Tag Archives: Dawn of the Dead

Review: The Walking Dead S4E04 “Indifference”

Posted on by Arleigh

TheWalkingDeadS4

“You can’t be afraid to kill.” — Carol Peletier

This week the godfather of the zombie genre was interviewed and the question of The Walking Dead was brought up. Well, it would seem that George A. Romero turned down the offer to direct a couple of episodes of The Walking Dead. His answer was that the show was really just a soap opera with the occasional zombie. His answer hasn’t sit well with fans of the show while those who have been major critics and detractors of it feel content at hearing their argument validated. Yet, it’s those very words that probably just gave the best answer as to why The Walking Dead the show continues to get huge ratings and just gain more and more fans with each new season…with each new episode.

Yes, it is a soap opera with zombies and we all know just how ridiculously popular soap operas can be when it hits a particular button with the general public. I think the writers and producers of the show know this to be true.

“Indifference” marks the fourth episode of the new season and it focuses on that very soap opera-ish aspect of the show that Romero spoke about in his interview. Yet, as the show delves more on the character interactions and conflicts with this episode it does so minus the flaws from past attempts which led to nowhere and no growth for the characters involved. Tonight’s episode explores the theme of not just the indifference which has settled on some of the survivors but also the concept of entropy which the zombie apocalypse itself has ultimately brought to the world from it’s very onset.

We see the time spent between Carol and Rick during this episode a battle of wills between two characters who become integral part of the groups survival dynamics since season 1. Yet, we see only true growth with Carol in this season. She has come a long way from the meek, silent abused housewife from season 1 to a battle-hardened leader-type who’s willing to make the difficult decision in behalf of the group. This used to be Rick’s role in the past three season, but the burden of leadership seemed to have weighed too much on this father of two. His decision during the timeskip to stop being the group’s leader and just become a farmer looks more and more like the very indifference and entropy tonight’s episode has been exploring.

Does Carol’s actions in killing both Karen and David make her out to be villain or does it just goes to show that she’s learned not to be afraid to kill if it means saving the rest of the group. She knows that what she did many wouldn’t understand, but she also knows that Karen and David were already dead and a danger to everyone. Her decision to unilaterally kill the two might have been correct when thought through logically, but Rick doesn’t see it that way. His reaction and decision to exile Carol was Rick’s emotional and attempt to hold onto the concept of humanity for the sake of Carl and Judith. Even as he drives away he understand that his decision might be wrong, but his narrow vision on trying to protect his children from calculated and logical decisions was another form of Rick’s indifference at the world as it is now and not as he wants it to be.

There’s change coming on the show’s group dynamics and we just don’t see it between Carol and Rick, but just as important between Tyreese and the rest of the scavenging group, Bob and Daryl and between Daryl and Michonne. We see Tyreese’s continue his change from the compassionate survivor who confessed to not having the stomach to killing the zombies day in and day out. His inconsolable rage from losing Karen (to a certain extent one of his last grasps in keeping his humanity) has made him a liability as he loses focus in his rage. yet, it’s this very indifference to whether he lives or dies that could become Tyreese’s ultimate wake-up call to become a better survivor in the long-run. The same couldn’t be said for Bob who we find out has already seen two groups of survivors not make it through with him being the only survivor. Just like Rick he has retreated back from trying to make things work through the very bottle he himself confessed probably killed Zach in the season’s premiere episode.

The show has improved from season to season. Season 4 looks to be more focused than seasons past. It still has some problems with having too many characters who do nothing but act as cannon fodder and/or plot devices (example Ana and Sam just for tonight’s episode). But even with the show looking like it’s just about talking and more talking it still manages to move the story forward when in the past it led things in circles. Yes, it’s this very dialogue-heavy and interpersonal conflicts that gives the show it’s soap opera label, but this season it’s this very drama that has made it very interesting on top of entertaining.

While Romero’s decision to turn down directing episodes of the show was based on this very soap opera-ish part of the show one has to remember that zombie fiction, even Romero’s very own classic films from Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead to Day of the Dead lived off of the very soap opera-like narrative and conflicts that The Waling Dead just happens to use and mine with each new episode. I don’t think the show will ever shed this part of it’s storytelling style. It’s a major appeal to the legion of fans who love and follow the show. It’s both a pro and con for the series. The question that continues to be explored with each new episode is whether Scott M. Gimple as the series’ new showrunner will be able to sustain this pace and not lose it in the end the way Mazzara did in season 3.

Notes

  • Tonight’s episode, “Indifference”, was directed by Tricia Brock and written by Matt Negrete.
  • A great cold opening with Carol doing her best warrior-mom role to make sure Lizzie doesn’t fear what needs to be done to survive. All the while this is happening we see Rick walking through the crime scene of Karen and David’s death and imagining just exactly how Carol did the deed.
  • Tyreese is really raging in tonight’s episode and doesn’t bode well for his long-term well-being if he continues to put the rest of the group in danger.
  • It looks like tonight’s episode will only use a small part of the cast which should keep irrelevant interactions to a bare minimum.
  • Bob confesses to having to bear witness to two previous groups of survivors he’s been a part of lose their fight against the zombies (and maybe other humans). I know that there’s been no sign of the Governor since the final episode of last season, but could Bob be talking of having been part of the Woodbury group.
  • We get two new redshirts in tonight’s episode with the very happy and wanting to help to a fault Ana and Sam. The story they told Rick and Carol about how they’ve survived in the housing community for so long sounds credible enough, but one could see Rick and Carol (especially Rick) not believing most of what’s being told to them.
  • It will be interesting to see how Rick will explain to the group in the prison (and to Daryl) just exactly what happened to Carol and whether he will tell them the truth of why she’s not with them anymore.
  • Talking Dead Guests: WWE wrestler Chris Jericho and Community‘s own Britta, Gillian Jacobs.

Season 4

Scenes I Love: Dawn of the Dead (Original 1978)

Posted on by Arleigh

I know this latest “Scenes I Love” is quite an extended one. It’s pretty much the entire opening to the original George A. Romero classic where we see the four main leads of the story introduced dealing with the crisis that’s been on-going around them for what could be weeks.

I could have easily taken so many smaller scenes from this extended sequence and used them as favorites since they’re all that and more. This sequence was Romero at his best as a screenwriter. While some of the heavy handedness would later plague his writing in his later zombie films in this one they take on the right balance. He’s telling the audience through the screaming outbursts, arguments and general chaos of every scene that we as a society were fucked the moment the zombie apocalypse began. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the civilian expert trying to explain how to deal with the crisis in such logical terms while everyone around him reacts with irrational outbursts of disagreements. Or it could be how the police and the civilians they’re sworn to protect and serve become warring tribes on opposite sides when the true enemy is shambling all around them.

This makes the crippled priest’s words in the end of the scene even more telling.

 

 

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Conquistador Scene From Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Both Arleigh and I have devoted a lot of time on the site to talking about our mutual admiration for the films of Italian horror director Lucio Fulci.  While Fulci will always have as many detractors as defenders, the fact of the matter is that Fulci has been a major and often unacknowledged influence on the direction of horror cinema.  To cite just one prominent example, the disturbing and graphic body horror of The Walking Dead has less to do with Romero and everything to do with Fulci.

Fulci remains a controversial figure and that’s not surprising.  For every Fulci lover, there’s a detractor.  For every good horror film that he made between 1979 and 1982, there’s a terrible one that he made in the years leading up to his   mysterious death.  But what everyone seems to agree on is that his 1979 epic Zombi 2 is one of the best (and most important) of the post-Romero Zombie films.  Zombi 2 may have been produced to take advantage of the popularity of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead but Fulci created a film that transcended its origins.

(Personally, I prefer Fulci’s film to Romero’s but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Zombi 2 is a film that’s provided us with a few scenes that we love here at the Shattered Lens.  Whether it’s the scene where a zombie wrestles with a shark or the very first Fulci’s signature eyeball impaling, Zombi 2 is a film that is full of memorable scenes.  Tonight, I want to highlight another moment from Zombi 2 — the conquistador scene.

As this scene begins, the film’s star are already fleeing from an army of zombies when they discover that it’s not just the recently deceased that they have to fear.  This is a scene that manages to be shameless, silly, and disturbingly effective at the same time.  In other words, it’s pure Fulci.

Horror Scenes I Love: Dawn of the Dead (dir. Zack Snyder)

Posted on by Arleigh

Continuing our horror-theme for October the latest “Scenes I Love” entry comes from one of those hated remakes that was actually better than expected (and for some better than the original…yes, heresy). It’s from the excellent extended opening sequence for Zack Snyder’s remake of George A. Romero’s horror classic, Dawn of the Dead.

In most zombie films we never truly get to see the early hours of the zombie apocalypse from the ground. We always hear about it second-hand after it has already occurred. In Snyder’s remake we get to see it first-hand just as it’s flaring up to uncontrollable levels.

I’m a traditional Romero-type zombie enthusiast myself, but I must admit that Snyder’s choice to make the zombies in this remake runners does add a sense of the end-times as we see zombies after zombies running and gunning after neighbors who either don’t know what the hell just dropped in their neighborhood or just too slow to get away. Love how this sequence even has a shout-out to the original version with the traffic helicopter that flies in to give a bird’s-eye view of the whole apocalypse coming down on everyone.

6 Trailers of the Dead

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi and welcome to the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation trailers!  To be honest, I’m usually way too ADD to come up with (let alone maintain) any sort of theme with my trailer posts but this weekend — almost by pure chance — a theme has emerged!  So, without further hold up, let us consider 6 Trailers of the Dead!

1) Night of the Living Dead (1968)

How have I done nearly a 100 of these posts without featuring the trailer for George Romero’s landmark Night of the Living Dead?

2) The Astro-Zombies (1968)

Apparently, 1968 was a big year for the dead returning to life.

3) The Majorettes (1986)

The Majorettes was directed by the late Bill Hinzman, the guy who played the Cemetary Zombie in Night of the Living Dead.

4) Dawn of the Dead (1978)

To be honest, I think I’ve already featured this trailer in an earlier post.  However, there’s no way that you can start a post with Night of the Living Dead and then end it with Day of the Dead without finding some room for Dawn of the Dead in the middle.

5) Dead Heat (1988)

Wow, this looks really, really, really … not good.  However, according to Wikipedia, it’s about zombies and it’s got the word “dead” in the title so it works theme-wise.

6) Day of the Dead (1985)

I’ve watched this trailer several times and those arms still make me jump every time!

Song of the Day: The Man Comes Around (by Johnny Cash)

Posted on by Arleigh

We’ve now reached the final day of what has been a week-long horror-themed “Song of the Day” feature for the site. It’s quite appropriate that this final day also lands on Halloween and I’m sure many will approve of this final choice to cap off the week.

A week which has seen Italian film composers and prog-rock bands chosen for creating and contributing some of the best and most memorable themes to horror films which will stand the march of time. We’ve seen an epic song from a Montreal band whose music has the apocalyptic sound to it. There’s also two entries from films created by a master of the horror genre in John Carpenter.

The week began with Goblin’s main title theme for George A. Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead. With Halloween night the premiere of the long-awaited and heavily-hyped tv adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic book series (by none other than Frank Darabont himself) I thought what better way to bookend Goblin’s theme for the Romero zombie epic than by picking Johnny Cash’s song “The Man Comes Around”. One of the last songs penned and sang by The Man In Black himself and properly used by filmmaker Zack Snyder to  be the intro music for his remake of Dawn of the Dead.

This song with its gospel-like (though not as hopeful as most) sound and it’s apocalyptic and Biblical lyrics just speaks of the apocalypse like no other song from this past week has done. It comes off almost like a prophecy come down and spoken by one of God’s main dudes. This song when paired with the scenes of the zombie apocalypse crashing down on an unsuspecting world in Snyder’s film instantly made it a favorite with all zombie fans everywhere and introduced The Man In Black to a whole new set of fans.

I would like to think that when the zombie apocalypse does arrive it would be to this song as I and those who share my belief in how to survive such an event ready ourselves for whatever may come.

The Man Comes Around

And I heard as it were the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying come and see and I saw
And behold a white horse

There’s a man going around taking names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won’t be treated all the same
There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down
When the Man comes around

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup?
Or disappear into the potter’s ground
When the Man comes around

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum
Voices calling, voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It’s Alpha and Omega’s kingdom come

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks

Till Armageddon no shalam, no shalom
Then the father hen will call his chickens home
The wise man will bow down before the throne
And at His feet they’ll cast their golden crowns
When the Man comes around

Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still
Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still
Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still
Listen to the words long written down
When the Man comes around

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum
Voices calling and voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It’s Alpha and Omega’s kingdom come

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks

In measured hundredweight and penneypound
When the Man comes around.

Close (Spoken part)
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale horse
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him.

Song of the Day: L’alba Dei Morti Viventi (by Goblin)

Posted on by Arleigh

Halloween is less than a week away and for the next few days there’ll be more song of the day choices and this time around it will all be centered on horror. To start things off I chose the theme from George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead which was composed by the Italian prog-rock band Goblin.

The theme’s titled “L’alba Dei Morti Viventi” and it definitely creates a dissonant tone which just creeps along and makes one feel more than just a bit uncomfortable. Goblin used a lot of their electronic music background to make this such a signature and iconic horror theme. Anyone who has seen the original Dawn of the Dead will automatically recognize this theme and the feeling it brings up. A feeling of dread and of creeping horror which perfectly describes the zombies from Romero’s grand opus.

Horror fans everywhere have Italian horror maestro Dario Argento for having gotten Goblin to create the score for Romero’s film (Argento was one of the key producers for the film and even re-cut it for the European market). Goblin had already worked with Argento on previous films with their best early work with the filmmaker being the score for Profondo Rosso (known as Deep Red in the US and English market). But no matter how many other Italian horror scores the band has made since Dawn of the Dead (and the ones after have been great in their own right) it will be their score for that film which will indelibly link the band in film music history.

PS: as an added bonus below is the band’s theme for Argento’s Profondo Rosso.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Holocaust 2000 (dir. by Alberto De Martino)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier this morning, while suffering from an annoyingly persistent case of insomnia, I decided to spend 2 hours watching a classic Italian exploitation film, Alberto De Martino’s oddly effective Omen rip-off, Holocaust 2000.

In Holocaust 2000, Kirk Douglas plays a businessman who wants to build a gigantic nuclear power plant in the Middle East.  There are a few problems with this plan.  First off, the site that Douglas selects just happens to be right next to a cave that is full of religious artifacts.  Secondly, there’s a handful of angry environmentalists picketing his London office.  And, perhaps the biggest problem, Douglas’ son happens to be the Antichrist.  This fact is obvious to the viewer because not only is his son named Angel (yes, we’re in the land of irony) but he also looks and acts nothing like Douglas.  Not only does Angel have a noticeably weak chin (no cleft to be seen at all) and speak with a rather posh accent but he’s also so extremely English that he’s even played by an actor named Simon Ward.

In other words, the viewer is pretty much in on the game from the beginning.  What makes the movie work is that director De Martino understands that everyone’s going to know that Angel’s the antichrist from the minute he first appears so, as opposed to the Omen films, he doesn’t waste a lot of time playing any “is-he-or-isn’t-he” games.  Instead, in the great tradition of Italian exploitation, De Martino jumps straight into the apocalypse without worrying about things like narrative cohesion and the end result is an enjoyably chaotic film that rarely makes sense but is never boring.  Whereas the Omen films are almost tedious in their attempts to provide theological justification for all the blood that’s spilled on-screen, Holocaust 2000 has a cheerful, let’s-make-it-up-as-we-go-along feel to it that, at times, almost makes the whole thing feel like some long lost Lucio Fulci film.

Holocaust 2000 is probably best known for two sequences.  The first features a helicopter blade very graphically chopping off the top of a man’s head.  If seeing the original Dawn of the Dead made me nervous around helicopters, seeing Holocaust 2000 has ensured that I will never ever step anywhere near one of those things.  Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of gore over the past few years but the decapitation scene in this movie …. well, perhaps it’s best to just shudder and move on.  (For the record, Holocaust 2000 came out before Dawn of the Dead so the helicopter decapitation scene here was not stolen from that film.  If anything, it was simply a more graphic version of David Warner losing his head in the Omen.)

The second sequence is a scene in which a very nude Kirk Douglas (who, it must be admitted, looked a lot better at 61 than most 20 year-olds do today) has a nightmare in which he watches the world literally come to an end.  Set to Ennio Morricone’s intense and memorable score, this sequence manages to be surreal, disturbing, and entertaining all at the same time.  It epitomizes everything that makes Holocaust 2000 such a surprisingly effective work of pure cinematic exploitation.

Like many of the great Italian exploitation films, Holocaust 2000 was released under several titles.  It is currently available on DVD under the title Rain of Fire and a big bleh to Lionsgate for choosing to go with such a boring name.  Admittedly, I can see their logic.  Though the movie was first released in theaters in 1977, it took 31 years for it to show up on DVD.  During that time, 2000 came and went and the world didn’t end (or maybe it did and the last 10 years have just been an extended hallucination, the choice is yours).  But still, Rain of Fire sounds like a substandard country song about a nasty divorce that ends in murder.  On the other hand, a title like Holocaust 2000 — nakedly exploitive and borderline offensive — represents everything that we’ve come to so love about Italian exploitation films.

Film Review: Zombie 5: Killing Birds (dir. by Claudio Lattanzi and Joe D’Amato)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Thanks to the wonderful people at Anchor Bay, I recently watched Zombie 5: Killing Birds, one of the last of the old school Italian horror films.

Admittedly, when I first hit play on the DVD player, I was expecting the worst.  Of all the various official and unofficial sequels to Lucio Fulci’s masterpiece Zombi 2 (which, of course, was itself an unofficial prequel to Dawn of the Dead), Zombie 5: Killing Birds has the worst reputation.  While most Italian horror fans seem to agree that Zombie 4 is enjoyable on its own stupid terms and even Zombi 3 has a few brave defenders, its hard to find anyone willing to defend Killing Birds.  The general consensus has always seemed to be that Killing Birds is a generic and rather forgettable splatter film that, title aside, had absolutely nothing in common with the Fulci classic.

Having now seen Killing Birds, I can say that the general consensus, in this case, is largely correct.  Killing Birds is generic, predictable, and ultimately forgettable.  However, taken on its own terms, it’s a perfectly enjoyable way for a lover of zombie cinema to waste 90 minutes.  As long as you don’t compare it to Zombi 2, i’ts a perfectly tolerable piece of trash that actually has one or two memorable moments tossed randomly through its running time.  At the very least, its a hundred times better than Umberto Lenzi’s similar Black Demons.

The film deals with a bunch of grad students who, while searching for a nearly extinct species of Woodpecker, end up spending the night at a deserted house in Louisiana.  Many years ago, a brutal murder was committed at this house and, well, you can guess the rest.  The grad students end up falling prey to a bunch of zombies, largely because the students are all remarkably stupid.  Meanwhile, B-movie veteran Robert Vaughn shows up as Dr. Fred Brown, a blind man who spends his days studying birds.  There’s a lot of birds in this movie and its never quite clear how they link up to the living dead but they certainly do look menacing flying past the camera.

With the exception of Vaughn (who overacts just enough to keep things interesting without going so far over the top as to become ludicrous), the film’s cast is likeable but not memorable.  Everyone’s playing a stereotype (i.e., the leader, the computer geek, the slut, the girl with looks and brains) and no one makes much of an effort to be anything more than a stereotype.  While this certainly keeps Killing Birds from displaying anything resembling nuance, it’s also strangely comforting.  Its lets a neurotic viewer like me know, from the start, that there’s no need to think too much about anything she might see for the next hour and a half.  Since this movie was made in the late 80s, most of the men sport a mullet and all of the women wear those terribly unflattering khaki pants that I guess were all the rage back then.

As I stated before, the film does have its occasional strengths.  Some of the deaths are memorably nasty (even if the gore effects are decidedly cut-rate, pun not intended).  As well, the film does an excellent job at capturing the hot, humid atmosphere of the Louisiana bayous.  I’ve spent enough time in that part of the country that I can attest that the movie perfectly captures the stagnant heat and the way dehydration can cause your mind to play tricks on you.  While the zombies themselves are hardly as impressive as Fulci’s, the filmmakers wisely keep them in the shadows for most of the film and, if nothing else, this allows the viewer to imagine something scarier than what they’re actually seeing.  Finally, this movie does have one of the most effective nightmare sequences that I’ve ever seen.  Lasting barely a minute and not really having much to do with the overall plot, this nightmare still features some rather disturbing imagery.  One image, in particular, has so stuck with me that I found myself paying homage to it in a my own writing.

Though the movie’s director is credited as being Claudio Lattanzi, it is pretty much an open secret that the movie was actually directed by the infamous Joe D’Amato (who, regardless of what else he may have done during his storied life, also directed one of my favorite movies ever, Beyond The Darkness).  I’ve read a few interviews where D’Amato said that he allowed Lattanzi to be credited as director because he wanted to help Lattanzi’s launch his own career.  To judge by the movie itself, however, it seems more probable that Lattanzi wasn’t delivering the movie that D’Amato wanted and D’Amato stepped in as a result.  Regardless, Killing Birds is hardly the best example of D’Amato’s work but, at the same time, it’s hardly the worst either. 

In the end, Killing Birds is a movie that will probably be best appreciated by those who already have a good working knowledge of Italian exploitation films.  It’s hardly a masterpiece (and, despite enjoying it, I would hesitate to even call it a “good” movie) but it’s not really deserving of all the criticism that it’s received over the years either.  As a bonus, the Anchor Bay DVD come with a lengthy interview with Robert Vaughn in which he discussed his career in B-movies and, while Vaughn says nothing about Killing Birds during the interview, he’s still interesting and enjoyable to listen to.  Unlike a lot of “reputable” actors who have made B-movies, Vaughn never condescends to the films that both started and ended his movie career.