| | I don't know per se as the my favorite horror/Halloween movie--let alone all-time favorite horror/Halloween movie. I WILL however, say what are the most scariest scare-fests in my humble opinion.
The George A. Romero's Living Dead trilogy will have to do, starting with the Night of The Living Dead, having the most profound impact on my life. It was the summer after graduating grade school, and I had to decide upon satisfying my cinematic curiosity that is the first modern zombie film, made in 1968. Now while that year might not sound all that significant to anybody else here, BUT as someone who grew up in the first decade of the MPAA's rating systems, I am reminded of how the same 60's was also the same 60's of The Sound of Music, some Jerry Lewis comedies (before he became more respected/acceptable by French comedic standards), and other family-friendlier sitcom fare of Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes (way before we knew of Bob Crane's shadier shenanigans with John Carpenter), Gilligan's Island, and even early days Brady Bunch. In short, the last decade before pretty much all of international pop culture (let alone American pop culture) is compartmentalized by obscenity rules and age clarifications.
And with NOTLD, it feels very traumatic to watch the Doris Day-styled hairstyles, coupled with the fashion and ambiance of say, AMC's Mad Men series, parachuted into the sort of genre realm more comparable to the Saw franchise, than say, what's found in a Cary Grant flick--ON Turner Classic Movies! ...and speaking of classic movies, there's something all too unsettling to see the same black and white film texture, of say, a Laurel & Hardy comedy, Frank Capra favorite, Busby Berkeley musical, silver screen classic, etc... utilized to horrific, Gothic effect with the first mainstream-successful introduction of rudimentary, gore FX (i.e, the first scene depicting the zombies munching on human innards etc...).
Yet, that's still some time before I first heard of other gory horror flicks that even predates Romero's Night of The Living Dead--by a decade if not more, like say some of the stuff by Herschel Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast, and some other flick like Night of The Flesh Eaters (the original title Romero intended to use for his debut feature before running a foul of something called, copyright infringement, if not marketing confusion). Maybe at least in hindsight, I was reminded by the subsequent likes of crime/historical fiction writer, James Ellroy, commenting in his literary work on the not-so-innocent side of the bobby-socks facade that was not only the Eisenhower 50's, but also with the innocence & idealism of the JFK 60's... AND I'VE READ L.A. CONFIDENTIAL... cover to cover... for a collegiate book report!
In the following years, maybe decades since my viewing of Night of The Living Dead, I've also came across the other parts of what was Romero's Living Dead trilogy (before augmenting Land of The Dead and Diary of The Dead, turning it into a quintet), with Dawn of The Dead (it actually made me too scared to hang out at the local mall for a few years!), and the much-aligned, possibly first sign of shark-jumping/anti-military effort, Day of The Dead. Both Dawn and Day had its fair share of scaring the holy be-(taking-the-Lord's-name-in-vain) out of me, BUT... in year 2009, at age 33 (you can guess what year of what age I first saw NOTLD), it seems the only thing left to be traumatized out of Romero's current body of work is that he's just another one-trick pony, with what amounts to a gorehound version of being the proverbial misanthropic curmudgeon, losing all faith in humanity as well as God. ...a one trick pony that should have been taken to back of the woodshed a long time ago had he not succumbed to allowing himself be pigeonholed as the "zombie guy," when he could have done so much more apart from the living dead franchise he pioneered, YET ironically resigned to as just another dead franchise marketeer, no different than the commercialism Romero satirized in the original Dawn of The Dead.
I could go into Romero's latter days expression on all things politics and religion come his Land of The Dead feature, but I think I just about covered everything about what's truly scary about the original Dead franchise, but also with the semantic irony that Romero's Living Dead franchise is a dead franchise(!), meaning a now tiresome series, no different from the now-laughable Jason Voorhees/Freddy Krueger/Michael Meyers/Hellraiser/Texas Chainsaw, sequels/prequels/remakes, etc... now pretty much a pop cultural joke worthy of a lame Wayans Bros. parody.
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| | Posted 11/2/2009 2:45 AM - 15 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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