And so I'm back, only a couple of months after posting the last one, to bring you something completely unrelated to what I said I was going to post before. But we take what we can get, so open wide and say "ah!".
Now anyone who knows me well, knows that I really dig on the zombies. And anyone who knows anything about zombie movies has probably heard the name George Romero at some point or another, and if you hadn't before, I'm sure you will in the ensuing marketing blitz for Land of the Dead (which I'm not here to review). You see, a long, long time ago in the borderline prehistoric late 1960's, our man George had a great idea. Now I don't know the history behind how he came to this idea, and I'm sure my detractors (if there are any) will no doubt try to cave my head in with the butt end of a pump action shotty if I get it wrong, so I'll skip to the end and say "...and so, Romero crafted an all new genre of film". It was still fundamentally a monster movie, but this time, the monsters were just like us.
This was different than Count Dracula and all of his blood sucking ilk, vampires were always a picky lot, sucking virgins dry and getting their rocks off by saying any vaguely suggestive "I'm A Vampire" phrase they could just outside of outright telling you that they lived in a coffin and had some tragic, world weary backstory about how much it "sucks" (which they would likely say with a snide giggle as if you weren't in on the joke) to know that you'll never die of old age. These were indiscriminate feeding machines, brain-hungry cannibal corpses. All it took was a bite and you'd join their ranks with an all new appetite for human flesh. And Romero never really saw the need to explain where they came from necessarily. Where they the bi-product of a terrible pathogen? Was their arrival the trumpet playing revelrie to let us know that Armageddon was just around the corner? The only thing that you could really say for sure was that the dead were walking the earth, getting resituated, and that they were caught in a constant fit of slack jawed, glazy eyed hunger.
The origins weren't ever anything John Q. Ticket Payer really fretted over. It wasn't the bare boned story that brought anyone into the Zombie movie fold. And why should they? It was the gore they paid to see. It was the battle for survival of the "them vs. us" variety that kept bringing them back. It was the spectacle of skull exploding, club to the head, hatchet tossing, helicopter blade twirling the top of your head clean off action that filled the seats. Everything else was just noise in the background, filler until we got to the next gut-ripping, intestine munching scene.
Since Night of the Living Dead's debut in 1968, there have been countless imitators, some of which have been extremely entertaining and others....not so much. But Romero, that reanimated dead revolutionaire, still holds such a special place in the hearts of fans.
When Land of the Dead was announced, there were suddenly shouts of how Romero, after an extended leave from the directors chair was going to come back and "Re-Invent" the genre. Which in itself, is fine. If he didn't (and he doesn't here), who would?
But what's even more frustrating about the renewed interest in Romero and his work, was that it's led many cinema buffs to again claim that there's a healthy deal of "social commentary" in Romero's work. That there were things to be gleamed from his movies other than "it's a bad idea to stand near windows during a zombie attack" or that "the people they kill get up and kill!". And those calls were strong enough to bring me back here strictly for the purpose of calling shenanigans on the whole thing.
What exactly qualifies as social commentary in any of these movies? The loudest response seems to come from the vague "consumerism" metaphors in Dawn of the Dead (the original, not the remake which most of you are probably familiar with). "Oh, they go to the mall because that's where they spent all their time when they were alive. Oh, that one's pushing a shopping cart." Or maybe, and this might sound a little farfetched, they happened to be bit at the the mall...or wandered in to the mall in search of meals with pulses. Was it our unwillingness to "understand otherwise perfectly sympathetic ravenous zombie maurauders" which seems to be the moral of "Land of the Dead"? Or maybe it's that rich people live in towers (!?!) and don't let anyone but their own kind in, and one day the poor (who until then were manipulated by vices) will rise up and eat them alive? Regardless, I don't really understand why little touches like that give horror fans enough to say "Thank goodness for Romero's commentary."
To be frank, regardless of what Romero or his fans might say to the contrary, this seems like a vain attempt to add an air of credibility to what Romero makes. He makes, and always has made, B-Grade Zombie movies. When I say that, this isn't me trying to blindly discredit or unfairly pigeon hole him. I enjoy his movies for exactly what they are, excercises in excessive violence with a taste for cheese. Romero is the zombie pioneer, does he really need any other title than that? Are we really that worried about him being percieved as a serious "autuer"? And why just give Romero's films the dubious honor of being socially conscious, aside from nostalgia and a sense of self-awareness that he makes cheesy films, what really seperates him from a lot of his imitators anymore? If we grant Romero the honor of being high-minded, then we'd probably have to give it to just about any other horror director who scripted in a vague metaphor or two, or showed people being people when they weren't being butchered or shoved down an elevator shaft or slapped by werewolves.
When John Carpenter was directing the Halloween movies, was he really addressing the darkness of the human heart, the potential for evil inherent inherent in even children, and our obsession with the serial killer counter-culture? No. He just wanted to play a couple creepy notes on his piano and show us lots and lots of people getting strangled by a guy in a white mask. Was Friday the 13th a parable about teens having unprotected sex, and Jason Voorhees represented the nasty venerael diseases (this was the 80's, he could have even been *gasp*...the AIDS!) that just might KILL YA'? Wrong again. Just some schlub in a hockey mask cutting through camp counselours with his machete like they were vines with raging hormones. And were the Nightmare On Elm Street movies really about parents who are deathly afraid of their kids dreaming? Alright, so I heard that one on a commentary, but I think you can join me in yelling "BULLSHIT!". I wouldn't want my kids to dream either if they were spending all of their time dreaming about a virgin raping, sweater vest loving, razor sharp claw toting, girl hungry pedophile from beyond the grave.
My point is, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes the shambling dead are just as shallow as their graves. Even if you don't buy into the hype, if you don't see the "deeper" meaning to it all, you can still enjoy late night zombie mayhem marathons. I know I do.
And for those of you still with me, here's a link to a "related" story in the news. Commentate.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,101…
enthralled
anxious
accomplished
curious