The following bio was taken from the book "The Fearmakers" by John McCarthy. This book looks at some of the greatest masters of suspense and terror (i.e. Tod Browning, James Whales, Roger Corman, William Castle, Terrance Fisher, Georgr Romero, Dario Argento, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, and many more). I highly recommend this book to all horror aficionados.
[Go to Amazon.com to see about buying this book]
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Throughout "Martin", Romero emphasizes his ongoing concern for the decay of social systems. The church to which Cuda belongs has burned down, and the new priest (played by Romero himself) is more interested in money and wine than in exorcism. The backdrop of Pittsburgh, where the film was shot, is one of urban blight; Martin roams around in neighborhoods destroyed by the failing economy of all American cities.
Romero's next picture was "Dawn of the Dead" (1979), a sequel to his first film. The scenario is a follow-up on the zombie invasion that began in "Living Dead", when, in Yeats' classic phrase, "mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." The film opens in a TV station broadcasting news of the zombie menace that has gone increasingly out of control. As Romero crosscuts to a SWAT team raid on a tenement building, the audience is treated to the first of countless graphic scenes of zombie carnage. Accompanied by a TV station crewmember and her helicopter-pilot boyfriend, two of SWAT team escapes to a mall, where the bulk of the film takes place.
"Dawn of the Dead" has great many moments of clerk comedy. The idea of the dead returning robotically to a mall where they once spent many happy hours is in itself a wry comment on consumer culture. And scenes of the living dead falling into fountains, stumbling on escalators, and clamoring for admission to department stores add to the film's overall tone of macabre humor. But underlying this satire, the film makes a more pessimistic statement concerning our culture and our society. As the four protagonists wall themselves inside the mall, sealing it off from zombie attack, their fortress becomes increasingly domestic. With the entire contents of the mall at their disposal, they run amok through the stores, indulging in the same fantasy of unlimited consumption parodied in the zombies' behavior. Soon the small space they've cleared for themselves resembles the same sort of suburban dream home that any other metaphorical "zombie" might desire. And with the immediate threat of the undead fought off for the moment, they become bored. As one of them succumbs to the bite of a zombie and becomes zombified himself, the party of settlers finds itself at a loss as to what to do next. Indeed, this hopelessness is the major framework of Romero's zombie trilogy, wherein goals as we've come to know them cease to exist. Money is useless. Nobody cares what car you drive. And staying alive means being constantly engaged in a fight against the undead. There is no place toward which one might aim, no peace anywhere.
Romero's cynical streak bares itself even more boldly during the film's climax, when outlaw bikers raid the mall. Our heroes, having defeated the immediate threat of the zombies for the time being, are now faced with something worse---their fellow humans. The weave of the social fabric, always under stress in Romero's films, rips entirely here as the fight for survival yields to a fight for plunder. This progression of events sum up the more dour political philosophy that once equipped with the means for survival, humanity will turn its attention to conquest simply for the sake of increasing its holdings.
Although the film's gleefully gory content may chase off some viewers; its serious, intelligent ideas about society and civilization in America and where each may be headed make the film impossible to dismiss. One can argue that even the excesses of bloodshed and organ spilling serve the same purpose: In a film that makes such strong critical points about American culture, the treatment of violence is an essential theme. "Dawn of the Dead" isan epic view of a civilization in decline.
It's apt, then, that Romero followed "Dawn" with "Knightriders" (1981), which, although in no way a fearfilm, makes similarly strong and bitter comments on issues of integrity and personal value systems. Like Romero's other work, the film focuses on a world falling apart---in this case, a troop of motorcyclists acting out a medieval fantasy. The idyllic microcosm falls into disarray as the result of crooked, violent policemen, sleazy promoters, greed, and power struggles within the troop.
"Creepshow", Romero's pastiche of 1950s EC horror comics, written by Stephen King, appeared in 1982. It's a demonstration of the dark wit and over-the-top putrefaction that so distressed parents and teachers in the 1950s, when EC horror comics came under fire for ostensibly corrupting the youth of our proud land. An anthology film, Creepshow's stories are united by one involving an angry father who throws his son's horror comic away with the warning "If I ever catch you reading this crap again, you won't sit down for a week!" Romero then follows this with the first tale, "Father's Day," a typically EC-ish story involving jealousy, rage, decadence, and the spectacularly rotten corpse of a vicious father. Romero's use of matting in these scenes to echo the stylized look of comic-book art is not only great fun but indicative of his sophistication as a filmmaker. The film is also thematically consistent with the rest of Romero's work; the social institutions of family, wealth, marriage, and class are again mercilessly criticized and parodied.
Perhaps the most memorable segment of "Creepshow" is the final one in which E. G. Marshall, playing a ruthless tycoon obsessed with cleanliness (modeled on Howard Hughes), fights an escalating war against cockroaches that have invaded his high-rise apartment. Trapped in his stark white digs, Marshall goes slowly out of his mind to the jazzy strains of his Wurlitzer as increasing battalions of cockroaches descend upon him. Longtime Romero collaborator Tom Savini's final effects sequence in this segment of Marshall's body splitting open, disgorging thousands of cockroaches, is remarkable.
"Day of the Dead", the concluding chapter of Romero's "zombie trilogy," hit screens in 1985. Although Romero has professed dissatisfaction with the film (budget limitations prevented him from pursuing the much grander idea he'd originally envisioned), it remains a solid, powerful piece of fear filmmaking. Set entirely in an underground bunker, the film concerns the escalating tensions between a military unit and a team of scientists. Our sympathies are entirely with the scientists. Most of the soldiers range from the imbecilic to the power-mad. Only two, a helicopter pilot named John (Terry Alexander) and an electronic s expert named McDermott (Jarlath Conroy ), offer any hope that the military might be anything mole than a legion of fools.
"Day of the Dead" is a much grimmer film than its predecessor. The relentlessly claustrophobic sets, the constantly simmering anger and distrust among the character and the apocalyptic finale offer little of the slapstick irony of the mall zombies. Even the droll characters of Bub (Howard Sherman), a behavioral-experiment zombie, and his tutor Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), a twinkly-eyed, avuncular neurologist are presented in poignant terms. Logan, teaching Bub to follow orders and identify simple objects, becomes the film's father figure, despite his numerous gory experiments.
The only place in which any hope exists is the small compound occupied by John and McDermott which is decorated to resemble a tropical vacation home. And theirs is a bleak hope indeed. To the sound of tape-recorded ocean waves, the two live in philosophical acceptance of their conditions, making what they can of a dire situation. As above them the world they knew is completely overrun by the undead and all about them the living demonstrate their venal stupidity, John and McDermott confront themselves by abandoning their harsh reality as much as possible and accepting that the, cannot leave.
Ironically, the film concludes on a much happier note than Romero's other zombie films, as the heroine, Sarah (Lori Cardille), John, and McDermott esc ape to a real tropical island. The sole survivors of one of the last enclaves of "civilization," they have left behind the complete destruction and meaningless struggles of the mainland and as the film concludes, theirs is the only promise of a new beginning
©1994 John McCarthy
01/23/98 11:00 PM
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