The dead! Are after me!
The 1986 film, Raiders of the Living Dead, features what may be the greatest song ever written about zombies. For your listening pleasure, here is George Edward Lott’s The Dead Are After Me!
Tag Archives: Raiders of the Living Dead
Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Raiders of the Living Dead!
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1986’s Raiders of the Living Dead! I picked it so you know it’ll be good.
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube, hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Bonus Horror Song of the Day: The Dead Are After Me by George Edward Lott
The dead! Are after me!
The 1986 film, Raiders of the Living Dead, features what may be the greatest song ever written about zombies. For your listening pleasure, here is George Edward Lott’s The Dead Are After Me!
Guilty Pleasure No. 41: The Dead Are After Me (Raiders of the Living Dead), performed by George Edward Ott
If you watched Raiders of the Living Dead earlier today, you heard this theme song:
The dead are after me….
We are the Raiders of the Living Dead….
Seriously, how can you not love that!? Yes, the song is totally mid-80s and it’s kind of silly but it’s also kind of perfect. Certainly, it’s the best thing about the film and the song has even gone on to achieve a life outside of the movie that it was written for. There are bands that regularly cover this song. It’s a permanent part of my Halloween playlist.
Seriously, you can ask my friends and they’ll tell you that, every October, they’re forced to listen to me sing this song in my off-key way. The deeeeeeeead are afterrrrrr meeeeee….
Many sites incorrectly refer to this song as being called, like the movie in which it appeared, “Raiders of the Living Dead.” The actual title is The Dead Are After Me. It was written and performed by a musician named George Edward Ott. I did some research and I came across some comments that Ott left on another site, in which he discussed how this song came into existence. From Morgan on Media:
In 1986, after viewing early outtakes of the film with Sam Sherman and Tim Ferrante, I went home and wrote the song in about 15 minutes. Cheesy song for a cheesy movie!
Yes, it is a cheesy song but it’s also rather brilliant in a cheerful, no apologies sort of way. Just try to get out of your head.
Previous Guilty Pleasures
- Half-Baked
- Save The Last Dance
- Every Rose Has Its Thorns
- The Jeremy Kyle Show
- Invasion USA
- The Golden Child
- Final Destination 2
- Paparazzi
- The Principal
- The Substitute
- Terror In The Family
- Pandorum
- Lambada
- Fear
- Cocktail
- Keep Off The Grass
- Girls, Girls, Girls
- Class
- Tart
- King Kong vs. Godzilla
- Hawk the Slayer
- Battle Beyond the Stars
- Meridian
- Walk of Shame
- From Justin To Kelly
- Project Greenlight
- Sex Decoy: Love Stings
- Swimfan
- On the Line
- Wolfen
- Hail Caesar!
- It’s So Cold In The D
- In the Mix
- Healed By Grace
- Valley of the Dolls
- The Legend of Billie Jean
- Death Wish
- Shipping Wars
- Ghost Whisperer
- Parking Wars
Horror on the Lens: Raiders of the Living Dead (dir by Samuel M. Sherman and Brett Piper)
Hi there and welcome to October! This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is horror month. For the past three years, we have celebrated every October by reviewing and showing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music. That’s a tradition that I’m looking forward to helping to continue this year.
Let’s start things off with the 1986 epic, Raiders of the Living Dead!
I reviewed this film last year but to recap, it’s the story of a creepy boy, a laser gun, a reporter, and a bunch of zombies. There’s a mad scientist involved, too. There always is. The movie opens with a truck being hijacked and then the action shifts to a power plant and, honestly, I have no idea what any of it means. Technically, Raiders of the Living Dead is not exactly a good film but it is a film unlike any other that you’ve seen. If nothing else, it’s a film that you watch and you can’t help but admire the fact that it somehow got made and went on to find a small but kind of appreciative cult audience. It’s just a very strange film and a good one to start October with, no?
Plus, it has got the greatest zombie-centric theme song ever! The opening credits alone are worth the price of admission (which, incidentally, is free because those of us at the Shattered Lens love you!)
So, here is Raiders of the Living Dead.
Enjoy!
The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Raiders of the Living Dead (dir by Samuel M. Sherman and Brett Piper)
Wow, were to even begin?
The 1986 film Raiders Of The Living Dead is not an easy movie to describe. It’s a film that somehow manages mix terrorists, zombies, journalists, movie theaters, a sociopathic kid who somehow invents a death ray, and the Three Stooges. If that makes it sound like something you want to see …. well, good. You should see this movie, just so you can say that you’ve had the experience.
On the plus side, Raiders of the Living Dead opens with one of the most brilliant songs that I’ve ever heard. Seriously, take a listen and then ask yourself why Olivia Cooke was covering Bob Dylan in Life Itself instead of this song:
So, I know what you’re asking. “What’s this movie about?”
I’m not really sure. Here’s what I can tell you.
The movie opens with a truck apparently being hijacked. At least, I think it was a hijacking. A guy jumped in a truck and drove off with it and then some police cars started following him down a country road so I’m going to assume that some sort of law was broken. Anyway, the truck gets away because a dump truck pulls in front of the police cars. The dump truck driver isn’t an accomplice or anything. He’s just having engine trouble. I guess the cops just decided they had wasted enough time chasing the other truck so they decided to just sit around and watch the dump truck driver work on his engine.
Suddenly, we’re in a nuclear power plant! Oh my God, a terrorist is trying to blow the place up! That will lead to an environmental catastrophe and …. oh never mind. Two SWAT guys just showed up and shot the terrorist with a taser and then the terrorist stumbled into a circuit box and got electrocuted so I guess that’s a god thing.
Now, I’m not sure how either of these scenes are connected to the rest of the film. In fact, we soon abandon the nuclear power plant so that we can send time with Jonathan (Scott Schwartz, the same kind who got his tongue stuck to the flag pole in A Christmas Story) and his grandfather, Dr. Corstairs (Robert Allen). Dr Corstairs is having trouble with whatever the 80s equivalent of a DVD player is and he gives it Jonathan to see if he can fix it. Somehow, Jonathan turns it into a death ray and accidentally atomizes his pet hamster. Jonathan never seems to be too upset over killing his pet, which leads me to suspect that Jonathan is a sociopath.
Meanwhile, there’s a reporter named Morgan (Robert Deveau), who drags his girlfriend with him to an old farmhouse in the middle of the night. He says that he’s investigating something for a story but I think he just has a thing for farmhouses. Anyway, they get attacked by zombies. Morgan escapes. His girlfriend doesn’t. Morgan never seems to be too upset about it, proving that Morgan is as much of a sociopath as Jonathan.
Anyway, Morgan goes into hiding, which in this case means getting a room in a nearby boarding house and looking for clues at the library. He also gets a new girlfriend named Shelley (Donna Asali). They go to a Three Stooges film festival together. They watch a Three Stooges short which means that viewers of Raiders of the Living Dead also have to watch it. This actually happens more than once.
Anyway, it’s all somehow connected to a mad scientist who is creating zombies out in a deserted prison somewhere. I’m not really sure how it all connects and neither is the film. Jonathan’s death ray does kind of play a role in resolving the whole zombie subplot but to be honest, I was so curious about why no one was freaking out about a kid having a death ray that it was sometimes hard to focus on just what exactly was going on at the prison.
So, this is a very strange film. Apparently, it was shot over a lengthy period of time, with footage being shot until the production ran out of money and then filming resuming whenever some more money came in. That probably explains why Raiders of the Living Dead seems to actually be five or six films in one. As bad as the film is, I am going to give it a cautious recommendation just because it’s so damn weird that I think everyone should experience it at least once.
Plus, I love that theme song!
6 Trailers From Vacation Girl
Hi! I may be on vacation but the trailer kitties have still been hard at work, putting together another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers.
Let’s see what they’ve got for us this week.
1) Raiders of the Living Dead (1986)
2) Phase IV (1974)
3) Hellgate (1989)
4) Beyond Evil (1980)
5) Terrorgram (1988)
6) Ticks (1993)
What do you think, Trailer Kitty?
Through the Shattered Lens 