Watching this and Body Bags together, an anthology of anthologies, two horror kinda-features from the head and tail end of Tales From The Crypt‘s cable run.

We open with the segment by Romero, not in his prime era. It’s his least scary zombie movie, and this seems like a half-hour script padded out to an hour since the actors say everything at least twice. I get that they’re trying to modernize a Poe story, but without that Corman/Price flair it feels like a TV episode. “Sick stuff always turns out to be rich people.” Adrienne Barbeau (after her John Carpenter heyday) is keeping her rich husband alive long enough to transfer everything into her own name with help from her hypnotist boyfriend. Husband dies too soon, and they consider Weekend-at-Bernies-ing him but settle for tossing him in the basement freezer (my second frozen body of the week after Crimes of the Future). Since he died while hypnotized and is still responding to questions, the doctor has got an open channel to the afterlife, very exciting for him until the scared wife just shoots the zombie husband in the head. Two cops arrive at the rich guy’s house to investigate, then when the spirit of the zombie husband kills the hypnotist in his sleep the same two cops arrive at his hotel – there are only two cops in NYC. At least it’s fun that everyone here except Dr. Boyfriend was in Creepshow.

Dr. Boyfriend and his comatose patient:

Argento’s half opens with police photographer Usher (Harvey Keitel) shooting a woman who died by pendulum, this is more like it. Harvey’s wife brings home a cat, he kills it to photograph its death then when she rightly accuses him he attacks her in a mezcal rage then dreams of being sentenced to the Ga-ga pole treatment at a ren faire. Of course she knows he killed the cat because she finds the photo book he published of its murder, and when she brings home a new cat he kills his wife with a cleaver and bricks her up to rot within the walls. When yet another cat alerts visiting cops to the body Harvey kills them and then, as foretold by prophecy, accidentally hangs himself trying to escape out the window while handcuffed to a dead cop.

The cat’s distinctive mark:

Good cast – the landlords are from Psycho and The Seventh Victim, the wife’s music student from Maximum Overdrive, one cop is McDowell from Coming to America, and the hotgirl he meets at a bar is a Warholian who played “Diane Paine” in a sports slasher. Released the week after the Living Dead remake, with a cameo by Savini as a madman. It still feels like a Crypt episode, but a good one.

Usher’s wife, dream sequence version:

“This is hell on earth.” Produced by the guy behind the Death Wish sequels and opening with Johnny and Barbara recast as worse actors, this remake is starting out looking like a bad idea. Romero had already returned to the Dead with Day and Dawn, and the first couple Return movies had come out in the 1980s, but inexplicably there were no straight remakes of the public-domain original NotLD until Romero initiated this one, handing the reins to gorehound Savini, whose new zombie designs attempt to offer a reason for this movie to exist.

They’re coming to get you:

Tony Todd soon arrives with a second reason. A theoretical third would be Barbara (who had costarred with Savini in Knightriders), rewritten as a stronger character who does more than just cower in the corner, and even survives the movie, but I dunno. The original movie had the character behaviors and dark ending appropriate for its moment, and this one’s doing its own late-80s thing (but maybe still set in 1968 – hard to tell in a farmhouse).

Local kids, Tony, the normally basement-bound Coopers:

Local kid Tom is a horror regular, having appeared in at least five sequels including a Mark Hamill Watchers, and his fiery death at the gas station is a big improvement over the original version (and just as stupid), so, movie has three and a half reasons to exist – that’s more than most movies. The mean baldie in the basement who endangers them all and is righteously murdered by Barbara at the end later became a Rob Zombie star.

Do not shoot at the lock on the gas pump:

I wasn’t sure about this one, been too long since I’ve seen it. It’s the one where the zombies start learning, the gruesome makeup effects are better than ever, but we’re in the hands of paranoid racist military goons and overall it’s a bummer movie – that circus elevator music from Dawn wouldn’t fly here.

Nice fakeout for Dawn fans, opening with four all-new people in a chopper. Our main girl is Sarah, whose main man Miguel is starting to lose his mind in the underground zombie containment facility. Lead military guy is also gone over the edge, starts killing scientists. Meanwhile the heart of the movie is Dr. “Frankenstein” Logan and his pet zombie Bub – they’re both very good if we could only tune out everyone else.

Dying Miguel lets the Z horde into the facility, Sarah and a couple others escape yet again by chopper, and the only “survivor” on the ground is Bub. Logan/Frankenstein was also in The Crazies, Miguel in Monkey Shines, Sarah’s drunk friend Bill in the Coen True Grit, chopper pilot John in Amateur and The Horror Show, and lead asshole Rhodes in Wishmaster.

Of Romero’s Dead movies I’ve only seen Land in theaters, so after watching Night in the best edition I’ve ever seen, I figure why not follow up with the others. This opens with real chaos in a TV studio, then the weatherman takes his girl Fran and two cops Ken Foree and Roger in the weather chopper and get the hell out of there. Despite the zombie apocalypse Romero wants to be utopian: when another cop at the station is being racist and violent, other cops kill him before he can shoot more civilians.

After setting up in the mall storeroom they go on risky missions to enforce their position. Blocking the main entrances with trucks, Roger has an unpleasant close-up encounter with a Z and goes kill-happy then gets bitten twice. The TV couple toughens up and learns to shoot, and while he’s teaching Fran to fly the chopper Tom Savini spots them and gathers his biker raider crew to take the mall. Flyboy is enraged that they’re stealing what he stole and starts shooting. Ken takes out Savini and they’re winning against the bikers, but the Zs have overrun the mall again and they swarm Flyboy in an elevator.

News team in red:

Cops in blue:

Besides all the action we get some good comic moments – I liked Flyboy checking the price of a jacket then putting it back on the rack – and the music is often pointedly ridiculous. Lonely despair is also addressed – the chopper lessons were an attempt to break free from their shut-in depression, and Ken considers suicide before joining Fran in the chopper at the last second. All lead actors were solid. I’ve recently seen Ken in Lords of Salem… Flyboy went on to Basket Case 2, Roger did Knightriders and the Dawn remake, and Fran did Creepshow and Madman.

New restoration looks terrific. Half the cast gets killed by their own zombified family members (coward Cooper and wife are eaten by their kid, the guy who says they’re coming to get you Barbra comes and gets Barbra), and the young people die due to fiery incompetence while escaping in the truck. We all remember what happens to Duane. I still haven’t played the commentaries but I watched some video extras, and Duane would like everyone to know that he’s totally fine – in fact extremely completely fine – not talking about the movie.

I watched The Lost George Romero Movie just because it’s hot from being freshly rediscovered. Should’ve watched Two Evil Eyes instead, but I hit my Argento quota yesterday. This is a basic Twilight Zone scenario, but unconvincing and overlong, the time-loop plot being the one cool thing about it. If you set an industrial film in a heavy-metaphor theme park, you’re gonna get Carnival of Souls vibes.

Lincoln Maazel explains that he is an actor (it’s true, he’s in Martin), then healthy Link interviews a beaten-up, agonized Link wearing the same suit. We follow healthy Link through various scenarios outside until he eventually becomes his miserable beat-down version. How did this happen? The movie wants us to think it’s elder abuse, but it seems everyone is just selfish dicks and society favors the rich. Anyway, the only Romero movie where the grim reaper rides a merry-go-round.

Part of a Late Horror Masters’ Lesser Works double-feature. Opens with a disclaimer about the treatment of the movie’s monkeys, but they never appeared to be in any convincing danger, except maybe in the final scene. No mention of the treatment of the movie’s parakeets. Monkey tricks are the primary reason to watch this movie, except for George Romero and/or Stanley Tucci completists.

Allan’s car accident:

Allan and monkey giving the same steely expression:

Moody Allan (Jason Beghe of One Missed Call Remake) is badly crippled, so his monkey-researcher friend Geoffrey (John Pankow of Talk Radio) donates a brain-eating monkey to service-animal trainer Melanie (Kate McNeil of The House on Sorority Row) to get Allan a furry helper buddy. Brain-eating monkey in a George Romero movie – what could go wrong?

Mad scientist Geoffrey:

Geoffrey’s boss Stephen Root:

Moody Allan is a bad influence on the monkey, who starts to murder everyone who she perceives as a threat – first setting fire to Allan’s ex (Lincoln NE’s Janine Turner of Northern Exposure) who has run off with his doctor (Stanley Tucci), then electrocuting Allan’s annoying mom (Joyce Van Patten of Bone), killing Geoffrey via drug injection, and most horribly, murdering the parakeet of Allan’s hateful catetaker (Christine Forrest, Romero’s wife). After she threatens Melanie in a rage, Allan manages to dispatch the monkey using only his neck and mouth. We also get a monkey-surgery dream sequence and blurry monkey-POV shots. Mostly dullsville compared to the space vampires. My birds reacted to the monkey chatter, but not to the parakeet.

Romero is just making mediocre genre movies and putting zombies in ’em now. This one’s a dumb 80’s actioner (buncha dudes act tough and spit bad dialogue punctuated by explosions) crossed with a silly-ass Irish family-feud revenge drama… with zombies in it. Shamus Muldoon is warring with Patrick O’Flynn on a small island off Ireland Delaware. One wants to kill all the local zombies, the other wants to keep ’em around attached to chains, like the last few minutes of Shaun of the Dead turned into a pretend-serious idea… “pretend” because whenever the drama threatens to get heavy, the movie throws in some cartoony business to show it’s all in good fun. The comedy destroys the drama since the drama wasn’t so good to begin with. At least Land of the Dead had new ideas (the zombies starting to communicate and organize) and kept some of the satirical edge of the first three. The last couple have felt like GA Romero’s Cash-in of the Dead… funny, since they barely played theaters (but they look cheap as hell so surely still made a profit for someone).

The O’Flynn gang:

Oh yeah, so a four-man army-deserter group are in search of money (why?), team up with a mysterious teen (who turns out not to be mysterious), and follow an exiled O’Flynn back to the island (of the dead) to look for his twin daughters and fight Muldoon, who’s trying to make the dead learn to eat animals instead of people (why?). At the end, the lesson (told to us in voiceover) is that people fight each other for stupid reasons.

The only shot I really liked:

More than one actor in this was also in Boondock Saints II and the Saw series. Mysterious Teen appeared in Land of the Dead and played Rodrick in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Our beardy hero was also in Land, and I’m pretty sure there’s a plot reference early on to Diary, but any connections to the other films seem like an afterthought. In competition at Venice, either because of that European tendency to fake-appreciate poor American genre flicks, or because they hadn’t seen the finished product when they allowed it in.

Hilarious cartoon explosion-aftermath:

Hilarious cartoon burning-head-used-as-cigarette-lighter:

I didn’t like it much. The handheld aspect makes it seem like it should be “reality,” but a little while in, I gave a big Juno-shrug and decided that it’s not more “real” than Land of the Dead was, just more annoyingly shot. That’s when you gotta sit back, admit that you’re watching a trashy movie, and enjoy it for what it is.

Rather than waste any more time on this one, here’s a confused and hastily-written email I sent to PG:

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I re-read the article (was actually in Film Comment) and they call the movie brilliant without saying why. Film people think that the confused subtext about media people excuses everything else. Gives them license to say it’s a “brilliant vision, an important work, a masterpiece, though obviously flawed”. It’s real cool to champion a genre movie, makes you sound like you know what’s what, as opposed to those high-minded losers who sit around talking about jean renoir and citizen kane. And it’s especially cool to praise Romero since he has the reputation of being an important and gifted filmmaker in a typically ignored genre and has the good fortune of having been Belatedly Discovered in the academic community (sometime between “bruiser” and “Land of the dead”). Therefore, in the eyes-wide-shut way of seeing things, any new film he releases can automatically be called a masterpiece without any need for justification.

Usual thoughts that arise in this situation (“Maybe eyes wide shut IS a masterpiece and I just don’t understand it yet? Time will tell!”) don’t seem to apply here, as DiaryOTD will only get less relevant over time, and unlike EWS it does not have hidden layers of obscure meaning, it splays itself right out on the dissection table for the viewer to feast on its brains. I’ve heard two things from Romero interviews… 1) He is a big fan of SHAUN of the dead and 2) He is pondering an immediate sequel to Diary, possibly re-using the girl-narrator character-actor. It’s easy to find comedy elements in previous DEAD movies, but nothing as outright nutty as that mute amish farmer segment. You can groan in pain at that segment but I found it pretty funny and exciting, and I read the Professor as a comic caricature (which ruins the whole “this is a documentary of something which is really happening” feel), and see a different kind of movie here. ARE romero’s thoughts on the media confused, or is the movie-in-the-movie confused because it is looking through the eyes of two people… the obsessive and immature male media/filmmaker and his girlfriend who never agreed with his way of doing things, and so is editing against his intentions.

Anyway, reason I brought up Romero’s sequel comment and the comedy aspect is because I am going to go ahead and say that Diary is Part One of a new Dead series. They’re not numbered so I can say whatever I want. LAND is part 4 of the original, and the final part to date. If there’s a Diary Part 2 it’ll only confirm this.

Unrelated: Professor reminds me of Mark Borchardt’s actor friend… you know the one… Thee ACTOR. And that guy was a “real” person. But of course, he was on camera, and always knew when he was on camera… so the Professor can actually be seen as realistic, a cross between that playing-it-for-the-cameras american-movie fellow and the Bob Odenkirk blustery prof caricature.

Whatever I was gonna write when I started this email is now forgotten, as was the point I was gonna make on “diary” since I went off on tangents and there’s rock music in my head and I crave pizza.