ended up financing Creepshow’s $8 million budget.

Pre-production began in early 1981 and Romero called on frequent collaborators, like makeup effects artist Tom Savini and cinematographer Michael Gornick. The production set up offices in Penn Hall Academy, an abandoned Pittsburgh grammar school, transforming their gymnasium into a soundstage. Principal photography began in late July 1981. In order to give each segment its own distinct look, King and Romero decided to employ the vibrant color scheme from the EC comic books through heightened, saturated lighting and utilizing stylized backgrounds. With the significant budget, Romero had the freedom to shoot on location as well as on a soundstage. Filming lasted 17 weeks, ending in late November.

Post-production was quite extensive with four different editors working on the five stories, a large amount of optical work, and composing the film’s score. Originally, Romero planned to use music from the Capitol Library (which he also used in Night of the Living Dead). He felt that the music would work well with the film, but assistant director John Harrison noticed the varying degrees of quality in material from the various decades and ended up creating much of the music in the film on a synthesizer. Rick Catizone created the animated sequences that acted as segues between segments in the style of Kamen’s comic book pages drawn for the film.

Creepshow debuted at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival and was a rousing success with a distribution deal made with Warner Bros. – the first time a studio would distribute a Romero film. The film received mixed reviews from mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “What they’ve done here is to recapture not only the look and the storylines of old horror comics, but also the peculiar feeling of poetic justice that permeated their pages.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “The best things about Creepshow are its carefully simulated comic-book tackiness and the gusto with which some good actors assume silly positions. Horror film purists may object to the levity even though failed, as a lot of it is.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “What one confronts in Creepshow is five consistently stale, derivative horror vignettes of various lengths and defects.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, “Creepshow is a faux naïf horror film: too arch to be truly scary, too elemental to succeed as satire.” Finally, in his review for the Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, “The Romero-King collaboration has softened both the horror and the cynicism, but not by enough to betray the sources – Creepshow is almost as funny and as horrible as the filmmakers would clearly love it to be.”

If Romero was criticized for his rather non-descript directorial style prior to Creepshow, with this film the director showed that he could turn on the style with the best of them, cutting loose and having fun with the material. He pays homage to the classic EC comic books from the ‘50s by presenting a series of short stories populated by reprehensible protagonists that get their well-deserved retribution through supernatural means. Most horror anthologies are notoriously uneven in terms of quality and Creepshow is no different. Fortunately, there’s only one segment that isn’t very good and that was down to casting, while the rest of them are populated with familiar faces that seem to be having fun inhabiting their colorful characters, which translates into fun for the audience watching them.

Creepshow helped kick off a new wave of horror anthology films that included the likes of Nightmares (1983), Cat’s Eye (1985), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), and, more recently, Trick ‘r Treat (2007), which, with its mix of horror and comedy and use of garish, vibrant lighting, seems particularly indebted to Creepshow. While it certainly doesn’t contain the scathing social commentary of other Romero films, it is a fun, entertaining romp – a cleansing of the cinematic palette if you will, before he moved on to tackle the third installment of his Dead trilogy with Day of the Dead (1985).

SOURCES

Gagne, Paul R. “Creepshow: Masters of the Macabre.” Cinefantastique. September-October 1982.

Further reading: Check out Sean Gill's excellent take on Creepshow over at his blog.

The Crazies

With the recent threats of Anthrax, SARS, bird and swine flu, The Crazies (1973), with its deadly viral outbreak affecting a small town in Pennsylvania, has become more relevant than ever before. Case in point: the impending remake starring Radha Mitchell and Timothy Olyphant. Made between zombie film classics Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1979), The Crazies is the missing link, of sorts – a warm-up for Dawn in that it explores many of the same themes but you can see filmmaker George A. Romero working them out in The Crazies.

Romero starts things off with a bang as a father smashes up his house before setting it on fire with his two kids and wife (whom he already killed) still inside. No explanation is given for his destructive behavior which makes his actions that much more chilling. David (W.G. McMillan) and Clank (Harold Wayne Jones) are two voluntary firefighters that rush to put out the fire. A highly contagious virus, code named Trixie, has infected some of the town’s inhabitants, turning mild-mannered people into crazed killers. The military has moved in and army soldiers are everywhere. David’s girlfriend is a nurse named Judy (Lane Caroll) and she shows up to work and finds all kinds of soldiers in white hazmat suits setting up base camp. David and Clank realize that something big is going down and decide to find Judy and split.

Naturally, the military doesn’t give a crap about the townsfolk and are thinking only about natural security, even considering dropping a nuclear bomb over the town in order to burn out the infected area. The military are in a state of controlled chaos as they try to contain the infected with varying degrees of success. A dance is broken up as martial law is imposed. Innocent people are woken up and taken from their homes, including crying children seized from their beds. David, Clank and Judy cross paths and joins forces with Artie (Day of the Dead’s Richard Liberty) and his daughter, Kathie (Lynn Lowry), after they are all captured by the military. They manage to escape and hole up in an abandoned country club as they try to figure out what to do next. As he did with Night of the Living Dead and to even greater effect in Dawn of the Dead, Romero explores the dynamic between these characters, including how they cope with the stress brought on by the dangerous situation they find themselves in.

The Crazies features slightly cheesy pre-Tom Savini gore that looks a lot like red paint but this only adds to the film’s low-budget charm. There is also a refreshing lack of recognizable movie stars. Instead, Romero populates his film with a cast of average (in the best sense of the word) looking people that could have been picked up right off the street. This kind of casting gives the film an authenticity, an almost documentary-like feel. The amateurish, unpolished delivery of dialogue by the cast also adds to the realism. It is like these people are being caught on camera during an unguarded moment in their lives, like we are intruding. For example, we are introduced to David and Judy in bed having a conversation that an actual couple might have. It is touches like this that help us get to know these characters so that we empathize with their plight later on.

Also adding to the realistic feeling is the film being shot on location in actual homes and buildings. Romero starts off with a claustrophobic vibe as most of the action takes place in-doors but by the film’s climax, he moves the action outdoors and really opens things up with an exciting chase that takes place in the countryside. There are all kinds of striking images in The Crazies, like a doctor with a gas mask on tending to two children with burns. There are chilling images of bodies being stripped of their valuables, bagged and then burned. In another scene, a crazed priest sets himself on fire a la the infamous Buddhist monk who did the same thing to protest the Vietnam War. Perhaps the most memorable image is that of an infected old lady repeatedly stabbing a soldier with a knitting needle only to resume her knitting as it nothing happened.

The army comes across as ineffectual as represented by Major Ryder (Harry Spillman) who seems like a bureaucrat in a military uniform. He looks disinterested and spends his time waiting for supplies to arrive, signing forms and giving orders that don’t always seem to be followed. Ryder gives an understandably upset local doctor sarcastic answers to some honest questions. His superior, Colonel Peckem (Lloyd Hollar) is a little better. He seems organized and actually knows what he’s doing. Even though he may well-informed, he meets resistance from his superiors, politicians far away from the situation who have no real understanding of what’s going on. Peckem is a rare, sane voice in a chaotic situation. Dr. Watts (Richard France, who would go on to play another scientist in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead), one of the developers of Trixie is brought in and complains to anyone who will listen. He has no problem voicing his opinions, openly criticizing his military handlers. The film cuts between scenes of the overwhelmed and disorganized military and the protagonists from the town just trying to find a way out of this nightmarish scenario.

The Crazies began with filmmaker Paul McCullough who wrote a screenplay called The Mad People about people who went crazy after a weapon spilled. Romero remembered, “it was really a character piece, it was people doing things, doing life that you see in the papers every day.” The military subplot in the McCullough’s script was only featured in the first act. Producer Lee Hessel agreed to finance and distribute the film but only if Romero rewrote the script to focus on the military taking over the town. Hessel had previously worked with Romero on There’s Always Vanilla (1971). Another change Romero made to the story was to have more action as per Hessel’s request. The budget was set at approximately $270,000 and the film was shot over 40 days. This was the first time that Romero worked with Screen Actors Guild actors and 35mm stock. Despite Hessel’s best intentions, The Crazies was poorly distributed and released under several different titles all over the country. It was not given a wide release but was eventually rediscovered on home video.

The Crazies takes the template Romero established with Night of the Living Dead and adds a political component, showing the ineptitude of military leaders. In this respect, The Crazies is a warm-up for Dawn of the Dead as it also features a small group of protagonists forced to survive on their own, unable to trust the authorities as they battle the infected. The Crazies also anticipates recent outbreak viral horror films like 28 Days Later (2002), its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), and Planet Terror (2007). Unfortunately, The Crazies is often considered to be a minor work in Romero’s canon but I have always felt that it was an important stepping stone towards more ambitious projects like Dawn of the Dead and Knightriders (1981). He showed more political and social awareness – something that was only hinted at in his early work.

DVD of the Week: Night of the Living Dead

In recognition of its 40th anniversary, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) has been given the special edition treatment on DVD...again. Since entering the public domain, everybody and his brother has released this film on home video so the buyer has to really be careful which version they get because the quality of the film and accompanying extras (if any) varies. In 2002, the “Millennium Edition” was released and it had the best mix of quality transfer and collection of extras. So, how does this new edition hold up?
Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner) are visiting their father’s grave and spot a man (S. William Hinzman) walking rather oddly among the tombstones. Johnny teases his sister with the now classic line, “They’re coming to get you, Barbra,” scaring her. As the man comes closer, she begins to apologize and he grabs at her. Johnny intervenes and he and the man struggle. Johnny is knocked to the ground, hitting his head on a tombstone. Terrified, Barbra runs for the car and manages to escape to a nearby farmhouse.

A few minutes later, a man named Ben (Duane Jones) shows up and by now a few more shambling figures like the man in the cemetery have appeared. After boarding up the house to keep those things out, Ben tells Barbra what happened to him and how he got there. They turn on a radio and a news broadcast confirms what we’ve already suspected – the dead have come back to life to feast on the living. Pretty soon their activity causes people hiding out in the cellar to surface: a man, his wife and their young daughter, and a young couple. They decide to pool their resources and fortify the house in an effort to hold up until help arrives.

What is so striking about the film’s memorable opening sequence is the matter-of-fact way Romero introduces the first zombie. The initial shot of him looks like someone out for a stroll but as we get a better look at him, something doesn’t seem right. The zombie doesn’t talk but rather snarls like an animal. What is also interesting is how smart he is – considering he’s a zombie. He knows enough to pick up a rock and smash a car window to get at Barbra when she tries to escape. When she takes refuge in the house he has enough sense to tear down the phone line.

For a first feature, Night of the Living Dead is a remarkably assured debut for Romero as he has EC horror comics scares with film noir flourishes and a dash of social commentary, especially with the film’s shocking ending (for its time). Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the film is the group dynamic. Romero presents us with a group of diverse characters and then bounces them off each other, pitting Ben’s rational heroics against Harry’s (Karl Hardman) cowardly arrogance. Romero creates believable characters who act realistically to extraordinary circumstances.
Romero also provides tantalizing details about what is happening through radio and later, television news reports that do a great job of establishing the frightening new world our characters are now living in. The broadcasts also hint at a possible source for the zombie epidemic – radiation from outer space that is a nice nod to science fiction films from the 1950s. Night of the Living Dead pioneered the modern zombie film complete with its own set of rules (i.e. the dead are slow moving and have to be shot in the head) that many other films of the genre would also adhere to afterwards. Romero’s film also demonstrated the power of an independently-made horror film that did not have to play by the safe, tired rules mandated by the Hollywood studios. It also launched Romero’s career, giving us several more thought-provoking films for years to come.

Special Features:

So, what’s missing from the “Millennium Edition?” Gone is Kevin O'Brien's 8-minute student film Night of the Living Bread (1990). Also, MIA is a collection of Romero’s early commercial work. Perhaps, the most glaring omission is the 400 pages (or screens) containing the original treatment, and more than 160 still images. Finally, missing is a video interview with actress Judith Ridley.

There is an audio commentary by co-writer/director George A. Romero, producer/actor Karl Hardman, actress Marilyn Eastman, and co-writer John A. Russo. They recall the creative solutions they came up with to deal with unforeseen problems and put crew members in front of the camera in order to cut costs. They provide plenty of filming anecdotes and talk mainly about how they pulled off certain shots, make-up effects, and other technical details on this production-oriented track.

Also included is a commentary by producer Russell Streiner, production manager Vince Survinski, actors Judith O’Dea, Bill Hinzman, Kyra Schon, and Keith Wayne. Everyone laughs and jokes with each others as they reminisce about making the film. They have a lot of fun recounting the stories behind what we are watching and speak admiringly of Duane Jones. This is an engaging, anecdotal track.

The set piece of the special features is “One for the Fire: The Legacy of Night of the Living Dead,” a feature-length retrospective documentary that opens with actors Judith O’Dea and Russell Streiner recreating their famous drive to the cemetery that started it all. They talk about how they were cast while Romero talks about his background in industrial films and how he cut his teeth on this kind of work. Screenwriter John A. Russo and Romero talk about the origins of the story. Most of the surviving cast and crew take us through the challenges of making this low-budget film in great detail. This is a fascinating, extensive look at how this landmark film came together.

“Speaking of the Dead” features an excerpt from a public appearance that Romero made in Toronto in 2007 where he talks about the influences on Night of the Living Dead. He cites EC horror comics for their content – lurid stories with lots of gore. Stylistically, he was inspired by Tales of Hoffmann (1951). Romero also talks about the downbeat ending and the angry feelings behind it. Later films, The Crazies (1973) and Dawn of the Dead (1978) are also touched upon.
“Ben Speaks” is the last, in-depth interview with Duane Jones in 1987 before he died in 1988. He has no regrets making the film despite being forever associated with it. The actor speaks very eloquently about his thoughts on the film and the fame that came with it.
Also included is the theatrical trailer.

Finally, there is a “Still Gallery” with various posters, promotional stills, and behind-the-scenes photographs.