To be fair, wasn't Tom Savini behind the Night remake? Great makeup artist, not-so-great director...

I'm going to try to post a review later tonight. Dave's right about the plot holes, but none of that bothered me; in fact, I didn't even notice them. I was too busy being beaten over the fucking head with Romero's social commentary at the time.

And what a commentary it was. Dave's reading is certainly correct, but there's a lot more to it than he lets on. For example, the line from Dennis Hopper that got the most reaction in the theater I was in was this:

"We don't negotiate with terrorists."

The "terrorist" in question is John Leguizamo, who responds moments later with this:

"I'm gonna go jihad on his ass."

And what is Leguizamo doing when he utters this line? He's in a hijacked vehicle, threatening to blow up ... a skyscraper.

Do I even need to tell you that Leguizamo ultimately proves to be a more sympathetic character than Hopper?

I won't bore with you a description of the opening scenes, where an armored transport races down a city street, brutally gunning down poor, innocent zombies left and right. If you want to know what GAR was going for with that, read here.

A boring, badly acted, offensive, cartoonishly propagandistic piece of shit. Save your money.

Sir,

Semi-intelligent zombies? Not good. Dennis Hopper in zombie movie? Very good. The clincher. George Romero has yet to make any stupid Hollywood lefty comments about this movie being an alllegory for Viet Nam or Watergate or Tammany Hall or the Manhattan Purchase or some other such nonsense. They get my $9.50 (I'll sneak in a candy and Coke from 7-11).

rcl

he's more sympathetic to the undead terrorists than he is to the "unilaterist" commander in chief that wants to blow them away

It's worse than that. Leguizamo isn't a zombie; he's a mercenary who's working for Hopper as the movie opens. And all he really wants as thanks for doing his dirty work is an apartment in Fiddler's Green. But he's an ethnic minority, so naturally Hopper informs him that "your kind" isn't wanted here. That's when Leguizamo hatches his terrorism plot.

At long last, then, an answer to the question, "why do they hate us?"

It's hard for me to overstate how nefarious Hopper's character is. Put it this way: he has a black butler who wears a white dinner jacket and bow tie, in vintage 1930s Jim Crow fashion. He's given dialogue at one point in the movie to the effect of, "This is how we control the masses. We give them their vices and entertainments, and they let us do whatever we want." He makes Billy Zane's character in Titanic look the picture of nuance.

It should come as no surprise that when he meets his demise, burning oil figures prominently. Note to Romero: suck my fat cock.

???

The zombies are the good guys?
Well, if they're going to put they're leftist politics into movies, it might as well be awful and stupid, like in real life.

suck my fat cock

Hmm. A new rating system is born.

"...their leftist politics..."
sheesh

Ok, I trust you guys. It sounds like a piece of crap.
So should I go see "war of the worlds"? Or is Spielburg going to preach at me, too?

When will the hollywierdos learn that no one gives flying f*** what they think? We just want to be entertained.

I've already written off War of the Worlds. I've reached my annual quota of dumbass actors and pseudo-intellectual political commentary as entertainment. At the very least, I'll wait for the DVD to come out.

I'm going to be pissed if Fantastic Four is a commentary on the evils of zionism and chimpymcbushitler.

Hollywood has been sucking Allah's fat cock for three years straight:

If the slump continues, Hollywood is on course for a third straight year of declining admissions and its lowest ticket sales since the mid-1990s. link

A work of fiction can be persuasive about matters of tradition, human understanding, and core values.

But do these 'artists' think that blatant, heavy-handed political messages persuade anybody? Obviously, they think so. Which means either:

1) they themselves are easily convinced by bumper-sticker catch-phrases, or

2) they have contempt for their audiences, whom they consider to be their intellectual inferiors.

> Why not do a biting satire about the Eisenhower Administration instead?

That would be the new game "Destroy All Humans."

Tremendously fun (throwing stuff around with telekinesis never gets old); often quite amusing; but marbled with greasy veins of ham-handed lefty humor. (Everyone knows there weren't really communists trying to sabotage America in the 1950's, right?) I recommend it overall, but be prepared for the occasional grimace of annoyance.

Ok, I saw it and now I have to admit I'm stupid. I let it wash over me, taking it in as a jumbled, cliched borefest only vagually dealing with zombies and completely missed the War on Terror allegory. After reading Allah above, it's definitely there (blowing up a skyscraper? How'd I miss that?), just couldn't see it for all the old school 'racist CEO type screwing The People' agitprop.

See, this is why I hate Hollywood. Not cause their unrelenting leftists in their personal lives, but because I can't even get a decent Zombie flick out of them anymore. Now even Undead cannibals aren't a bad thing. Now even the threat of flesh eating zombies, like everything else, must be viewed as nuanced shades of gray. (and that's putting it lightly. You'd be forgiven for thinking the Zombies are the real heroes of this movie) Apparantly, we're supposed to get to the root causes of why Zombies hate us. To 'Peace out' and learn to share the world with them. Great.

On second thought, screw this. The movie simply fails to work as a movie - not exciting, people doing stupid stuff for stupid cartoony reason - that it's ridiculous taking it's even more ridiculous 'lessons' to their logical conclusion. It's just a piss poor, scattered movie that critics are going to say is way better than it is because they agree with it's politics. Fine.

The only thing I'll say that some seem to be making too big a deal out of is "Zombie intelligence." Very little of it in the movie. They're still stupid fucks. And still slow, like Zombies should be.

Apparantly, we're supposed to get to the root causes of why Zombies hate us.

Duh. We stand between them and the restoration of the caliphate. Also known as the zombiphate. Occassionally referred to as the Suck-Allah's-Fat-Cockiphate.

First, thanks for the link, Ace.

Second, how funny is this? I watched an entire movie and completely ignored all the leftist commentary! Sure, like Allah, I knew it was there. . . but it didn't bother me. It's like being bothered by kittens, or stupid children. They can't help themselves.

No, I'm still pissed at the *basic mechanics of filmmaking* that Romero couldn't get right.

I don't mind seeing lefty trash, as long as it's *entertaining* lefty trash.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Ray,

Wild stab in the dark:

Is the "zombie intelligence" an attempt to show the zombies learning violence and militarism from US?

US, capitlized, or U.S., whichever.

I read about a zombie picking up a machine gun.

I haven't seen the film, but you have... so... can this be read as a rather innocent primitive culture learning organized mass violence from us evil Americans?

Uh, if zombies saw a porn movie, would they learn from it and start having zombie sex? Serious question here.

Is the "zombie intelligence" an attempt to show the zombies learning violence and militarism from US?

I don't think so. The zombies represent the lower class; their growing intelligence is, I think, supposed to symbolize the awakening of the masses to the fact of their own oppression. In this, as in everything else, Romero is heavy-handed: at the beginning of the movie, the humans shoot fireworks into the sky before they go on their raids, because the zombies can't help but look up and stare at the pretty lights in the sky. They're easily distracted, you see, which makes them easy targets. By the end of the movie, the fireworks no longer captivate them. They're wise to the game now, man! They see through the Man's lies!

They also develop a basic facility with tools. One zombie carries a meat cleaver; the lead zombie experiments with a jackhammer; and yet another zombie picks up a shovel and uses it as a bludgeon when they're battling the human soldiers. All fine, working-class tools, being used to break the chains of oppression. I swear to God, by the end of the movie I thought Romero was going to have them start picking up hammers and sickles. Fucking jackass.

Ace: No, not really. Here's the deal, the Zombie intelligence thing only shows up at a few different points, none of which are really crucial to the plot, or somehow give the zombies the ability to do stuff 'stupid zombies' couldn't have pulled off.

SPOILERS.
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1. One(Big Daddy) picks up a gun. This goes nowhere except, toward the end, he gruntingly shows a zombie cheerleader how to shoot a military type who's already laid out on the ground before them, who was gonna get killed by them, gun or not. Never turns into Zombies having firefights with humans (which would have forced me to punch somebody in the audience and walk out in disgust)

2. The humans go on supply runs by distracting Zombies with fireworks, killing them as they stare up at the 'sky flowers' (as the retarded sidekick calls them). Big Daddy catches on to ignore the firworks, and tries to warn other zombies not to look up at them. Not much of a plot point except toward the end, the hero races to save some humans, launching fireworks till he arrives, but the Zombies have learned, and eat them anyway. Not a big point, Romero didn't set it up in such a way that it was certain the humans would have been saved had these zombies not learned to ignore the fireworks. Hero took forever to get there anyway. Other humans nearby were saved by his arrival. If there was a point here about Zombie smarts being a big scary thing, it was confused.

3. Big Daddy, angry at his Zombie brethern getting butchered, decides to take the fight to the humans, and attack the city and Fiddler's Green. Other Zombies go along for the showdown in large numbers. Smarts doesn't add anything to this. I would've bought them attacking the city simply because that's where their food was, didn't need some smart/revenge angle. Well... they seem smart enoough to realize they can get to the city, crossing a ribver, by walking on the river bottom, but that didn't strike me as smart.

4. Evil CEO type's death. Big Daddy has Hopper trapped in a limo. It's next to a gas pump. BD starts filling the limo with gasoline, then, later, rolls a firepot down a ramp toward limo killing Hopper. Smart, but it wasn't like the only way Hopper was going to die in that situation was if the Zombie's were smart. Likely just to draw out some sort of showy way to kill Hopper with some sort of "Blood for oil" subtext. Just silliness really.

Really, the Zombie's weren't that smart and their 'smartness' was neither here nor there plotwise. In fact, the Zombies themselves were largely beside the point. The whole show was about the doins of an Evil CEO type, a gun fortified tractor-trailor, and two other sets of humans in some sort of revenge/power stuggle. Boring.

"Guilding the lily ruins it sometimes"

argh. Don't do that, Ace.

You can't gild a lily. Shakespeare:

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
- King John, Act IV, Scene II

One of my pet peeves, along with "the exception that proves the rule" and "the proof is in the pudding."

Megan

"prove" and "proof" in your pet peeves are the older meaning of the word, "to test"; the sayings at least make a little more sense with that context.

Political allegory only really works with satire (Team America comes to mind). This zombie fest isn't going to work. Good and Evil have to be absolutes, and the characters have to be able to tell the difference (as in Batman Begins).

Goddess:

I thought that myself for a time when I first looked up the origin of that phrase because it sounded so ridiculous to me, and yes, it is a little more plausible, but so few people use it in even that sense; mostly, they seem to think that something which contradicts a rule actually does prove, or establish, the rule itself. Which is absurd, of course. The version you cited is much better, but still not absolutely precise.

The actual origin turns out to be a legal principle: "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis;" that is, the existence of a specific exception implies that the rule holds true in all other, non-exceptional cases. Not far removed, as Cecil Adams admits and Michael Quinion expands upon, from "the exception tests the rule."

Megan:

You are priceless. Thanks for the quote.

I agree that "guilding" the lilies is really bad. Can't let those frigging lilies form a union. Next thing you know, they will form a left-wing PAC.

My pet peeves are more current, and mundane. "Travelers' Advisory" in weather reports and "methodology," rampant in business memos for the last ten years, just drive me nuts.

Dave nails some of the problems I've seen with most modern horror movies. Horror-move-as-social-commentary peaked in the 70's with Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist (and only the latter was scary). The problem with zombie pictures is just what Dave says: against well-armed and motivated humans, zombies just aren't scary.

Romero falls into the the same trap he did with Day of the Dead: he's making a Woody Allen movie, only with Zombies instead of jaded Manhattanites. Zombies aren't stand-ins for the hordes of oppressed third-worlders striving to get to America's promised land; they are evil undead flesh-eating beasts who must be put down with a bullet to the noggin.

The remake of Dawn of the Dead is (IMO) far superior to the original because it understands this basic truth. The original picture is almost embarassingly bad in comparison.

Horror movies come in two flavors. One is the cerebral kind that play to our existential dread and spiritual malaise; I count The Exorcist as this kind, despite the seat-jumping scares and gruesome bits. The other is the atavistic kind that essentially plays on our primal fears of darkness and being eaten by wild animals. Vampires, werewolves, all kinds of monsters spring directly from this primitive part of our brains. The ghoul-type zombie is a near-perfect monster because they are us...and yet not us, for they hunt and eat us.

Lathering social commentary on this kind of thing is dumb, and is why very few modern horror pictures are actually scary. If I'm a horror-film director, then I'm not trying to convince you that the zombie is a metaphor; I'm trying to convince you that he's a ravenous evil beast who's trying to rip your guts out and eat them while they're still steaming.

'Cause, you know, that's an unsettling thing to think about.

P.S.:

Turbo-zombies rule. Slow zombies suck and must be destroyed.

That is all.

Anyone here catch the Fiddler's Green reference? It's an old Cav poem. Our own 2/17 Cav doesn't have it on their page, so I must refer to their sister battalion at Fort Drum.

http://www.drum.army.mil/sites/tenants/division/10AVNBDE/3-17CAV/Pages/317Fiddlers%20Green.htm