The Crazies (1973)
It isn’t that surprising to watch a George Romero movie and see someone being brutally murdered. Nor is it that novel to see how he delights in charting the downfall of mankind, usually as a result of our own folly. What marks him out as a great filmmaker is his ability to weave his pretty linear story into a complex narrative on the tragic weakness of humanity, namely our unfathomable combination of dauntless courage and distasteful arrogance. The Dead series is steeped in this notion, with Romero executing a beautiful full-circle from Night to Land in showing audiences how, when the going gets tough we generally go to pieces.
Day of the Dead (1985)
For two decades, Day of the Dead was considered the final installment of George A Romero’s seminal zombie series, and talk of the film has always carried with it the faintest sense of anticlimax. As has been well documented over the years, it’s not exactly the film Romero set out to make - his planned epic featuring, amongst other things, a war between several zombie factions, had to be drastically scaled back for budgetary reasons - but he’s since labelled it his favourite of the original trilogy, and twenty years later there’s a strong case to be made for Day as the best in the series. Read more
Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)
Director Amando De Ossorio’s much-admired Tombs of the Blind Dead is often considered one of the finest Spanish horror movies ever made - not an incredible feat considering Spain’s less than stellar contribution to the genre. Thirty-five years later the film has dated somewhat, and the impact of the once shocking gore has been tamed by the excesses that were to follow throughout the 1970s, but it’s still an important and impressive piece of work by any standards. Read more
Silent Hill (2006)
Computer games have something of a chequered history when it comes to big screen adaptations. Actually I suppose that’s not quite true as their heritage is quite consistent; basically, they’re usually very bad indeed. I’d still like to know who decided that Bob Hoskins would make a good Super Mario, or that Kylie Minogue’s heart-warming portrayal of quintessential Australian suburb-dweller could only be followed by a part in Street Fighter. More recently we’ve had the slightly more accomplished Resident Evil series which wasn’t as bad (no really) as a lot of people feared.
Saw II (2005)
In much the same way that The Blair Witch Project capitalised on its unexpected success by immediately rushing out a sequel, fans of the diabolical ‘Jigsaw’ had to wait for less than a year for the follow-up to Saw. In light of this it shouldn’t be too surprising that Saw II offers up very little in the way of fresh ideas, but should we really have expected anything else? After all, the strength of the original was in watching helpless victims being psychologically and physically dissected in fiendishly cruel ways. Is this enough to carry a sequel though? Read more
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