Creepshow 2 (1987)

When The Curtain Goes Up, The Terror Begins!

Stephen King and George A. Romero return three more stories in the second installment of the Creepshow series.

"Chief Wooden Head" is the tale of an older couple who are the proprietors of a small, bankrupt shop in the desert. They remain open against the odds in a struggle to make a go of it and to provide for the needs of the local community. Their customers are primarily the local First Nations community and their store has a life-sized wooden statue by its front door - "Chief Wooden Head". But the shop falls victim to a group of petty criminals. The robbery goes bad and the thieves escape, but not for long. Guess who hunts them down to mete out tough justice...

In "The Raft" four young couples decide to go swimming at a lake far away from civilization. They swim out to a wooden raft in the water only to find that they are being hunted by a giant oily blob which aims to hunt down and consume them all one by one.

Lastly, "The Hitchhiker" is a nightmare scenario wherein a hit and run goes from bad to even worse. An adulteress business woman is rushing home after an extra-marital booty call when she accidentally hits and kills a hitchhiker. But the hitchhiker won't stay dead and wants revenge.

Creepshow 2 continues in the tradition of the original Creepshow film seamlessly and with all the cheese, laughs, and occasional spooks of the first movie. It continues on the strong underlying theme of "what goes around comes around", whereby bad people meet nasty ends. This sequel is darker than its predecessor and features more brutal, less cartoonish violence. Romero's participation in the writing process is noticeable in the films underlying social commentary as well.


4 wooden chiefs out of 5
Rated R: contains violence, frightening scenes, sexual content, nudity, language. 

Creepshow (1982)

Jolting Tales of Horror!

Stephen King and George A. Romero present five "jolting tales of horror" in this two hour long collection.

First, in "Father's Day", the zombified corpse of a murdered Father comes back for revenge, and for the Father's Day cake that his daughter never gave him. Great zombie courtesy of special effects genius Tom Savini, but not the most compelling of the stories.

Next, in "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verril" Stephen King plays a yokel who finds a meteor on his property only to find out that it comes with unexpected consequences. A very strange tale, and a great, comical, performance by King.

"Something to Tide you Over" stars Leslie Nielson as an insane and vengeful ex-husband who buries his ex-wife and her new lover up to their necks on a beach and then watches them drown for his own amusement. Again, we get some neat zombies returning from their watery graves to exact revenge.

In "The Crate", a strange creature is found hidden below the stairs in a University. The Janitor reports the find to Professor Dexter who informs his colleague and friend, Henry Northrup. Henry hatches a plan to feed his detested wife to the beast. Divorce might have been a better option.

Finally, in "They're Creeping up on You!", a selfish and extremely rich businessman lives the high life in his penthouse while treating his employees like garbage. Finally during a black out he meets a fitting end.

Creepshow will be loved by fans of grisly but comedic horror-cheese series like Tales from the Crypt. The skits aren't generally all that scary, some more-so than others, but they do feature some good actors and special effects as well as the opportunity to feel satisfied that the bad guys got their comeuppance. The film was followed by two sequels, although only the first can boast the involvement of King and Romero and is noticeably better for it.

4 fathers day cakes out of 5
Rated R for violence, language, and frightening scenes.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.

Following up after the end of Romero's first masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead takes us deeper into a world lost in zombie apocalypse.

Two SWAT team officers and two members of a TV news team aim to flee to Canada in hopes that the zombie outbreak has not spread across the border. They escape in the station's traffic helicopter. Soon they land at a local shopping mall where they hope to re-fuel and stock up on supplies.

They find that hundreds of zombies have congregated at the mall, as if driven there by memories or routine. They establish a safe base camp and go out to find supplies in the zombie infested halls of the mall. But it may be their fellow humans, not the zombies, who cause them the most trouble.

Like Romero's other films, Dawn of the Dead has something to say. Namely, a critique and mockery of the hedonistic consumerism exemplified in American capitalism. It also boasts improved special effects compared with its predecessor. The zombies are all kind of blue on the other hand, which is a bit odd. The film has also been criticized for its campy dialogue, sets and even acting. While some of this is partially true, it doesn't manage to take away from the movie's greatness. Romero lulls the viewer into a false sense of security using humour and lightheartedness only to jerk you violently back into reality through some series of horrifying events.

Dawn of the Dead is another great zombie classic; fun to watch, grisly, yet an effective carrier of a timely critique of the society we live in. A remake, which did not involve Romero, was released in 2004. 

5 Hare Krishna zombies out of 5
Rated R for violence/gore, language, frightening and intense scenes. 

The Crazies (1973)

Why are the good people dying?

A military plane crashes in the mountains near Evan's City, Pennsylvania. It's deadly cargo, a bacteriological weapon named "trixie" is released into the towns water supply. Soon the residents are dying, or turning incurably, violently, mad.

A small group of civilians tries to escape death at the hands of either infected fellow civilians, or trigger-happy soldiers, as the military quarantine's the town and begins rounding up its people. Meanwhile the military blunders its way through a failed containment of a man-made disaster they created.

The Crazies is the original version of the 2010 remake. While the remake was not completely true to the storyline of the original, the over-all plot remains basically the same as does the underlying social commentary about war, the military, biological/bacteriological weapons, etc.

Of course the original had a budget of around $250,000 as opposed to the $20,000,000 of the remake - a fairly significant difference which is pretty noticeably in terms of production quality, makeup, special effects, costume and basically every other aspect of the film.

But The Crazies is still a thoroughly enjoyable film despite its small budget and other limitations. It holds true to the hallmark of George A. Romero's other films: horror, gore, and politics. It's only a shame that until the release of the recent, excellent, remake, this original film had nearly faded into the unknown. Hopefully the remake will encourage more horror and sci-fi fans to hunt down a copy of the 1973 film and give it a well deserved viewing.

4.5 gas masks out of 5
Unrated: contains violence, gore, nudity, language.


Watch The Crazies trailer.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

They won't stay dead!

Barbara finds herself in perhaps the least fortunate of places, a graveyard, on the very day when for reasons unknown, the dead rise from their graves in search of warm human flesh. She manages to escape to a house out in the country side where she meets Ben, another zombie survivor. They soon find out that a family, the Coopers, are hiding out in the basement with a young couple named Tom and Judy. Now this unlikely group of allies must try to work together to fend of hordes of the living dead who are intent upon devouring whatever live flesh they can get their teeth into.

In 1968, the modern zombie film was born thanks to George A. Romero, and this film. To this day, the greatness of Romero's films remains unsurpassed. A hallmark of his work, starting with Night of the Living Dead, was his mixture of social and political commentary with horror. It was because of this that his film was referred to by  historian Adam Rockoff as "subversive on many levels." In the case of Night of the Living Dead, Romero's "subversiveness" included the films implied criticism of 1960's American society, as well as the horrendous war in Vietnam which was still raging at the time of the films release. It also took on patriarchy and racism by placing a woman and a black man as the films brave heroes who worked together to survive, which was contrasted by the slightly villainous, cowardly, individualistic, and abusive conservative white male head of the Cooper family. The film was also attacked by critics of the day for its graphic content which was beyond anything that mainstream audiences had yet seen on the big screen.

Night of the Living Dead kicked off Romero's "Dead series" which now includes six films. The film was never copyrighted, leading to numerous unauthorized and illegitimate "sequels" and "remakes". Tom Savini made an excellent remake of Night of the Living Dead with Romero's blessings in 1990, but the Return of the Living Dead series was also originally intended to act as a series of sequels to Night of the Living Dead despite having no actual connection to the series or to Romero... and despite being far inferior to the legitimate series directed by Romero himself.

5 They're coming for you Barbara's out of 5
Rated 18A/R for violence/gore, brief nudity, mild profanity.

Watch the Night of the Living Dead trailer.

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Survival of the Dead (2009)

Survival isn't just for the living.

George A. Romero's newest chapter in the "... of the Living Dead" series takes place on an Island, well after the initial zombie outbreak took place. Two rival factions are fighting based on their respective views of how to deal with the zombies. Patrick O'Flynn leads a faction bent on physically eliminating all zombies in order to curb further outbreaks. His nemesis, Seamus Muldoon, aims to reform the zombies by teaching them the human behavior they once knew.

Muldoon gets the upper hand and exiles O'Flynn, who travels to the mainland and meets a band of renegade National Guards led by the "Sarge" who briefly appeared in Romero's previous film, Diary of the Dead. The two groups ultimately join forces and return to Plum Island, inciting a war between the two rival factions in the midst of an island riddled with the flesh-craving undead.

Survival of the Dead continues the greatest zombie franchise in existence, started by Romero with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. While it's hard to say that this new chapter is anywhere near topping some of Romero's zombie classics, it seems to continue the series nicely. Survival keeps the humour, the gore, and the obligatory underlying political and social commentary of the other films in the series. It may be a bit milder, but it's still gory and fun.

The movie was shot at Port Dover, Ontario, giving it one of the nicest backgrounds on which a blood and guts filled zombie flick has ever been filmed which makes for an interesting contrast. The actors, all Canadian, were all actually relatively decent. The plot was something different from your run of the mill zombie flick, and the script was actually intelligible. You'll know a Romero movie when you see it, beware of cheap immitations.

4 exploding zombie heads our of 5
Rated 18A/R for graphic violence & gore, language, and brief sexual content.


Watch the Survival of the Dead trailer. 

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The Crazies (2010)

Fear thy neighbor.

The 2010 remake of George A. Romero’s classic anti-war B movie The Crazies is bound to please any fan of horror and sci-fi films. Jam packed with suspense, action, and its share of gore, The Crazies is a genuinely frightening and suspenseful film which few movies to come from North American film makers in recent years could match.

But The Crazies isn’t just thrills and fake blood, it carries forward the anti-war message of the 1973 original. When a top secret bio-chemical weapon is accidentally released on the population on a small town, it results in many of the townspeople being turned into homicidal maniacs. The military intervenes, attempting to contain the effects of the weapon through the use of brute force against all those who are, or may be, infected. A small group of citizens are left to navigate through unspeakable horrors in an attempt to escape through the danger of infection, gangs of trigger happy soldiers, and murderous “crazies,” to freedom.

The Crazies is also partnered with the Chemical Security campaign being run in the United States by Greenpeace which is working with other environmental groups for strict legislation to protect people and the environment from exposure to dangerous chemicals from plants and factories with unsafe processes.
If you don’t get a chance to catch The Crazies in theaters, watch for it on DVD later this year. You won’t regret it!

5 dead guys out of 5
Rated R for bloody violence and language. 

Watch the Crazies trailer


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