GeorgeRomero

With the upcoming release of Romero's Survival of the Dead (review), zombie fever will once again rip through the horror community as everyone complains that the creator of the zombie has ruined his own ever-evolving creation. Naturally, no release of a film in a popular zombie franchise can be without its viral marketing materials.

To coincide with the release of Survival of the Dead in theaters on May 28th and VOD, XBOX Live, Amazon and Playstation on April 30th, Magnet has released the handy-dandy Zombie Identification Field Manual to ensure your complete safety when dealing with the zombie apocalypse. Never again will you confuse your drooling great grandfather or drunk roommate for a zombie, as the field manual highlights the attributes necessary to discern the living from the undead.

Survival of the Dead takes place in a desperate, nightmarish world where the dead walk the earth, relentlessly attacking the living. It is the story of Plum Island – a beautiful refuge whose isolation allows two powerful families to maintain a semblance of order in the wake of the zombie holocaust. But as the inhabitants slowly die off, the two clans become sharply divided: the O'Flynns believe that the undead must be destroyed without exception, while the Muldoons insist that afflicted loved ones be kept "alive" until a cure is found. The result is an escalating showdown with echoes of a classic Western stand-off that erupts in brutality and violence.

The guide can be viewed or downloaded here or by clicking the image up there in the top right. Check out more on Survival of the Dead at its official Facebook page and the official website. The red band trailer can be found here.

Yes, I'm excited. Yes, I know it's a remake. No, I don't care. It looks creepy. I want to see the Crazies. Bad. I like Timothy Olyphant, particularly from his turn in Deadwood, and while I'm certainly a fan of Romero's original, it never quite clicked with me like so much of his other work has. We've shown you trailers and explored the early viral websites they put out there (viral! *snicker*), but as the promotion machine amps up, I get more and more antsy to see this flick. This one looks like it earns it's 'R' rating. While that's not a prerequisite for a fine horror film, it sure as hell doesn't hurt when it's flagging the story of a town gone mad.

The mutants over at Dread Central have a plethora of new shots that lead me to believe that this will be a nice adrenaline-and-blood cocktail. Here's hoping! Click the pic to your right to take you over to Dread and get a gander at the rest of them.
And leap past the break to check out the trailer and lengthy synopsis.

I'll admit that this particular remake doesn't have a heck of a lot going for it on paper. Are any true blue horror fans really looking forward to it? Breck Eisner, offspring of Michael, is racing Rob Zombie for the remake crown. Somehow, this priveleged pretty-boy managed to get his hands on not only the Crazies, but Flash Gordon, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and my precious, the Brood. With a track record like that, I'm becoming convinced that he's part of a cabal that was assembled for the sole purpose of pissing me off.

That said, I'm drifting towards giving him the benefit of the doubt. The latest trailer, available below, tickled the horror part of my brain. Timothy Olyphant usuallly acquits himself nicely (see Deadwood) and if there's a Romero film that's great, but definitely could be improved upon, it's the Crazies.

The film's conceit is simple enough. People start going berserk in a small town. Before long, it becomes clear that the water is tainted. While Sheriff Dutton (Olyphant) tries to deal with the situation, the military moves in with a 'scorched earth' mentality. The sheriff and a few others realize that getting the hell out of Dodge is their new main objective.

The poster to the right is taken from one of the many spooky images from the new trailer. The deviants at Bloody-Disgusting have a shiny, engorged look at it here, if you need to biggie size it.

After the jump is the second trailer. Check out the nifty official site, as well.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! As we all sit down to gorge ourselves on turkey and stuffing, I can't help but glance around the dinner table and think of spectacular death scenes from zombie cinema. What? No, I don't see a problem with the thought process. The way in which my family and friends tear into the succulent flesh of the ceremonial bird always brings to mind images of swarms of the undead descending upon some hapless dupe and making a hearty meal out his insides. So to kickoff the holiday season, I thought it would be fun to make a list of some of my favorite moments of zombies feasting on humanity...with ample carbon-based gravy of course.

I do not like Dawn of the Dead.

George Romero's epic 1978 classic about a group of survivors holed up in an abandoned mall after the walking dead have taken over the city has taken its seemingly rightful place on a number of top ten lists, but not mine. For me, Dawn of the Dead is many things, but a great horror film is not one of them.

And it's not because the zombies are blue.

Now, before you show up on my front step with torches and pitchforks slandering my credibility as a horror fan and overall swell guy, hear me out. My point of view, though controversial in nature, is the end result of close to twenty years of horror fanaticism and is not without merit. I don't discriminate lightly, and while I feel "just because" is a perfectly acceptable reason for not liking a film, I assure you that excuse does not fly with my assessment of Dawn of the Dead.

Argh, I hate conflicting emotions. Why can't the world be black or white, dead or undead? On the one hand, I would love to read any book written by zombie Godfather George A. Romero, and I would particularly love to read a book written by Romero about, well, zombies. On the other, more rational hand, I do not want to read (or see) the foundation myth explaining how Romero's particular legions of the undead came to be, which is exactly what I will inevitably be reading in July 2010 according to an article from The Guardian about Romero's upcoming novel, The Living Dead.

The UK Publisher, Headline, describes the premise of The Living Dead as, "the full story behind the living dead: how they came to be [and] what they can and cannot do". It starts in San Diego, where a corpse sits up and begins to walk during an autopsy, while a reporter from Atlanta shows viewers "glimpses of increasing chaos from around the globe". Which is all well and good if I want to read another World War Z, but global chaos and scientific reasoning is not what I've come to associate with Romero's undead cannon.

Hasn't "When there's no more room left in hell, the dead will walk the Earth" been sufficient explanation since Dawn of the Dead came out in '78? Does anyone really require further examination than that simple conceit? Obviously if Romero writes a book, I'm going to read it, even if it deals with material I'd rather be left vague, but I just wish it would be a standalone entry and not a retroactive law book as to what can and cannot be done in the world of the walking dead. Doesn't that kind of defeat the whole oral history, fire-side mystique of not knowing the end-all reason behind the brain-hungry re-animation of friends and family?

By Jenni Miller

"Listen to this!" A friend pressed the ringer on his BlackBerry, and it played the theme to The Omen, "Ave Satani" by Jerry Goldsmith, which he'd assigned to a particularly heinous client of his. Another friend had, for a time, assigned a relative the unforgettable score from Halloween as composed by writer/director John Carpenter himself. And I'm sure somewhere there is someone with the theme from The Exorcist, which was written by Mike Oldfield.

Ringtones aside, there's no denying that a deft soundtrack or score can ratchet up the tension in any movie, especially one that uses droning noises and other disturbing, almost subliminal effects that can slip past the viewer and straight into our brain. Some of my favorite spooky soundtracks sure to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end include the above, naturally, but there are a few that need some love as well.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but Hollywood tends to break things. If a formula worked once, it will invariably be remade, repackaged, and resold over and over again until the equation is no longer profitable. But occasionally the Hollywood hive mindset is not content with merely breaking something. Every now and then it has to rape and pillage, and thus we shall soon have Night of the Living Dead: Origins. Wallow in these few key bits from The Hollywood Reporter's news on the matter:

"Zombie movie "Night of the Living Dead" is coming back, this time in a 3D CGI format and without the involvement of George Romero." ... "On the story front, De Soto, who wrote the script with David R. Schwartz, wants to update the tale partially by bringing out the characters' backstories and make what he called "an American-style anime."" ... "The aim of the process is to make tennis balls on a stick representing real people or monsters a thing of the past by allowing actors interact with CG elements as if they are tangible." ... "De Soto was a fan of the original "Living Dead" and once the trio realized the rights were in the public domain, zeroed in on that project."

Scott has seen [REC] 2 up in Toronto, but until his review shows up on these fine interwebs of ours later today, let's revisit an old (read: last year) list of mine covering all the bases of found-footage horror that I could think of...

(Oh, and BTW? He liked [REC] 2.)

-We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.

-Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.

-The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.

Now, on with the list!