George Romero's zombie movies are different than any other series I've profiled for this column. They're less sequels than a procession of spiritual successors riffing on similar chords every decade or so. If you're a self-professed zombie fan, though, and somehow haven't seen these flicks, then you should step away from your computer right now and dig them up immediately. You simply would not have the likes 28 Days Later, Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Shaun of the Dead or anything else where the infected deceased get up and eat brains if it weren't for these movies.
That's not to say that I think they're perfect, though. Read on...
Night of the Living Dead (1968) Dir. George Romero
Listen, I understand and respect this flick’s historical importance in the American--nay, international--horror imagination. With some ideas from I Am Legend, this took zombies, the reanimated servants of voodoo witch doctors, and updated them into the modern undead hordes so many love today. Still, I’m going to play iconoclast and say that it hasn’t aged very well. Even discounting advances in effects and in schools of acting, this still feels more silly and non-eventful than the slow-burn nail-biter it's built up to be. Call it a case of respect-but-not-appreciation, but the revered social commentary feels really blown out of proportion when you finally get to see it after hearing all the reverence.
Dawn of the Dead (1978) Dir. George Romero
Now, here's the best of the bunch, by my reckoning. Like Road Warrior and Empire Strikes Back, this is one of those great sequels that takes the loosely-conceived setting of the first movie and fashions a true world out of it. I’d even go as far as to argue that it’s more influential than Night because, when you get down to brass tacks, every subsequent zombie has basically been a remake of Dawn with varying levels of seriousness or satire. Survivors holing up in an ironically re-purposed standard of urban life? Rival human gangs proving to be just much a threat as the zombies? It all started here. I'll also give this one respect for being the only entry in this series that never makes you want to rolls your eyes when it gets into the requisite social commentary.
Day of the Dead (1985) Dir. George Romero
This one makes me think of that old “even-numbered Trek movies don't suck” rule that applied for so long before the last movie broke it. The social commentary button gets pushed so damn hard with all the tense confrontations the survivors and military men are forced to have in their bunker. It doesn’t help that the heel resembles John Mellencamp enough to make you wonder if he’ll take out the ol' acoustic guitar and play “Jack & Diane” unplugged on his breaks. The sub-plot about the rehabilitation of Bub the zombie is the single most interesting part of this flick--it finally touches on your suspicions that the undead might eventually get their wits back--so its under-cooking is doubly frustrating. Also, while this is otherwise very dated, I'll raise my machete to Tom Savini for his timeless make-up effects work. Even a quarter century after-the-fact, there are still plenty of "How'd they do that?!" moments when the guts start spilling.
Land of the Dead (2005) Dir. George Romero
Opinions were divided on this, but I’ll maintain that it fulfills the aforementioned “one on, one off” pattern. It at least delves a bit into how society would adjust to zombies in the long term and the shot above of Big Daddy leading the legion of the undead across the river has to be the single creepiest image in the whole series. While each of these flicks makes a grab at metaphor, I’d say that a gnarled mechanic leading an army of the marginalized against the affluent in their posh, ivory tower community makes for the most cogent and potent symbolism. Also, Dead Reckoning has to be the most kickass anti-undead vehicle ever engineered outside of Ash's Deathcoaster in Army of Darkness.
Considering how Diary and Survival aren’t supposed to take place in the same universe, I suppose there’s some question of how satisfying a conclusion this is. Of course, can you have any kind of an arc to a series when there are no recurring characters aside from the zombies?
EDIT: Okay works now.
Also the soundtrack to Dawn of the Dead is the best thing ever. But then again anything Goblin does is pretty much that.
What I've long wondered is what would the 'zombie' landscape have developed into without Romero's offerings? Would cinema have any real occupation with the living dead, or maybe focused on the concepts related to voodoo and spiritualism/enslavement? Who would have been there if not Romero? I don't know, all before my time and I've only become more fascinated and less dreadful of zombies in the last view years of my elderly mid life crisis . . .
I also like Land, despite it not being very good. It has moments, but also seems to be more full of stupid decisions than the other ones.
The Return of the Living Dead series is like a cool spin-off series of Night. I know there's some deal with Romero's partner from the original doing his own thing but I'm too lazy to google it. Those movies treat the events of Night as if it actually happened but "they changed the story" of what really happened.
Wow - such interesting comments ... nothings better than people stating the order of thier favorite films in a series...
Dawn and Night could be characters from Twilight *Oh no what have I done?!*
I can only imagine how the movie would have turned out if it had a bigger budget. There was apparently supposed to be a large zombie-on-zombie battle, with Bub and other trained zombies being used as weapons by the humans. Romero said that he could have had more money from his studio if he toned down the gore and got a friendlier rating, but he said no and got half as much money to fund its production.
I feel terrible, out of these movies, I've only seen Night. I've also seen the remake of Dawn, but it sounds like I need to go back and watch the original.