Tag: George Romero

Delayed Monday Morning Movie Review: Day of the Dead (1985)

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After much delay, here is this week’s Monday Morning Movie Review of George A. Romero‘s 1985 zombie classic Day of the Dead (not to be confused with the festive Mexican holiday of the same name).

When I first pulled up the flick on Shudder, I was hoping for 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, the supposedly “fun” Romero Dead movie.  That’s the one with survivors of a zombie apocalypse live it up in a mall, enjoying all the materialism the late 1970s could afford.

Despite my efforts, though, I can’t seem to locate that flick on any streaming service I use, so Day of the Dead it was.  By now the trope of “humans are the real monsters” is familiar to viewers—and readers of virtually any Stephen King novel—but Day of the Dead delivers that trite message in a taut, unsettling way.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Creepshow (1982)

The Portly Politico4 Comments

I’ve been enjoying my Shudder membership immensely, and it’s pretty much become the main streaming service I watch when I’m viewing solo.  Needless to say, I’ve consumed a lot of movies on the service already, so brace yourselves for many horror movie reviews (as if I didn’t mostly write those already).

This week, I’m looking at the horror anthology Creepshow (1982).  Horror anthologies can vary in quality, with usually one very strong entry, and then some forgettable duds.  Creepshow, for the most part, beats the odds.

I don’t remember when I first saw Creepshow, but I was probably far too young.  What I do know is that some of its most iconic, comic-book-inspired images have stuck with me down to the present.  I didn’t even know they were from Creepshow until re-watching it all these years later, but they’ve been seared into my brain.

For example, the whole plot of “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill“—which stars Stephen King in his first film role—has always stuck with me (indeed, I have an idea for a short story with a similar premise tentatively entitled “Yeast Man”):  the idiot farmer slowly succumbing to the weird alien plant.  Ted Danson’s submerged head in “Something to Tide You Over” is another memorable image, as is the flood of roaches entering the impossibly sanitized apartment in “They’re Creeping Up on You!”

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