Post by loverofbeers on Apr 12, 2013 18:53:56 GMT -5
So I saw sixteen Zombie movies last month, two are kind of on the fence as truly members of the genre. But sixteen. I gots to tell you, you do feel that. I felt Horror and movie tired and wiped out, but that passes usually after a week or so. But I knew I would stay away from Zombie movies for a while.
Zombie movies have never gotten to me, but this last month they did. I started imagining, for the first time after all these years, how a Zombie smells like. And that made Zombies terrifying. The stench. The stomach-turning stench. So a question, how can a rotting pile of meat keep from stinking and alerting you from faraways of it's ravenous imminent approach?
So I wasn't going to watch more Zombie flicks, but.... Something lingered from last month, and not The Return of the Living Dead which I missed having the time to watch. I really missed Dario Argento's take on Dawn of the Dead.
First let me compare in on a letter grade system to Romero's. It was an A+ compared to a B- for Romero's edit from his own footage. Quickly, comparing the two, Romero's has very hokey music with little silence in any scene. It is much more comedic and hokey-fun in nature. It uses some really bad Zombie death-props, regardless, and cuts scenes of dialogue and deep characterization. 'Nuff said.
I had to re-watch the Argento version, it lingered in my noggin since my last double-watching introduction to this new-to-me experience late last month. Like I said, it is now one of my all time favorite Horror movies, up there with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Shining, The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and frankly The Devil's Rejects, as well as a very few more.
First an apology to the band Goblin. I always hated them as Eurotrash and loud and annoying and wrong in movies, especially Giallo films. They help to make Argento's film a perfect film for me, Horror or any and all genres of film included. Argento used this band like Heyman guided wrestlers in ECW in the mid to late Nineties. Argento was a genius madman at directing Goblin in making the score for this movie. And for that, I apologize to Goblin. When guided in the making of a soundtrack for a movie, Goblin is beyond talented and effective. When used like Romero, lazily, and for comedic effect to cover-up dialogue, I hate them.
So yes, the soundtrack and more specifically the lack of soundtrack in huge amounts of the movie, was perfection. The character development and scenes of dialogue are great. One example is now in the raid of the mall, you hear the comments of the bikers not comedy high-jinks. It makes the scene more "real" and again, effective. Much more real....
Time for the characters, the foursome. They are much more developed and everyone is so much more likable, Hell, loveable. You root for them, big time, from the start and throughout. SPOILERSPOLIRSPOILERSPOLIERS.
Roger comes off as more impulsive after the helicopter ride and less the professional "trooper" from the earlier scenes with the SWAT attack. He starts to unwind in the mall and become irresponsible, cocky, easily distracted by mirth and I would say he digresses to a reactionary child role, especially more heightened after being infected by Zombie bites. You really see his fate coming and the tension to his sad fate is heightened to the degree that I almost began to squirm, which I rarely do.
As a tangent, if you compare Roger to Samurai lore, his losing of his primary rifle to a member of the dead (this Zombie who knows and embraces his Second Amendment by parading that rifle, barrel pointing down at his own face, for the duration of this movie), is like a Samurai losing a sword, like losing one own's soul, heart, or even life. He was going to bite it, and thank you Tom Savini for the great effects. I loved the two actual bites but my favorite effect from the whole movie was small and probably easy to pull off. It is when a Zombie-girl puts two fingers into Roger's wrapped up, chewed-up ankle and blood pulsates a bit up from the bandages. My personal favorite effect.
With the added scenes and the dialogue, Stephen, aka Flyboy, ALWAYS comes of as a very good guy that is accepted by the two other guys from the start, with just a little bit of tension that quickly dissipates at the beginning, and they quickly become very good and fun-loving friends. Flyboy is still responsible and very important in locating and decoding a set of blueprints to the mall and teaching Peter how to read the prints. This is important after Flyboy's "death" for the escaping Peter and Flygirl.
Flyboy is more and more shunned by the woman he got knocked up, Frannie, aka Flygirl. With much personal love and respect for her character, dear Frannie rejects his beautifully staged marriage proposal. It truly was a gorgeous meal. We get a BOOBY shot of Flygirl's left breast after the meal, unclear of if they bumped monkeys. There hair still looked perfect from the meal, but they were nekkid in bed under the covers. Oh, I'll give it to George Romero, this scene was beauty to look at, it was shot so beautifully. It is Kubrick level cinematic art.
Anyway, you always dig Flyboy in this version, from the start.
Also about the un-dead. By Romero's Rules, some Zombies seem to be much more intelligent and natural "born" leaders like Bub and Big Daddy. When Flyboy re-animates, he IMMEDIATELY heads to the false wall that he and Peter had built earlier, leading the un-dead personally upstairs to the survivor's last hideaway in the mall. I like this point.
With the footage at his disposal, Romero re-made Barbara, Version 2.0, more feminist, and as a part of a commentary/dialogue he wanted to start with the audience. Women's Lib was in the air in America and Frannie went from Barbara yet functional, to a strong female who was vital to survival for the great Ken Foree at the end. Roll credits as they fly away to an uncertain future yet bleak future.
By the way and significant to my judgement, trust me I'm not being lecherous here, Frannie was never even mildly attractive to me, ever before. She was the average blonde. Somehow Argento turned Flygirl into a beauty to rival Hollywood actresses of old, all using the same footage, much of it discarded by Romero.
Argento made Franny into Flygirl, no politics. Just personal inter-relationship strife between her and Flyboy, and the wise independent desire to be able to fly the whirly-bird if Flyboy ever was ever lost to the then foursome, led Frannie to begin to learn successfully like Luke to Yoda, how to fly the helicopter with much warmth and encouragement from Flyboy.
Argento's Frannie is an integral part of a foursome, threesome, twosome, an integral part indeed. She loves and protects every member of her group with the proficient and trained marksmanship (markswomanship, markspersonship?) of an armed-angel and lioness, and somehow she is gorgeous. Hats of to Dario Argento.
Peter is so very interesting here. He is everyone's best friend yet their natural leader, and he is very deep and sentimental and not stern, but a smiler, often, and at bad times, he smiles. A badass.
He loses his brothers and then he loses his two new best friends. By the end he is suicidal, but he chooses one of three endings Romero had planned, and the second one that was "filmed". Actually, with the same footage shot, you get two ends. The first, Flygirl waits for Peter to climb into the whirly-bird. The other, she takes off, sees Peter emerge onto the roof, and lowers to his rescue, but never lands, same footage, but used better by Argento to more dramatic effect. Oh, and no send-off with a ridiculous high-school football-superhero music theme at the end for this movie, but in your face Rock and Roll, baby! Rock and Roll will never die.
Oh yeah, in the Argento version, via dialogue and tone set by a superior use of Goblin, you get the feeling that Peter and Flygirl will be fine, damn their fuel. It seems to me also that Romero filmed the ending for Day of the Dead to make up for this possibly tragic end scene of the surviving two flying away in this nebulous ending in his version. And the unborn baby, too, I feel survives in Argento's film. By the way, Flygirl smoked often, yet she was preggers. And drank wine. Those freakin' seventies. That is how you end up with a deformed unbalanced mutant child that will grow up to have a franchise of its own. Oops, back to Peter...
Like I said, Peter is a smiler. After he confronts Flyboy via rifle muzzle, he "detenses" the situation with a slight grin to Stephen, and a stern look but it also reads as "Sorry, but now we are good". Also he smiles often while tackling the bikers at the end. He has fun, but he is devastating, and smartly safe and ahead of his prey. God bless the rifle. Anyway, he smiles much in this version. You love the guy and root for him.
SPOILERSPOLERSPOILERSENDS
So I watched this movie three times in about three weeks or so. I don't feel like I ever want to watch the Romero version again. It feels deficient and again, hokey, needlessly.
Oh yeah, one last fact, Argento's version has more dialogue but is cut so well. It is still a long movie by Horror standards, yet shorter than Romero's version. It glides by at a healthy 140 minutes. He uses a better cut for the whirly-bird end, and omits the "Frankenstein Monster" helicopter blade prop, reminiscent of a watermelonhead, no fault of Mr. Savini but the heat on that day in Pennsylvania. Romero made a bad decision based on just wanting to use that prop, dammit. And no running Zombie kids, Argento did a better edit job, and TRIMMED this footage effectively. Anyway, Argento's version of Dawn of the Dead, Zombi, is a huge recommend to all Horror fans.
Oh yeah, it is the member of two horror franchises, one Italian as a whole, Zombi, and also the second installment of Romero's original un-dead trilogy. But worth two points. After all that gushing, I am on the hunt tonight with a healthy two points!!! Yee-ahh!!!! you, my worthy competitors.
A local Independence Stash IPA Cheers! to Argento Romero and the whirly-bird. You swung and hit an incredible homerun Mr. Argento.
LOB-2
Zombie movies have never gotten to me, but this last month they did. I started imagining, for the first time after all these years, how a Zombie smells like. And that made Zombies terrifying. The stench. The stomach-turning stench. So a question, how can a rotting pile of meat keep from stinking and alerting you from faraways of it's ravenous imminent approach?
So I wasn't going to watch more Zombie flicks, but.... Something lingered from last month, and not The Return of the Living Dead which I missed having the time to watch. I really missed Dario Argento's take on Dawn of the Dead.
First let me compare in on a letter grade system to Romero's. It was an A+ compared to a B- for Romero's edit from his own footage. Quickly, comparing the two, Romero's has very hokey music with little silence in any scene. It is much more comedic and hokey-fun in nature. It uses some really bad Zombie death-props, regardless, and cuts scenes of dialogue and deep characterization. 'Nuff said.
I had to re-watch the Argento version, it lingered in my noggin since my last double-watching introduction to this new-to-me experience late last month. Like I said, it is now one of my all time favorite Horror movies, up there with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Shining, The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and frankly The Devil's Rejects, as well as a very few more.
First an apology to the band Goblin. I always hated them as Eurotrash and loud and annoying and wrong in movies, especially Giallo films. They help to make Argento's film a perfect film for me, Horror or any and all genres of film included. Argento used this band like Heyman guided wrestlers in ECW in the mid to late Nineties. Argento was a genius madman at directing Goblin in making the score for this movie. And for that, I apologize to Goblin. When guided in the making of a soundtrack for a movie, Goblin is beyond talented and effective. When used like Romero, lazily, and for comedic effect to cover-up dialogue, I hate them.
So yes, the soundtrack and more specifically the lack of soundtrack in huge amounts of the movie, was perfection. The character development and scenes of dialogue are great. One example is now in the raid of the mall, you hear the comments of the bikers not comedy high-jinks. It makes the scene more "real" and again, effective. Much more real....
Time for the characters, the foursome. They are much more developed and everyone is so much more likable, Hell, loveable. You root for them, big time, from the start and throughout. SPOILERSPOLIRSPOILERSPOLIERS.
Roger comes off as more impulsive after the helicopter ride and less the professional "trooper" from the earlier scenes with the SWAT attack. He starts to unwind in the mall and become irresponsible, cocky, easily distracted by mirth and I would say he digresses to a reactionary child role, especially more heightened after being infected by Zombie bites. You really see his fate coming and the tension to his sad fate is heightened to the degree that I almost began to squirm, which I rarely do.
As a tangent, if you compare Roger to Samurai lore, his losing of his primary rifle to a member of the dead (this Zombie who knows and embraces his Second Amendment by parading that rifle, barrel pointing down at his own face, for the duration of this movie), is like a Samurai losing a sword, like losing one own's soul, heart, or even life. He was going to bite it, and thank you Tom Savini for the great effects. I loved the two actual bites but my favorite effect from the whole movie was small and probably easy to pull off. It is when a Zombie-girl puts two fingers into Roger's wrapped up, chewed-up ankle and blood pulsates a bit up from the bandages. My personal favorite effect.
With the added scenes and the dialogue, Stephen, aka Flyboy, ALWAYS comes of as a very good guy that is accepted by the two other guys from the start, with just a little bit of tension that quickly dissipates at the beginning, and they quickly become very good and fun-loving friends. Flyboy is still responsible and very important in locating and decoding a set of blueprints to the mall and teaching Peter how to read the prints. This is important after Flyboy's "death" for the escaping Peter and Flygirl.
Flyboy is more and more shunned by the woman he got knocked up, Frannie, aka Flygirl. With much personal love and respect for her character, dear Frannie rejects his beautifully staged marriage proposal. It truly was a gorgeous meal. We get a BOOBY shot of Flygirl's left breast after the meal, unclear of if they bumped monkeys. There hair still looked perfect from the meal, but they were nekkid in bed under the covers. Oh, I'll give it to George Romero, this scene was beauty to look at, it was shot so beautifully. It is Kubrick level cinematic art.
Anyway, you always dig Flyboy in this version, from the start.
Also about the un-dead. By Romero's Rules, some Zombies seem to be much more intelligent and natural "born" leaders like Bub and Big Daddy. When Flyboy re-animates, he IMMEDIATELY heads to the false wall that he and Peter had built earlier, leading the un-dead personally upstairs to the survivor's last hideaway in the mall. I like this point.
With the footage at his disposal, Romero re-made Barbara, Version 2.0, more feminist, and as a part of a commentary/dialogue he wanted to start with the audience. Women's Lib was in the air in America and Frannie went from Barbara yet functional, to a strong female who was vital to survival for the great Ken Foree at the end. Roll credits as they fly away to an uncertain future yet bleak future.
By the way and significant to my judgement, trust me I'm not being lecherous here, Frannie was never even mildly attractive to me, ever before. She was the average blonde. Somehow Argento turned Flygirl into a beauty to rival Hollywood actresses of old, all using the same footage, much of it discarded by Romero.
Argento made Franny into Flygirl, no politics. Just personal inter-relationship strife between her and Flyboy, and the wise independent desire to be able to fly the whirly-bird if Flyboy ever was ever lost to the then foursome, led Frannie to begin to learn successfully like Luke to Yoda, how to fly the helicopter with much warmth and encouragement from Flyboy.
Argento's Frannie is an integral part of a foursome, threesome, twosome, an integral part indeed. She loves and protects every member of her group with the proficient and trained marksmanship (markswomanship, markspersonship?) of an armed-angel and lioness, and somehow she is gorgeous. Hats of to Dario Argento.
Peter is so very interesting here. He is everyone's best friend yet their natural leader, and he is very deep and sentimental and not stern, but a smiler, often, and at bad times, he smiles. A badass.
He loses his brothers and then he loses his two new best friends. By the end he is suicidal, but he chooses one of three endings Romero had planned, and the second one that was "filmed". Actually, with the same footage shot, you get two ends. The first, Flygirl waits for Peter to climb into the whirly-bird. The other, she takes off, sees Peter emerge onto the roof, and lowers to his rescue, but never lands, same footage, but used better by Argento to more dramatic effect. Oh, and no send-off with a ridiculous high-school football-superhero music theme at the end for this movie, but in your face Rock and Roll, baby! Rock and Roll will never die.
Oh yeah, in the Argento version, via dialogue and tone set by a superior use of Goblin, you get the feeling that Peter and Flygirl will be fine, damn their fuel. It seems to me also that Romero filmed the ending for Day of the Dead to make up for this possibly tragic end scene of the surviving two flying away in this nebulous ending in his version. And the unborn baby, too, I feel survives in Argento's film. By the way, Flygirl smoked often, yet she was preggers. And drank wine. Those freakin' seventies. That is how you end up with a deformed unbalanced mutant child that will grow up to have a franchise of its own. Oops, back to Peter...
Like I said, Peter is a smiler. After he confronts Flyboy via rifle muzzle, he "detenses" the situation with a slight grin to Stephen, and a stern look but it also reads as "Sorry, but now we are good". Also he smiles often while tackling the bikers at the end. He has fun, but he is devastating, and smartly safe and ahead of his prey. God bless the rifle. Anyway, he smiles much in this version. You love the guy and root for him.
SPOILERSPOLERSPOILERSENDS
So I watched this movie three times in about three weeks or so. I don't feel like I ever want to watch the Romero version again. It feels deficient and again, hokey, needlessly.
Oh yeah, one last fact, Argento's version has more dialogue but is cut so well. It is still a long movie by Horror standards, yet shorter than Romero's version. It glides by at a healthy 140 minutes. He uses a better cut for the whirly-bird end, and omits the "Frankenstein Monster" helicopter blade prop, reminiscent of a watermelonhead, no fault of Mr. Savini but the heat on that day in Pennsylvania. Romero made a bad decision based on just wanting to use that prop, dammit. And no running Zombie kids, Argento did a better edit job, and TRIMMED this footage effectively. Anyway, Argento's version of Dawn of the Dead, Zombi, is a huge recommend to all Horror fans.
Oh yeah, it is the member of two horror franchises, one Italian as a whole, Zombi, and also the second installment of Romero's original un-dead trilogy. But worth two points. After all that gushing, I am on the hunt tonight with a healthy two points!!! Yee-ahh!!!! you, my worthy competitors.
A local Independence Stash IPA Cheers! to Argento Romero and the whirly-bird. You swung and hit an incredible homerun Mr. Argento.
LOB-2