This is a movie I listed as one of the most influential horror films of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night Of The Living Dead. This is the film that forever changed what we consider to be  zombie, and yet when George Romero made the movie the one word he never used in the script was zombie. The monsters were always called things, or ghouls.

Before this film any movies about zombies generally dealt with them as though they are from Caribbean myth, the reanimated corpses of the recently dead that serve the wishes of an evil wizard or priest. In White Zombie they are laborers making a sugar cane plantation work, in other films armies of the dead are used, but always there is a controlling agency that is the source of the scourge with understandable if somewhat irrational motivations.

With Night Of The Living Dead (Originally titled Night Of The Flesh Eaters.) Romero created a new monster, one that everyone else referred to as a zombie and that in end supplanted the Caribbean zombie as the de-facto zombie legend.

In terms of filmcraft, this film is a flawed film suffering from a lack of skill in the writing and direct through limited budget and effect capability. If you watch this film looking for quality film making you will be disappointed. What this film had, especially for its time (1968) was shock value. Compared to the horror films of of the 60’s this is an in your face gore-fest. The film is simply relentless in his ferocity. At this time other films were satisfied with smear of blood for gore, while Romero took the audience up close to entrails eating ghouls. The film was also ground breaking in the casting of a black man in the heroic lead. At the time when race riots were breaking out and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was being assassinated, to have a black hero ordering about a white man and slapping a hysterical white woman was simply unparalleled.  It is to Romero’s ethical credit that he saw nothing ground breaking in this. He has made mention in numerous interviews that the actor, Duane Jones, got the part simply because he was the best actor who read for it.

The film’s tones is also more like something from the 70’s than something from the 60’s. Its futile ending reflects the growing cynicism and fatalism in american society.

Of course the films lasting influence was with the creation of the new screen monster, the zombie. After this movie zombies became self-motivated — usually only by hunger — relentless hordes of undead. They were freed of the slavery imagery and instead became an all-consuming mindless crowd. Eventually zombies as a monster factionalized as new filmmakers tried new ways to invigorate and revitalized the concept (If I can be pardoned for using the term in relation to the undead.) Dan O’Bannon gave us smart and indestructible zombies in Return Of The Living Dead, — which is actually a sequel to Night Of The Living Dead — Zack Snyder gave us fast zombies in the remake of Dawn Of The Dead,  and Danny Boyle gave us viral zombies in 28 Days Later. There have been others cause the zombie genre is not dead, but forever undead and ready to bite, however they all owe a debt to George A. Romero and nine friends who wanted to make a monster movie.

So last night I watched an atmospheric horror film from the early sixties, The Innocents (1961) based on the novella The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James.

The story is about a young and inexperienced nanny, Miss Giddens  – played wonderfully by Deborah Kerr – who is sent to look after the household and two young wards who are the niece and nephew of her employer.  Their uncle wants nothing to do with the children, being a bachelor and happy in his lack of responsibilities.

The household, Bly House, is in the country and the characters are isolated there, living in their own little world. Things seem normal enough until Miles, the young nephew is sent home, expelled from school under mysterious circumstances. Miles is played by the outstanding young actor Martin Stephens best known to me as the David the leader of the alien children in the classic SF film The Village Of The Damned. He is equally good here playing an equally stranger and terrifying child.

Events take a turns for the strange and Miss Giddens begins to suspects that not only is the supernatural afoot in the household, but that the two innocent children are hiding terrible secrets and that the innocence is all lies and deceit.

This film works its horror without overt acts of violence or scenes of random brutality. It is a slow piece, with careful photography  that builds suspense and tension with understated shots, and a disdain for photographic trickery. The image above is one of the ones I found most unsettling in the film. I can’t explain the image too much without indulging in spoilers, but it is the heart of the story right there in one image.

Today’s horror films have, in general, lost all sense of the unease that should be at the heart of horror. There is way too much attention paid to pain, suffering, and dismemberment. Torture-porn is not horror in my opinion. Horror comes from that moment when the sand shifts under your feet and the world no longer works the way you thought it did. This film capture that emotional wonderfully.

It is hard to believe that it has been twenty-two years since I first saw the film, The Princess Bride. The film took my breath away with its romance, its humor, and its action. This was and still is a wonderful  film to discover. William Goldman, author of the novel and the screenplay, subverts the cliches of the fairly tale without mocking them. He takes a fairly standard plot-line and set of baseline characters and weaves something truly original. The novel is well worth the time to read, even if you have seen the movie. People interested in adaptation of novels to screenplays should pay strict attention as Goldman is the master of the art. (Some of his previous adaptations, include Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, and The Ghost and the Darkness.) This perfect date movie was directed flawless by Rob Reiner, son of comedian legend Carl Reiner and a talent who has become a force for directional skill and artistry in his own right.

Reiner cast the film perfectly, Carey Elwes as Westley, Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, and Andre the Giant as Fezzik the Giant. (in fact Goldman tells us that the role of Fezzik was written with Andre The Giant in mind so it truly was perfect casting.)

After suffering through The Mist as last weekend’s Sunday Night Movie, I knew I wanted to watch a film that would make me feel good about life and love and dreams. Something to cleanse my palate, my mind, and my soul of the foul taste that wretched film left behind. It was down to my favorite — emotionally speaking – film of all time, The Princess Bride.

Despite suffering from a headache all day Sunday (one that plagues me even now even as I write this on Monday night) The Princess Bride lifted my spirits, brought joy to my heart, and laughter to my lips. I also had a spot of inspiration into the ending fight for my novel Cawdor.  It will sort of be the inverse of the final fight between Inigo and Count Rugen – The Six Fingered Man. The hero will say nothing all during the fight. She will be an implacable force for vengeance.

This film is medicine for the soul. It washes away cynicism and helps reveal a better heart.

So with a nod towards Halloween my Sunday Night movie this weekend was The Mist. The Mist is a monster movie based on the Stephen King novella os the same title. I had hear a number of good things about this film and it’s been sitting in my Netflix queue for sometime, so I decided that Halloween was the perfect time to give it a spin.

I was disappointed. This film did not work for me and frankly left me rather cold. It may be that I have grown out of my Stephen King phase or it could be that King has grown stale. Either way too many of the elements to the story felt like stock and formula elements rather than facet of a storyline.

The Mist is a story about a small New England town that is suddenly engulfed in a mysterious mist one day following a terrible storm. The protagonist of the film is David Drayton, played by Thomas Jane, a graphic artist with a loving wife and intelligent little boy. His life is complicated by his neighbor, Brent Norton (played by Andre Braugher) a big shot lawyer with whom Drayton has scuffled in court over property damages. The two, along with Drayton’s son, drive into town for supplies following the storm and are trapped in the local supermarket when the mist closes in around the town.

Quickly it become apparent that there is something in the mist and it is death to go out into it. There are a number of other people trapped in the supermarket and it’s clear that everyone here is part of the stock company of Stephen King characters. David Drayton himself is the smart, talented and usually liked artist. Brant Norton is the unlikeable lawyer/business man type, you have the not-too-bright and even less courageous mechanics in Jim and Myron, the likable and sweet high school girl who babysits for the locals, the shy boy, and the character no King story can possible be without, the Christian Zealot, here embodied by Mrs. Carmody, played by Marcia Gay Harden.

Mrs Carmody is truly a character I am tired of seeing. She is not a character as much as she is parody of a character. King’s dislike of christian characters is evident in  work and Mrs. Carmody is no exception. There was nothing interesting, new, or exciting with this set of characters captured in this plot.

The majority of the screentime is spent as a siege movie. The people trapped in the store struggling to over the the events tossed at them. This whole story is pretty much the opposite of a character driven piece. Here events happen, tentacles grab people, giant bugs fly into the store with deadly stingers, and people react to these events. Overall I will give this to the film, the main characters do NOT act like professional victims. They generally figure out the right approaches and right techniques to deal with the situation. However they are reactive and that in my book generally makes for more boring stories.

The film remained so-so right up until the resolution when it jumped the shark and turned into utter garbage. To explain why I feel that was will mean spoilers, so if you wanna know, follow me through the jump.

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Released in the USA in May 2008 this French film is a deadpan spoof of classic 60’s spy films. OSS 117 is the title and code name for the lead character, played perfectly by Jean Dujardin. (Picture here as his character us learning to Mambo with lovely co-star Berenice Bejo.)

OSS 117 is sent to Cairo after the agent already in place goes missing and is considered assassinated. His mission is to find out who killed Jack Jefferson, OSS 117’s best friend, discover the fate of a missing Soviet ship full of arms, investigate local islamic terrorists out to overthrow the government and protect the French interests in the region. You know, the typical stuff that James Bond does before breakfast.

Oss 117 thinks he’s Bond. This is the 50’s. He dresses in the height of fashion, he knows every woman wants to bed him and he utterly clueless to just how thick he really is.

Jean Durjandin plays Sean Connery but with just the right amount of overacting. He clearly studied Connery’s movements and mannerisms, then repeated them in a larger broader fashion for comedy. The satire works spot-on. He delivers puns and quips that no one thinks is funny save himself. He routinely misses vital clues while self absorbed with some tiny detail that matters to only him, such as ‘Has the car been washed recently?’

Even with the subtitles getting the way of some subtle verbal performances, this film was a real treat and one I am likely to pick-up and add to my collection.