Diary of the Dead

Forty years ago, director George A. Romero changed the way the movie world looked at zombies by giving audiences an entrails-eye view of what it must really look like when the undead rise from their graves to feast on the flesh of the living.

Last year, the director, who has made a career out of milking that original Night of the Living Dead formula with sequels and remakes, went back to the drawing board to create one of the best horror movies of the past decade.

Diary of the Dead follows a group of Pitt University film students as they graduate from making their own cheap horror movie to documenting the horror that surrounds them as the dead start coming hungrily back to life. Unlike the teens in the vast majority of horror movies, these kids aren’t pretty and vacant; they have brains and use them so they won’t become a meal for some stumbling zombie.

The film, told from the students’ hand-held video camera perspective, takes a little getting used to stylistically, but unlike the amateurish trickery of the Blair Witch Project it isn’t there just to make viewers so nauseous they won’t realize how pitiful the actors are and how dumb the story is. Under Romero’s sure hand, the style of Diary comes with substance.

Like all the Romero zombie films, Diary of the Dead is filled with plenty of literally gut-wrenching moments, but they are usually delivered with the kind of dark humor that the director specializes in. Like all Romero movies, however, Diary is as much social commentary as it is scare-fest and it leaves the audience plenty to chew over regarding the voyeuristic world we wallow in even in the direst of circumstances.

Re-Animator (1985)

Every one in a while, it’s good to kick back and relax to a classic horror movie … like Re-Animator.

Granted, Re-Animator is not ‘classic’ in the sense of Nosferatu or Frankenstein, but those of us who prefer their horror with a little twist – and a lot of gore – there’s nothing quite like this Stuart Gordon extravaganza.

The movie tells the story of medical student Herbert West (the delightful Jeffrey Combs) who is obsessed with extending the time a body can be brought back to life after the brain technically dies. While more legitimate scientists (at least in the film) put the limit at 12 seconds, West feels that with just a few squirts of his special neon green formula he can extend it … indefinitely.

Bringing the dead back to life is a staple of the horror genre, but few films have the guts, so to speak, to capture it so graphically on the big screen. Although some of the gore looks a little dated – especially when compared to some of the stomach churning exercises in bad taste being churned out today – Re-Animator still has enough murder and mayhem to make its more squeamish viewers reach for a bucket.

What separates this film from the hundreds of other horror movies dedicated to the same central theme is Re-Animator's wicked sense of humor. Whether it’s West’s first experiments with the household cat (“Don’t expect it to tango. It has a broken back.") to the infamous seduction scene (don’t ask … it has to be seen to be believed), Re-Animator is a very funny film. Sick, twisted and very funny.

Starring Jeffrey Combs.

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Edmund (2005)

Edmund is a powerful drama of one man’s slide into madness that drags the audience along with him whether they want to go there or not.

For those willing to risk 90 minutes of their life watching it – even if they have to watch some of it peaking through the hands they have clamped over their eyes – it’s an ultimately rewarding experience if for no other reason than they get to see a great actor, William H. Macy, do some of the best work of his career.

In the movie Macy plays Edmund Burke, a mild-mannered fellow who one night, on impulse, goes to see a fortune teller who proclaims that the Tarot cards are revealing a problem in his life: He’s not where he’s supposed to be. Edmund takes her at her word and decides to make some drastic changes in his life, starting with telling his wife he’s leaving her because she no longer interests him ‘spiritually or sexually.’

What follows is a true descent into hell for Edmund. It would spoil things to give too much away; suffice it to say that with a script by David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) and director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator) behind the lens, it’s not a trip for the faint of heart.

Which makes Macy’s performance that much more impressive. There are very few actors who could do the things that Edmund Burke does and still make the audience care about what happens to him. Nobody would ever cheer Edmund Burke for his actions or his beliefs (and least I hope they wouldn’t), but Macy is powerful enough to make you want to understand the why behind it all.

Sarring William H. Macy, Denise Richards, Mena Suvari, Julia Stiles.
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The Omega Man (1971)

This summer, Will Smith will save the world (again) in I Am Legend, the story of the last human on earth battling against the nightly attack from the rest of the world - all of whom have transformed into blood-thirsty vampires.

In 1971, back when Smith was just three years old, Charlton Heston did pretty much the same thing in The Omega Man. (And for those keeping score Vincent Price did it, too, in 1964’s The Last Man on Earth.)

In The Omega Man, Heston plays Robert Neville, an army scientist working on a top secret biological experiment that goes horribly wrong. Just before the outbreak, Neville, who was working on a cure, injects himself with an experimental drug that keeps him alive.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that everyone who didn’t get the antidote –which is just about everybody left on the planet – is pretty pissed off at Neville and wants him dead. So Neville spends his days hunting down and killing the infected, while at night, the infected get together to come up with ways to repay the favor.

Although it’s a little bit dated – particularly the groovy clothes and cool dialogue Heston looks so uncomfortable with – the film has enough action, and social consciousness, to make up for any unintentionally funny moments.

Heston who, unfortunately, is known by the younger generation of film fans for his senile NRA ranting in Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine, gives a good performance, as does Rosalind Cash as his not-infected-yet love interest. The real treat, though, is watching the great character actor Anthony Zerbe chew the scenery as Matthias, leader of the infected legions.

Starring Charlton Heston, Rosalind Cash, Anthony Zerbe.

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They Live (1988)

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum.”

While it may not have the same cachet as Dirty Harry’s “Do you feel lucky, punk” or The Terminator’s “I’ll be back,” hearing Rowdy Ronnie Piper deliver that line in John Carpenter’s 1988 film, They Live, is still a classic movie moment. The rest of the movie is pretty darn good, too.

In They Live, Piper plays Nada, an unemployed construction worker trying to find a job, a place to live and a quiet life for himself away from prying eyes and nosey people. One day he finds a cardboard box full of cheap sunglasses that reveal a whole new world to him when he looks through them. While half the people he sees through the glasses are normal, the rest are revealed to be hideous aliens plotting to taking over the world.

John Carpenter has never been known for the subtlety of his movies, and They Live is about as heavy handed as he gets, from the in-your-face action scenes to the political themes that lie behind the alien invasion. There’s enough style and humor in the movie, however, to make the director’s medicine go down easy even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying.

And for those of you who enjoy movie trivia, pay close attention to the ‘Put the glasses on” fight between Piper and co-star Keith David. Now go rent South Park: Season 5 and watch Timmy and Jimmy in their epic 'Cripple Fight'. Note the similarities.

Starring Roddy Piper and david Keith. Directed by John Carpenter.

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The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Vincent Price stars as Anton Phibes, a deranged doctor – not a medical doctor, mind you, but a mad organist with a Ph.D. in music – who uses nine Biblical plagues as a template for his revenge on the physicians and nurses he blames for letting his wife die on the operating table. Cheesier than a Philly Steak Sandwich (you can actually see the strings holding up the bat as it swoops out of the room in the opening scene) it’s filled with that bad-movie charm I love to unwind to. Price is entertaining to watch, no small achievement considering his character can only speak through an old-fashion megaphone he plugs into his neck, and there are some classically bad supporting roles from the likes of Joseph Cotton and Terry Thomas.

The killings themselves are more fun than fierce. The rats in one scene look more like they’re cuddling with their victim than killing him, despite the extreme close-up of one of them gnawing on something nasty, and the plague of frogs murder is too 70s trippy to be anything but silly. But the plague of locust is suitably creepy and the plague of the first born is a diabolical mix of tension and terror.

Someday, Hollywood will do a remake of The Abominable Dr. Phibes that will be twice as gory and not half as enjoyable. Until then, enjoy the original but skip the sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again. It’s awful.

Starring Vincent Price, Joseph Cotton, Terry Thomas.
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