horrorworld

“There coming to get you, Barbara.” Recite these words to any true horror fan and they’ll likely correctly place it to George A. Romero’s 1968, low-budget horror classic Night of the Living Dead. This film is a true masterpiece that launched an entire genre of horror films featuring flesh-eating zombies. This led to great follow-up movies, remakes and inspired new creators to bring a different take. Unfortunately it also inspired ill-conceived and lazy rip-offs as well. Some efforts may have been well-intentioned, but the results many times came out as an insult to the genre. For every truly great zombie movie, there is probably a dozen or more horrendously written and poorly executed others.

 When a zombie movie is done right, it is a beautiful and chilling thing to watch. To me, there is nothing more hopeless that can be portrayed on screen than the growing mass of the walking dead. The sheer mathematics of the multiplying antagonists, replicating their mass with each new victim, creating another killing machine. The dire vision of the enemy being all around and at all turns makes this type of movie like no other. The great scenes of despair as several decaying hands break through a boarded window or a sea of flesh-hungry corpses are looked upon from atop the roof of a shopping mall. When there is no where to run and the person next to you can become a foe with a simple bite mark, it creates a doomed feeling that permeates a theatre. Add in the repulsiveness of cannibalism and some make up magic showing decaying flesh and missing body parts and you have some pretty grisly and disturbing images. Done well, with a good script, premise and film crew and you have the makings of a classic. Done poorly with a bad script, forgettable premise and lackluster crew and you sacrifice 90 minutes of your life that you will never get back. In upcoming posts I will discuss some of the classics and some of the duds. In the meantime, you can never go wrong with a Romero flick.

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